February 26, 2025 • 74 mins
Are we putting too much trust in doctors? This week, we delve into the chilling narrative of Dr. Michael Swango, known as the "Doctor of Death." Following his seemingly normal upbringing, Swango’s twisted journey into medicine reveals unanswered questions and checks our faith in the healthcare system.
His medical career began with promise but quickly revealed alarming elements that would later escalate into widespread horror. Colleagues began to notice irregularities during his training—unusual patient deaths and a disturbing penchant for poisons. His antics didn't stop there; after being expelled from the residency program due to his apparent negligence, he sought new opportunities cloaked in lies. Swango's job as an EMT further escalated the dread surrounding him when his coworkers reported widespread illness after interactions with him.
The shocking revelation about his arrest and poisoning of colleagues only scratches the surface of his manipulative journey—one that continued even after he served time for his crimes. His marriage to nurse Kristen Kinney unveils even more darkness as suspicions and tragedies unfold swiftly.
Prepare for a rollercoaster of emotions as we unpack a narrative filled with twists, red flags, and the deeply troubling reality of a healthcare system failing to protect victims from disguised predators. Join us as we break down how Dr. Swango created a facade of trustfulness while engaging in deadly deception. Don’t forget to subscribe, share your thoughts, and leave a review—your engagement is crucial and keeps us moving forward!
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Stay safe, and stay suspicious...trust, after all, is a delicate thing!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Amanda, hello, hello, hello.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
How you doing.
I'm doing good.
It's Monday.
How are you?
I'm great.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
You know what this is .
Episode five Five.
Can you believe it?
I know we're like we graduatedfrom a toddler to like a
full-grown kindergartner.
At this point as a podcast, Iknow, look at us go.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
We're growing up so quick.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
We're growing up so fast.
We are growing up so fast andyou know what listeners.
We love you, we love yourfeedback and I do want to say
we're listening.
Okay, we are listening to yourfeedback and I hope that
everyone appreciates the factthat, after we got some very
good feedback about how long theintro was, yours truly figured
(00:51):
out how to whittle it down, sowe went from two minutes to 40
seconds.
Please appreciate that yourfeedback matters and we do try
to make changes and make thisbetter, and I think it's getting
better every single episode.
What do you think?
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Yeah, I think so.
You guys listen to us, welisten to you and, of course, we
can only get better every time,right?
Yeah, only if you keep givingus feedback friends, yeah, so
don't stop Keep going.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
I love how many people are downloading and
commenting and emailing.
It's fantastic.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
It is really fun.
I actually really look forwardto this part of the week.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Yeah, same.
So keep it coming, guys,because we want to stick around.
So you know, let us make thiswhat you want in your ears.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Thanks for letting us have a hobby.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
So, speaking of what's going into people's ears,
amanda, oh boy, what canlisteners expect today?
Because a little bit, so yeah,I'm a little bit excited about
what we're going to hear, eventhough it's terrible.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
But what you got, yes , well, as mentioned in our
brief little what to expect fornext week.
Last week I told you that wewere going to be exploring the
unsettling case of the notoriousdoctor, uh, dr michael swango.
(02:22):
He, he is known as the Doctorof Death, not to be confused
with Dr Death.
The case of Christopher Dunst,which we all widely know,
because I think it was on whatNetflix?
Speaker 1 (02:35):
I think it was on everything at one point or
another.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Yeah, that was that was big, oh my gosh.
But yeah, not him.
There's another creep um whowas coined with a similar
nickname.
Uh, trigger warnings for thiscase include mental health
suicide, alcohol abuse and, ofcourse, murder moida, most foul
moida moida.
(02:59):
Um.
So dr sw, you know big bad man.
He had a career in medicinethat spanned over a decade and
you know it's hard to imaginehow someone that's so trusted
with the lives of people couldend up taking them.
But Dr Swango wasn't justtreating his patients, he was
(03:20):
poisoning them, oh no.
And it wasn't just hispatients' friends, it was also
his colleagues.
What?
Oh no.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
And it wasn't just his patients' friends, it was
also his colleagues.
What, oh?
Okay, I'm going to have tobuckle up for this one, because
I'm already mad.
I can't believe this.
I haven't heard of this case.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
He's a monster.
I hadn't either.
All right, let's get into it,all right.
Okay, so for some background,michael Joseph Swango, born
James Michael Swango.
He was born on October 21st1954 in Tacoma Washington, to
(03:57):
Muriel and John Swango.
Okay, he's a Libra and wasraised in Quincy, illinois.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
He's a Libra born in the same place as me.
Oh, but I'm not a killer doctor.
I was going to say, you knowthat because you're a Libra.
I'm not a killer doctor, though.
Oh, I hate that you share that?
Speaker 2 (04:16):
No, you're not.
Can confirm.
He was the middle of threechildren and, by all accounts,
his mother, Muriel, tried tocreate a loving home for the
kids, but this wasn't alwayseasy because she was left to do
it by herself most of the time.
Her husband, John, was rarelyhome because he served as a
(04:37):
career officer in the UnitedStates military.
The timing of his career wasduring the Vietnam War and upon
return to the States, Johnbecame depressed.
Did you hear that start echoing?
Okay, I'm going to redo thatsentence.
(04:57):
Upon return to the States, Johnbecame depressed because of how
he was treated and perceived byhis fellow citizens and
eventually turned to alcohol.
This created turmoil betweenhim and Muriel and they
eventually divorced, With hisfather out of the picture.
Michael was very dependent onMuriel and some even described
(05:18):
him as clingy.
He constantly wanted to impressher and have her approval.
So he excelled in school andbecame an accomplished musician,
learning to play the piano andplaying the clarinet in high
school band he made A's and B'sthroughout his high school
career and was even thevaledictorian of his graduating
(05:39):
class of Quincy Catholic BoysHigh School in 1972.
By all accounts, he was a verywell-adjusted and really popular
kid.
There were no reports ofproblems with classmates or
teachers, and he was evenelected class president.
He began working toward acareer in healthcare and his
(06:00):
ambition to become a doctor soontook hold.
To say the least, his path tobecoming a doctor was atypical.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Can I just say also play the clarinet, I'm happy to
report.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
I think this is where the similarities end
Similarities between me and thisguy.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
I don't, I'm not looking report.
I think this is where thesimilarities end Me and this guy
.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
I'm not looking forward to how this plays out,
because I don't think he's thegood one in this story.
So shortly after high school hebegan attending Milliken
University, which is a smallliberal arts college in Decatur.
I did that so many times and Iwas like I'm going to nail this.
And then here we are time toshy.
Decatur, illinois.
That was only a three-hour drivefrom his hometown.
(06:51):
With his great grades and SATscore he could have attended
school just about anywhere, buthe reportedly wanted to stay
close to home.
At Milliken he had a 4.0 GPAGPA.
But things changed for himsometime around his sophomore
year when he reportedly had areally messy breakup with his
first serious girlfriend.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
I know, yeah, I mean especially if it's your first
breakup.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
I mean who doesn't have that Like your first
serious person.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Messy relationship, messing up with your grades yeah
.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
So obviously, as we kind of mentioned, this had a
big impact on him.
Yeah, his friends said that hestarted to act and dress
differently.
He had previously dressed reallypreppy with polo shirts and
khaki pants, and was reported tothen wear military attire
post-breakup.
Yeah, and this is also notablebecause it was a controversial
(07:54):
decision for the time, becauseof the negative reputation of
the military being at the heightof the Vietnam War, where many
people were burning draft cardsand attempting to stay as far
away from anythingmilitary-related as possible.
Yeah, yeah.
So, needless to say, this gavehim a lot of unwanted attention.
(08:16):
He abruptly dropped out ofcollege and you know joined the
Marine Corps.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
They were doing that, yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
He excelled in the military, earning the special
rank of a sharpshooter.
He received a number of medalsand distinctions, including the
Meritorious Mast and DefenseService Medal.
Despite never having gone towar, his reasons for leaving the
service were about as unclearas they were for him joining in
the first place, but he wasgiven an honorable discharge in
(08:45):
1976.
After the Marines he enrolledfull-time.
Okay, I'm gonna do that again.
After the Marines he enrolledas a full-time student at Quincy
University in Quincy, illinois.
He continued to stick out fromhis peers because of the
(09:06):
military mannerisms and the wayhe dressed.
He was reportedly a loner whilehe was at Quincy University.
It was later discovered that heembellished his military record
on his application to Quincy.
And oh, we'll come to find thathe also excels at lying
(09:28):
Shocking.
He has a GPA of 3.89, whichmine was higher, but he did
(09:49):
double major in biology andchemistry.
I didn't double major, so it'sjust a casual doctorate, big
deal.
Um, and this is where he beganto express an interest in
attending medical school.
His only real extracurricularactivity or hobby perhaps was
spending late nights in thescience lab to conduct chemistry
(10:11):
research and other experimentssorry, I'm sorry, I'm just, he
was a loner, right, I watchedbreaking bad.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
I'm just saying weird , right?
Oh, sorry guys, sorry guys,listen, if that's how you spend
your Saturday night, please.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
I'll backtrack to any of our lab friends out there
listening to our, but also get ahobby okay and then you ended
up using it for good.
We love ya.
Love ya, all of ourpathologists out there.
Okay, Okay, Anyway.
(10:53):
So I'm going to call the nextthing that I share with you.
You know nothing but red flagnumber one.
Same yeah, His senior thesisdiscussed the assassination of
Georgie Markov.
That meant nothing to me when Ifirst read it, so I had to look
it up.
But the story goes that Georgiewas waiting at a bus stop to go
(11:17):
to work and suddenly felt asharp pain in his leg.
He turned to see a man next tohim fumbling with an umbrella.
The man said oh sorry, and wenton his way.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Oh my gosh, that's so creepy.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
The umbrella man and it was assumed that he simply
brushed into him.
But when he got to work hestarted to become deathly ill
and was rushed to the hospital.
He died a few days later andthe cause of death was
determined to be a lethal doseof ricin which had been injected
(11:53):
in his leg.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Yeah, ricin, oh my gosh.
