Remembering Donald Harvey

MSNBC has plans for a new true-crime show called “Mindhunters” about serial killers. They’ve been in town this week interviewing people who were connected to the Donald Harvey case 20 years ago.

The so-called Angel of Death was convicted of killing more than 30 people, mostly at Drake Hospital and other health centers where he worked in Cincinnati and London, Ky.

Harvey’s claim to be a mercy killer was laughable. He is a remorseless creature who killed simply because he could.

The MSNBC crew has interviewed him up at Lucasville, where he is serving consecutive life terms. Others they’ve talked to include Bill Whalen, his defense attorney; Joe Deters, who was an assistant prosecutor on the case, and me.

Whalen later wrote a book about the case: “Defending Donald Harvey.” Deters served as the prosecutor’s office spokesman during the case and was on the nightly news almost daily for weeks during the investigation, turning himself into a household name for Cincinnati.
In 1987 I was one of several Enquirer reporters on the story. Paul Clark, now our arts and entertainment editor, and I spent several interesting days documenting Harvey’s early life down in Owsley County Kentucky. It wasn’t pretty.

Photographer Gary Landers and I later managed to get into the Laurel County Jail down in London for an interview with Harvey after he confessed to killing nine patients in a hospital where he worked down there. He loved to talk about himself. According to the MSNBC folks, he still does. The show is supposed to come out later this year.

This is a story that seems to have a life sentence.