Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén - “Angel of Death” Donald Harvey Pt. 1

Episode Date: June 6, 2022

He didn’t have control of much growing up in rural Kentucky. His family was poor. His uncle sexually abused him. And his parents were ashamed of his homosexuality. But once Donald Harvey was hired as a hospital orderly, he found he could wield absolute power over the powerless. Parcasters, we have exciting news! Our first book hits bookshelves July 12th. Don’t miss this chilling summer read that takes you deep into the darkest sides of human nature. Learn more and grab your copy at www.parcast.com/cults! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, listeners, it's Vanessa. For years, Parcast has worked tirelessly to bring you an unprecedented look at history's most radical true crime events. Your support has not only allowed us to keep exploring these stories, but has driven us to keep expanding as well. So as a thank you to the Parcast listeners, I am honored to announce the release of our first book, Cults, Inside the World's Most Notorious Groups, and Understanding the People Who Join Them. It's available on July 12th and you can pre-order it today at parcast.com slash cults. The Branch Davidians, the Ant Hill Kids, Heaven's Gate and more. Cults combs through the terrifying details never explored in any of Parcast series before. This is a passion project only made possible by you. So we

truly hope you'll enjoy it. Visit parcast.com slash cults to pre-order your copy of Cults inside the world's most notorious groups and understanding the people who join them. Due to the graphic nature of this killer's crimes, listener discretion is advised. This episode includes discussions of murder, sexual abuse of children, and elder abuse. We advise extreme caution for children under 13. It was quiet at Marymount Hospital that evening. Outside, the summer sun was setting over the mostly empty parking lot. But Marion wouldn't be going home any time soon. A patient had died unexpectedly, which for Marion meant paperwork.

She was already halfway out the door when she got the alert on her pager. The deceased was an elderly man who had been on a ventilator for weeks. He'd been showing some signs of improvement, but his death wasn't a surprise. With patients of this age, you could never count on anything. As she got closer to the patient's room, Marion saw a familiar figure heading towards her. She smiled at the young man. of course this happened on his watch. 18-year-old Donald Harvey had only been working as an orderly for a few months,

but he quickly endeared himself to everyone on the board. He was clean-cut, polite, and diligent. This was the fifth patient who died while Harvey was on duty. The nurses had made it into a running joke. They all knew how hard it was to get used to losing patients, and they didn't want him to feel self-conscious. Laughing about it was the best way to cope. The teen indulged the jokes, encouraged them.

As Marion looked at Harvey, he gave her a wry smile and said, Yeah, I guess I got another one. Hi, I'm Greg Poulson. This is Serial Killers, a Spotify original from Parcast. Every episode, we dive into the minds and madness of serial killers. Today, we're exploring the murders of Donald Harvey, aka The Angel of Death. I'm here with my co-host, Vanessa Richardson.

Hi, everyone. you can find episodes of serial killers and all other Spotify originals from Parcast for free on Spotify. This is the first part in a three-part series about Donald Harvey. Today we'll discuss his upbringing in an unstable household and how abuse and homophobia shaped him. We'll also talk about his first job as a hospital orderly and how he was inspired to kill his defenseless patients. Over the rest of the series, we'll explore how Harvey concealed his murder spree for years and why he expanded his horizons beyond his patience to target friends, neighbors, and even his long-term boyfriend.

We'll also chronicle the sadistic misstep that finally brought him down. We've got all that and more coming up. Stay with us. This episode is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. Whether you're hiring for a role or searching for a killer, the hunt can be exhausting. When detectives looked and searched to find any kind of evidence to find the person they were looking for, like Jack the Ripper,

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get a quality candidate within the first day. And now, you can try it for free. at ZipRecruiter.com slash killers. That's ZipRecruiter.com slash killers. Meet your match on ZipRecruiter. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Bonnie and Clyde, the Lonely Hearts Killers, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

