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By David Lohr
Beginnings
Donald Harvey
Donald Harvey was born in Butler County, Ohio, in 1952. Shortly after his birth, Harveys parents
relocated to Booneville, Kentucky, a small community nestled away on the eastern slopes of the
Appalachian Mountains. In an August 14, 1987, interview with Cincinnati Post reporter Nadine
Louthan, Harveys mother, Goldie Harvey, recalled that her son was brought up in a loving family
environment.
My son has always been a good boy, she said.
Martha D. Turner, who was principal of the elementary school Harvey attended for eight years, backed
up McKinneys comments in her own interview with the Cincinnati Post:
Donnie was a very special child to me, she said. He was always clean and well dressed with his hair
trimmed. He was a happy child, very sociable and well-liked by the other children. He was a
handsome boy with big brown eyes and dark curly hair he always had a smile for me. There was
never any indication of any abnormality.
Former classmates of Harvey described him as a loner and teachers pet. He rarely participated in
extracurricular activities, opting instead to read books and dream about the future. Following his
graduation from Sturgeon Elementary School, Harvey entered Booneville High School in 1968.
Earning As and Bs in most classes with little effort, he became bored with the daily routine and
dropped out. Having no real goals, Harvey was not sure what he wanted to do with his newfound
freedom. For unknown reasons he eventually decided to relocate to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he
secured a job at a local factory.
In 1970 work began to slow at the plant and Harvey was eventually laid off. His mother called him a
few days later and asked him to travel to Kentucky and visit his ailing grandfather, who was recently
placed in a hospital there. Harvey agreed and within days set off for Marymount Hospital in London,
Kentucky. Although no one knew it at the time, this trip would later prove to be the beginning of a
long journey into madness and murder.
A Killer Emerges
While in Kentucky, Harvey spent much of his time at Marymount Hospital, and was soon well known
and liked by the nuns who worked there. During one particular conversation, one of the nuns asked
Harvey if he would be interested in working there as an orderly. Since he was currently unemployed
and didnt want another factory job, Harvey agreed and started work the next day. Although he was
not a trained nurse or doctor, Harvey's duties required him to spend hours alone with patients. Some of
his duties included changing bedpans, inserting catheters and passing out medications.
Harvey's first few weeks at the hospital were uneventful, but something snapped within him along the
way. To this day criminal psychologists are unable to explain what brought out his murderous
tendencies. Whether he was unable to cope with the pain and suffering around him or simply enjoyed
watching his victims die may never be known. According to Harvey's later confessions, he considered
himself an angel of death, or mercy killer. But the details he eventually revealed about his first
murder negate that self-serving description.
Donald Harvey
during interview
During an evening shift, just months after starting at the hospital, Donald Harvey committed his first
murder. Years later, in a 1997 interview with Cincinnati Post reporter Dan Horn, Harvey described it:
When he walked into a private room to check on a stroke victim, the patient rubbed feces in his face.
Harvey became angry and lost all control.
The next thing I knew, Id smothered him, he said. It was like it was the last straw. I just lost it. I
went in to help the man and he wants to rub that in my face.
Following the murder, Harvey cleaned up the patient and hopped into the shower before notifying the
nurses.
No one ever questioned it, he said.
Just three weeks after committing his first murder, he killed again when he disconnected an oxygen
tank at an elderly womans bedside. As the weeks went by and no one detected foul play in his first
two murders, Harvey became more brazen. Whether out of boredom, opportunity or experimentation,
his methods varied with each murder. He used various items, such as plastic bags, morphine and a
variety of drugs, to kill more than a dozen patients in a year. In one case, he chose an exceptionally
brutal method. The patient had an argument with Harvey because he thought Harvey was trying to kill
him, and during the course of that argument, he reportedly knocked Harvey out with a bedpan. Upon
recovering from the blow, Harvey waited till later that night, snuck into the patients room, and stuck a
coat hanger through his catheter. As a result of the puncture, infection set in and the man died a few
days later.
On March 31, 1971, a drunk and disorderly Harvey was arrested for burglary. While being questioned
about the crime, Harvey began babbling incoherently about the murders he had committed. The
arresting officers looked into his claims and questioned him extensively about them, but in the end
they were unable to find any substantial evidence to back them up, or charge him with any crime
relating to them. A few weeks later he went to trial for the burglary charges and pleaded guilty to a
reduced charge of petty theft. After paying a small fine for his indiscretion, Harvey decided it was
time for another change of scenery and enlisted in the United States Air Force.
Deadly Techniques
Harvey served less than a year in the Air Force before he received a general discharge in March 1972.
