April 15, 1952 - Donald Harvey
His position as a hospital orderly gave him sustained, largely unsupervised access to vulnerable patients over many years — a combination that allowed the harm to accumulate largely undetected. What began, by his own account, as a misguided rationale for ending suffering shifted into something far more deliberate, with the confirmed victim count reaching 37 and his own claimed total more than doubling that figure. The institutional setting, meant to protect the sick, instead provided the conditions that made him one of the most prolific killers operating within the American healthcare system.
From Wikipedia
Donald Harvey (April 15, 1952 – March 30, 2017) was an American serial killer who claimed to have murdered 87 people, though he has 37 confirmed victims. He was able to do this during his time as a hospital orderly. His spree took place between 1970 and 1987.
Harvey claimed to have begun killing to "ease the pain" of patients—mostly cardiac patients—by smothering them with their pillows. However, he gradually grew to enjoy killing and became a self-described "angel of death". At the time of his death, Harvey was serving 28 life sentences at the Toledo Correctional Institution in Toledo, Ohio, having pleaded guilty to murder charges to avoid execution.
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