Heather Pressdee | |
---|---|
Born | August 28, 1982 |
Criminal status | Incarcerated |
Criminal penalty | Three life sentences without parole and 380 to 760 years |
Details | |
Victims | 3 confirmed up to 17 possible |
Span of crimes | 2022–2023 |
Country | United States |
State(s) | Pennsylvania |
Date apprehended | May 25, 2023 |
Heather Irene Pressdee (born August 28, 1982) is an American nurse and convicted serial killer. She is serving life imprisonment, having been convicted of murdering three patients by lethal injection, and is connected to the deaths of 17 in total, which took place in Western Pennsylvania.
The daughter of Michael and Bonita Pressdee, Pressdee was born on August 28, 1982. She is the oldest of two children. From 2003 to 2004, she attended the Community College of Allegheny County, although she did not graduate. She went on to become a registered veterinary technician before returning to get her nursing degree. [1]
Pressdee had intentionally administered lethal doses of insulin to nursing patients throughout five nursing homes in Pennsylvania. The first two victims she was charged with murdering were 55-year-old James Bartoe and 83-year-old Joseph Campbell, both of whom had died on December 4 and 25, 2022, respectively. [2] Her third victim was 43-year-old Nicholas Cymbol, who died on May 1, 2023. [3]
Pressdee claimed she believed she was ending the suffering of a lot of people by doing what she did. [4]
Pressdee was arrested in May 2023. She had been charged in relation to three murders and 19 attempts to commit murder. [5] In total, she is connected to the deaths of 17 patients. [6] [7] In order to avoid the death penalty, Pressdee pleaded guilty on all counts. [1] The murders in which she ultimately pleaded guilty to were of James Bartoe, 55, Gerald Shrum, 90 and Nicholas Cymbol, 43. [8] On May 2, 2024, she was sentenced to three consecutive terms of life imprisonment, as well as 380 to 760 additional years. [5] She is currently incarcerated at SCI Muncy. [9]
Charles Edmund Cullen is an American serial killer. While working as a nurse, Cullen murdered dozens—possibly hundreds—of patients during a 16-year career spanning several New Jersey and Pennsylvania medical centers until being arrested in 2003. He confessed to committing as many as 40 murders at least 29 of which have been confirmed, though interviews with police, psychiatrists and journalists suggest he committed many more. Researchers who are intimately involved in the case believe Cullen may have murdered as many as 400 people. However, most murders cannot be confirmed due to lack of records.
Kristen Heather Gilbert is an American serial killer and former nurse who was convicted of four murders and two attempted murders of patients admitted to the Veterans Affairs Medical Center (VAMC) in Northampton, Massachusetts. She induced cardiac arrest in patients by injecting their intravenous therapy bags with lethal doses of epinephrine, commonly known as adrenaline, which is an untraceable heart stimulant. She would then respond to the coded emergency, often resuscitating the patients herself. Prosecutors said Gilbert was on duty for about half of the 350 deaths that occurred at the hospital from when she started working there in 1989, and that the probability of this merely being a coincidence was 1 in 100 million. However, her only confirmed victims were Stanley Jagodowski, Henry Hudon, Kenneth Cutting, and Edward Skwira.
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Christine Malèvre is a former nurse who was arrested in 1998 on suspicion of having killed as many as 30 patients. She confessed to some of the murders, but claimed she had done so at the request of the patients, who were all terminally ill. France, however, does not recognize a right to die, and Malèvre eventually recanted most of her confessions. The families of several of her victims strongly denied that their relatives had expressed any will to die, much less asked Malèvre to kill them.
Beverley Gail Allitt is an English serial killer who was convicted of murdering four infants, attempting to murder three others, and causing grievous bodily harm to a further six at Grantham and Kesteven Hospital, Lincolnshire, between February and April 1991. She committed the murders as a State Enrolled Nurse on the hospital's children's ward.
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Natrona Heights is an unincorporated community in Harrison Township, Allegheny County in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. It is located in Western Pennsylvania within the Pittsburgh Metropolitan Statistical Area, approximately 24 miles (39 km) northeast of Pittsburgh. Natrona Heights is situated near the Allegheny River, Natrona, Brackenridge, and Tarentum.
Colin Campbell Norris is a Scottish serial killer and former nurse convicted for the murder of four elderly patients and the attempted murder of another in two hospitals in Leeds, England, in 2002.
Donald Harvey was an American serial killer who claimed to have murdered 87 people, though he has 37 confirmed victims. He was able to do this during his time as a hospital orderly. His spree took place between 1970 and 1987.
Jessie Gordon, formerly McTavish, is a Scottish retired nurse who was convicted in 1974 of murdering a patient with insulin, and of administering a variety of substances with intent to cause harm. The conviction was overturned on appeal in 1976. She was dubbed the "Angel of Death" by the press.
Gary Ray Bowles was an American serial killer who was executed in 2019 for the murders of six men in 1994. He is sometimes referred to as The I-95 Killer since most of his victims lived close to the Interstate 95 highway.
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Elizabeth Tracy Mae "Bethe" Wettlaufer is a convicted Canadian serial killer and former registered nurse who confessed to murdering eight senior citizens and attempting to murder six others in southwestern Ontario between 2007 and 2016. With a total of 14 victims either killed or injured by her actions, she is described as one of the worst serial killers in Canadian history.
Vickie Dawn Carson Jackson is an American serial killer who killed at least 10 patients at the Nocona General Hospital in Nocona, Texas between 2000 and 2001, using the muscle paralytic drug mivacurium. Despite protesting her innocence, she was found guilty on all counts and sentenced to life imprisonment.
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