Okay, can I just say I'm sorryI'm interrupting you, but when I
was in kindergarten I was on aschool bus and somebody
punctured my leg, my the back ofmy calf you know how you sit
(12:17):
like.
I was on the window seat andthere was a uh, my kid behind me
.
I was like a kindergartner andthis was like a fourth grader
and they poked my leg with theirumbrella and lacerated it.
Oh my god, I can't believe.
So I remember I didn't feel itbecause it must have been a
really clean cut and I rememberthe bus monitor coming down and
there was a trail like a littlerivulet of blood going from
(12:41):
basically my area down the restand then it started and she was
like where is this coming from?
and I was like oh my gosh,where's this coming from?
And nothing hurt until Ifigured out it was coming from
my leg I'm glad it didn'tcontain a lethal dose of
anything.
Yeah, apparently these kidshave been scratching my leg with
this umbrella.
Oh my god, what if it was right?
I'm, yes, I am lucky to bealive.
(13:05):
This was such a lesser issuethan this poor man who lost his
life, but the uh and now,officially, this is where the
coincidence is Similar.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
So similarities, I didn't know about the bus story.
Um so they they found the lethallethal dose.
Um, and you know,coincidentally, these were
precisely the chemicals thatSwango had been experimenting
with in the science lab.
Uh-huh, a little foreshadowaction from Quincy University in
(13:47):
1979, with an award from theAmerican Chemical Society for
Academic Excellence, and quotingJack Smith, the author of the
book, I read that I forgot totell you about that.
I read, so I will post that inthe show notes.
But he quoted if only they knewthat Michael Swango's
excellence would be used one dayfor murder.
If only they knew that MichaelSwango's excellence would be
(14:08):
used one day for murder.
Swango was then accepted intothe Southern Illinois University
School of Medicine that sameyear.
He was again an ideal studentand took a special interest in
(14:37):
courses such as pharmacology,toxicology and pathology.
What that set him apart, it washis study habits.
It was reported that he wouldbegin to take a test and then
make an excuse to go into thehallway to cram his notes before
he would come back into theclassroom to answer the
questions.
Well, he's too busy playingchemist in the lab at night to
(15:00):
study, I guess.
Despite his differences withhis peers, he was making it
through med school and by hisfinal year he had chosen
neurosurgery as a specialty.
While in medical school, though, the faculty and his peers
began to notice that morepatients than usual seemed to
pass away while Swango wasadministering the treatment,
(15:24):
some of the other med studentsstarted calling him Double-O
Swango, in reference to theJames Bond movies, in which
Double-O agents were licensed tokill.
Yes, oh my gosh Swango wasnearly dismissed from medical
school in his last month when itwas discovered that he had been
(15:46):
fudging all of his history andphysical reports.
During his OBGYN rotation atthe hospital, he was observed to
go into a patient's room forless than 10 minutes and come
back with full reports, whichnormally took someone about 30
to 45 minutes that's crazy.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
Which normally took someone about 30 to 45 minutes,
that's crazy.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
I freaking, know it, but you know, after some
investigation it was proven thathis H&P reports had been
fabricated.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
but this wasn't grounds enough to have him
expelled.
Oh well, they did.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
they did hold a hearing to determine what to do
with him and there was just onevoting member who thought they
ought to give him a secondchance.
And needing a yep, needing aunanimous, vote to expel a
student, he was able to proceedand finish medical school,
graduating in 1983.
Oh no, I don't know.
So you're right, that isgrounds enough to expel a
student but it has to be aunanimous vote.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
Mm-hmm and we'll find that he's afforded maybe more
than one second chance too many.
Come on, ohio state.
Come on, we have friends there.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
They do better.
So this second chance affordedhis medical career to take that
sinister turn that we're aboutto start unraveling.
Despite all the red flags andnearly getting kicked out of
medical school and havingobviously poor letters of
recommendation, he was acceptedinto the neurosurgery program at
Ohio State University MedicalCenter.
(17:37):
They've gotten better.
They learned their lesson withSwango.
He signed an agreement thatwould grant him residency in
neurosurgery after a 12-monthinternship in general surgery
that would begin on July 1st1983.
(17:58):
Shortly after he arrived, manyof his patients you know, I, I
don't know became deathly illout of nowhere, with some even
dying.
Nursing staff noted that therewas an unusually high amount of
code blues that were called, andit was when he was assigned to
(18:19):
the patients I mean, isn't herequired to?
he was observed to be allegedlymessing with people's IVs with
unknown syringes.
There were yeah, this next partis sick.
There were instances where hewould see someone getting CPR
during a code blue and he wouldjust casually walk away rather
than trying to be the hero andsave the day.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
First of all, they have barriers.
And second of all, how did youbecome a doctor with this lack
of compassion for preservinghuman life?
Speaker 2 (18:52):
You're obviously so.
There was a story that I readand this nurse was like you have
to come and help and he waslike that's disgusting, like
referencing doing CPR, likeputting mouth-to-mouth
resuscitation.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
No, nope.
So this obviously, yeah, thisobviously started gossip amongst
hospital staff that, perhapsdue to either gross negligence
or flat-out incompetence, he hadbeen adversely affecting
patients.
These suspicions increased whenthe head of nursing staff, amy
moore, witnessed refusing togive respiratory aid to a
(19:45):
patient who was having obviousdifficulty breathing.
He insisted that the patientneeded to have her heart
monitored.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
Despite the patient's heart being just fine, it was
the breathing that was not fine.
The nurse had to physicallyintervene because of his refusal
to perform life-saving efforts.
Hippocratic oath, whatevercratic oath like seriously.
He couldn't even pretend enoughto like jump in there as they
(20:34):
should nope, definitely not.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Um.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
So then comes our classic case of nursing staff
reporting concerns toadministrators, but you know
they were told that they werejust being paranoid.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Come on, the complaints like this started to
pile up, and the hospital wasforced to conduct an internal
investigation.
Unfortunately, though, theycould not find any direct
evidence of wrongdoing, so allthe cursory investigation did
was clear him from anywrongdoing.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Yeah, maybe he can kill a whole, nother different
population of patients.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
Yeah, it was just word of mouth.
Yeah, so this was theirsolution.
So this was their solution.
They moved him to another wingat the hospital with hopes from
administration that this mightresolve the issues, thinking
maybe it was just a matter ofmisunderstanding and personality
conflicts with the staff.
Yeah, so we already know thatthis was of course not the case.
(21:44):
Wherever he was moved, patientswould begin to mysteriously die
Evil.
It was not only the patientsthat would become ill.
Swango's co-workers wouldmysteriously fall ill as well,
and through my research I foundthat this was a way for him to
not only practice his chemicalconcoctions on people, but also
(22:04):
for revenge to those that toldon him chicken.
So an incident that was notedin the book that I read that
again I forgot to tell you about.
I'm so sorry.
I'll link it in the show notes.
Um, but it highlighted swangooffering to buy everyone lunch
and he took individual ordersand came back with kentucky
(22:26):
fried chicken what I love,kentucky fried chicken.
But okay, yeah, for real,except, uh, you know, the only
trouble was that his chicken waslaced with poison.
The charges should have beenbrought against him.
(22:53):
Shortly after eating, everyonebecame violently ill, throwing
up and getting high fevers.
Because of all the anecdotalclaims and rumors surrounding
Swango Ohio.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
Medical Center decided, you know, not to bring
him back to finish his residency.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
Mm-hmm.
Well, this unfortunately didnot stop Swango from getting his
medical license and he now hada license to practice medicine.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
He received his medical license in September
1984 and moved back to Quincy tofind work, a diploma.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
He, of course, lied to all of his family and friends
about why he left all thewonderful opportunities in Ohio,
saying he simply didn't getalong with the medical staff,
and he just chose not to returnwhen actually he wasn't allowed
to return.
This is crazy, yeah.
(23:49):
And and all that aside too,like, oh man, you weren't even a
good student, all of us studiedour butts off and you cheated.
So in quincy he got a job as anEMT out of a local medical
facility called BlessingHospital.
(24:10):
You know and this was a prettybig demotion from being a
medical doctor that he took workas an EMT.
So we're now in July of 1984,and we are back in Quincy where
Swango is working as an EMT withAdams County Ambulance
Corporation.
His co-workers soon took noticethat he was a little too
(24:32):
enthusiastic about death.
They noted an unbridledenthusiasm that he exhibited
when they happened upon afatality.
Yeah, they, oh, yeah.
It seemed as though the sightof a dead body was exhilarating
for him.
He would get excited and hewould often remark quote wasn't
that great End quote.
(24:54):
After deadly run-ins on the job, he told his partner Brent,
this is chilling, oh, wow, okay.
So he said my ultimate fantasyambulance call is when a busload
of children are hitting head onwith a tanker truck filled with
gasoline and hitting it head onand then it blows up.
(25:15):
And then he describes seeingthe scene as kids hanging over
barbed wire fences with theircharred bodies hanging out of
the windows.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
Okay, okay, hello.
Someone needs to callbehavioral health.
This guy is disturbed.
I don't even talk about don'tknow.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
So brent, his partner , was obviously very disturbed
by the things he was saying andhe was like listen, we're out
here trying to save people andhe's describing scenes where
there's no life left at all.
Like what the heck?
The paramedics?
The paramedics had even seenthat he was making scrapbooks
(26:07):
that were filled with newspaperclippings, photos of natural
disasters, crime scenes, trafficaccidents and various other
forms of gory death.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
Yeah, he would literally share this scrapbook
with his coworkers, whichobviously made them very
uncomfortable.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
Oh wow, they chalked it up to him having a dark sense
of humor, but his macabrebehavior was just a little too
much and they were just outrightcreeped out by him.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
No.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Yes, yeah, red flags be flying this entire time.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
I mean flags abound here, Flags abound.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
So not only were their stomachs turning from
uncomfortability, but they werealso turning due to becoming
violently ill.
Peculiar illnesses coupled withhis strange obsession with
death left his colleaguessuspicious that he may be
messing with their food anddrink.
Yeah, and I was like I feellike he kind of liked these ones
(27:10):
, his co-workers, like at thehospital.
He was doing it to punishpeople that told on him.
