[Daily News] Serial killer and former nurse's aide Donald Harvey succumbed to his injuries on Thursday, two days after he was badly beaten in an Ohio prison.Harvey, who was 64, was serving 15 life sentences after agreeing to a plea deal in 1987 to avoid the death penalty. He would have been eligible for parole in his 90s, if he lived that long.
He is believed to have killed as many as 87 people during his 18-year murder spree. Harvey used cyanide, rat poison and arsenic to kill his victims. Some of the patients were suffocated when he let their oxygen tanks run out. He was finally caught after a medical examiner sniffed cyanide while performing an autopsy.
Harvey claimed he was trying to end his patients' suffering as he killed patients in Cincinnati and London, Kentucky but prosecutors disagreed.
"He killed because he liked to kill," former Ohio prosecutor Arthur Ney Jr. once said.