Pennsylvania nurse linked to 17 nursing home deaths

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

A Pennsylvania nurse proves why you cannot trust every medical professional with your life.

Jon Haworth reported for ABC news on November 3, that:

A former Pennsylvania nurse who, in May, had been accused of killing two patients with doses of insulin, now faces more murder charges. She has confessed to trying to kill 19 additional people at several locations, authorities said Thursday.

Heather Pressdee, 41, is accused of administering excessive amounts of insulin to patients in her care, some of whom were diabetic and required insulin, and some of whom were not, according to the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office.

In total, 17 patients died who had been cared for by Pressdee.

According to Haworth, Pennsylvania's Attorney General's Office stated:

"The allegations against Ms. Pressdee are disturbing. It is hard to comprehend how a nurse, trusted to care for her patients, could choose to deliberately and systematically harm them,” said Pennsylvania Attorney General Michelle Henry. "The damage done to the victims and their loved ones cannot be overstated. Every person in a medical or care facility should feel safe and cared for, and my office will work tirelessly to hold the defendant accountable for her crimes and protect care-dependent Pennsylvanians from future harm."

Pressdee has now been charged with 2 counts of first-degree murder, 17 counts of attempted murder and 19 counts of neglect of a care-dependent person.

Haworth reported that The Attorney General's Office stated that:

"The alleged crimes happened while Pressdee was employed as a registered nurse at the following facilities: Concordia at Rebecca Residence; Belair Healthcare and Rehabilitation (Guardian); Quality Life Services Chicora; Premier Armstrong Rehabilitation and Nursing Center; and Sunnyview Rehabilitation and Nursing Center," officials said. "Pressdee typically administered the insulin during overnight shifts when staffing was low and the emergencies would not prompt immediate hospitalization."

The victims ranged in age from 43 to 104.

Similar to the Elizabeth Wettlaufer murders in London and Woodstock, Ontario Canada, the crimes occurred over several years and there was minimal oversight over the medications at the care homes. Similar to the Wetlaufer case, the news article related to the original charges in May 2023 stated that:

The complaint states that Pressdee has an alleged pattern of "being disciplined for abusive behavior towards patients and/or staff" at several other facilities and either resigned from them or was terminated.

Both Wettlaufer and Pressdee received serious complaints against them and were either fired or resigned their positions. But they were still able to find employment as nurses in other facilities.

During the Wettlaufer trial in Canada, I stated that the deaths were only a tip on the iceberg based on the lack of oversight and the vulnerability of those who were killed. My position remains the same. There may be many more murders occurring in care homes throughout Canada and the USA.

Canada's euthanasia law lacks the same type of oversight. In Canada a person is approved to be killed when two doctors or nurse practitioners agree that the person qualifies. The law only requires that the doctors and nurse practitioners be of the opinion that the person meet the criteria of the law. In other words, there is no effective oversight of the law and yet 13,241 Canadians reportedly died by euthanasia in 2022.

Article promotes legalizing euthanasia in America.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

An opinion article by Alison McCook published by the Philadelphia Inquirer promotes the legalization of euthanasia and assisted suicide in Pennsylvania. McCook is an assistant opinion editor at The Inquirer.

McCook writes about the death of her mother in 2007 by ALS and asks the question - Why is assisted suicide not legal in Pennsylvania? The article is well crafted but this article is designed to legalize assisted suicide and euthanasia which is the new goal of the American death lobby.

What is the difference between euthanasia and assisted suicide?

With assisted suicide two medical practitioners approve a person's request to die, the primary practitioner writes the prescription for the lethal drug cocktail. The person receives and consumes the lethal drug cocktail and dies by assisted suicide. Assisting a suicide is currently legal in 10 states.

With euthanasia, two medical practitioners approve a person's request to die, the primary practitioner then lethally injects the person with a lethal drug cocktail. Lethal injection is currently defined as homicide in all 50 states. The death lobby is now working to expand assisted suicide laws to euthanasia.

