Maggie P. Rawlings, 84, was a patient at Marymount Hospital in London, Kentucky, after suffering a serious burn to her arm when she fell onto an open grate. While hospitalized in January 1971 she became one of several patients later identified as victims of hospital orderly Donald Harvey. Accounts place Rawlings’ death on January 15, 1971; Harvey later admitted he suffocated her with a pillow and that he placed a plastic bag between her face and the pillow in an apparent effort to conceal evidence. Her death was described as an intentional suffocation rather than an accidental medical death.

At the time, the killing did not prompt a homicide investigation and passed amid other deaths of seriously ill patients. Harvey left Marymount not long afterward; his role in the Marymount deaths remained hidden until prosecutors reexamined his record after his 1987 exposure in Ohio. In November 1987 he pleaded guilty in Laurel County to charges connected to nine Marymount patients, including Rawlings, and received life sentences to run with his Ohio terms. Rawlings’ killing is part of that larger series of patient deaths.

If anyone knew Maggie Rawlings, her hospital caretakers or circumstances at Marymount in 1970–1971, can you share information that might shed more light on her final days?