His records list unspecified grounds for the discharge, but it was widely rumored at the time that his
superiors had learned of his confessions to the Kentucky police and did not want to deal with any
similar matters in the future. After his release from the military, Harvey dealt with several bouts of
depression. By July 1972, he was unable to control his inner demons and decided to commit himself
to the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Lexington, Kentucky.
Harvey remained in the mental ward of the facility until August 25, but then admitted himself again a
few weeks later. Following a bungled suicide attempt in the hospital, Harvey was placed in restraints
and over the course of the next few weeks received 21 electroshock therapy treatments. On October
17, 1972, Harvey was again released from the hospital. Goldie Harvey later condemned the hospital
for releasing her son so abruptly, feeling that he had shown no apparent signs of improvement from the
time of his admittance.
No More Boundaries
The early 1980s brought about variations in Harveys methods. He moved in with a gay lover, Carl
Hoeweler, and soon began poisoning him out of fear that his mate was cheating on him. Harvey would
slip small doses of arsenic into Hoewelers food so that he would be too ill to leave their apartment.
Harveys confidence was hitting peak levels and he began feeling as though he was unstoppable. On
one occasion, following an argument with a female neighbor, Harvey laced one of her beverages with
hepatitis serum, nearly killing her before the infection was diagnosed and treated. Another neighbor,
Helen Metzger, was not so lucky. Harvey put arsenic in one of her pies, and she died later that week at
a local hospital.
In April 1983, Harvey had a squabble with Hoewelers parents and began to poison their food with
arsenic. On May 1, 1983, Hoewelers father, Henry, suffered a stroke and was remitted to Providence
Hospital. Harvey visited Henry Hoeweler there and placed arsenic in his pudding before leaving.
Hoeweler died later that night. Harvey continued to poison Carls mother, Margaret, off and on for the
next year, but was unsuccessful in his attempts to kill her. In January 1984, Hoeweler broke off the
relationship with Harvey and asked him to move out. Harvey was angry at the rejection and spent the
next two years trying to kill Hoeweler with his poisonous concoctions. At one point he even tried to
kill a female friend of Hoeweler as a way to get his revenge. While neither attempt worked, he did
manage to land Hoeweler in the hospital at one point, as a result of the poisons he had unknowingly
ingested.
While leaving work on July 18, 1985, security guards noticed Harvey acting suspiciously and decided
to search a gym bag he was carrying with him. Inside the satchel, the guards discovered a .38-caliber
pistol, hypodermic needles, surgical scissors and gloves, a cocaine spoon, various medical texts, two
occult books, and a biography of serial killer Charles Sobhraj. Fined $50.00 for carrying a firearm on
federal property, Harvey was then given the option to quietly resign from his job rather than being
fired. Nothing about the incident was ever noted in his work record and hospital authorities did not
open an investigation to determine if Harvey had committed any other crimes while working at the
hospital.
Final Factors
In April 1987, after securing a search warrant for Harveys apartment, investigators found a mountain
of evidence against him: jars of cyanide and arsenic, books on the occult and poisons, and a detailed
account of the murder, which he had written in a diary. Following this new discovery of evidence,
Harvey was arrested on one count of aggravated murder, and after filing a plea of not guilty by reason
of insanity was held under a $200,000 bond. The evidence against Harvey was growing rapidly, and
investigators were beginning to look into several other mysterious deaths at the hospital. Harvey
realized that it was only a matter of time before they discovered the full extent of his crimes, and
decided he should try to make a plea bargain to avoid Ohios death penalty.
In a 1991 interview with a reporter from the Columbus Dispatch, Harvey gave a rare glimpse into his
mindset:
Why did you kill?
Well, people controlled me for 18 years, and then I controlled my own destiny. I controlled other
peoples lives, whether they lived or died. I had that power to control.
What right did you have to decide that?
After I didnt get caught for the first 15, I thought it was my right. I appointed myself judge,
prosecutor and jury. So I played God.
On July 23, 2001, the Associated Press printed an article listing the worst serial killers in the United
States. Donald Harvey was rated number one, followed by John Wayne Gacy, Patrick Kearney, Bruce
Davis and Dean Corll.
Donald Harveys first scheduled parole hearing is set for 2047. He will be 95.
Wake-Up Call?
One would think that cases such as Harveys and Shipmans would galvanize the medical community
worldwide to develop procedures to safeguard against murder in medical institutions. However,
discoveries of serial murders within hospitals have risen drastically over the years. The number of
victims these serial killers are able to claim before attracting attention strains credibility. British Dr.