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Slow burns, second chances, chemistry you can feel through the screen. Your next obsession is waiting. Watch only on Prime. Healthcare professions often appeal to those with a deep desire to help people. Doctors, nurses, and other hospital staff work long, grueling hours, doing incredibly high-stakes work, whether they're saving lives, delivering babies, or providing end-of-life care to patients in their final days. In recent years, we've all become much more conscious of just how heroic frontline health care workers are. But though they're few and far between, there are a few bad apples in

every barrel. Some health care providers develop a god complex, wielding their medical authority and knowledge over their patients. In most cases, this manifests as arrogance or dismissiveness, and a general unwillingness to listen to patients. Unpleasant, but not usually dangerous. In Rare cases, though, a truly dangerous person slips through the cracks and is granted almost limitless power over patients at their most vulnerable. As loved ones and investigators deal with the damage these people leave in their wake, a question bobs to the surface, who would do such a thing? In this story, the answer to that begins in Hamilton, Ohio, a suburb about 20 miles north of Cincinnati. Quiet and peaceful, it was an ideal place to grow up in the 1950s.

So in April of 1952, when Donald Harvey was born there, it seemed like he was destined for a charmed life. As far as we know, Harvey's first few years of life were uneventful, but as an only child, it was hard for him to miss the tension between his parents. His father, Ray, worked as a machine helper at a local factory, but he was blind in one eye and struggled to keep up with the pace of work. His prospects looked bleak, and he and his wife Goldie often fought about money. So in 1957, the Harvey's decided they could no longer afford to live in Hamilton. Ray left his job, and the family packed up their belongings and moved about 200 miles south

to Boonville, Kentucky. Boonville was a tough, poverty-stricken town. Ray and Goldie had grown up there and were used to it, but for young Harvey, it was a disorienting change of pace. Instead of a quiet suburban street, the family now lived in a three-room farmhouse that sat next to a creek. Back in Hamilton, it was easy to walk to a neighbor's house, but here, homes were a quarter mile apart.

To a five-year-old, that would have felt like much more. Despite the lower cost of living in Kentucky, money was still very tight. The Harvys had two more children and the three years after they moved. With more mouths to feed than ever, the pressure to provide overwhelmed Ray. The work available in Boonville was mostly manual labor, and just like in Ohio, his eyesight limited. his prospects. As a result, the family barely scraped by. Harvey would sometimes complain to his parents that he was hungry, only to be told there was no food in the house. Vanessa is going to take

over on the psychology here and throughout the episode. Please note, Vanessa is not a licensed psychologist or psychiatrist, but we have done a lot of research for this show. Thanks, Greg. Childhood poverty and food insecurity can have a serious impact on a person's development. According to a 2017 study from Cornell University, which followed hundreds of participants over a 15-year period, poverty made children more prone to anti-social conduct like bullying, and was also associated with anxiety, chronic stress, and feelings of helplessness. This last point is especially relevant to Donald Harvey's story, so keep that in mind moving forward. Because, of course, children are inherently vulnerable and dependent on their parents to get their basic needs met,

If they grow up in an environment where that's not happening, a sense of helplessness can set in, making them feel like they can't do anything to change their circumstances. This can make a person more susceptible to mental health conditions, particularly depression. But whatever was going on inside of him as a child, Harvey hit it well. His first grade teacher knew him as a clean-cut, neatly-dressed boy who never caused trouble. As he got older, Harvey began spending as much time as he could out of the house, searching for food and sanctuary. A neighbor of Fannie Mae took pity on him.

She gave him hot meals and let him stay the night sometimes, in exchange for helping her elderly parents with cooking and cleaning. Though this might seem like a nice gesture, it also taught Harvey that nothing in life was free. Any kindness that was shown to him came at a price. And that price soon became much steeper. Harvey began spending time with an uncle who lived nearby, But his uncle took advantage of Harvey's vulnerability.

He sexually abused the young boy on numerous occasions. In short, because Harvey's basic needs for food, shelter, and comfort weren't being met, he went searching for them in other places, and this made him vulnerable to adults who wanted to take advantage of him. Before he reached the age of 10, he was also abused by a different neighbor who, like his uncle, offered him food and a place to sleep in exchange for sex. Thus, a troubling pattern began. He needed what these men had to offer, food and a bed.