McCook makes her case for euthanasia by writing:

Even if Pennsylvania manages to pass a medical aid-in-dying law, it would be flawed, along with all the other aid-in-dying laws on the books in other states, because these laws require that patients give themselves lethal medication. By the time my mother was ready to die, she would have likely been too paralyzed to do this. There’s a whole class of patients who are terminally ill and cannot ingest the medication without assistance. Our laws, as written, leave them behind.

McCook is arguing that legalizing assisted suicide leaves out a group of people who are not capable of self-administering the lethal drugs. This argument assumes that there is nothing wrong with killing people, which is what euthanasia does, but in fact, without going into details, people with ALS are dying by assisted suicide since the term self-administer is loosely defined.

This article shows us the direction of the death lobby in America. Historically, they started with trying to legalize euthanasia but failed. In 1994 Oregon passed its assisted suicide voter initiative because they limited the act to assisted suicide. Now the death lobby is working to expand their assisted suicide laws to euthanasia.

The good news is that their first attempt in California has failed. In June 2022 a California federal judge rejected a case designed to permit euthanasia within California's assisted suicide act. Lonny Shavelson, a doctor that solely focuses on assisted suicide argued that the state's assisted suicide law discriminated against people who had difficulty self-ingesting lethal assisted suicide drugs and to remedy the situation the state needed to permit euthanasia (lethal injection) in those cases. (Link to the decision). The Judge decided that legalizing euthanasia would not extend the state assisted suicide law but fundamentally altered it.

The American death lobby lost their first battle in legalizing euthanasia in America but clearly their goal is to continue this battle.

Opposing euthanasia is most effective when we all it what it is, that being homicide/murder. It is never a good or a safe idea to give doctors the right in law to kill you.

Link to my previous articles about the California court case (Link 1) (Link 2).

EPC supports Shawn's law - Pennsylvania House Bill 184.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Shawn Shatto

In July 2020, the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition published an article about the assisted suicide death of Shawn Shatto. The article explained how Shawn died by suicide, but in this case she was aided by an assisted suicide website that provided lethal directions and encouraged her to die. Jackie Bieber, Shawn's mother, is trying to prevent similar assisted suicide deaths. The article states:

Ever since the day Shawn took her life, Jackie has been advocating for "Shawn's Law," which "strengthens penalties against anyone who assists in a suicide, but especially anyone who is under the age of 18 or has a mental disability." Bieber would like to see Shawn's Law signed by Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf. She doesn't want anyone to feel as lost and hopeless as her daughter did the day she died.

Rep Dawn Keefer

Pennsylvania House Bill 184, also known as Shawn's Law, is sponsored by Representative Dawn Keefer. Shawn's Law states that:

A. Causing suicide as criminal homicide.--A person may be convicted of criminal homicide for causing another to die by suicide only if he intentionally causes such suicide by force, duress or deception.

(b) Aiding or soliciting suicide as an independent offense.--A person who intentionally aids or solicits another to die by suicide is guilty of a felony of the second degree if his conduct causes such suicide or an attempted suicide, and otherwise of a misdemeanor of the second degree.

Shawn's law is a proactive way to protect people from assisted suicide and websites that instruct and encourage suicide. 

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition supports Shawn's  law and urges the Pennsylvania Senate to pass it and Governor Wolf to sign it into law.

Shawn Shatto is one of many people who were struggling with depression and anxiety to come across an assisted suicide website that provided instructions and encouraged suicide.

Don't believe the assisted suicide lobby when they say that suicide and assisted suicide are different, when the assisted suicide lobby is also involved with peddling suicide.

If you or someone you know is contemplating suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.

• Pennsylvania House passes Shawn's law (Link).
• Suicide promotion website linked to euthanasia activist (Link). 
• Assisted suicide groups linked to suicide promotion websites (Link).

Assisted suicide website led to daughter's suicide death.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

On May 22, 2019; Jackie Bieber found her daughter Shawn Shatto on her bedroom floor unresponsive and cold. She attempted CPR but in vain. 