But but here I'm like they werebeing nice to you, bro, what
are you doing?
Speaker 1 (27:21):
yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
so there was one morning that swango brought in
donuts for his colleagues.
After about 20 minutes, thosethat enjoyed a tasty treat found
themselves violently ill,throwing up in the bathrooms.
They thought it was superstrange and tried to eliminate
what might have caused so manyof them to fall ill so suddenly,
and they deduced it must havebeen the donuts, but oddly the
(27:46):
donuts were nowhere to be found.
The box had disappeared.
The paramedics reached out tothe shop where the donuts were
purchased to see if anyone elsehad reported people falling ill,
and they said uh no, neverheard of that happening to
anyone else.
Shortly thereafter, swango andhis partner Brent volunteered to
(28:07):
work at a high school footballgame.
I don't think I knew this.
Maybe I knew this, but they'rerequired to have an ambulance at
high school football games.
Did you know that?
After I read that I was like,well, I guess I did see an
ambulance there usually, but Ididn't know that anyway.
Yeah.
So they volunteered to go dothat, I know.
(28:30):
And Swango and Brent were there.
And Swango says to Brent youknow I'm going to run to the
concession stand, can I get youanything?
And Brent was like you know,sure, I'll take a pop, thanks
bro.
He did not say bro probably,but he agreed he would take a
pop.
So by the third quarter of thegame Brent was violently ill
(28:51):
again.
He thought that he must havethe flu or something like what
could be going on.
And all of these guys are likemedically inclined right,
they're doing life-savingefforts, but they're all.
Why are we falling ill sosuddenly?
They couldn't figure out what'sgoing on.
Yeah, so there was anotherinstance.
(29:11):
Back at the what do they callit?
The ambulance bay.
There was two guys that madethemselves some iced tea and
then they got called on a call.
So they couldn't enjoy theiriced tea, went to go save some
(29:34):
lives, came back and one of themtook a sip of their iced tea
and was like whoa, this wasreally sweet.
So this guy that thought it'sreally sweet, he was diabetic.
He never sweetened his iced tea.
So he told his partner hey,this is really sweet, you taste
it sure?
Speaker 1 (29:49):
enough it was sweet.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
So then they run into another colleague who told them
hey, I just witnessed theoddest thing.
Swango was just in here andleft shortly after.
I watched him pull out of here.
After you guys started pullingup, he whipped it around and
took the alley out of here,almost like he didn't want
anyone to know that he had beenhere.
Wonder if he had something todo with the iced tea.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
So this was a breaking point.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
His colleagues definitely suspected him of
messing with their food anddrink.
They covered the iced tea andrequested that it be tested, and
, sure enough, the tea was foundto have arsenic.
Yep, those that had fallenviolently ill in a sudden manner
offered hair and nail samplesto be tested, and they were also
(30:40):
found to have traces of arsenic.
In October, swango was arrestedby the Quincy Police Department
after arsenic and other poisonswere found in his home.
The main drug he used on hiscolleagues was an ant poison
called Taro, and it containedarsenic.
They found tons of the stuff inhis home, as well as ants.
(31:05):
They did find ants there, wow.
But after further investigationthey found that the species of
ants that were in his home didnot belong to the region.
Yes, they were.
What?
Speaker 1 (31:21):
He brought them to his home.
Okay, so the ants were fromFlorida, where Swango had
recently gone to visit his mom.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
Well, okay, so the ants were from Florida, where
Swango had recently gone tovisit his mom, and apparently he
thought that bringing a ton ofants back from Florida would be
enough to justify the amount ofpoison that he had.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
Yep, and so he could say he just had a little ant
problem.
Okay, okay, mm-hmm.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
Hitchhiking all the way to Illinois, destination
Swango's apartment.
They were hitchhiking on my wayto Illinois, destination
Swango's apartment.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
they were hitchhiking on my suitcase on the way back.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
I know so on August 23rd 1985 he was convicted of
aggravated battery for poisoninghis coworkers and was sentenced
to 5 years in prison and youknow we've always got an early
release for good behavior.
And was sentenced to five yearsin prison, mm-hmm.
And you know we've always gotan early release for good
(32:14):
behavior, yep.
So he was released from prisonin 1989 for only serving two and
a half years of his sentence.
Help me.
Upon release he had a difficulttime finding employment in a
hospital, no shit.
He eventually took a job as acounselor at a career
(32:38):
development center in Virginia.
It wasn't long before he beganmessing with his colleagues
again and they would become ill.
Suddenly they became even morealarmed.
I'm sorry.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
Yeah, I'm not sure what his qualifications for
getting hired were.
Did he say he had a job as acounselor, Like what the I mean?
Speaker 2 (33:02):
Maybe a little plug on ants, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
And like fail at life .
Okay, yeah little plug on ants.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
I don't know and like fail at life okay, yeah, um, so
they his colleagues would seehim perusing his scrapbooks in
periods of downtime, soobviously they're becoming a
little concerned.
Yeah, and you love when acounselor just loves bruising
death scrapbooks.
(33:33):
So obviously there was a lot ofpressure for him to leave the
job and he eventually partedways with the Career Center.
In May of 1989.
His colleagues at the CareerCenter informed local police
about his strange activities andthe unexplained illnesses.
His colleagues at the careercenter informed local police
about his strange activities andthe unexplained illnesses.
The investigation followedSwango back to Ohio where
Virginia police sought tocollaborate with their
(33:55):
counterparts in the state inorder to find some reason to
charge Swango.
Digging into Swango's activityattracted attention from local
news and a story surfaced thathe was under investigation.
Once again, nothing came fromthe investigation, but all of
this prompted Swango to changehis name.
On January 18, 1990, he had hisname officially changed from
(34:23):
Joseph Michael Swango to DavidJackson Adams, joseph Michael.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
Swango to David.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
Jackson Adams.
At this time he also marriedhis longtime girlfriend, rita.
On July 8th 1989.
Swango and Rita decided thiswas a time to reestablish
himself and start a new life.
Rita and Swango were onlymarried for less than two years
before they finally divorced.
No sure didn't.
(34:56):
Throughout his marriage, he wasworking as a lab technician at
a premier coal company inVirginia called Atta Coal
Services and by all accounts, hewas an ideal employee.
However, after his marriagecrumbled, so did his behavior on
the job.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
Oh, was you sad, was you naughty.
Yeah, little buddy, the ruse.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
Didn't have any counselor.
Friends from your old job, ohno, did you have anybody to
poison, yeah.
So his coworkers began to havethe same telltale signs of
poisoning.
And after his divorce wasfinalized in May of 91, swango
went back to Ohio and appliedfor admission to the Ohio Valley
(35:51):
Medical Center.
He submitted a completelyfraudulent application in which
he claimed his license had beensuspended due to felony battery
conviction over a fistfight at alocal bar.
We of course know this is notthe case.
Speaker 1 (36:08):
Hmm, also something.
Yeah, we of course know this is, uh not the case.
Also something.
Yeah, that's not something youshould be proud of either, but
he's like it just goes to showhow horrible his actual, the
actual truth was that a fistfight at a local so much better,
despite it's like a paper cut,compared to what you did the
better option, like let me lieabout this, you know.
(36:28):
I mean, either way, do you wantyour physician to be someone
who's yeah, yeah, definitely nomention of?
Speaker 2 (36:35):
poisoning or patients and colleagues who had been
left, you know, dead or illbecause of him.
He had some big sob story ofbeing at the wrong place at the
wrong time and he fell victim toa heavy-handed judge who just
had it out for him Mm-hmmClassic, I know he's a victim
(36:56):
Very original swango.
I've never heard this before,yeah, so he had gone a little
too far with his deception andeven created false legal
documents, such as fake prisondischarge sheets and forged
docketing statements.
He used these documents tosupport his claims that he had
been imprisoned over that minorfight rather than premeditated
(37:18):
poisoning of his colleagues.
He even went so far as to typeup a letter from the governor of
Virginia stating that thegovernor had moved to completely
restore all of Swango's rightsas a citizen.
Dr Jeffrey Schultz was thehospital director that couldn't
wait to bring Swango on board togive the young man a second
(37:40):
chance.
However, these documents andother doubts began to wait on
him.
He reached out to the police inQuincy, illinois, to find out
the truth.
Of course, he found out that,you know, everything was all a
lie.
Dr Schultz immediatelysuspended Swango's application
process and authorities inIllinois were alerted to the
(38:01):
fact that Swango was forgingdocuments, which is a serious
criminal offense.
Prosecutors then beganexploring the possibility of
charging Swango with forgery,but by the time they could build
a solid case, he had alreadymoved on Chart note.
(38:22):
Welcome to the chart notesegment where we learn about
what's happening in medicine andhealthcare.
Okay, so I've recently beenhearing a lot about using AI to
help how do I say, write notesat work.
Have you been hearing aboutthis?
Yeah, yeah, that so.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
I first heard about this from Adam.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
He was saying that a local hospital was going to
start trialing this, or theyalready were.
So basically what that lookslike is they use this AI
platform and the platformlistens to the entire encounter
and then helps summarize andcome up with a chart note for
you, and then you only have tolook, look it over, make sure
(39:19):
it's accurate.
So I wanted to look a littlemore into this Um.
So I found um at the universityof Pennsylvania that they did a
study on this.
So the study was on clinicianexperiences with ambient scribe
technology to assist withdocumentation, burden and
efficiency, and this study wasactually just published in the
JMA network open.
(39:40):
You talked about JMA in yourlast episode and in my head I
was like doesn't everyone justcall that jama?
Is that just a me thing?
Yeah, oh yeah, I guess if it'soffensive, sorry, I mean I want
to call it I don't want tooffend anyone, but that's pretty
(40:01):
cool acronym so okay, just abrief overview of the study um.
It explored how ai scribetechnology could reduce the time
doctors spend on documentation,thus improving their
interactions with patients.
The AI tool listens todoctor-patient conversations and
accurately transcribes notesinto electric health records.
(40:21):
The study involved 46clinicians and showed a 20%
reduction in time spentinteracting with EHRs during and
after patient visits, includinga 30% reduction in.
This is cute pajama time, Iknow, so they called.
