CHICORA, PA – Heather Pressdee, a Pennsylvania nurse, pleaded guilty on Thursday for administering dangerously high levels of insulin to nursing home patients. Her actions led to the deaths of 17 individuals, and Pressdee now faces several criminal charges, including first-degree murder and attempted murder.
From 2020 to 2023, Pressdee allegedly misused insulin at multiple nursing home facilities, according to the Pennsylvania attorney general’s office. Her victims, totaling 22, comprised both diabetic and non-diabetic patients.
Pressdee was initially charged in May last year for the deaths of two patients and injuring a third at Quality Life Services, a nursing facility in Chicora. However, she later admitted to attempting to kill 19 other individuals at various other facilities where she worked, leading to additional charges.
As part of her guilty plea, Pressdee admitted to three counts of first-degree murder and 19 counts of attempted murder, according to a news release from the attorney general’s office.
Several wrongful death lawsuits have been filed by the victims’ families. Nicholas Cymbol’s family, for example, alleges in a March lawsuit that Pressdee regularly insulted, berated, and bullied Cymbol, a “brittle diabetic” patient at Sunnyview Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Butler. The family accused Pressdee of denying him food and water and frequently ridiculing his anoxic brain injury.
Another patient, known only as J.B. in a criminal complaint, reportedly experienced two hospitalizations in 2022 due to low blood sugar before he passed away on Dec. 4, 2022. Pressdee allegedly stated that J.B., who was nonverbal and under her care at Quality Life Services, would be “better off dead.”
Pennsylvania Attorney General Michelle Henry criticized Pressdee for betraying the trust placed in her, using her position as a caregiver to harm those under her care.
Robert N. Peirce, the attorney representing five families who are victims in the case, expressed hope that the resolution of the criminal proceedings would help alleviate the families’ suffering to some degree.
Pressdee was given three consecutive life sentences for the first-degree murder charges, as well as up to 760 years for the criminal intent to commit murder charges.