Like a ghost, he hovered in front of the sickbed, waiting for an opportunity to take people's lives without mercy.
No one knows how many patients he killed, nicknamed the "Angel of Death."
Text/ManChun #Real Case #Vol. 102
Cincinnati, Ohio, USA.
John Powell, who had been in a coma for months in his bed at Drake Memorial Hospital, seemed to have begun to improve slightly after careful treatment by medical staff. And just as everything was going in a good direction, a figure sneaked into John's room, and he added something to John's nasogastric tube...
On March 7, 1987, John Powell, who had been in a coma for several months and whose condition began to improve, died. The assistant coroner in charge of the autopsy for John found some unusual signs during the examination: on John's body, there was a smell of almonds. And this smell is enough to show that it was not the disease that caused John's death, but cyanide poisoning (people who died of cyanide poisoning also had the almond smell of cyanide on their bodies).
As a result, John, who had been ill for several months, apparently did not die of natural causes, so the local police immediately launched an investigation.
After the police intervened in the investigation, at first they suspected that John's relatives and friends wanted to get rid of the burden of this serious illness, but after investigation, they found that they could not find any evidence or motive to prove that it was the hands of John's relatives and friends, in other words, John's death had nothing to do with these people. This discovery once brought the investigation to an impasse, but the police quickly adjusted their thinking, they believe that because John was unconscious in bed, the murderer must be someone who could approach him, and since the murderer was not John's family and friends, it was likely that the murderer was some medical worker who was eligible to enter and leave John's ward.
So the police got a list of medical staff eligible to enter and leave John's ward from Drake Memorial Hospital, which offered few people on the list, and soon a paramedic named Donald Harvey came into the police's sight, and this Harvey was nicknamed "Angel of Death" because he often appeared around dead patients.
Donald Harvey
This anomaly that happened to Harvey made the police extremely suspicious of him, so the police began to investigate this Harvey with great effort, and they wanted to see if there was any connection between him and John's death...
In April 1987, the police obtained a search warrant for Harvey's apartment. After a search, the police found enough evidence in Harvey's apartment to accuse Harvey of murdering John: several cans containing cyanide or arsenic, and many books on occult and toxicology. In addition to these poisons and books, what is even more frightening is a diary by Harvey.
In this diary, police found that in addition to John, many other victims had also died at the hands of Harvey. In this diary, he recorded in detail the number of people he murdered.
The police quickly arrested Harvey, and at the same time, more and more evidence began to prove Harvey's guilt, and the police began to investigate the other victims based on Harvey's diary.
As the investigation continues to deepen, more and more evils begin to emerge...
In 1970, at the age of 18, Harvey set out from Booneville, Kentucky, to visit his sick grandfather at Marymount Hospital in London, Kentucky. Harvey spent a long time at the Malimont Hospital, during which time he won the affection of the nuns in the hospital.
One day, a nun asks Harvey if he would like to stay at Malimont Hospital as a paramedic, which is a very good offer for Harvey, who is unemployed. So Harvey happily responded and started working the next day.
Although Harvey did not receive any professional medical training, the nuns in the hospital still arranged for him to do tasks such as inserting catheters for patients, distributing drugs, and Harvey's work also gave him time to spend alone with patients every day.
At first, Harvey's work was uneventful, but he didn't know whether he was used to seeing life and death in the hospital or for other reasons, Harvey gradually developed some unusual ideas about the patients he cared for.
During a night shift, Harvey was checking on a stroke patient in a private room when the patient suddenly wiped feces onto Harvey's face. In a fit of rage, Harvey covered the patient's nose and mouth with a blue plastic sheet and a pillow, and after the victim lost his breath, Harvey even used a stethoscope to hear if he still had a heartbeat. After confirming the victim's death, Harvey took the plastic sheet and pillow, cleaned the victim and changed into a clean hospital hospital staff uniform before calling a nurse without panic. The nurse who came to see him didn't have any doubts, or even asked how Harvey's patient died, and the patient was identified as a normal death.
This time, the crime was like opening Pandora's box, and Harvey began to kill recklessly. Until leaving Montemari Hospital on 27 March 1971, Harvey killed 15 victims in various ways while in office.
On March 31, 1971, a drunken Harvey was arrested for theft, and when questioned by the police, Harvey told them about his killing, but the police did not find any evidence to prove Harvey's claims, so Harvey's confession of murder could only be dismissed. In the end, the court found Harvey guilty of theft, but because the crime was minor, Harvey did not have to go to jail to serve his sentence, only to pay a fine.