Pajama time is known as workdone after hours.
(40:45):
I mean, I hate work after hours, but I love that they call it
pajama time.
Speaker 1 (40:51):
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
Yeah, clinicians gained around two extra minutes
of face-to-face time withpatients per visit and 15
minutes of personal time eachday.
One doctor reported savingabout two hours of documentation
time each week.
Speaker 1 (41:08):
Yeah, these time savings allow doctors to focus
more on patient care, which iscritical for both the
clinician-patient relationshipand physician well-being.
Speaker 2 (41:21):
One doctor noted that the AI scribe drastically
reduced their documentationburden and helped them engage
with patients withoutdistraction, which I feel like I
could resonate with.
That, because when I was inclinic, compassion fatigue is a
real thing.
When you're burned out, it just, it drains every ounce in every
(41:42):
corner of you.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
So yeah, yeah, and you're busy thinking okay, how
am I going to?
Quantify this or qualify thisin writing and did I ask all the
the points that I'm required toask?
Speaker 2 (42:00):
it's a lot, it's a lot.
Get this down, but still getthis um, so at the end of the
study, most clinicians rated thesystem as fairly easy to use,
with 65% either recommending orpassively recommending it.
The study's co-authorsemphasize that the technology is
improving daily and is likelyto transform how outpatient
primary care providers operate.
(42:20):
Penn Medicine's goal is to usetools like this to strengthen
the clinician-patientrelationship, reduce cognitive
burdens and restore valuabletime for both providers and
patients.
Speaker 1 (42:37):
I love this because I mean they're already doing it
with co-pilot for MicrosoftTeams meetings, where the
minutes are just getting written.
I mean you can always go backand be like the minutes are just
getting written.
I mean you can always go backand be like, oh, that wasn't
quite right, but a lot of timesit's scarily on point and better
than someone who's trying torun a meeting and write notes at
the same time.
(42:57):
So I can imagine it's a similarthing with.
I mean, we've had medicalscribes, but still that's
another person who has to be,you know, educated in the
medical field and sit there andtake notes and we have to pay
that person.
And yeah, that takes time fromthe.
You know that allows thephysician to have more time, but
(43:18):
it's still another physicalperson that you have to employ
who has to have a certain skillset.
So if we're going to use AI, Imean I say, bring it.
But then, you know, part of meis like, yeah, they're going to
bring it and they're going to gonot so that we can keep up with
the status quo.
Now they're going to say, ohwell, now that you have that,
you can do something in aquarter of the time and it's
(43:41):
like, oh god, that's not truebecause we're already
overextended.
So yeah, I know, yeah yeah,it's.
It's like we've relieved a bitof this burden now how?
Speaker 2 (43:59):
can we add some more?
That was kind of my concernwith it.
Speaker 1 (44:04):
But if it's just, it sounds amazing to relieve some
of that, right, I, I would havekilled for that quantity, for
quality then, but that's notbuying us anything.
Yeah, yeah yes, and that's whatI was gonna say is like I just
(44:26):
got so burnt on sacrificingquality for quantity.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
So as long as it doesn't turn into one of those
and maybe that just is dependenton where you're at yes, write
in listeners.
Yeah, but anyway, that'sanother story for another day.
But I would be curious to knowif anybody is already using this
.
Do you like it?
Do you hate it?
What are your fears?
I feel like AI is coming andgoing to be utilized more and
(44:54):
more and more and more whetherwe want it or not.
Speaker 1 (44:56):
So we better just lean into it, and I know what
the answer is, you know, and alot of times they'll get
something that's not the rightanswer.
So it's like it's only as goodas yeah, exactly yeah, it's only
as good as yeah, exactly yeah,it's definitely Wikipedia stage.
Speaker 2 (45:15):
So, yeah, I think it has potential, as long as it's
quality that it's like it's kindof at its.
Wikipedia stage Like how do weget it better?
Speaker 1 (45:19):
Anything.
Speaker 2 (45:20):
So I don't know what the answer is, but anyway,
that's a bigger thing, but I'mso yeah, well, and also they
talked about, or so we had sometraining one time and now we're
(45:40):
rambling.
But, um, I'll make this asshort as possible.
Um, but we had this thing on aiand it was like you can't put
students personal information,or so, let's say, patients
personal information in there,etc.
Because once it's out in ai,it's kind of like out in the
world.
Speaker 1 (45:57):
So that was another thing, is like if this ai tool
or scribe or whatever isliterally a part of your
appointment, is that?
Speaker 2 (46:07):
kind of going to be lost in cyberspace like your
personal, personal information.
Speaker 1 (46:11):
Yeah, no, I agree, that's part of it.
Yeah, agreed, private or not.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
So that's a little scary.
Okay, back to the story.
All right, folks, we are now atthe University of South Dakota
where, with the same forgeddocuments, swango had applied
and been accepted.
(46:43):
This is also where he met nurseKristen Kinney.
Nurse Kristen Kinney, kristenwas engaged at the time to a
local doctor, but wasimmediately enamored by the
charisma of Swango and all ofthe attention he was showing her
.
Feeling like Swango had more tooffer, she broke off her
engagement.
Their relationship progressedvery quickly and Kristen's
(47:09):
parents were eager to meet theman that Kristen was so
impressed with.
For the most part, they feltthe same.
However, they did notice somered flags, such as the fact that
there were about three years ofSuango's life that he just
couldn't account for, from about1984 to 1987,.
Speaker 1 (47:28):
He drew a complete blank about his life.
I was like what, where are yougoing with that?
Speaker 2 (47:32):
Okay, oh, could those be the years that he was
incarcerated for poisoning hisco-workers.
Speaker 1 (47:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (47:43):
So another red flag to her family was the fact that
he supplied little to noinformation about his own
parents and family.
He was the most forthcomingabout his father's military
career and background, which isodd because, as we know, he did
not have a relationship with hisfather.
He said next to nothing abouthis mother, though he was
(48:06):
actually the closest with her.
He simply said that she wasliving in a nursing home in
Missouri, which actually wastrue.
So shortly after he went toprison, she developed an acute
case of Alzheimer's and wasplaced in an assisted living
center.
Despite all the red flagsflying everywhere all the time,
(48:27):
kristen could see no wrong andthe couple was engaged to be
married in May of 1992.
See no wrong.
And the couple was engaged tobe married in may of 1992.
Kristin's mother was quoted tosay this is either the most
wonderful thing in the world forkristin or he's some kind of
nut, I know, yeah.
So the year 1992 seemed to be acomeback year for Swango.
(48:52):
He was happily engaged and hasa residency at the University of
South Dakota.
Him and Kristen moved to SiouxFalls and both worked at Royal C
Johnson Veterans MemorialHospital.
Swango seemed to have turned apage.
There were no mysteriousillnesses and he was reportedly
doing well as a doctor.
(49:12):
He was oh my god, you're doingyour job.
Oh, what a good boy.
He wasn't fabricating any HMPcharts and doing everything by
the books.
By all accounts, he was acompetent and hardworking doctor
with no troubled history at all.
(49:32):
Author Jack Smith, in that bookthat I forgot to tell you about
, wrote that Swango may haveeven convinced himself of this
false narrative because heactually sent in an application
to the American MedicalAssociation Idiot.
After applying, he realizedthat this might raise old red
(50:00):
flags and he tried to quicklywithdraw his application.
However, it was too late.
Not only did the ama reject him, they immediately contacted the
administration at the hospital.
The hospital was extremelyconcerned and determined that
Swango would have to goimmediately.
They wanted to keep theirfindings under wraps, as
hospitals often do, and theyfound out this information right
(50:22):
before Thanksgiving and decidedto wait until the holiday to
let him know of his fate.
Right as they were trying toquietly sweep their findings
under the rug, the DiscoveryChannel aired a documentary
about Swango's case on theirtrue crime series, justice Files
.
I know Several doctors, nursesand other members of the
(50:49):
hospital's medical staff sawthis episode and recognized Dr
Swango.
The airing of the episode ofcourse started the old gossip
mill at every nurse's station,with everyone spilling the beans
on what had aired regarding DrSwango.
Dr Anthony Salem, the directorof the hospital's medical
residency program, quicklycanceled Swango's access to the
(51:12):
pharmacy and terminated him as aresident.
Dr Salem contacted Swango andtold him he did not need to come
to his next shift, but ratherhe should come and meet with him
.
The next day.
Swango showed up as scheduled,but with Kristen, which I
thought was weird.
But he was just acting like hehad no idea what all the fuss
was about.
(51:32):
He said I had an ant problem Iwas trying to deal with.
Dr Salem then played arecording of the episode for him
, but he continued to actindignant and incredulous about
the whole ordeal.
He stuck with his story that hewas convicted wait, that his
(51:53):
conviction for poisoning hiscolleagues had been a great
miscarriage of justice, whichwas completely railroaded by
that biased judge andprosecution.
Poor boy, this was a prettyeye-opening for Kristen.
She had absolutely no idea ofhis dark past.
The media was, of course, allover the story and following
(52:16):
Swango and Kristen around.
She was very torn because onone hand she wanted to support
her partner, but on the otherhand she didn't feel like she
could trust him.
Eventually she met up with anold colleague to share her
frustrations and everything thathad been going on, and she told
her friend I need out and askedif she could live with her and
her husband for a while.
(52:36):
She also disclosed that Swangohad been discussing the idea of
moving overseas so that he couldwork somewhere far away from
the charges that were hauntinghim.
She began to self-medicate withProzac and drink heavily, but
she also began to growsuspicious that Swango had been
slipping something into herdrinks.
She started to have strangeheadaches and migraines that
(53:00):
came out of nowhere.
She feared she was having thesame symptoms that Swango's
previous victims had, likely dueto a combination of everything
going on and Kristen justdealing with this the best she
could.
She felt like she was losingher mind.
Yeah, and on a very cold nightin late October of 93, she was
(53:22):
found by police walking down avery busy street in Sioux Falls
without any clothes on.
This earned her a trip to thepsychiatric ward, where she was
held for four days before shewas deemed stable enough to be
released.
