Leon Nelson, a 64-year-old male whose race or ethnicity was not identified in the reliable online sources reviewed, was a patient at Drake Memorial Hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio, when he became one of the victims of hospital orderly Donald Harvey, the serial killer later known as the “Angel of Death.” Contemporary reporting identifies Nelson as a Drake patient who died by suffocation in April 1986. There is a discrepancy over the exact date: later compilations sometimes list April 14, 1986, but contemporaneous United Press International reports published during Harvey’s prosecution state that Nelson died on April 12, 1986. Because those reports were produced at the time of the criminal proceedings, April 12 is the better-supported date in the available reporting.
Nelson’s death occurred during a period when Harvey was killing patients at Drake Memorial Hospital. Accounts of Harvey’s crimes describe him using several methods against vulnerable patients, including cyanide, arsenic, other poisons and suffocation. Nelson’s killing was one of the suffocation cases. Later accounts state that Harvey smothered him with a wet plastic garbage-bag liner. Nelson’s death did not initially result in an immediate murder arrest, and Harvey continued working around patients and continued killing after Nelson died. Within days, other Drake patients were targeted, including Virgil Weddle and Lawrence Berndsen, as Harvey’s series of killings continued through 1986 and into 1987.
The investigation that ultimately exposed Harvey began after the March 1987 death of another Drake patient, John Powell. An autopsy revealed cyanide, transforming what had appeared to be another hospital death into a homicide investigation. Investigators focused on Harvey, who had access to Powell and had a troubling employment history in hospital settings. Harvey was arrested in April 1987 in connection with Powell’s murder. Once authorities began examining his background and questioning him, the investigation widened dramatically as Harvey admitted responsibility for numerous other deaths.
Nelson’s killing became part of the much larger prosecution. In August 1987, Harvey entered guilty pleas to 24 murders, most involving patients at Drake Memorial Hospital. Contemporary accounts specifically listed Nelson among the victims included in the case, identifying him as a Drake patient who died from suffocation. Harvey’s pleas were part of an agreement that spared him from a possible death sentence while ensuring that he would spend the rest of his life in prison. He initially received multiple life sentences in Ohio, and further investigations in Kentucky uncovered additional killings from his earlier hospital employment there. Harvey ultimately admitted to dozens of murders and was convicted in connection with 37 deaths, although he claimed responsibility for considerably more.
No separate accomplice or second suspect has been identified in the available accounts of Nelson’s death. Donald Harvey was the person held criminally responsible. The Nelson case therefore did not develop as an unsolved homicide with multiple competing suspects; instead, it became one element of the serial-murder investigation that followed Harvey’s arrest. Harvey’s own admissions, the broader investigative findings involving deaths at Drake, and his guilty pleas established his responsibility for Nelson’s killing without a separate trial devoted solely to Nelson’s death.
The circumstances surrounding the Drake killings later raised disturbing questions about how so many patients could die without earlier intervention. Reporting after Harvey’s guilty pleas described concerns among hospital personnel about unusually frequent deaths during his employment. A later civil lawsuit connected to a Harvey victim even alleged that some Drake staff members had placed bets on which patients would die next, illustrating the atmosphere surrounding the unusually high mortality rate at the facility. Those allegations were separate from the criminal case against Harvey and did not establish additional perpetrators in Nelson’s death.
Harvey remained imprisoned after resolving the Ohio and Kentucky cases through guilty pleas and life sentences. His criminal history ultimately encompassed murders committed over many years in hospital environments, with Nelson remembered as one of the Cincinnati patients killed during Harvey’s particularly concentrated series of attacks at Drake Memorial Hospital. Nelson’s death, initially concealed among the deaths of seriously ill patients, was ultimately recognized as an intentional homicide after Harvey’s arrest and confession exposed the scale of the killings.
