Nursing home ‘Angel of Death’ pleads guilty

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4-4-2008 Handout Mugshot from the McHenry County Sheriff's Office of Marty Himebaugh

Updated: January 23, 2012 3:48AM

A former nurse charged with overmedicating residents at a Woodstock care center where six patients died suspiciously admitted Thursday she gave one patient a drug he had never been prescribed.

Marty Himebaugh — whom McHenry County prosecutors said had been described as the “Angel of Death” by a co-worker — faces up to three years in prison after pleading guilty to felony criminal neglect.

In exchange for her guilty plea, prosecutors dropped five other felony counts against Himebaugh, whose nursing license was suspended by state regulators in 2009 following a probe of suspicious patient deaths at the former Woodstock Residence nursing home where she worked.

Authorities began investigating the nursing home in 2006 after receiving reports of six unusual patient deaths there purportedly involving overdoses of morphine, a powerful painkiller. The bodies of three former patients ultimately were exhumed and a pathologist determined one had died of a morphine overdose.

Himebaugh and her former supervisor, Penny Whitlock, were charged in 2008 in connection with their duties at the nursing home, though neither was charged with causing any patient deaths.

Whitlock was acquitted earlier this year of charges she allowed Himebaugh to overmedicate patients with morphine and tried to obstruct the investigation of the nursing home by ordering an employee to destroy drugs she purportedly kept in her desk.

Prosecutors also contended Whitlock had nicknamed Himebaugh the “Angel of Death” because of the way patients in her care died — though Whitlock denied ever using that phrase.

The 60-year-old Himebaugh, who had been scheduled to stand trial next week, faced charges of giving patients medications they hadn’t been prescribed and of dosing some with excessive levels of morphine.

In pleading guilty to criminal neglect, she admitted giving the anti-anxiety medication Ativan to an agitated male patient, even though he hadn’t been prescribed that drug, Himebaugh attorney Sam Amirante said.

That patient fell several hours later and received a head injury, though Amirante contended the fall couldn’t clearly be linked to the drug given him by Himebaugh in an effort to help, not harm, him.

“She really felt she did the right thing,” Amirante said, adding he plans to ask that Himebaugh be placed on probation when she is sentenced in December.

“It’s been a long haul for her. She wanted to get this over with and go on with her life,” Amirante said of Himebaugh.

Prosecutors declined to say Thursday whether they would seek a prison term for Himebaugh, who is free on bond.

Relatives of one patient who died at the home in 2006 have mixed emotions about Himebaugh’s guilty plea, their attorney said.

“We’re saddened she didn’t have to face trial on all the charges, we’re gratified she admitted some of her guilt,” said Steven Levin, who represents relatives of 78-year-old Virginia Cole in a pending civil lawsuit against the nursing home.