She stayed with Swango for afew weeks following discharge
before she decided to pack upher things and head back to her
parents in Virginia.
(53:43):
Kristen's parents were sorelieved that she came back and
hoped that this would be the endof their relationship.
Her headaches also seemed todisappear once she was no longer
in Swango's presence.
Shocking, but less than twoweeks later, on April 23rd of 93
(54:04):
, swango and Kristen arrived ather parents' house arm in arm.
He came to Virginia to share thegreat news with Kristen that he
received a residency, this timefor a psychiatric position, at
the State University of New Yorkat Stony Brook on Long Island.
(54:25):
Well, yeah, so Dr Alan Millerwas the director of the resident
psychiatry program and he hadan in-person interview with
Swango and other faculty memberswho were just all so impressed
by him.
Swango did reveal to them atthe interview that he had served
time in jail and that he justwanted to be forthcoming, and he
wanted them to know that.
Yeah, he used the same old liesthat he used in South Dakota
(54:51):
that he had been incarceratednot for poisoning but for a bar
brawl.
He used the same forged legaldocuments to bolster the claims
and, of course, they did acursory check of his references,
but superficial cross-checksbetween institutions failed to
raise any red flags and I'm notdone with this yet.
Any red flags and not done withthis yet.
(55:16):
So I'm sure you could guess howhis uh, psychiatry, a
psychiatry residency was going.
Patients began dying undermysterious circumstances.
These patients yeah, I know.
So, yeah, the patients wouldpresent so he's at a VA hospital
and the patients would presentto the clinic with symptoms
similar to a severe cold orpneumonia and end up being
(55:37):
hospitalized for conditions thatwere completely unrelated to
why they went there in the firstplace.
Presume, like maybe if you'reimpatient at the hospital, they
have, like psychiatry, comearound just to like check on you
yeah, well, especially becauseotherwise why are you impatient
(55:57):
at all?
Speaker 1 (55:57):
But if he's going into psychiatry, like that was
his focus, how are you killingpsychiatric patients, like I
understand if someone comes inwith a disease or like a cardiac
?
Speaker 2 (56:07):
issue.
Well, you know just, uh, hissame old antics.
These Well, you know just hissame old antics.
These people are coming in withmental health issues.
I don't know that we've reallygot much into yet but Physical,
there were patient familyinterviews and the patients
would tell their family membersthat there was a doctor that
would visit them late everynight and tell them you're next.
(56:30):
Families later shared yeah, I'mjust like picturing him, like
pointing and being like you'renext.
Families later shared ininterviews that sadly, they
thought that their family memberwas just hallucinating because
(56:52):
they were sick.
But it turned out to be so muchmore than that he was.
Yeah, he was also said to bebadgering patient spouses to
sign do not resuscitatedirectives.
So two weeks after he began atStony Brook, he placed a call to
Kristen back in Virginia.
At Stony Brook he placed a callto Kristen back in Virginia.
(57:14):
It's not entirely clear whatwent on during the conversation,
but Kristen's next doorneighbor heard a lot of
hysterical crying and shoutingthrough the walls of the
apartment.
Kristen called her mom and wasnoted to seem strangely devoid
of emotion.
Kristen calmed her by tellingher mom I'm fine, I love you.
But Kristen's mom had a gutfeeling that something was wrong
and wanted to check on herright.
(57:35):
Yep, and a little plug to mymom.
Uh, my mom calls this the momworry button, and she said it.
It never goes away.
So swango had even calledkristen's mom saying you know
you should go check on her.
She pretty upset.
Despite her gut feeling andgrowing concerns, her husband
told her she's 27.
Give her some space.
(57:56):
And this is like no fault tohim saying this right Like.
But at the advice of herhusband she decided to give
Kristen space.
The next night they received aphone call from police
requesting they come down to thestation for an incident
involving their daughter.
Speaker 1 (58:11):
A phone call from police, requesting they come
down to the station for anincident involving their
daughter.
Speaker 2 (58:14):
They arrived at the station and learned that Kristen
had been found dead, slumpedagainst a tree.
She had apparently taken herown life.
There was a note addressed toher parents.
That was extremely odd and itread I love you both so much, I
just didn't want to be hereanymore.
Found day-day living a constantstruggle with my thoughts I'd
(58:36):
say I'm sorry, but I'm not.
Speaker 1 (58:38):
I feel that sense of peace, peace of mind that I've
been looking for.
It's nice, I'll be seeing youfrom beyond the grave.
Oh, come on.
Speaker 2 (58:47):
Someone who's about to take my life doesn't write
like that.
Speaker 1 (58:49):
No what an ass.
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2 (58:52):
Yeah, I'll be seeing you like no yeah no, not at all
no, no and and just ending it,I'll be seeing you when she just
had called her mom no, oh yeah.
Her parents never believed shewould or could commit suicide
and couldn't help but wonder ifit was the constant
psychological pushing andshoving from Swango that driven
(59:15):
her there.
An autopsy, though, revealedthat she had been poisoned with
lethal doses of cyanide, andagain, my research showed that
this was two weeks after he hadbeen in New York.
So I don't know if it's likehow he finally got a two-week
(59:35):
lethal dose I mean, nobody doesthat to themselves, I don't know
but clearly he was the culpritof having that in her system?
Speaker 1 (59:42):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (59:48):
Yeah.
So this is where things take alittle bit of a turn again for
swango.
So through the grieving ofkristin's mother, she found
correspondence with one ofkristin's former co-workers at
the hospital in south dakota andit was because of their
exchanges that the folks insouth dakota were tipped off
(01:00:08):
that swango's latest residencywas in New York.
She was horrified to learn thatsomeone with Swango's history
was allowed to continuepracticing medicine.
The news of his residencyeventually reached the dean of
the University of South DakotaMedical Center and he alerted
the dean of Stony Brook, jordanCohen.
(01:00:28):
After all of the disturbingdetails were shared with Cohen,
he immediately notified thedepartment chair, who contacted
Dr Miller, and then Dr Millerarranged an immediate meeting
with Swango to question himabout the allegations.
Dr Miller suspended Swango'sresidency Finally, and Jordan
(01:00:48):
Cohen sent warning letters toevery single medical school in
the nation.
And Jordan Cohen sent warningletters to every single medical
school in the nation detailingSwango's disturbing background
and advised them not to considerhis applications.
So he was eventuallyblacklisted at every hospital in
the United States.
Thank God, states, thank God.
(01:01:11):
Swango showed back up atMiller's office the next day,
begging and pleading for him tobe lenient and not suspend his
residency Wah wah wah.
Miller knew he couldn't let himstay at Stony Brook, but he did
offer him some advice, sayinggo somewhere that really needs a
doctor somewhere.
that's desperate.
Miller suggested swango make atrip overseas to some
(01:01:42):
impoverished region of thedeveloping world where competent
doctors were scarce resources.
Yeah, with being blacklisted atevery hospital in the united
states, he basically had nochoice but to leave the country
if he ever wanted to practicemedicine again, or should I say,
continue his killing spree.
Yeah, this is the point wherethe FBI enters the story.
They got involved due to hisfalsifying documents and using
(01:02:05):
fraudulent credentials to entera VA hospital, but of course,
swango was nowhere to be foundin New York, and this is where I
leave you listeners to end partone.
That's right, this is a tubata.
Speaker 1 (01:02:21):
Ugh.
Speaker 2 (01:02:28):
I was going to disclose at the beginning that
it was going to be a tubataAmanda.
Speaker 1 (01:02:32):
But I decided to wait for the end.
Are you going to disclose?
Speaker 2 (01:02:34):
at the beginning that it was going to be a two-pata,
amanda, but I decided to waitfor the end.
Speaker 1 (01:02:38):
You're going to drop us here, I was hoping you were
going to say, and they nabbedhim and put him away to rot in
solitary confinement forever andever.
Amen and no no, this guy'sabout to get a new lease on life
.
Speaker 2 (01:02:57):
Why the hell wasn't he I have.
So I know honestly it probablycould have been like a four or
five parter.
There's just so much to thestory.
Again, I will have everythingin the show notes, but I highly
encourage people to, not beforeI finish part two, but to go
look it up and like do a deeperdive, because it's just crazy
and there's no way I could havedone this in one part.
How many second chances.
Speaker 1 (01:03:19):
This guy's a nightmare I don't understand how
he was allowed to get even tothis point, let alone.
It seems like there's going tobe more right.
Second, third, fourth, way toofourth, way too many.
Um, okay, well, I'm not goingto wallow in this too much,
because I'm hoping that nextweek we're going to have some
(01:03:41):
restitution, some feeling oflike.
I hope this guy gets nabbed andsuffers.
So, um, if that doesn't happen,we're going to hear some more
from me, but at this point I'mgoing to.
We're going to hear some morefrom me, but at this point I'm
going to, I'm going to bite mytongue.
Um, I can't wait for part twoand I'm going to bring up our
new, brand new medical mishapsfor our last section.
(01:04:13):
So just lighten the mood,because medical mishaps oh, that
happened unplanned.
I loved it message was an emailfrom our friend who thought of
the segment to begin with,richard marsh from the uk.
Yeah, thank you, richard.
(01:04:34):
He writes hi.
Dr jenna and dr amanda.
Oh, loving the podcast.
However, that third episodefeatured that chap I mean yeah,
thanks, richard, love the ideaaccent that that third episode
featuring that chap operating orfalse diagnosing just to make
money while spitting false hopeand life-charging disabilities.
Speaker 2 (01:04:56):
Please do, please do.
Speaker 1 (01:04:58):
What a guy, what a cad.
I mean, could you be moreBritish, Richard?
Could you be more British?
He goes.
I think everyone would havebeen so saddened and gone blimey
listening to that one.
Speaker 2 (01:05:13):
I'm obsessed.
I'm obsessed.
Speaker 1 (01:05:16):
Maybe your podcast listening moment of fun would be
an uplifting end to the showfeaturing funny medical mishaps
supplied by us listeners.
So let's get the ball rollingwith this one, which I've called
nasal invasion.
