Carol Dudley Miller, 89, a white female, lived a quiet life in Eugene, Oregon, until her death on January 26, 1979, and was later named among four elderly patients authorities said were killed that year by a nursing-home orderly who used insulin overdoses.
Investigators eventually focused on Otha Harrison Hart, a diabetic aide who had worked at a Eugene care facility. In the fall of 1983, while in Lincoln, Nebraska, Hart told police he had administered lethal insulin injections to four people in Eugene in 1979—three at a nursing home and one at a private residence—framing the acts as “mercy killings.” A warrant for his arrest was issued in October 1983, and he was taken into custody in Nebraska as Lane County authorities assembled the Oregon case.
Court records and contemporaneous reporting show prosecutors charged Hart in connection with the 1979 deaths and, in early 1984, he moved to change his plea. In March 1984, Hart pleaded guilty to reduced charges—down from aggravated murder to attempted murder—in the four cases described as mercy killings. He admitted giving insulin overdoses, and the plea resolved the criminal case arising from those deaths.
Within that cluster of victims, local case summaries identify Carol Dudley Miller by name, along with Ileen Donnor, Lee Zumwalt, and Frank Jesse Stanton Jr., as the four Eugene victims tied to Hart's insulin injections in 1979. Those accounts place Miller in that group of patients and describe the method—insulin toxicity—consistent with Hart's statements and the charges brought by Lane County prosecutors.
No other suspects were implicated. The available record indicates Hart was the sole person arrested and prosecuted in connection with the deaths, and his admissions and guilty plea fixed him as the responsible party in the eyes of the court.