As a young boy, he felt he had no real choice but to give them what they wanted in return. According to a study published by the Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health, sexual abuse can shatter the way a child relates to the world, distort their self-image, and create a deep sense of powerlessness. A young victim is often unable to change their situation. despite being threatened and violated by the abuse. In Harvey's case, this was especially true, because if he resisted, he could be denied food and shelter.

On some level, Harvey may also have been craving love and attention. His own household was volatile. Ray and Goldie got into regular screaming matches, which frightened their children. Meanwhile, according to Harvey, his mom treated him more like a brother than a son. It's not clear exactly what he meant by this, But we do know that Goldie was very young when she had Harvey. At just 17 years old, she was barely an adult herself. Since she and Ray fought so much, she may have turned to Harvey for comfort.

Perhaps she saw her eldest son as an equal and confided in him about her emotional and financial worries. The psychological term for this is parentification. It involves a role reversal where the child is expected to take care of their parent, either practically or emotionally. Since the term was first coined in the late 1960s, research has shown that parentification can have lasting effects on children. They may have developmental and academic problems because they're overwhelmed by their caregiving role.

It can also affect the child's ability to form healthy emotional attachments throughout life. According to attachment theory, a person's attachment style is affected mostly by their relationship with their parents. If the parental dynamics are dysfunctional, as in parentification, then the child can grow up with an insecure attachment style, where they approach relationships with fear or avoidance. As dysfunctional as things may have been between Harvey and his mom, it paled in comparison to his relationship with his father.

As Harvey neared adolescence, Ray began to notice that his son wasn't like most boys. He saw Harvey as weak and treated him coldly, hoping it would toughen him up. Ray wasn't the only one who'd noticed something different about Harvey. Other kids at school called him a sissy because he preferred to play with the girls rather than the boys. At some point, Harvey realized that he was gay and admitted it to his father. Ray didn't handle the news well. We don't know much about this interaction,

except that Ray blamed himself for his son's sexuality. Though to be clear, sexuality is not something that requires blame. His father's attitude surely added to whatever, or self-loathing Harvey was already feeling. Not to mention homosexuality was still a long way from being fully decriminalized, and rural Kentucky would have been a particularly hostile place to grow up queer.

By the time Harvey was a teenager, school was unbearable. He was bullied mercilessly and had no friends. So he dropped out in the ninth grade. It's not clear how Harvey spent the next few years of his life. Given how tense things were at home, it's possible that he continued spending time with his abusive uncle and neighbor. As a queer teenager coming of age in rural Kentucky, Harvey missed out on a lot of formative experiences. He began to fantasize about what his life could be like if only he could get out of Boonville.

He knew there were places in America and maybe even in Kentucky, where gay people could live more openly. But he couldn't imagine how to get there. Then in early 1970, when Harvey was 17, his step-grandfather was hospital. in London, Kentucky, a city about 45 minutes southwest of Boonville. When the family organized a trip to visit him, Harvey jumped at the chance. He wasn't especially close with the old man, but he'd take any chance he could to see someplace new. London was a small city.

The population was less than 5,000 at the time, but compared to Boonville, it felt exciting, full of possibilities. At Merrimont Hospital, Harvey's attention soon drifted from his ailing step-grandfather, wandering out into the hallway, he struck up a conversation with a young man named Kyle White. Kyle was an orderly, which is a hospital employee who assists nursing staff, moves patients around the facility, and sometimes performs basic patient care. You needed a strong work ethic. The hours could be long and the pay low. But it was a job, and it wasn't in Boonville.

That was all Harvey needed to know. When Kyle told him the hospital was hiring orderlies, he jumped at the opportunity. Two months later, in May of 1970, Harvey started work as an orderly at Merrimount. He moved in with Kyle and his family in London, which gave him a much-needed sense of stability. It's not clear if Harvey and Kyle were just friends or something more, but either way, Kyle was a rock during Harvey's first couple of days at work. He showed Harvey the ropes at the hospital, explained how to check vital signs. He and the other orderlies also gave Harvey a rundown of which patients to watch out for.