Initially she did not realize that Shawn had died by a suicide. What she would soon learn was that her daughter, who had been dealing with depression and anxiety, was provided lethal directions and encouraged to die by suicide through an assisted suicide website.

An article written by Jennifer Passmore, published by Moms.com explains:

Shawn had been dealing with depression and anxiety for years, and had been seeing a therapist and took medication. Originally, Bieber didn't think her daughter took her own life. That is, until she had found several disturbing things on her daughter's cell phone, including messages from a website that teaches people how to commit suicide.

Shatto's aunt, Elizabeth Hoffman said, "They were cheering her on to the finish line of a suicide." On the post, various people were telling her what kind of drugs to mix in order to kill herself. Then they had the audacity to wish her 'good luck' and 'safe travels.' Bieber believes if it was not for that website, her daughter may still be alive today.

Jackie responded by wanting to protect people like her daughter by working to get Shawn's Law (House Bill 1827) passed. Passmore states:

Ever since the day Shawn took her life, Jackie has been advocating for "Shawn's Law," which "strengthens penalties against anyone who assists in a suicide, but especially anyone who is under the age of 18 or has a mental disability." Bieber would like to see Shawn's Law signed by Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf. She doesn't want anyone to feel as lost and hopeless as her daughter did the day she died.

So far, Shawn's Law has passed the House, and is now in the Senate. If you are interested in helping in getting this law passed, you can call your local senator and ask them to vote in favor of the law.

Shawn's law is a proactive way to protect people from assisted suicide and websites that instruct and encourage suicide. 

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition urges the Pennsylvania Senate to pass Shawn's law and Governor Wolf to sign it into law.

Shawn Shatto is not the first person who was struggling with depression and anxiety to come across an assisted suicide website that provided instructions and encouraged suicide.

Don't believe the assisted suicide lobby when they say that suicide and assisted suicide are different, when the assisted suicide lobby is also involved with peddling suicide.

If you or someone you know is contemplating suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.

• Pennsylvania House passes Shawn's law (Link).
• Suicide promotion website linked to euthanasia activist (Link). 
• Assisted suicide groups linked to suicide promotion websites (Link).

Brain death court cases becoming more common.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Taquisha McKitty's daughter

As the family of Taquisha McKitty await the decision in the "brain death" case in Brampton Ontario, it is shocking to read how common brain death court cases are becoming.

Based on the immenent release of the McKitty decision, CBC News interviewed Hugh Scher, the lawyer for the McKitty family. According to CBC news Scher stated:

"It raises a serious question as to what is death in Ontario and in Canada. There is no statutory legal definition," said Scher on Metro Morning Tuesday. "We're hopeful this case will provide some guidance." 

Scher and the McKitty family say that beyond breathing and having a heartbeat, Taquisha shows other signs of life — like moving her legs — that prove she's still biologically alive. 

"She eats, she drinks, her organs function," said Scher, comparing her to "many other people with a severe neurological impairment."

Hugh Scher was also the lawyer in the Shalom Ouanounou case in Toronto. 

Areen Chakrabarti with mother

Meanwhile a New Jersey hospital is embroiled in two cases. 

Areen Chakrabarti, who is on the autism spectrum, ran upstairs during the confusion of an April 14 fire suffered severe smoke inhalation, Doctors at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia state that Areen is brain dead but his mother says that her son responds to her. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer:

When Areen was admitted to CHOP on April 15, physicians urged his mother to consider removing him from life support. After more than a week, the hospital told her the boy would be removed from life support if tests revealed a complete lack of brain activity. 

Banerjee, who has maintained a near-constant bedside vigil at the hospital, says her son remains aware of her presence. She said when the boy’s blood pressure becomes elevated, it falls again when she speaks to him.

