Claborn Laughlin Kendrick, identified in reporting as Clayborn Kendrick, was a 69-year-old Cincinnati man who died at Drake Memorial Hospital on September 20, 1986, while recovering from a serious head injury. At the time his death did not immediately reveal foul play; investigators later concluded that Donald Harvey, an orderly at Drake, deliberately killed Kendrick by introducing cyanide through his gastric feeding tube and by injection, according to Harvey’s own accounts.

Harvey’s journal allegedly recorded that he timed Kendrick’s death while Kendrick’s wife was out of town; Kendrick’s daughter Kathy Young reported that Harvey wrote he had delayed the killing so the wife could take a planned vacation. Kendrick was buried at Maple Grove Cemetery in Cleves, Hamilton County, Ohio. No second suspect was identified in Kendrick’s killing; Harvey later admitted many hospital murders after investigators linked cyanide found in a different patient to a homicide probe.