Called nasal invasion he'sgonna hate me for this accent
(01:05:37):
because it's it's definitely notcornwall, but I, it's all I can
do, richard, it's all I can do,baby okay, richard, I'm
obsessed with you, suck or crewon a mint okay, I don't know
what crewing it sounds great tome thing.
Is that what you english peopledo?
I need to ask my mother.
I know you can suck on a mint,but how do you crew on it?
(01:05:57):
I don't know.
Maybe he'll tell us.
Anyway, he says for me, one ofmy favorite with an o-u-r-i-t
glass and still is even afterthis medical mishap is the good
good old polo.
A polo is a round mini mint.
It's about two centimeters.
I mean, we're gonna just haveto wing it.
(01:06:18):
For those of us in thenon-metric system in damso with
a hole in the middle, the art ofsuccessfully enjoying a mini is
to suck on it until the lastpossible moment before it breaks
and dissolves.
If he was in my late teens thatwhilst attempting this challenge
, um, it all went a bit wrongand I ended up in the yard.
(01:06:40):
I think he was saying he was inhis late teens, I think that's
what that meant and he ended upin the emergency room.
Oh no, was I choking on it?
Was I asphyxiating myself?
No, no, I had in fact managedto get a piece of this mint
lodged into my left nasal cavity.
What, what, how the hell didyou manage that?
It all came about as, duringenjoying the mint, I started to
(01:07:04):
sneeze and, whilst having a loudsneeze, I bit down on the mint,
causing it to break up or, atthe same time, having a sharp
intake of breath, causing a bitof the mint to go towards the
back of my throat and then, as Isneezed against it, went up and
into my left nasal cavitycavity where it became well and
truly stuck.
No amount of aggressive blowing,snorting, blocking the right
(01:07:27):
side of my nose, etc.
Would budge the pesky polo.
Uh, only one thing for it uh,seek professional assistance, if
you will.
So turns out, it was quite astraightforward procedure, if
you know what you're doing.
Um, have you know a minor setof tweezers to extend up your
(01:07:47):
nose in a steady hand?
Bit like playing a game ofoperation.
Do you remember that, apartfrom my nose, uh, my nose was a
buzzer in that situation?
Uh, many thanks to the nursesand doctors for keeping a
straight face whilst undertakingthe procedure yes, I'm sure
they've seen and dealt withworse and more interesting
objects than a patient's nose.
(01:08:09):
Did it hurt?
Well, I wouldn't add it to yourbucket list and um, but you do
have a minty fresh flavor inyour nose for a while.
There you go, and that was fromRichard.
Thank you, richard, and I'm sosorry for slaughtering your
accent.
I can only do posh, richard,only posh.
Speaker 2 (01:08:31):
Thank you, richard, that was amazing.
Thank you, richard, that wasamazing.
Speaker 1 (01:08:34):
Thank you for sending that in, and we have had
several others written in to ussince then.
Yes, medical mishaps, yes, yes.
So, please, please.
This is what makes this fun andengaging.
We want to hear from you, soemail us your medical mishap.
I didn't even know.
I'm so excited.
(01:08:54):
Doctoring the truth atbuzzsproutcom Uh, don't miss a
beat.
Subscribe or follow doctoringthe truth wherever you enjoy
your podcast, for stories thatshock, intrigue and educate.
Trust After all, is a delicatething.
You can support the show thisis new by clicking on a
subscriber link.
When you look at your podcastepisode, there's a subscriber
(01:09:17):
link and you can support us foras low as three dollars a month
and we'll give you a shout outon the show, and we're always
looking for ways to bring youmore rewards in the future.
This might include exclusivecontent, early access to
episodes, fun merch and moreMore.
Be sure to follow us onInstagram at Doctoring the Truth
(01:09:38):
, and Facebook at Doctoring theTruth.
Right, amanda, I paused on thatone and more.
There we go.
But also, please, we get creditfor downloads, so download.
Speaker 2 (01:09:53):
If you ever wonder what it's called, it's just
doctoring the truth at whateverplatform you're on, until then
stay safe and stay suspicious.
Speaker 1 (01:10:02):
Bye, I can't stop bye see you next week, friends, why
am I not able to stop?
I'm still going, okay.
Amanda, hello, hello, hello.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
How you doing.
I'm doing good.
It's Monday.
How are you?
I'm great.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
You know what this is .
Episode five Five.
Can you believe it?
I know we're like we graduatedfrom a toddler to like a
full-grown kindergartner.
At this point as a podcast, Iknow, look at us go.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
We're growing up so quick.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
We're growing up so fast.
We are growing up so fast andyou know what listeners.
We love you, we love yourfeedback and I do want to say
we're listening.
Okay, we are listening to yourfeedback and I hope that
everyone appreciates the factthat, after we got some very
good feedback about how long theintro was, yours truly figured
(00:51):
out how to whittle it down, sowe went from two minutes to 40
seconds.
Please appreciate that yourfeedback matters and we do try
to make changes and make thisbetter, and I think it's getting
better every single episode.
What do you think?
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Yeah, I think so.
You guys listen to us, welisten to you and, of course, we
can only get better every time,right?
Yeah, only if you keep givingus feedback friends, yeah, so
don't stop Keep going.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
I love how many people are downloading and
commenting and emailing.
It's fantastic.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
It is really fun.
I actually really look forwardto this part of the week.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Yeah, same.
So keep it coming, guys,because we want to stick around.
So you know, let us make thiswhat you want in your ears.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Thanks for letting us have a hobby.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
So, speaking of what's going into people's ears,
amanda, oh boy, what canlisteners expect today?
Because a little bit, so yeah,I'm a little bit excited about
what we're going to hear, eventhough it's terrible.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
But what you got, yes , well, as mentioned in our
brief little what to expect fornext week.
Last week I told you that wewere going to be exploring the
unsettling case of the notoriousdoctor, uh, dr michael swango.
(02:22):
He, he is known as the Doctorof Death, not to be confused
with Dr Death.
The case of Christopher Dunst,which we all widely know,
because I think it was on whatNetflix?
Speaker 1 (02:35):
I think it was on everything at one point or
another.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Yeah, that was that was big, oh my gosh.
But yeah, not him.
There's another creep um whowas coined with a similar
nickname.
Uh, trigger warnings for thiscase include mental health
suicide, alcohol abuse and, ofcourse, murder moida, most foul
moida moida.
(02:59):
Um.
So dr sw, you know big bad man.
He had a career in medicinethat spanned over a decade and
you know it's hard to imaginehow someone that's so trusted
with the lives of people couldend up taking them.
But Dr Swango wasn't justtreating his patients, he was
(03:20):
poisoning them, oh no.
And it wasn't just hispatients' friends, it was also
his colleagues.
What?
Oh no.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
And it wasn't just his patients' friends, it was
also his colleagues.
What, oh?
Okay, I'm going to have tobuckle up for this one, because
I'm already mad.
I can't believe this.
I haven't heard of this case.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
He's a monster.
I hadn't either.
All right, let's get into it,all right.
Okay, so for some background,michael Joseph Swango, born
James Michael Swango.
He was born on October 21st1954 in Tacoma Washington, to
(03:57):
Muriel and John Swango.
Okay, he's a Libra and wasraised in Quincy, illinois.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
He's a Libra born in the same place as me.
Oh, but I'm not a killer doctor.
I was going to say, you knowthat because you're a Libra.
I'm not a killer doctor, though.
Oh, I hate that you share that?
Speaker 2 (04:16):
No, you're not.
Can confirm.
He was the middle of threechildren and, by all accounts,
his mother, Muriel, tried tocreate a loving home for the
kids, but this wasn't alwayseasy because she was left to do
it by herself most of the time.
Her husband, John, was rarelyhome because he served as a
(04:37):
career officer in the UnitedStates military.
The timing of his career wasduring the Vietnam War and upon
return to the States, Johnbecame depressed.
Did you hear that start echoing?
Okay, I'm going to redo thatsentence.
(04:57):
Upon return to the States, Johnbecame depressed because of how
he was treated and perceived byhis fellow citizens and
eventually turned to alcohol.
This created turmoil betweenhim and Muriel and they
eventually divorced, With hisfather out of the picture.
Michael was very dependent onMuriel and some even described
(05:18):
him as clingy.
He constantly wanted to impressher and have her approval.
So he excelled in school andbecame an accomplished musician,
learning to play the piano andplaying the clarinet in high
school band he made A's and B'sthroughout his high school
career and was even thevaledictorian of his graduating
(05:39):
class of Quincy Catholic BoysHigh School in 1972.
By all accounts, he was a verywell-adjusted and really popular
kid.
There were no reports ofproblems with classmates or
teachers, and he was evenelected class president.
He began working toward acareer in healthcare and his
(06:00):
ambition to become a doctor soontook hold.
To say the least, his path tobecoming a doctor was atypical.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Can I just say also play the clarinet, I'm happy to
report.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
I think this is where the similarities end
Similarities between me and thisguy.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
I don't, I'm not looking report.
I think this is where thesimilarities end Me and this guy
.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
I'm not looking forward to how this plays out,
because I don't think he's thegood one in this story.
So shortly after high school hebegan attending Milliken
University, which is a smallliberal arts college in Decatur.
I did that so many times and Iwas like I'm going to nail this.
And then here we are time toshy.
Decatur, illinois.
That was only a three-hour drivefrom his hometown.
(06:51):
With his great grades and SATscore he could have attended
school just about anywhere, buthe reportedly wanted to stay
close to home.
At Milliken he had a 4.0 GPAGPA.
But things changed for himsometime around his sophomore
year when he reportedly had areally messy breakup with his
first serious girlfriend.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
I know, yeah, I mean especially if it's your first
breakup.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
I mean who doesn't have that Like your first
serious person.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Messy relationship, messing up with your grades yeah
.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
So obviously, as we kind of mentioned, this had a
big impact on him.
Yeah, his friends said that hestarted to act and dress
differently.
He had previously dressed reallypreppy with polo shirts and
khaki pants, and was reported tothen wear military attire
post-breakup.
Yeah, and this is also notablebecause it was a controversial
(07:54):
decision for the time, becauseof the negative reputation of
the military being at the heightof the Vietnam War, where many
people were burning draft cardsand attempting to stay as far
away from anythingmilitary-related as possible.