Jayden Auyeung with mother

Sadly, there is a second case occurring at the same hospital. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Anna and Jonathan Auyeung, the parents of Jayden Auyeung, filed for a temporary restraining order in Common Pleas Court on Wednesday, their child’s 10th birthday. The Edison, N.J., boy, has a genetic motor neuron disease, couldn’t breathe after a mucus plug developed in his throat while he was at home on May 4, his mother said. Despite efforts to revive him, he had to be taken to Robert Wood Johnson Hospital in New Brunswick, N.J., where he was placed on life support. Two days later he was transferred to CHOP, which had treated him for ye. 

His mother does not accept that there is no hope of her son’s recovering. 

“When we touch him or talk to him, he moves his finger and moves his leg and moves his mouth,” Anna Auyeung said, but she was told not to see these as positive signs. “Doctors said it was spinal reflex,” she said.

All of these cases are incredibly difficult but the question of brain death creates confusion. These people are biologically alive, are moving and reacting, and have been declared dead.

There must be a better way to deal with these situations.

Bruni blindly supports assisted suicide.

The following article was written by Wesley Smith and published on his blog under the title Frank Bruni Hugs Assisted Suicide in NYT. I have slightly edited the article.

Wesley Smith

By Wesley Smith - August 11, 2013

I read Frank Bruni every Sunday in the New York Times. I usually don’t agree with him, heck I almost never do. But he is a talented writer and an articulate and passionate advocate for his views. Besides, I believe in reading differing opinions from my own.

As I get him, Bruni is mostly a social liberal–and thus it comes as a sadness–but hardly a surprise–that he supports assisted suicide and uses his huge advocacy platform to push the death agenda. (I think liberals should be adamantly opposed to assisted suicide, but then, liberalism has changed since my day when its primary purpose was protecting the weak and vulnerable.)

The context of his column involves a case in PA in which Barbara Mancini is being prosecuted for handing her aged father a jar of morphine, apparently knowing he intended to use the drugs to kill himself. I commented previously on this case in the context of demonstrating the lie of the assisted suicide lobby leaders, that the prosecution violated the U.S. Constitution.

Bruni has a different take: He claims sort of a no harm, no foul opposition to the prosecution. From, “Fatal Mercies:”

That’s all that Joseph Yourshaw, 93, seemingly wanted: to exit on his own terms, at home, without growing any weaker, without suffering any more. And that’s all that one of his daughters, Barbara Mancini, 57, was trying to help him do, according to the police report that set her criminal prosecution in motion. She’s charged, under Pennsylvania law, with aiding a suicide, a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Such a sentence would be ludicrous, but so, by all appearances, is the case against her: a waste of public resources, a needless infliction of pain on a family already grieving, and a senseless prioritization of a frequently ignored (and easily ignorable) law over logic, compassion, decency. 

It would have been easy for prosecutors to walk away; that sort of thing happens all the time. That it didn’t happen here suggests how conflicted, inconsistent and bullheaded we Americans can be when it comes to the very private, very intimate business of dying.

Bruni doesn’t know the facts of that case, nor do I.  But his easy comfort with a daughter allegedly helping kill her father is terribly misguided–even if you disagree with me that helping someone else kill themselves is intrinsically wrong and an (often unintended) form of abandonment. And we wonder about why there is a crisis of elder suicide.

Bruni’s quick and unequivocal embrace of Mancini recalls to mind the enthusiasm of the media in defense of George Delury, when he was arrested for assisting the suicide of his wife, Myrna Lebov. Lebov had a progressive case of MS and was growing increasingly disabled. Like so many of these kinds of cases, Delury claimed the mantle of compassion in helping his wife ”exit on her own terms,” the advocacy slogan the media now use almost as a cliche in reporting assisted suicide stories. From my Weekly Standard article, “Abandoning the Most Vulnerable:”

Delury became an instant celebrity. He was acclaimed as a dedicated husband willing to risk jail to help his beloved wife achieve her desired end. The assisted-suicide movement set up a defense fund and renewed calls for legalization. Delury made numerous television appearances and was invited to speak to a convention of the American Psychiatric Association. He signed a deal for a book, later published under the title But What If She Wants to Die? 

