Edward Wilson was 32 and living in the Cincinnati area when he died after being poisoned with arsenic. According to later admissions by Donald Harvey, Harvey secretly put arsenic into Wilson’s Pepto-Bismol on or about March 18, 1985. Wilson became fatally ill and died approximately five days later, on March 23, 1985.

Wilson was not a hospital patient; his death occurred within the circle of neighbors and acquaintances around Harvey and Harvey’s longtime companion, Carl Hoeweler. Online accounts identify the immediate motive as a dispute over utility bills that led Harvey to intervene on Hoeweler’s behalf. Harvey later acknowledged poisoning several people outside medical settings as well as patients, and Wilson was one of the deaths he admitted to.

No arrest in Wilson’s death was made at the time; Harvey was not arrested until April 1987 after a separate hospital poisoning came to light. Wilson’s case became part of the larger prosecution and plea negotiations in which Harvey ultimately pleaded guilty to many killings.