Some were severely ill and needed extra supervision. Others could get violent, and if that happened, it would be Harvey's job to subdue them. It was a lot to absorb, but Harvey threw himself into the work. Even on the longest, most grueling days, he was happy. He was out of his parents' grasp, away from the kids who had bullied him and the adults who'd abused him. At last, his life was starting. There was no looking back now. moment, Harvey loses his first patient and finds the experience inspiring.

Hi, listeners, it's Vanessa. On behalf of Parcast, I'd like to thank you for your continued support. Your loyalty has allowed us to keep expanding even beyond podcasts. That's why I'm so thrilled to share some special news with you all, something we've never done before, and made possible only because of you. On July 12th, we're releasing our first book titled Cults, inside the world's most notorious groups and understanding the people who joined them. And you can pre-order it today at parcast.com slash cults. Those of you who've been with Parcast since the beginning know that it's a labor of love for us to bring you these powerful stories. As long as you keep listening, we keep creating.

So with the benefit of years of research and insights, we've put together a comprehensive narrative that tries to make sense of mysterious groups such as nexium, Heaven's Gate, the Manson, family and more, exposing how shared beliefs can have deadly results, and taking you deeper into the dark side of human nature than ever before. You won't want to miss this book. Visit parkast.com slash cults to pre-order your copy of cults inside the world's most notorious groups and understanding the people who join them. That's parkast.com slash cults. Thank you again for listening. We can't wait for you to dive in. Pay off your home, travel for life, drive a Ferrari.

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You win? Details at Yamava.com must be 21-20. Please gamble responsibly. Monopoly is a trademark of Hasbro. Hasbro is not a sponsor of this promotion. to the story. In May of 1970, 18-year-old Donald Harvey was settling into his first job as a hospital orderly. One morning, about a month after he'd been on the job, Harvey was tasked with taking care of 42-year-old Elizabeth Wyatt. She was terminally ill, and he was responsible for keeping her hooked up to

oxygen. That morning, under Harvey's watch, her oxygen supply became dangerously low, and a few hours later, a nurse checked on her only to find that she had died. Now, Harvey later told conflicting stories about this incident. In one version, it was an accident. He had mistakenly connected her to an oxygen tank that was almost empty. But in a different interview, he claimed that he killed Elizabeth deliberately. In this version, he described the killing as an act of mercy. Seeing her being force-fed in a hospital bed,

he said he felt that it, quote, was no way to live. And so he cut off her oxygen supply. It's possible that the truth lies somewhere in between. Perhaps he did grab the wrong tank, but when he realized his mistake, he chose to do nothing. Regardless, after watching Elizabeth die, an unfamiliar feeling overwhelmed Harvey. It wasn't remorse, but something closer to elation. His actions had led directly to the death of another person. person. For most of his life, Harvey had always seen himself as weak. His father saw him that way, and so did the kids at school. But here, wearing this uniform, he wielded absolute power. He could decide who lived and who died. As we discussed earlier, Harvey may also have felt a sense of helplessness

throughout childhood, motivated by his family's poverty and the sexual abuse he suffered. So praying on those who were truly helpless was a darkly appealing concept. But even as he found his twisted outlet, he got another reminder of just how powerless he was. According to Harvey, after he moved to London, he was raped by another man. There aren't any other details available about this incident, but it shattered his outlook on life. He'd seen London as a place where he could finally escape his past. He'd left behind the uncle and the neighbor who'd sexually abused him. Yet here he was, right back in the same position.

It was a devastating blow, but now he knew. at least one way that he could make himself feel powerful. On May 30th, 1970, Harvey was called to attend an 88-year-old stroke victim, Logan Evans, and Harvey couldn't stand the guy. He was apparently nasty towards the hospital staff and caused trouble for everyone. Logan was incontinent, and it was Harvey's job to clean him up that day. But when he tried, Logan fought back, cursing at him. During the struggle, Logan smeared feces on Harvey's face.

