A serial killer and former nurse’s aide who was known as the “Angel of Death” has died on Thursday after being attacked two days earlier inside of an Ohio prison, the Associated Press reported.
Donald Harvey, 64, who pleaded guilty to killing more than three dozen people at hospitals in Ohio and Kentucky in the 1970s and 1980s, was pronounced dead Thursday morning after suffering critical injuries inside his cell at the state prison in Toledo.
According to a patrol report cited by the AP, Harvey was in his cell when an unidentified person attacked him Tuesday afternoon.
A prison spokesperson confirmed to The Huffington Post that his death was under investigation by The Ohio State Highway Patrol, whose special response team handles prison incidents.
The beating left him on life support, and medical personnel did not expect him to survive, WCPO-TV reported Wednesday citing local law enforcement sources.
According to the AP, Harvey was serving multiple life sentences after pleading guilty to killing 37 people while working at hospitals in Cincinnati and London, Kentucky. He later claimed to have killed 18 others while working at a veterans’ hospital in Cincinnati. His most common method of killing his victims was by using arsenic and cyanide.
The string of the deaths began as mercy killings, he claimed. Eventually, he said he simply enjoyed killing and the power of choosing who would live and who would die.
He ended up pleading guilty to the crimes to escape the death penalty, he said.
According to online prison records, his first opportunity for parole was 2043.
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