Could a Pennsylvania nurse charged with killing two nursing home residents and trying to kill a third have more victims?
That’s the question being raised by a retired detective who previously exposed perhaps the most notorious US nurse-murderer ever, and likely also by investigators in the still-active case.
Tim Braun was instrumental in bringing down Charles Cullen, who admitted killing 29 patients at hospitals in New Jersey and Pennsylvania by injecting fatal doses of drugs into IV bags and other methods. Braun told Pennsylvania television station WFMZ that there are similarities between the cases.
Namely, Cullen and Heather Pressdee, the nurse currently accused of murder, jumped from facility to facility. He worked at 11 hospitals and other healthcare entities over 16 years, while she worked at 11 healthcare facilities in western Pennsylvania over 11 years, including seven nursing homes.
Pressdee waived a preliminary hearing last week and is expected to appear in a Butler County Court on July 25 for a formal arraignment. She is being prosecuted by the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s office.
The investigation into the deaths is still ongoing, and officials at the AG’s office have not responded to McKnight’s queries about whether the investigation involves an examination of Pressdee’s actions or suspicious deaths at other nursing facilities.
Investigators “have identified a pattern of Pressdee being disciplined for abusive behavior” that led to her being fired or resigning. Braun said Pressdee’s previous employers could have stayed quiet about any suspicions for fear of damaging their own reputations or repercussions that can come from issuing a poor reference.
“Because her license appears to have been still active at the time of her arrest, it might indicate that she was not reported to the nursing board,” Braun told WFMZ.
Nursing licenses granted by the Pennsylvania Department of State are valid for two years. Officials upload a monthly list of disciplinary or corrective actions taken by the 29 professional licensing boards, including the Board of Nursing. The entries include an individual’s full name, the last known business address, the imposed sanction and a brief description of why the actions were taken. The listing also includes whether the disciplinary actions were appealed.
McKnight’s Long-Term Care News first reported on the Pressdee case after she was charged last month with two counts of murder and one count of attempted murder. The deaths involved residents at Quality Life Services, a skilled nursing facility about an hour north of Pittsburgh. She is accused of killing a 55-year-old man and another 83-year-old resident by administering unneeded insulin. A third man, a 73-year-old man who was roommates with the 55-year-old victim, survived after emergency hospitalization.
A certified registered nurse practitioner and Quality Life Services’ medical director began looking into the deaths after becoming suspicious when the two deceased victims were transported to the hospital within 30 minutes of each other with identical symptoms, according to the charging documents.
“The CRNP found it to be very unusual,” investigators said in the documents, which noted that Pressdee allegedly told the CRNP that the 55-year-old victim would be “better off dead” prior to the man having a “profoundly low” blood sugar.
The documents said that Pressdee dropped out of nursing classes at the Community College of Allegheny County before spending 14 years working at the Pittsburgh Veterinary Specialty & Emergency Center, performing critical care services, anesthesia and euthanasia. She eventually returned to CCAC and completed her degree as a registered nurse.
She allegedly told investigators, who confronted her at her parents’ home, that one of the deceased was a “brittle diabetic and that he was a difficult patient” while the other man “had a lot of medical conditions.” She claimed the man who survived had asked her to kill him.