Clearly, Logan wasn't in his right mind and had limited control over his actions. But Harvey took this very personally. He felt humiliated and wasn't about to let that slide. He picked up a sheet of blue plastic that lay nearby and wrapped it over Logan's face, cutting off his air supply. Harvey pulled the plastic tight and put his stethoscope against the old man's chest. Then he listened, fascinated as Logan's heartbeat first sped up, then got slower. and slower, until finally, it stopped altogether.

Afterwards, Harvey acted with calm precision. He disposed of the plastic sheet, then cleaned Logan up, changing his now dead body into a clean hospital gown. To any onlooker, it would seem like he died peacefully in his sleep. Harvey was so confident of how well he'd covered his tracks that he alerted the on-duty nurse that Logan had no pulse. He clearly had no fear of getting caught. And sure enough, it seems that the nurse saw nothing unusual about what had happened.

Logan was in his late 80s and he was already very ill, so his death didn't come as a surprise. According to Harvey's own descriptions of his crimes, he was motivated by empathy for his patients. They were terminally ill and had no quality of life, so he felt he was putting them out of their misery. In an interview with the New York Times, he said, I hope if I'm ever sick and full of tubes or on a respirator, someone will come and end it. This reasoning is typical of what criminologists call an angel of death. This rare type of murderer is usually a medical professional who takes their patient's lives and claims to be doing it out of mercy.

They may target the elderly or disabled, people on long-term life support, or people in chronic pain. But as we'll see from the details of his next murders, we should take Harvey's claim that he acted out of empathy with a grain of salt. Over the next 10 months, Harvey killed at least a dozen patients. We don't have a lot of details about these deaths, but we do know that his MO varied. He killed some by smothering them with a hospital sheet or suffocating them using a pillow. And then sometimes he'd apply the trick he'd learned from one of his earliest kills, by hooking them up to a near-empty oxygen tank.

Other murders were more vicious. In one case, he killed it. an 81-year-old man by puncturing his bladder with a coat hanger. A sadistic murder like this on a defenseless elderly person suggests a terrifying level of anger. Ever since he was bullied and abused as a child, Harvey had been holding on to an enormous anger. It was a deep simmering well of rage that he was only just beginning to tap. But as far as his co-workers were concerned, Harvey was a gentle, conscientious young man who took his job seriously, even as more and more patients died on his watch. Nobody seemed to raise an eyebrow. After all, they were

elderly or severely ill. Harvey was so far from being suspected of any wrongdoing that his colleagues made a joke of the whole thing. They gave him the morbid nickname, The Kiss of Death. He was only too happy to join in with a joke. Sometimes after killing a patient, he'd make comments along the lines of, got another one today. Behind the affable exterior, though, he was struggling. It's not clear what was going on in Harvey's personal life at this time, but we do know that by March of 1971, he was in a state of deep despair. When he left Boonville to start a life of his own, he thought all his problems would disappear,

but his self-loathing had followed him to London, and the rush he got from killing patients never lasted long. Still, he knew he couldn't get away with doing it more often than he already was. That meant he needed a new outlet for his feelings. On the night of March 31st, two weeks before his 19th birthday, Harvey waited until his roommate was asleep. Once the apartment was quiet, he snuck out the front door and into the hallway. Harvey broke into an empty apartment and stole some clothing. He then entered a second apartment where he started a fire.

This wasn't just an act of arson. According to Harvey, it was a suicide attempt. But Harvey didn't die that night. presumably he changed his mind and made it out of the apartment in time. As soon as he recovered from the smoke, he knew he was in trouble, so he fled London that night and drove an hour and a half north to the city of Frankfurt. There he holed up with another acquaintance. But that plan didn't work for long.

