Met the End

Met the End, a true-crime survival memoir, explores the life and death of John Powell, first known victim of American serial killer Donald Harvey, through the eyes of Powell's daughter, Holly Brians Ragusa. When a motorcycle accident in 1986 left Powell in a coma, the nightmare for Brians Ragusa and her family had scarcely begun: Harvey, a nurse's aid, was poisoning him with cyanide, and when Powell died, an investigation revealed dozens of similar crimes. For Brians Ragusa, fifteen years old at the time, the incident had profound mental and emotional consequences. She struggled for decades to reconcile childhood memories of her Dad against the sensational publicity surrounding his murder. Then, in 2017, the national spotlight returned to Harvey's case when a fellow prison inmate beat him to death. Rekindled trauma from the news coverage drove Brians Ragusa to finally tell her father's story. Through research, interviews, and introspection, Brians Ragusa faces the tragedy of her family's past, and finds reclamation.

Holly Brians Ragusa (she/her/hers) is an interdisciplinary writer, speaker and community activist based in Cincinnati. Author of Met the End (November 2022) and an Opinion contributor to the Cincinnati Enquirer, Brians Ragusa's other publications include La Piccioletta Barca, Tiny Seed Literary Journal, The Well and On Being Mindful Poetry Project, Inside Out: A Trans Artist Project, and Earth Journal. She serves a range of nonprofits and lives in historic Over-the-Rhine, sharing space with her husband, mother, three cats, one dog, and (sometimes) two grown children. Her passions also include moon-gazing, seeking meaning, and mustard. hbragusa.com