Yeah, yeah.
So, needless to say, this gavehim a lot of unwanted attention.
(08:16):
He abruptly dropped out ofcollege and you know joined the
Marine Corps.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
They were doing that, yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
He excelled in the military, earning the special
rank of a sharpshooter.
He received a number of medalsand distinctions, including the
Meritorious Mast and DefenseService Medal.
Despite never having gone towar, his reasons for leaving the
service were about as unclearas they were for him joining in
the first place, but he wasgiven an honorable discharge in
(08:45):
1976.
After the Marines he enrolledfull-time.
Okay, I'm gonna do that again.
After the Marines he enrolledas a full-time student at Quincy
University in Quincy, illinois.
He continued to stick out fromhis peers because of the
(09:06):
military mannerisms and the wayhe dressed.
He was reportedly a loner whilehe was at Quincy University.
It was later discovered that heembellished his military record
on his application to Quincy.
And oh, we'll come to find thathe also excels at lying
(09:28):
Shocking.
He has a GPA of 3.89, whichmine was higher, but he did
(09:49):
double major in biology andchemistry.
I didn't double major, so it'sjust a casual doctorate, big
deal.
Um, and this is where he beganto express an interest in
attending medical school.
His only real extracurricularactivity or hobby perhaps was
spending late nights in thescience lab to conduct chemistry
(10:11):
research and other experimentssorry, I'm sorry, I'm just, he
was a loner, right, I watchedbreaking bad.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
I'm just saying weird , right?
Oh, sorry guys, sorry guys,listen, if that's how you spend
your Saturday night, please.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
I'll backtrack to any of our lab friends out there
listening to our, but also get ahobby okay and then you ended
up using it for good.
We love ya.
Love ya, all of ourpathologists out there.
Okay, Okay, Anyway.
(10:53):
So I'm going to call the nextthing that I share with you.
You know nothing but red flagnumber one.
Same yeah, His senior thesisdiscussed the assassination of
Georgie Markov.
That meant nothing to me when Ifirst read it, so I had to look
it up.
But the story goes that Georgiewas waiting at a bus stop to go
(11:17):
to work and suddenly felt asharp pain in his leg.
He turned to see a man next tohim fumbling with an umbrella.
The man said oh sorry, and wenton his way.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Oh my gosh, that's so creepy.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
The umbrella man and it was assumed that he simply
brushed into him.
But when he got to work hestarted to become deathly ill
and was rushed to the hospital.
He died a few days later andthe cause of death was
determined to be a lethal doseof ricin which had been injected
(11:53):
in his leg.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Yeah, ricin, oh my gosh.
Okay, can I just say I'm sorryI'm interrupting you, but when I
was in kindergarten I was on aschool bus and somebody
punctured my leg, my the back ofmy calf you know how you sit
(12:17):
like.
I was on the window seat andthere was a uh, my kid behind me
.
I was like a kindergartner andthis was like a fourth grader
and they poked my leg with theirumbrella and lacerated it.
Oh my god, I can't believe.
So I remember I didn't feel itbecause it must have been a
really clean cut and I rememberthe bus monitor coming down and
there was a trail like a littlerivulet of blood going from
(12:41):
basically my area down the restand then it started and she was
like where is this coming from?
and I was like oh my gosh,where's this coming from?
And nothing hurt until Ifigured out it was coming from
my leg I'm glad it didn'tcontain a lethal dose of
anything.
Yeah, apparently these kidshave been scratching my leg with
this umbrella.
Oh my god, what if it was right?
I'm, yes, I am lucky to bealive.
(13:05):
This was such a lesser issuethan this poor man who lost his
life, but the uh and now,officially, this is where the
coincidence is Similar.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
So similarities, I didn't know about the bus story.
Um so they they found the lethallethal dose.
Um, and you know,coincidentally, these were
precisely the chemicals thatSwango had been experimenting
with in the science lab.
Uh-huh, a little foreshadowaction from Quincy University in
(13:47):
1979, with an award from theAmerican Chemical Society for
Academic Excellence, and quotingJack Smith, the author of the
book, I read that I forgot totell you about that.
I read, so I will post that inthe show notes.
But he quoted if only they knewthat Michael Swango's
excellence would be used one dayfor murder.
If only they knew that MichaelSwango's excellence would be
(14:08):
used one day for murder.
Swango was then accepted intothe Southern Illinois University
School of Medicine that sameyear.
He was again an ideal studentand took a special interest in
(14:37):
courses such as pharmacology,toxicology and pathology.
What that set him apart, it washis study habits.
It was reported that he wouldbegin to take a test and then
make an excuse to go into thehallway to cram his notes before
he would come back into theclassroom to answer the
questions.
Well, he's too busy playingchemist in the lab at night to
(15:00):
study, I guess.
Despite his differences withhis peers, he was making it
through med school and by hisfinal year he had chosen
neurosurgery as a specialty.
While in medical school, though, the faculty and his peers
began to notice that morepatients than usual seemed to
pass away while Swango wasadministering the treatment,
(15:24):
some of the other med studentsstarted calling him Double-O
Swango, in reference to theJames Bond movies, in which
Double-O agents were licensed tokill.
Yes, oh my gosh Swango wasnearly dismissed from medical
school in his last month when itwas discovered that he had been
(15:46):
fudging all of his history andphysical reports.
During his OBGYN rotation atthe hospital, he was observed to
go into a patient's room forless than 10 minutes and come
back with full reports, whichnormally took someone about 30
to 45 minutes that's crazy.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
Which normally took someone about 30 to 45 minutes,
that's crazy.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
I freaking, know it, but you know, after some
investigation it was proven thathis H&P reports had been
fabricated.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
but this wasn't grounds enough to have him
expelled.
Oh well, they did.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
they did hold a hearing to determine what to do
with him and there was just onevoting member who thought they
ought to give him a secondchance.
And needing a yep, needing aunanimous, vote to expel a
student, he was able to proceedand finish medical school,
graduating in 1983.
Oh no, I don't know.
So you're right, that isgrounds enough to expel a
student but it has to be aunanimous vote.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
Mm-hmm and we'll find that he's afforded maybe more
than one second chance too many.
Come on, ohio state.
Come on, we have friends there.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
They do better.
So this second chance affordedhis medical career to take that
sinister turn that we're aboutto start unraveling.
Despite all the red flags andnearly getting kicked out of
medical school and havingobviously poor letters of
recommendation, he was acceptedinto the neurosurgery program at
Ohio State University MedicalCenter.
(17:37):
They've gotten better.
They learned their lesson withSwango.
He signed an agreement thatwould grant him residency in
neurosurgery after a 12-monthinternship in general surgery
that would begin on July 1st1983.
(17:58):
Shortly after he arrived, manyof his patients you know, I, I
don't know became deathly illout of nowhere, with some even
dying.
Nursing staff noted that therewas an unusually high amount of
code blues that were called, andit was when he was assigned to
(18:19):
the patients I mean, isn't herequired to?
he was observed to be allegedlymessing with people's IVs with
unknown syringes.
There were yeah, this next partis sick.
There were instances where hewould see someone getting CPR
during a code blue and he wouldjust casually walk away rather
than trying to be the hero andsave the day.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
First of all, they have barriers.
And second of all, how did youbecome a doctor with this lack
of compassion for preservinghuman life?
Speaker 2 (18:52):
You're obviously so.
There was a story that I readand this nurse was like you have
to come and help and he waslike that's disgusting, like
referencing doing CPR, likeputting mouth-to-mouth
resuscitation.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
No, nope.
So this obviously, yeah, thisobviously started gossip amongst
hospital staff that, perhapsdue to either gross negligence
or flat-out incompetence, he hadbeen adversely affecting
patients.
These suspicions increased whenthe head of nursing staff, amy
moore, witnessed refusing togive respiratory aid to a
(19:45):
patient who was having obviousdifficulty breathing.
He insisted that the patientneeded to have her heart
monitored.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
Despite the patient's heart being just fine, it was
the breathing that was not fine.
The nurse had to physicallyintervene because of his refusal
to perform life-saving efforts.
Hippocratic oath, whatevercratic oath like seriously.
He couldn't even pretend enoughto like jump in there as they
(20:34):
should nope, definitely not.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Um.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
So then comes our classic case of nursing staff
reporting concerns toadministrators, but you know
they were told that they werejust being paranoid.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Come on, the complaints like this started to
pile up, and the hospital wasforced to conduct an internal
investigation.
Unfortunately, though, theycould not find any direct
evidence of wrongdoing, so allthe cursory investigation did
was clear him from anywrongdoing.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Yeah, maybe he can kill a whole, nother different
population of patients.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
Yeah, it was just word of mouth.
Yeah, so this was theirsolution.
So this was their solution.
They moved him to another wingat the hospital with hopes from
administration that this mightresolve the issues, thinking
maybe it was just a matter ofmisunderstanding and personality
conflicts with the staff.
Yeah, so we already know thatthis was of course not the case.
(21:44):
Wherever he was moved, patientswould begin to mysteriously die
Evil.
It was not only the patientsthat would become ill.
Swango's co-workers wouldmysteriously fall ill as well,
and through my research I foundthat this was a way for him to
not only practice his chemicalconcoctions on people, but also
(22:04):
for revenge to those that toldon him chicken.
So an incident that was notedin the book that I read that
again I forgot to tell you about.
I'm so sorry.
I'll link it in the show notes.
Um, but it highlighted swangooffering to buy everyone lunch
and he took individual ordersand came back with kentucky
(22:26):
fried chicken what I love,kentucky fried chicken.
But okay, yeah, for real,except, uh, you know, the only
trouble was that his chicken waslaced with poison.
The charges should have beenbrought against him.
(22:53):
Shortly after eating, everyonebecame violently ill, throwing
up and getting high fevers.
Because of all the anecdotalclaims and rumors surrounding
Swango Ohio.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
Medical Center decided, you know, not to bring
him back to finish his residency.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
Mm-hmm.
