Hospital Orderly Admits 34 Killings, TV Station Says

A hospital orderly under investigation by a grand jury and already charged with the cyanide death of one patient has told investigators that he killed as many as 33 other people, a television station reported today.

WCPO-TV said Donald Harvey, 35, confessed in interviews with police detectives that he killed at least 34 people, most of them at hospitals where he worked.

A special grand jury that has been looking into Harvey’s activities at Drake Hospital for the last five weeks is expected to wrap up the investigation next week.

The station quoted sources as saying Harvey told investigators that he killed 23 patients in the year he worked at Drake Hospital, 5 during the time he worked at the Cincinnati Veterans Administration Hospital and 6 people outside of hospitals.

Harvey claims to have used cyanide, arsenic, rat poison, cleaning fluid and air injection as well as suffocating patients with plastic bags and pillows, the station said.

An investigation began after the sudden death in March of John Powell, 44, of Cincinnati, a comatose motorcycle accident patient in the ward where Harvey worked at Drake Hospital.

The investigation revealed that Powell died of cyanide poisoning, and Harvey was charged with murder. He pleaded innocent by reason of insanity, and his trial was scheduled for Jan. 25.

The investigation included an order to exhume bodies of 10 people Harvey had come in contact with, including two acquaintances of Harvey and some former Drake patients, the station said.

Preliminary results from the FBI laboratory in Washington confirmed the presence of arsenic in tissue samples taken from some of those 10 bodies, WCPO reported.

If Harvey is charged with 34 counts of murder, it will be the greatest number of murder charges ever filed against an individual in U.S. history.