The police tracked Harvey down that night. But they had no idea that they'd caught a serial killer. They didn't even know to look for one. As far as they knew, Harvey was just a thief and a vandal who'd set an apartment on fire earlier that night. In the mid-20th century, most states saw arson mainly as a crime against property, rather than a dangerous crime against people. So the fact that Harvey had set fire to an apartment didn't necessarily give the police any reason to assume he was violent. And because he had no record and seemed gentle and harmless, the sheriff reduced the charge to petty theft. However, the sheriff did suspect that Harvey was mentally unstable, so he might benefit from

outpatient treatment rather than prison. A judge agreed and sentenced Harvey to mandatory counseling. There aren't many details available from those counseling sessions, so it's unclear whether they helped. But as far as we can tell, Harvey's therapists had no idea that he was capable of murder, let alone that he'd already killed over a dozen people. Likewise, Harvey's parents had no idea what he'd become. When they found out that he'd attempted suicide, it seemed to confirm Ray's worst fears about his son, that he was weak and unable to handle life.

But despite their rocky relationship, it seems that Harvey had kept in contact with his parents and still wanted their approval. So when his dad suggested a different path for his life, he was all ears. Ray suggested Harvey joined the Air Force. He thought the structure and discipline would keep him out of trouble. But more importantly, he hoped the military life would make his son more masculine.

At least, that was how Harvey interpreted his dad's suggestion, and he was miserable enough to try anything. So in June of 1971, he shipped out, ready once again for a brand new life. Coming up, Harvey's time in the military provides him with some unexpected freedoms. Kayak gets my flight, hotel, and rental car right, so I can't. tune out travel advice that's just plain wrong. Bro, Skycoin, way better than points. Never fly during a Scorpio full moon. Just tell the manager you'll sue.

Instant room upgrade. Stop taking bad travel advice. Start comparing hundreds of sites with kayak and get your trip right. Kayak, got that right. Now back to the story. Donald Harvey arrived at Northern California's Travis Air Force Base in the summer of 1971, And although it seemed like Harvey's father hoped the military would curb his son's same-sex attraction, the plan backfired. Travis Air Force Base was just an hour away from San Francisco.

And having access to a city like that was a game changer for 19-year-old Harvey. He'd spent his entire life in conservative rural areas, where being gay meant being ostracized. But in the 1970s, San Francisco was at the forefront of the LGBTQ rights movement and was often called the United States Gay Mecca. The city's first LGBTQ rights march had happened just one year earlier, and there was a thriving gay community based in the Castro District. That said, the Air Force was far from a queer-friendly environment. In fact, at the time, being gay was grounds for dismissal, though there wasn't yet a formal ban on LGBTQ people serving. This was the environment where Harvey spent most of his days, and it wasn't unfamiliar to him. Homophobia had been.

a defining force throughout his life, and it always contributed to his sense that he was an outsider who would never live a truly happy life. But at Base in California, that life felt tantalizingly close. During his downtime, Harvey threw himself into the city's queer culture, going out to gay bars for the first time. Then he would return to Base, where he had to hide his true self more carefully than ever before. He was at once more free and more oppressed than he'd ever been. But after less than a year, Harvey's time in the Air Force came to an end. He had neglected to mention his criminal record when he applied to join, and when they found out about the theft, he was discharged.

Specifically, Harvey was given a general discharge under honorable conditions. In military terms, this means that the person's performance was satisfactory, but fell short of the requirements for an honorable discharge. In practice, this type of discharge often indicates minor misconduct. After this type of discharge, Harvey would have been eligible for some, but not all, VA benefits. But perhaps more importantly, a general discharge comes with a stigma. Leaving the Army with anything other than an honorable discharge can be a black mark for prospective employers or schools. There was also an ambiguous note on Harvey's exit papers that read,

Character, Behavior Disorder. It's not clear if this note referred to his criminal past or if the Air Force had other reasons. to suspect that Harvey had behavioral problems, or perhaps it was their coded way of referring to Harvey's sexuality. In any case, Harvey's new life in California was over. Now he had to do the very last thing he wanted to do, return home to the Midwest. He packed up his belongings, flew back to Kentucky,

and returned to Boonville, the hard-scrabble town he'd tried so hard to escape. Strangely, his first stop was his uncle's house, the man who had sexually abused him for so many years. If Harvey hadn't already hit rock bottom, returning to his abuser was surely the nail in the coffin, but perhaps in his mind his uncle was at least nice to him. He knew that there was no kindness waiting for him at his parents' house.