Harold Shipman is one of the world's most prolific serial killers, claiming at least 215 victims. The
list of medics who kill and their number of victims continues to grow:
Orville Lynn Majors, Richard Angelo, Michael Swango, Dr. Harold Shipman, Genene Jones, Efren
Saldivar, Beverley Allitt
Richard Angelo, Long Island, New York, at least 10 murders
Orville Lynn Majors, Clinton, Indiana, at least 130 murders
Roberto Diaz, Riverside, California, 12 murders
Brian Rosenfeld, Florida, 23 possible murders
Defending Harvey
by Katherine Ramsland
him this chance to "tell his story." Actually, Defending Donald Harvey (Emmis Books) is largely
Whalen's story. He was Harvey's defense attorney, and one might easily question the ethics of some of
his decisions. For example, after the first murder came to light, he urged a suspicious reporter to "keep
digging" and decided that since Harvey had confessed to him a number of hospital murders, he needed
to protect society rather than attempt to get his client off. He justifies that, hoping to get readers to
sympathize with his difficult position, and many will. Nevertheless, there are several situations
throughout this case in which Whalen seems less concerned with the demands of our justice system
than with his personal issues. And, surprisingly, he remained friends with Harvey after his part was
done. It's difficult to know, when all is said and done, what he really thinks about Harvey: Sometimes
this serial killer is a monster, sometimes merely a pathetic human being.
The story is familiar to anyone who knows about healthcare serial killers, so there's not much new
here. Even the reporter, Pat Minarcin, who broke the story and who adds an "Afterword," merely
repeats most of what Whalen says. Since there has been no other book on Harvey, this is a good
addition to the extant literature on serial killers, but otherwise there seems little justification for
retelling Harvey's story at this time.
Harvey was caught when an autopsy revealed a toxin in the body of a male patient, John Powell, and at
the time, no one put much effort into considering that he may have caused other deaths as well. It was
Harvey himself who started the momentum by confessing to his public defender, who then urged
Minarcin to find a way to dig up evidence. Harvey told Whalen that he had lost count of how many
people he'd killed (including people outside the hospital), but that it had not been more then seventy.
In the end, says Whalen, he was convicted of thirty-six murders and one charge of manslaughter,
although beyond the official tally there were clearly many more victims.
No Mercy Killer
by Katherine Ramsland
Harvey continues to insist that he was a mercy-killer, but the facts indicate otherwise. Over the course
of eighteen years in several different institutions, he killed for petty reasons as well as mercy. One
man he just didn't like; another he killed out of revenge. And then there were the acquaintances he
poisoned with arsenic who just happened to have annoyed him. There seems little doubt that he was
engaged in occult practices when he chose some of his victims, and the opening scene of this book has
him lighting candles that stand for specific people and deciding from a candle's flicker that the person
symbolized by that candle should die. He supposedly believed he was receiving commands from some
spirit named Duncan. Even so, Whalen wants to accept the idea that Harvey's acts were somehow the
result of projecting his own depression onto his patients (although he also sometimes rejects this
explanation).
While Whalen attempts to set Harvey apart by comparing him against a description from a book that
stereotypes serial killers, he fails to make comparisons against studies of healthcare serial killers, aside
from a passing glance at Charles Cullen (whom Harvey believes may have actually corresponded with
him for a short time). Despite himself, Whalen makes it clear that like many serial killers, Harvey was
cold-blooded about this business but was a complete coward when it came to his own death. He also
loves attention, inflating his victim count to 87 when he was not getting enough, and he appears to be a
callous narcissist. In other words, among serial killers, he's not that unique.
Donald Harvey
But there's a more important issue at stake. It's clear that Harvey should never have gotten the jobs he
did, and since Cullen's story is sadly similar, we can see from this account that not much has changed
since 1987 when Harvey was caught. Indeed, hospital administrations still protect their institutions
and letters of warning to others still fail to get sent. In addition, the idea of an "internal investigation"
by administrators who ignore whistleblowers is as much an empty gesture today as it was back then.
Yet Harvey offers a solution. He likes to "help" by describing his methods and telling hospitals what
they did wrong in creating situations that allowed him to kill unhampered. In other words, he revels in
his acts, blames others, and deflects responsibility from himself. So what else is new? There will
always be ways for determined predators to kill, no matter what safeguards are put into place. The
bottom line is, short of psychosis, they choose to exploit the trust engendered in healthcare
communities and to take the lives of vulnerable people. There's not much here about Harvey to feel
sympathy for.
Bibliography
Books/Journals
The Cincinnati Crime Book, by George Stimson; July 1, 1998, Peasenhall Press
Blind Eye, by James B. Stewart; January 1999, Simon & Schuster
Hunting Humans, by Michael Newton; September 1991, Breakout Productions
Newspapers
Cincinnati Post- Ohio
The Columbus Dispatch Ohio
Los Angeles Times - California
The Associated Press
CNN
Internet
All about nurses who kill
Cincinnati Post