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WEBVTT CONVICTED 30 YEARS AGO INHAMILTON COUNTY COURT, DONALHARVEY ADMITTED TO KILLING 37PEOPLE AT HOSPITALS CINCINNATI AND KENTUCKY.WORKING AS A NURSE'S AIDE IN THE1970'S AND 1980'S, HARVEY WOULDEITHER SUFFOCATE OR POISON HISVICTIMS WITH ARSENIC ANDCYANIDE.>> IT'S STILL SO PAINFUL TOTHINK ABOUT IT.IT'S JUST NOT FAIR THAT HE GOTTO CHOOSE WHEN PEOPLE DIEDEMILY: BETSY SUNDERMANN SAYS SHEWAS 10-YEARS-OLD WHEN HARVEYMURDERED HER MATERNALGRANDMOTHER, MARGARET KUCKROW. >> HE KILLED MY GRANDMA, AND WEFOUND OUT IN FEBRUARY THAT SHEHAD DIED.HE KILLED HER ON VALENTINE'S DAYBECAUSE HE WAS SICK LIKE THAAND THEN WE FOUND OUT INNOVEMBER THAT HE HAD KILLED HER.SO IT WAS KIND OF A DOUBLE GRIEFFOR US, DEALING WITH HER DEATH,THEN FIGURING OUT HOW HE KILLEDHEEMILY: HARVEY CLAIMS HISPATIENTS WERE CHRONICALLY ILL,AND HE WAS TRYING TO END THEIRSUFFERING.BUT SUNDERMANN, WHO ONCE WORKEDAS A PROSECUTOR AND NOW AMAGISTRATE, SAYS HARVEY'SREASONING WAS ALL AN EXCUSE TOKILL>> I JUST WANT PEOPLE TO KNOW HEWASN'T THIS MERCY KILLER THATHE'S PAINTED TO BE.HE WAS A REALLY AWFUL PERSON,AND HE KNEW WHAT HE WAS DOING,AND HE DID IT TO BE MEAN AND TOTAKE PEOPLE'S LIVEEMILY: SUNDERMANN NOW WORKS AS AMAGISTRATE FOR HAMILTON COUNTYAND WAS AN ASSISTANT PROSECUTORFOR HAMILTON COUNTY PROSECUTORJOE DETERS.JOE DETERS SAYS HE WAS ANASSISTANT PROSECUTOR ON THEHARVEY CASE, AND IT WAS HISFIRST EVER SERIAL KILLER CASE.TODAY HE SAID HE HAS NO SYMPATHYFOR DONALD HARVEY.

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A serial killer known as the "Angel of Death" after he admitted killing three dozen hospital patients in Ohio and Kentucky died Thursday, two days after investigators said he was attacked in prison, Ohio's prisons department said. Donald Harvey, who was serving multiple life sentences, was found beaten in his cell Tuesday afternoon at the state's prison in Toledo, state officials said. He died Thursday morning, said JoEllen Smith, spokeswoman for Ohio's prison system. He was 64. While details about the attack weren't released, he was beaten when an unnamed person went into his cell, a patrol report said. Harvey pleaded guilty in 1987 to killing 37 people, mostly while he worked as a nurse's aide at hospitals in Cincinnati and London, Kentucky. He later claimed he was responsible for killing 18 others while working at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Cincinnati. He told his former attorney the killings began in 1970 when he was at Marymount Hospital in Kentucky. Many of his victims were chronically ill patients and he claimed he was trying to end their suffering. Harvey used arsenic and cyanide to poison most of his victims, often putting it in the hospital food he served them, prosecutors said. Some of the patients were suffocated when he let their oxygen tanks run out. Twenty-one of the people Harvey killed were patients at the former Drake Memorial Hospital in Cincinnati, where he worked as a nurse's assistant. "He really was an awful and evil person," Betsy Sundermann said. "He knew what he was doing. It wasn't a mental illness. He did it to be mean and to take people's lives." Sundermann's grandmother Margaret Kuckro died of cyanide poisoning while she was a patient at Drake Memorial Hospital in February 1987. "He killed her on Valentine's Day because he was sick like that," Sundermann said. "Then we found out in November that he had killed her so it was a double grief for us, dealing with her death, then figuring out how he killed her." Sundermann told WLWT she was 10 years old when her grandmother died and even 30 years later finds it painful to talk about Harvey. "I still have this fear all the time that he would be out," Sundermann said. "I just feel like the world is a safer place without him here." Sundermann is a magistrate for Hamilton County Probate Court and served as an assistant prosecutor in the Hamilton County Prosecutor's Office for Joseph Deters. Deters was an assistant prosecutor on the Harvey case in 1987. "It was my first serial killer case," Deters said. "I just had never confronted someone that was that evil before. He couldn't care less about anybody but himself and he was willing to kill multiple people." Sunderman told WLWT her early experience with the justice system probably helped clear her career path. "Going through this as a child must have led to me becoming a prosecutor," Sundermann said. "I don't think I ever put it together like that, but it had to have had an influence on it." Harvey was caught after a medical examiner smelled cyanide while performing an autopsy on a victim. Harvey told a newspaper after he pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty that he liked the control of determining who lived and died. Former Hamilton County Prosecutor Arthur Ney Jr. who prosecuted the cases in Cincinnati said Harvey was not a mercy killer. "He killed because he liked to kill," Ney said. "I just want people to know he wasn't this mercy killer that he's painted to be," Sundermann said. "I know that he probably had this psychopathic personality and he probably made up all kinds of excuses for what he did."