In March 2017, 64-year-old Donald Harvey was found beaten to death in his cell at the Toledo Correctional Institution. His assailant, a fellow inmate named James Elliot, later told investigators he knew the family of one of Harvey’s victims. Harvey’s death brought a final, violent close to the life of a man known to history as the “Angel of Death.”
The story of Donald Harvey is a dark chapter that Hamilton County can never entirely move past. In the 1980s, Harvey worked as a nurse’s aide at what was then known as Drake Hospital. This county-operated facility functioned essentially as a warehouse for elderly patients who lacked the means for private nursing care. It was here that Harvey’s crimes reached their peak, though his path of destruction began long before.
