Heather Pressdee and the night shift
In a nursing home, a death in the night rarely looks like a crime. Her coworkers suspected anyway. She kept moving to new jobs.
- When
- October 2020 to May 2023
- Where
- Care facilities in Allegheny, Armstrong, Butler and Westmoreland counties, Pennsylvania
- Status
- Convicted
Content note killing of patients, elder abuse. No graphic images.
In brief
Heather Pressdee, a registered nurse from Natrona Heights, Pennsylvania, gave lethal or potentially lethal doses of insulin to 22 patients at five care facilities in Allegheny, Armstrong, Butler and Westmoreland counties between October 2020 and May 2023, prosecutors said. Seventeen of those patients died. Some were not diabetic. She was arrested in May 2023 over two deaths at a nursing home in Chicora, and the case grew from there. On May 2, 2024, she pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree murder and 19 counts of attempted murder and was sentenced to three consecutive life terms without parole, plus 380 to 760 years.
Turning pointTwo men in the same room at a Chicora nursing home crashed with low blood sugar about 10 minutes apart on her night shift. One of them was not diabetic and could not have injected himself.
- Convicted
- Heather Pressdee, 41 at sentencing, a registered nurse from Natrona Heights
- Murder counts
- James "Matt" Bartoe, 55; Gerald Shrum Sr., 90; Nicholas Cymbol, 43
- Patients harmed
- 22, aged 43 to 104, between October 2020 and May 2023
- Deaths
- 17 of those patients died, prosecutors said
- Facilities
- Five, in Allegheny, Armstrong, Butler and Westmoreland counties
- Sentence
- Three consecutive life terms without parole, plus 380 to 760 years
Watch the episode
Heather Pressdee: The Killer Nurse
Also on TikTok
Timeline
2018
Pressdee graduates from the Community College of Allegheny County with an associate degree in nursing and begins a series of short-lived jobs at nursing homes and care facilities in western Pennsylvania.
October 2020
She starts at Concordia at Rebecca Residence in Allegheny County. The earliest of the 22 patients named in the eventual charges was in her care there.
April 2021 to February 2022
At Belair Healthcare and Rehabilitation Center in Lower Burrell, four patients die in her care. Coworkers tell administrators they suspect her. She is suspended, but an internal investigation finds "no identifiable evidence" and she moves on.
November 20, 2022Around midnight
Working the night shift and the medication cart at Quality Life Services in Chicora, Pressdee injects two men who share a suite with short-acting insulin, she later tells investigators. Both are rushed to Butler Memorial Hospital with low blood sugar about 10 minutes apart.
December 2022
James "Matt" Bartoe, 55, dies on December 4 after his family ends life support. His suitemate, Joseph Campbell, dies on December 25.
March 25, 2023
Gerald Shrum Sr., 90, a Korean War veteran, dies at Sunnyview Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in Butler Township while in her care.
May 1, 2023
Nicholas Cymbol, 43, dies at Sunnyview while in her care.
May 24, 2023
Investigators interview Pressdee at her home in Natrona Heights, where she admits injecting the Chicora patients. She is taken into custody and charged with two counts of criminal homicide and attempted homicide. The Attorney General announces the charges the next day.
November 2, 2023
The Attorney General's office files new charges covering 19 more patients at five facilities from 2020 to 2023, including two counts of first-degree murder and 17 counts of attempted murder.
May 2, 2024
In the Butler County courtroom of Judge Joseph E. Kubit, Pressdee pleads guilty to three counts of first-degree murder and 19 counts of attempted murder. Prosecutors do not seek death. She is sentenced to three consecutive life terms plus 380 to 760 years.
The full story
What happened
Heather Pressdee earned an associate degree in nursing in 2018 and went to work caring for elderly and seriously ill patients in western Pennsylvania. She did not stay anywhere long. Prosecutors said she was disciplined for abusive behavior toward patients or staff at each facility, and each time she resigned or was fired and found another job.
Between October 2020 and May 2023, at five of those facilities, she gave 22 patients lethal or potentially lethal doses of insulin. They ranged in age from 43 to 104. Some were diabetic and some were not. Seventeen of them died.
According to the criminal complaint, she often worked the medication cart and gave the insulin during the night shift, when staffing was lowest and the buildings were quiet, and she tried to make sure patients died before shift change so they would not be taken to a hospital where tests could show what had happened.
The warnings
At Belair Healthcare and Rehabilitation Center in Lower Burrell, where she worked from April 2021 to February 2022, four patients died in her care. Coworkers noticed the pattern and went to their superiors. Pressdee was suspended, but an internal investigation found no identifiable evidence against her. She left and kept working elsewhere.
Chicora
From May to November 2022 she worked as assistant director of nursing and interim director of nursing at Quality Life Services in Chicora, Butler County. On the night shift of November 19 to 20, two men who shared a suite were rushed to Butler Memorial Hospital with dangerously low blood sugar, about 10 minutes apart. One was a 55-year-old man who was not diabetic and could not have given himself insulin. A nurse practitioner told investigators she had never seen anything like it in 30 years.
James “Matt” Bartoe, 55, died on December 4 after his family ended life support. Joseph Campbell died on December 25.
The investigation into those deaths led investigators to Pressdee’s home in Natrona Heights on May 24, 2023. She told them she had injected both men around midnight, and that she had injected a 73-year-old man who survived an overdose that August. She said she felt bad for her patients because their quality of life was not good, and claimed the survivor had asked her to kill him. She was arrested that day.
The wider case
By then Pressdee was working at Sunnyview Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in Butler Township, where Gerald Shrum Sr., 90, had died on March 25 and Nicholas Cymbol, 43, on May 1. Investigators from the Attorney General’s office went back through her work history. In November 2023 they filed charges covering 19 more patients.