After this incident, Harvey entered service in the Air Force. However, Harvey, who had not served long, was found by the governor for his bad past records and was ordered to be discharged from the army on March 9, 1973. After retiring from the military, Harvey first worked as a part-time nurse's assistant at Cardinal Hill Hospital in Lexington, before finding a second nursing job at The Samaria Hospital in Lexington in June 1973. Until August 1974, Harvey was doing both jobs. Perhaps because the two hospitals have stricter management systems, Harvey has never had the opportunity to be alone with patients when he works, so it is speculated that this may be the reason why he has not killed any of the patients during his time at these two hospitals.
In September 1975, Harvey moved back to Cincinnati, Ohio, and a few weeks after moving back, Harvey found a night job at V.A. Hospital, where Harvey could go to almost any corner of the hospital without supervision because harvey's work was trivial and complicated, and the specific tasks depended mainly on which department needed Harvey's assistance.
Over the next decade, Harvey killed at least 15 patients, and he detailed the killings of each victim in his diary: covering the victim's mouth and nose with a plastic bag and a wet towel to suffocate him; spraying rat poison in the patient's dessert; injecting cyanide into the patient's buttocks... While committing a lot of evil deeds, Harvey is also studying how to better hide his crimes.
Harvey resigned from the hospital on July 15, 1985, and seven months later, in February 1986, he joined Drake Memorial Hospital in Cincinnati as a full-time nurse assistant. Over the next 13 months, Harvey killed 23 more patients by cutting off ventilators and injecting highly toxic substances such as air or cyanide into the patients' veins. Of course, this was Harvey's last madness, because the murder of John Powell in March 1987 finally drew the attention of the police to him, and his accumulated crimes were finally revealed.
In 1987, Donald Harvey entered the courtroom for trial
While Harvey's crime is terrifying, it is also very puzzling: Why does Harvey, as a nurse, kill sick people who are sick?
In 1991, Harvey was interviewed by a reporter from the Columbus Express, in which Harvey confided his inner thoughts.
The reporter asked, "Why did you kill those people?" ”
Harvey said: "I have been controlled for 18 years, and now it is my turn to control others. I enjoy the feeling of controlling people's lives and deaths because I have that power. ”
And when the reporter asked, "What gives you the power to control the lives and deaths of others?" ”
Harvey replied: "I had that power when I wasn't arrested for the first 15 cases. Since then, I have appointed myself as judges, prosecutors, and jurors, and therefore, as God. ”
Donald Harvey was convicted by a court in 1987 and sentenced to several prison sentences ranging from one sentence to another, and according to U.S. regulations, Harvey could not wait until his first parole hearing until 2047, when he was 95 years old.
Donald Harvey was sent to prison, image: toutiao.china.com
Donald Harvey in prison
Donald Harvey was interviewed by an orthodontic institution in 2004
Harvey, however, will never wait for that hearing in 2047. Because on the morning of March 30, 2017, an inmate broke into Harvey's cell, who was already critically ill. After breaking in, the prisoner beat Harvey to death. Murderer Donald Harvey was 64 years old.
Donald Harvey's crimes are not unique in the history of crime, in many parts of the world, there have been similar patterns of crime, and this type of crime often occurs in the medical field, so some people call it "angel of mercy" or "angel of death", and the characteristics and motives of this crime are mainly as follows:
(1) "Benevolent killers": they firmly believe (and may sometimes be delusional) that the victim is suffering or is not being helped; (2) Cruelty: Using the convenience of their positions to control helpless victims; (3) Vicious "heroes": The perpetrators have endangered the lives of the victims, but they are still trying to "save" the victims, and some people even try to revive the victims even when they know that they are dead, and the purpose of this is to create an illusion of selfless help.
From the above introduction, it is not difficult to find that these so-called "benevolent" people are actually just some cruel and vicious murderers. They judge the situation of their victims by their own standards, and after making so-called judgments, ruthlessly deprive victims of what they consider to be in pain and helplessness, or use the blood of victims to create a false image of selfless help for themselves. Such a group of people, after all, are just some psychologically deformed murderers, and they can never be the angels they think they are!
References for this issue: 1. murderpedia: donald harvey 2. wikipedia: donald harvey; angel of mercy (criminology) 3. ＂angel of death＂ serial killer donald harvey dies after prison attack（published march 30, 2017；＜associated press＞） 4. donald harvey－the angel of death（thoughtco.com） 5. true crime corner: donald harvey（by loretta sisco posted on apr 11, 2017） 6. w. carlton weddington：my six months with donald harvey，＂the angel of death＂（by w. carlton weddington, on fri apr 14, 2017） 7. Inserted in this article, unless otherwise specified, is from: murderpedia 8. Source of title image material: www.mtime.com Editorial Board: Main Writer: Man Chun; Reviewer: Xiao Yuanyuan; Proofreader: Pea Xiao Liu; Editor: Lin Yuanfang
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