Former nurse sentenced to life in prison for killing, harming nursing home patients
A year and a day after Heather Pressdee killed a 43-year-old man at a Butler Township nursing home, the former nurse was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Pressdee, 41, of Natrona Heights, was sentenced Thursday, May 2, to serve three consecutive life sentences followed by 380 to 760 years in prison in a plea agreement in which she pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree murder and 19 counts of attempted murder filed by the Attorney General’s office.
Prosecutors said she injected her patients with insulin or air to create air embolisms.
“I just wanted to say I'm very sorry for what I've done that impacted a lot of people, including my parents, and I'm deeply sorry,” Pressdee said before the sentence was imposed.
She was charged between May and November 2023 with two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of criminal homicide, one count of criminal attempted homicide, 17 counts of attempted murder and 22 counts of neglect of a care-dependent person. Later, charges related to the 22 victims were added or amended to also include counts of third-degree murder and reckless endangerment.
The charges linked Pressdee to the death of 17 patients and indicated she administered lethal doses of insulin to five others who were under her care. The murders and attempted murders happened from 2020 to 2023 while she worked as a registered nurse at five nursing homes in Butler, Armstrong, Westmoreland and Allegheny Counties. Her nursing license was revoked during the investigation.
The charges she didn’t plead guilty to were dismissed after Butler County Common Pleas Court Judge Joseph Kubit imposed the sentence.
Kubit told Pressdee that the sentence reflects the “absolute depravity of your actions.”
The Attorney General’s office did not try to attach aggravating circumstances to the murder charges to seek a death penalty sentence because Pressdee accepted responsibility and allowed victims to have closure by agreeing to plead guilty, prosecutors said.
The murder charges she pleaded guilty to were filed in the deaths of James “Matt” Bartoe, of East Brady, who was 55 when he died on or about Nov. 19, 2022, at Quality Life Service of Chicora; Gerald Shrum Sr., of Penn Township, who was 90 when he died March 25, 2023, at Sunnyview Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in Butler Township; and Nicholas Cymbol, of Dayton, Pa., who was 43 when he died May 1, 2023, at Sunnyview.
Bartoe’s mother, Helen, said she visited him twice a day. She told Pressdee that she forgives her because she is a devoted Catholic.
Vincent Bartoe, one of his five siblings, said his brother was diagnosed with brain cancer at age 27, and he was eventually taken to Quality Life after their mother was no longer able to take care of him.
“We were told he’d get expert care and attention,” Vincent Bartoe said, later calling his brother his best friend.
He told Pressdee that he hopes inmates treat her like she treated her patients.
Cymbol’s older sister, Melinda Brown, described him as “full of life.” She said he loved outdoor activities, Halloween and Christmas, and cooking, and he was popular with staff and other patients at Sunnyview.
A diabetic, Cymbol gave himself four shots of insulin a day since he was 10 years old, and had been receiving dialysis since he suffered kidney failure in 2012, she said.
In 2016, he accidentally injected himself with too many does of insulin and was found “lifeless,” Brown said. He was flown to a hospital, but was left in a persistent vegetative state, she said.
Doctors said he would remain that way, but he fought through recovery and was able to walk, talk, dance and have a great memory for seven more years, said his niece, Hailey Mergen.
“He was a fighter with a great will to live,” Mergen said.
He was living with two caregivers after the mishap, but both contracted COVID-19 at the same time, Brown said. The family decided to take him to Sunnyview temporarily until new caregivers could be found, she said.
Brown said she envisions Nicholas “gasping for air and foaming at the mouth” before he died at the facility.
“I feel I failed by not being there daily to see what was going on,” Brown said.
Mary Beth Graham, the oldest of Shrum’s six children, said her mother, Marguerite, died in 2019 from a head injury from a fall, and one of her sisters died of breast cancer.
She said the family took him to Sunnyview after he began having difficulty getting around on his own when he was in his mid-80s.
Sometime after he died, the Attorney General’s office called and told her that her father had been murdered, she said.
“The guilt and sorrow are relentless,” Graham said.
No one was with him to comfort him in his last moments of life, she said.
Shrum’s second oldest daughter, Linda White, said someone visited him everyday at Sunnyview.
She said his parents sold eggs from their farm to pay for his birth in 1933, and he took over running that farm at age 14, so his father could get a job. He hunted to feed the family, served in the military, was active in his church and went on to receive a flying license.
At Sunnyview, she said Pressdee gave him at least two doses of insulin and then created the air embolism to kill him
“She is evil personified,” White said.
She said she believes Pressdee will kill again if she has the opportunity.
“I curse you with a long and truly miserable life,” she said.