The plea
On May 2, 2024, before Judge Joseph E. Kubit in Butler County, Pressdee pleaded guilty to the first-degree murders of Bartoe, Shrum and Cymbol and to 19 counts of attempted murder. The Attorney General’s office did not pursue the death penalty, citing her decision to accept responsibility. Asked by her attorney why she was pleading guilty, she said, “Because I am guilty.”
She told the families she was sorry. They described the people she had killed. Judge Kubit sentenced her to three consecutive life terms without parole and 380 to 760 more years, a sentence he said reflected the absolute depravity of what she had done.
What the video couldn't include
Her coworkers saw it first
At Belair in Lower Burrell, staff noticed the pattern of deaths and took their concerns to superiors. Pressdee was briefly suspended, but an internal investigation turned up "no identifiable evidence," according to the criminal complaint. A hospital doctor who treated a second low blood sugar patient from her care there referred the case to the state Department of Health. She went on to work at other facilities, where more patients died.
Timed to the end of the shift
The complaint says Pressdee often took steps to make sure patients died before shift change, so they would not be sent to a hospital where testing could reveal the insulin. When one survivor at Chicora was sent to the hospital by the oncoming shift, doctors found he had been given insulin.
What she told investigators
She said she felt bad for patients' quality of life and hoped they would "just slip into a coma and pass away." Of one woman, she said she "looked at her like an animal would." A coworker at Sunnyview told police she was always saying residents "just needed to die."
The texts to her mother
According to court documents, between April 2022 and May 2023 she texted her mother about her unhappiness with patients and colleagues and about potentially harming them. She made similar complaints about people she met at restaurants and elsewhere.
Three murder counts, 17 deaths
Pressdee was convicted of three murders, but 17 of the 22 patients died. Investigators said they filed murder charges only where they could concretely prove the cause of death. Several of the attempted murder counts she pleaded guilty to involve patients who died in her care or afterward.
In court, she apologized
Before the sentence, Pressdee said she was very sorry for what she had done. Judge Kubit told her the sentence reflected the "absolute depravity" of her actions. Cymbol's sister, Melinda Brown, called her "pure evil." The niece of Jack Rogers II, who died at Belair, told her, "I hope you live to 100."
The lawsuits
Families have filed wrongful death lawsuits against Belair and Sunnyview, alleging the facilities missed or ignored warning signs. The facilities have not been found liable in our sources.
The video and the record
The episode tells this case in about 4 minutes with illustrated recreations. Here is how its key moments line up with what is documented.
Some of the patients collapsing had been given insulin, and some weren't even diabetic
Documented
Prosecutors said some of the 22 patients were diabetic and others were not.
During overnight shifts, when the halls were quiet and staffing was reduced
Documented
The criminal complaint says she gave insulin during the night shift "when staffing was lowest and the facilities were quiet."
In late 2022, authorities received information concerning a suspicious patient death
Compressed
Charging documents say the investigation began with allegations about two men who died in December 2022. The date authorities were first alerted is not given in our sources.
Initially accused of killing two patients and attempting to kill another at Quality Life Services
Documented
The May 2023 charges: two deaths and a man who survived hospitalization.
Prosecutors connected her actions to as many as 17 deaths
Documented
Seventeen of the 22 patients died. She was convicted of three murders.
Sometimes because of the way a patient looked at her, or because she believed that person had no quality of life
Documented
From her statements to investigators, as reported.
One told her she hoped Pressdee lived to be one hundred years old
Documented
A victim's niece, at sentencing.
A quiet hallway, a medication cart, a nurse entering a patient's room
Reconstruction
AI-generated illustrations. No real photographs or patient likenesses are used.
That trust was the last mistake they ever made
Dramatized
A closing line written for the video. The patients and their families did nothing wrong by trusting their care.
What the four marks mean
- Documented
- Shown as it is recorded in court filings, police statements, or consistent reporting.
- Reconstruction
- A reasonable visual recreation of a documented event. The event happened; the image is illustrative.
- Compressed
- Real events shortened, merged, or reordered to fit the runtime.
- Dramatized
- A storytelling choice (framing, wording, emphasis) that the record does not establish.
Sources
- [1]Butler Eagle“Nurse charged with homicide, worked at multiple Butler facilities”Details from the affidavit of probable cause.
- [2]WPXI“Local nurse accused of killing 2 patients, hurting another with intentional doses of insulin”
- [3]CNN“Pennsylvania nurse faces additional charges after admitting she tried to kill 19 other patients, AG says”
- [4]CNN“Pennsylvania nurse sentenced to life in prison after admitting she intentionally gave patients excessive insulin doses, prosecutors say”
- [5]NBC News“Pennsylvania nurse pleads guilty to killing patients with lethal doses of insulin”
- [6]NBC10 Philadelphia“Life in prison for Pa. nurse who pleaded guilty to murder charges”
- [7]CBS News Pittsburgh (KDKA)“Pennsylvania nurse pleads guilty to killing nursing home residents with insulin; families call her "pure evil"”
- [8]Butler Eagle“Former nurse sentenced to life in prison for killing, harming nursing home patients”
- [9]The Daily Beast“Heather Pressdee, Nurse Who Killed Patients With Insulin, Avoids Lethal Injection”
- [10]Butler Eagle“Remembering the victims of Western Pennsylvania serial killer nurse Heather Pressdee”Lists all 22 patients named in the charges, by facility.
SourcedFacts in this file come from the reporting listed above. Some details are still waiting on primary records. Last reviewed September 12, 2026. How we check cases