But after some time, his uncle's house became too much to bear, so Harvey finally moved back in with his parents. They greeted him coldly, telling him he'd brought shame on their family. According to Harvey, they specifically told him that his homosexuality made them ashamed, not his discharge from the military. It's hard to understand why he would voluntarily go back to such a toxic environment, but perhaps he felt his parents' house was the best option he had. Back in his childhood bedroom that summer, Harvey felt crushed by despair.

He'd had a chance at the life he'd always wanted and he'd messed it up. Just two years after leaving home, he was right back where he'd started. That July, he tried to end his life again, but his parents found him in time and took him to the ER. Once he was stabilized, he was transferred to a VA hospital in Lexington, where he received psychiatric care. Harvey didn't fight this. In fact, some reports say that he committed himself. He was willing to try anything to feel better, and when he arrived, he found himself confined to a hospital bed and placed in restraints. It was a confronting reality for the teen, but he wasn't afraid. fact, he might have hoped the medical staff could help him turn things around. And when a psychiatrist

told him about electroconvulsive therapy, he was intrigued. First developed in Italy during the 1930s, ECT is a treatment that stimulates the brain with electrical currents to induce seizures. Psychiatrists discovered that these brief seizures seemed to relieve the symptoms of severe mental illness, so practitioners began working on a reliable way to induce them. ECT was initially used to treat schizophrenia, but it was soon found to be equally effective for mood disorders like depression, which may have been Harvey's diagnosis. At the time Harvey was hospitalized, ECT's use was in decline, thanks partly to the development of antidepressant and antipsychotic drugs during the 1950s, but it was still used for treatment-resistant mental illness, especially at inpatient

facilities. In Harvey's case, it seems the doctors went all out. Today, a patient might be given in six to 12 ECT sessions total, but Harvey was given 21. It sounds like a lot, but it seemed to work. At least after a few months, Harvey's doctors felt he'd made satisfactory progress. For his part, Harvey felt he could think clearly again. He could finally imagine a future for himself, and it looked bright. So in October of 1972, he was discharged, with the understanding that he'd continue to attend outpatient psychiatric treatment.

It's not clear where Harvey went after that, but over the next couple of years, he worked at various hospitals in Kentucky, and as far as we know, he performed his duties to the letter and didn't kill any patients. This unexplained gap between his murders is strange, but not unheard of.

As true crime fans will know, many serial killers have cooling-off periods where they go months or even years between murder sprees. There are a lot of factors that cause these dormant periods. Sometimes there are legit. logical reasons why a person stops killing, or life temporarily puts them on a different path. In Harvey's case, it seems he may have been focusing his energy on other extracurricular pursuits.

He reportedly developed an interest in the occult during this time, and more disturbingly, he became involved with some local neo-Nazi groups. The details on this aspect of Harvey's life are sketchy, but based purely on speculation, it's easy to imagine why Harvey might have been drawn to Nazi ideology. Social isolation, especially during childhood, can make a person more susceptible to radicalization by hate groups. According to a 2013 paper out of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, peer rejection and the lack of a support network can make hate groups more appealing, because they create a more powerful need to belong.

Though isolation won't in itself make a person easy to radicalize, it's one of many risk factors. Harvey had always felt like an outsider, and his months of inpatient psychiatric care probably only made him feel more isolated from other people his age. But by marginalizing other people, he could make himself feel like he belonged. But even that was only a temporary fix, and by the summer of 1975, Harvey was ready for another fresh start. He'd long since completed his 18 months of outpatient therapy, and his doctors were pleased with his progress.

