Roger Evans, a 74-year-old man, was a patient at Daniel Drake Memorial Hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio, when his life became part of a much larger series of killings committed inside hospitals by orderly Donald Harvey. Online accounts of the case identify Evans as one of the patients Harvey deliberately murdered while working at Drake. Evans died on September 17, 1986. Available sources do not reliably identify his race or ethnicity, so that information is not included.
Evans was being cared for at Drake Hospital and had a gastric tube in place. According to contemporary reporting released after Harvey’s crimes were uncovered, Harvey used that tube as the means of killing him. He injected cyanide into Evans’s gastric tube, delivering a lethal dose directly into his body. Evans died that day. At the time, however, his death did not trigger the investigation that would eventually expose Harvey. Like many of the patients Harvey targeted, Evans was already seriously ill and being treated in a medical institution, an environment in which an unexpected decline or death could initially appear to be the consequence of disease rather than deliberate poisoning.
The killing of Evans occurred during an especially active period in Harvey’s crimes at Drake. In the months surrounding Evans’s death, other patients were poisoned with arsenic, cyanide, rat poison, or other substances, while some were killed by different methods. Harvey had access to vulnerable patients and their feeding or gastric tubes, intravenous lines, food, and drinks, allowing him to administer poisons with little immediate suspicion. Evans’s killing was later described as intentional and premeditated, with cyanide introduced through his gastric tube.
The case that finally broke the pattern came months later. On March 7, 1987, Drake patient John W. Powell died after cyanide was placed in his gastric feeding tube. During Powell’s autopsy, forensic pathologist Dr. Lee Lehman detected evidence that led to testing for cyanide. Once poisoning was confirmed, investigators focused on Harvey, who had been working around Powell and had a troubling employment history in hospital settings. Harvey was questioned and admitted killing Powell. Cincinnati police arrested and charged him with Powell’s murder on April 6, 1987.
What initially appeared to investigators as a single homicide rapidly expanded. Once Harvey was under scrutiny, authorities began examining other suspicious deaths connected to him. Harvey eventually began describing numerous killings committed over many years in Kentucky and Ohio, including patients at Drake Memorial Hospital. Through those admissions, Roger Evans’s death was no longer treated simply as the death of a hospitalized patient. Harvey identified Evans as one of the people he had intentionally poisoned, and investigators were able to place the killing within the series of homicides he committed while employed at Drake.
By August 1987, prosecutors had assembled a sweeping Ohio case against Harvey. On August 18, he pleaded guilty to 24 counts of aggravated murder, along with attempted aggravated murder charges and a felonious-assault charge. Roger Evans was specifically listed among the Drake Hospital murder victims in contemporary accounts of the plea, with prosecutors describing his death as the result of cyanide injected into his gastric tube on September 17, 1986. Harvey’s plea arrangement spared him from the possibility of execution in exchange for his admissions and guilty pleas to the murders authorities could establish.
The Ohio proceedings resulted in multiple life sentences. Harvey subsequently faced additional prosecution in Kentucky for killings committed earlier in his hospital career there, pleading guilty to additional homicide charges. His acknowledged victims ultimately numbered in the dozens, and investigators believed the true number of people he killed might never be known with certainty. He claimed responsibility for far more deaths than prosecutors were able to formally prove.
For Evans’s death, there is no indication in the available online reporting that investigators pursued another suspect. Donald Harvey was the identified killer, and his own admissions, the broader investigation, and his guilty pleas resolved the homicide as part of the Drake Hospital murder series. There was therefore no separate trial in which a jury determined Harvey’s guilt for Evans’s killing; the case was resolved through Harvey’s guilty plea as part of the larger prosecution. He remained imprisoned for the crimes until 2017, when he died after being severely beaten by another inmate in an Ohio prison.