But then, the truth came out. Delury kept a computer record of the events leading up to the suicide, which the police eventually discovered. It turned out that Delury had put Lebov out of his misery:

The diary showed that Lebov did not have an unwavering and long-stated desire to die, as Delury had claimed. Rather, as often happens with people struggling with debilitating illnesses, her mood waxed and waned. One day she would be suicidal–but the next day she was engaged in life. Delury, moreover, encouraged his wife to kill herself, or as he put it, “to decide to quit.” He researched her antidepressant medication to see if it could kill her, and when she took less than the prescribed amount, which in itself could cause depression, he stashed the surplus until he had enough for a poisonous brew.

That wasn’t all. He worked assiduously at destroying Lebov’s will to live by making her feel worthless and a burden. On March 28, 1995, Delury wrote in his diary that he planned to tell his wife: I have work to do, people to see, places to travel. But no one asks about my needs. I have fallen prey to the tyranny of a victim. You are sucking my life out of my [sic] like a vampire and nobody cares. In fact, it would appear that I am about to be cast in the role of villain because I no longer believe in you.

Delury later admitted on the NBC program Dateline that he had shown his wife that very passage.

Not only that, but after emotionally bludgeoning Myrna into taking the poison, he put a plastic bag over her head to make sure she died,

Now, which of these stories resonated the most with you? The compassionate daughter or the vile husband?

It is very telling that in our current culture, the abuse of Lebov’s is so easily and quickly shrugged off. In fact, had he been on the Times’ op/ed page when Lebov died, before the diary came to light, I can see Bruni writing in support of Delury in the same language–and for the same reasons–he did Mancini.

After all: For the assisted suicide warriors, these things always are approached as no harm, no foul until proven otherwise. 

Assisted Suicide case in Pennsylvania (Mancini case)

Barbara Mancini has been ordered to stand trial for the charge of aiding or assisting the suicide of her father, Joseph Yourshaw (93) in Pottsville Pennsylvania.

The facts of the case are not well known and the judge placed a gag order on the case, but a local newspaper stated the facts in the following manner.

Just six months ago, a 93-year-old Yourshaw was terminally ill and in at-home hospice at his West Market Street, Pottsville home. A hospice nurse testified at the hearing that upon arriving at the home February 7th, she called 911 after learning Mr. Yourshaw had swallowed a bottle of morphine. He died four days later. Pottsville Police Captain Steve Durkin said when he arrived at the home the day of the overdose he was met by Barbara Mancini and that she told him that she gave her father the morphine because he wanted to die. He also testified that Mancini didn't want her father going to the hospital. ... 

District court judge James Reiley denied a defense request to dismiss the case. The defense wanted the charge thrown out based on two previous supreme court rulings. Ms. Mancini, who is a registered nurse, remains free on $100,000 bail. Her trial date has not yet been set.

According to an article in the Philadelphia Enquirer:

On Feb. 7, Pottsville Police Capt. Steve Durkin went to the Yourshaws' home in response to a 911 call from the hospice nurse. 

The nurse "told me that her client had taken an overdose of his morphine with the intent to commit suicide," Durkin wrote in his report. 

The nurse said Mancini, who also is a nurse, gave her father the morphine "at his request so that he could end his own suffering," Durkin wrote. 

When an ambulance arrived, Mancini told paramedics that her father was dying and did not want further treatment, but the police captain overruled her. 

"I advised defendant that she no longer had any say in the matter and that her father was going to the hospital for treatment," Durkin's report says. 

Yourshaw was revived at the hospital, only to die there four days later after doctors gave him more morphine for his pain, according to Mancini's lawyers.

The Mancini case brings up some very interesting questions concerning the issue of assisted suicide. 

Some media outlets are attacking the prosecutor in this case and are making inferences that this case will pour cold water on palliative care professionals who are working to kill the pain and not the patient. 

I think that this case is too early to judge. 

If Barbara Mancini intentionally assisted her father's suicide attempt, then she broke the law. 

If she only helped to control her father's painful symptoms, then she should be acquitted.

These issues will be better understood when more information about the case is available.