John Powell was a 44-year-old man from Cincinnati who died on May 2, 1987, while receiving care at Daniel Drake Memorial Hospital — a county-owned convalescent facility. He had suffered severe brain injuries in a motorcycle accident the previous summer and was being cared for at the hospital when a routine autopsy revealed cyanide poisoning.

The cyanide finding triggered an investigation that implicated Donald Harvey, a 35-year-old orderly at the hospital. Harvey confessed to poisoning Powell, saying it was a mercy killing, and authorities later tied him to a pattern of patient deaths using arsenic, cyanide and other methods. Powell’s case was among those that led to aggravated murder charges against Harvey and ultimately to guilty pleas in Powell’s death and numerous other killings.

Powell’s death exposed a serial pattern of murders at the facility and became a focal point in the probe that halted the killing spree.