Case Study Final Paper Donald Harvey was a hospital orderly who was famously known as “The Angel of Death” for killing his patients. This behaviour is thought to be attributed to his troubled childhood and upbringing. In a deep dive study done by Elizabeth Sellers, Pannill Hedgecock, and Melissa Georges at Harvard University about Harvey’s life beginning at birth, it was revealed that he was born in Hamilton, Ohio on April 15, 1952, and was 1 of 3 children. When Harvey was six months old his father dropped him resulting in a head injury and his soft spot remaining unclosed. As Harvey proceeded to get older, he watched both parental figures act abusively towards each other. Once again, at age 5, Donald suffered another head injury after falling off the running board of a truck resulting in a 4-5 in. laceration on the back of his head. While Harvey suffered several physical traumas as detailed a year prior in 1956 at age 4 he was also subjected to sexual abuse trauma. (Sellers et al., n.d.). In 1956, Donald Harvey was molested for the first time and continuously since over the next decade and a half by his mother’s half-brother, Wayne. Harvey was often used “…as an aid for masturbation… (Sellers et al., n.d.)” while at times being made to engage in oral sex. A year later in 1957, at age 5, Harvey’s neighbor, Dan Thomas, began to sexually abuse him as …show more content…
Donald waited seven years after the first murders, to begin the initiation process into the occult. Several of Harvey’s kills were also accidental not intentional, furthermore several victims were killed by Harvey as they said they did ‘t want to suffer. For demonological theory to fit best there would need to be consistent evidence from the beginning of Harvey’s murders to the occult. This is not the case and does not play a role in his murders until years after they have