Now that he was free to leave Kentucky, he couldn't wait to get out. There was just one problem. He had no idea where to go. He tried to think back to the last time he'd been truly happy. He couldn't afford to go all the way back to California, but he could manage the trip to Ohio, where he spent the first few years of his life. He'd grown up in a suburb of Cincinnati,

and had always jumped at any opportunity to visit the city. Now, as a 23-year-old gay man, it held a much deeper appeal. Unlike many of the cities close to him, Cincinnati was openly friendly to the queer community. The city held its first public pride celebration just two years earlier. It wasn't San Francisco, but it was close enough.

So that summer, he packed up his things and drove north to Cincinnati. He'd gotten a tip about a job at the Veterans Administration Medical Center there, and as soon as he got into town, he went in to inquire. The hospital wasn't hiring orderlies. but there was a position in the morgue.

As a morgue attendant, Harvey's responsibilities were similar to those of an orderly, only instead of working with living patients, he'd be assisting dead ones. He'd transport bodies from the hospital down to the morgue, help prepare them for autopsy, take tissue samples, and so on. A lot of people might have been put off by these tasks, but not Harvey. After all, he was more than familiar with handling dead bodies. Not that his prospective employers knew that. Of course, being around corpses didn't give him the same rush of power as killing vulnerable patients,

but the process of transporting, cleaning, and preparing a body was kind of like a post-kill ritual. This is the way some serial killers find a way to relive their crimes. They might keep trophies to remind them of their victims, return to the scene of their crime, or collect newspaper clippings detailing their murders. Perhaps simply by working in the hospital morgue, Harvey was able to relive his crimes so vividly that he could resist the urge to kill. By that stage, he hadn't killed in more than four years, and he didn't want to start again. Thankfully, his hours were long and he didn't have a lot of time to think, which was how he liked it.

But every now and then, he felt his resolve slipping. Sometimes passing a hospital room on his way to collect a corpse, he'd glance in at a bedridden patient, lying prone and defenseless. After at least a dozen kills, he knew how easy it would be. It took all of his willpower to keep walking. Then one morning, after pulling back the sheet from a corpse, he was hit with a wave of deja vu. The wizened, shrunken old man,

looked so much like Logan Evans, one of his first victims, that he'd felt like he'd seen a ghost. Once the shock faded, Harvey couldn't stop thinking about Logan, about how powerful he'd felt as he'd listened to his heart rate, gradually fading. In a twisted way, he felt closer to Logan and his other victims than he ever had to another person. They were the only ones who'd ever seen his true self. As much as he hated to admit it, Harvey was lonely.

At 23, he never had a real relationship, and he wondered if that was the reason he felt so out of step with the world. The more he thought about it, the more sense it made. If he could find someone who really understood him, maybe he wouldn't ever need to kill again. He never imagined that would unleash an entirely new side of his personality, one just as twisted as the simmering urge to kill. Thanks again for tuning into serial killers.

We'll be back soon with Part 2, where we'll explore how Harvey's first serious relationship sends him spiraling back into violence. For more information on Donald Harvey, Amongst the many sources we used, we found the Cincinnati Inquirer's coverage from 1987 extremely helpful in our research. You can find all episodes of Serial Killers and all other Spotify originals from Parcast for free on Spotify. We'll see you next time. Have a killer week.

Serial Killers is a Spotify original from Parcast. Executive producers include Max and Ron Cuddler, sound design by Juan Borda, with production assistants by Ron Shapiro, Trent Williamson, Carly Madden, and Joshua Kern. This episode of serial killers was written by Emma Dibdin, with writing assistance by Amber Hurley and Joel Callan, fact-checking by Bennett Logan, and research by Brian Petrus and Chelsea Wood.

Serial Killers stars Greg Paulson and Vanessa Richardson. Hi listeners, it's Vanessa. Exciting news, Parcast's first book, cults inside the world's most notorious groups, and understanding the people who join them is now available for pre-order at parcast.com slash cults. Thanks to your support, we've compiled years of research, insights, and a catalog of case studies to expose more about these cults and the people behind them than ever before.

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