In the summer of 1974, 64-year-old John Edward Harris was a patient in the coronary care unit at Petersburg General Hospital in Virginia. He died on the night of June 23, a death that investigators later linked to a troubling cluster of overnight fatalities in the same unit. Hospital staff noted a pattern: the unexpected deaths occurred during night shifts, and a single 21-year-old nurse’s aide, Lee Roy Hargrave Jr., was on duty at each one and had often initiated the emergency responses.

Toxicology eventually showed lethal doses of lidocaine in several of the deceased patients, including Harris—lidocaine that had not been prescribed. Hargrave was arrested on August 14, 1974, and indicted in the deaths of six patients, one of whom was John Edward Harris. He pleaded not guilty. In May 1975 Hargrave was tried and convicted of first-degree murder in the death of 73-year-old Josephine L. Thomas and received a life sentence; he was indicted but not tried for Harris’s death.

Does anyone have memories of Petersburg General Hospital or information about the night-shift pattern that could shed light on these deaths?