Well, this unfortunately didnot stop Swango from getting his
medical license and he now hada license to practice medicine.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
He received his medical license in September
1984 and moved back to Quincy tofind work, a diploma.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
He, of course, lied to all of his family and friends
about why he left all thewonderful opportunities in Ohio,
saying he simply didn't getalong with the medical staff,
and he just chose not to returnwhen actually he wasn't allowed
to return.
This is crazy, yeah.
(23:49):
And and all that aside too,like, oh man, you weren't even a
good student, all of us studiedour butts off and you cheated.
So in quincy he got a job as anEMT out of a local medical
facility called BlessingHospital.
(24:10):
You know and this was a prettybig demotion from being a
medical doctor that he took workas an EMT.
So we're now in July of 1984,and we are back in Quincy where
Swango is working as an EMT withAdams County Ambulance
Corporation.
His co-workers soon took noticethat he was a little too
(24:32):
enthusiastic about death.
They noted an unbridledenthusiasm that he exhibited
when they happened upon afatality.
Yeah, they, oh, yeah.
It seemed as though the sightof a dead body was exhilarating
for him.
He would get excited and hewould often remark quote wasn't
that great End quote.
(24:54):
After deadly run-ins on the job, he told his partner Brent,
this is chilling, oh, wow, okay.
So he said my ultimate fantasyambulance call is when a busload
of children are hitting head onwith a tanker truck filled with
gasoline and hitting it head onand then it blows up.
(25:15):
And then he describes seeingthe scene as kids hanging over
barbed wire fences with theircharred bodies hanging out of
the windows.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
Okay, okay, hello.
Someone needs to callbehavioral health.
This guy is disturbed.
I don't even talk about don'tknow.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
So brent, his partner , was obviously very disturbed
by the things he was saying andhe was like listen, we're out
here trying to save people andhe's describing scenes where
there's no life left at all.
Like what the heck?
The paramedics?
The paramedics had even seenthat he was making scrapbooks
(26:07):
that were filled with newspaperclippings, photos of natural
disasters, crime scenes, trafficaccidents and various other
forms of gory death.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
Yeah, he would literally share this scrapbook
with his coworkers, whichobviously made them very
uncomfortable.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
Oh wow, they chalked it up to him having a dark sense
of humor, but his macabrebehavior was just a little too
much and they were just outrightcreeped out by him.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
No.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Yes, yeah, red flags be flying this entire time.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
I mean flags abound here, Flags abound.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
So not only were their stomachs turning from
uncomfortability, but they werealso turning due to becoming
violently ill.
Peculiar illnesses coupled withhis strange obsession with
death left his colleaguessuspicious that he may be
messing with their food anddrink.
Yeah, and I was like I feellike he kind of liked these ones
(27:10):
, his co-workers, like at thehospital.
He was doing it to punishpeople that told on him.
But but here I'm like they werebeing nice to you, bro, what
are you doing?
Speaker 1 (27:21):
yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
so there was one morning that swango brought in
donuts for his colleagues.
After about 20 minutes, thosethat enjoyed a tasty treat found
themselves violently ill,throwing up in the bathrooms.
They thought it was superstrange and tried to eliminate
what might have caused so manyof them to fall ill so suddenly,
and they deduced it must havebeen the donuts, but oddly the
(27:46):
donuts were nowhere to be found.
The box had disappeared.
The paramedics reached out tothe shop where the donuts were
purchased to see if anyone elsehad reported people falling ill,
and they said uh no, neverheard of that happening to
anyone else.
Shortly thereafter, swango andhis partner Brent volunteered to
(28:07):
work at a high school footballgame.
I don't think I knew this.
Maybe I knew this, but they'rerequired to have an ambulance at
high school football games.
Did you know that?
After I read that I was like,well, I guess I did see an
ambulance there usually, but Ididn't know that anyway.
Yeah.
So they volunteered to go dothat, I know.
(28:30):
And Swango and Brent were there.
And Swango says to Brent youknow I'm going to run to the
concession stand, can I get youanything?
And Brent was like you know,sure, I'll take a pop, thanks
bro.
He did not say bro probably,but he agreed he would take a
pop.
So by the third quarter of thegame Brent was violently ill
(28:51):
again.
He thought that he must havethe flu or something like what
could be going on.
And all of these guys are likemedically inclined right,
they're doing life-savingefforts, but they're all.
Why are we falling ill sosuddenly?
They couldn't figure out what'sgoing on.
Yeah, so there was anotherinstance.
(29:11):
Back at the what do they callit?
The ambulance bay.
There was two guys that madethemselves some iced tea and
then they got called on a call.
So they couldn't enjoy theiriced tea, went to go save some
(29:34):
lives, came back and one of themtook a sip of their iced tea
and was like whoa, this wasreally sweet.
So this guy that thought it'sreally sweet, he was diabetic.
He never sweetened his iced tea.
So he told his partner hey,this is really sweet, you taste
it sure?
Speaker 1 (29:49):
enough it was sweet.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
So then they run into another colleague who told them
hey, I just witnessed theoddest thing.
Swango was just in here andleft shortly after.
I watched him pull out of here.
After you guys started pullingup, he whipped it around and
took the alley out of here,almost like he didn't want
anyone to know that he had beenhere.
Wonder if he had something todo with the iced tea.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
So this was a breaking point.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
His colleagues definitely suspected him of
messing with their food anddrink.
They covered the iced tea andrequested that it be tested, and
, sure enough, the tea was foundto have arsenic.
Yep, those that had fallenviolently ill in a sudden manner
offered hair and nail samplesto be tested, and they were also
(30:40):
found to have traces of arsenic.
In October, swango was arrestedby the Quincy Police Department
after arsenic and other poisonswere found in his home.
The main drug he used on hiscolleagues was an ant poison
called Taro, and it containedarsenic.
They found tons of the stuff inhis home, as well as ants.
(31:05):
They did find ants there, wow.
But after further investigationthey found that the species of
ants that were in his home didnot belong to the region.
Yes, they were.
What?
Speaker 1 (31:21):
He brought them to his home.
Okay, so the ants were fromFlorida, where Swango had
recently gone to visit his mom.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
Well, okay, so the ants were from Florida, where
Swango had recently gone tovisit his mom, and apparently he
thought that bringing a ton ofants back from Florida would be
enough to justify the amount ofpoison that he had.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
Yep, and so he could say he just had a little ant
problem.
Okay, okay, mm-hmm.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
Hitchhiking all the way to Illinois, destination
Swango's apartment.
They were hitchhiking on my wayto Illinois, destination
Swango's apartment.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
they were hitchhiking on my suitcase on the way back.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
I know so on August 23rd 1985 he was convicted of
aggravated battery for poisoninghis coworkers and was sentenced
to 5 years in prison and youknow we've always got an early
release for good behavior.
And was sentenced to five yearsin prison, mm-hmm.
And you know we've always gotan early release for good
(32:14):
behavior, yep.
So he was released from prisonin 1989 for only serving two and
a half years of his sentence.
Help me.
Upon release he had a difficulttime finding employment in a
hospital, no shit.
He eventually took a job as acounselor at a career
(32:38):
development center in Virginia.
It wasn't long before he beganmessing with his colleagues
again and they would become ill.
Suddenly they became even morealarmed.
I'm sorry.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
Yeah, I'm not sure what his qualifications for
getting hired were.
Did he say he had a job as acounselor, Like what the I mean?
Speaker 2 (33:02):
Maybe a little plug on ants, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
And like fail at life .
Okay, yeah little plug on ants.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
I don't know and like fail at life okay, yeah, um, so
they his colleagues would seehim perusing his scrapbooks in
periods of downtime, soobviously they're becoming a
little concerned.
Yeah, and you love when acounselor just loves bruising
death scrapbooks.
(33:33):
So obviously there was a lot ofpressure for him to leave the
job and he eventually partedways with the Career Center.
In May of 1989.
His colleagues at the CareerCenter informed local police
about his strange activities andthe unexplained illnesses.
His colleagues at the careercenter informed local police
about his strange activities andthe unexplained illnesses.
The investigation followedSwango back to Ohio where
Virginia police sought tocollaborate with their
(33:55):
counterparts in the state inorder to find some reason to
charge Swango.
Digging into Swango's activityattracted attention from local
news and a story surfaced thathe was under investigation.
Once again, nothing came fromthe investigation, but all of
this prompted Swango to changehis name.
On January 18, 1990, he had hisname officially changed from
(34:23):
Joseph Michael Swango to DavidJackson Adams, joseph Michael.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
Swango to David.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
Jackson Adams.
At this time he also marriedhis longtime girlfriend, rita.
On July 8th 1989.
Swango and Rita decided thiswas a time to reestablish
himself and start a new life.
Rita and Swango were onlymarried for less than two years
before they finally divorced.
No sure didn't.
(34:56):
Throughout his marriage, he wasworking as a lab technician at
a premier coal company inVirginia called Atta Coal
Services and by all accounts, hewas an ideal employee.
However, after his marriagecrumbled, so did his behavior on
the job.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
Oh, was you sad, was you naughty.
Yeah, little buddy, the ruse.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
Didn't have any counselor.
Friends from your old job, ohno, did you have anybody to
poison, yeah.
So his coworkers began to havethe same telltale signs of
poisoning.
And after his divorce wasfinalized in May of 91, swango
went back to Ohio and appliedfor admission to the Ohio Valley
(35:51):
Medical Center.
He submitted a completelyfraudulent application in which
he claimed his license had beensuspended due to felony battery
conviction over a fistfight at alocal bar.
We of course know this is notthe case.
Speaker 1 (36:08):
Hmm, also something.
Yeah, we of course know this is, uh not the case.
Also something.
Yeah, that's not something youshould be proud of either, but
he's like it just goes to showhow horrible his actual, the
actual truth was that a fistfight at a local so much better,
despite it's like a paper cut,compared to what you did the
better option, like let me lieabout this, you know.
(36:28):
I mean, either way, do you wantyour physician to be someone
who's yeah, yeah, definitely nomention of?
Speaker 2 (36:35):
poisoning or patients and colleagues who had been
left, you know, dead or illbecause of him.
He had some big sob story ofbeing at the wrong place at the
wrong time and he fell victim toa heavy-handed judge who just
had it out for him Mm-hmmClassic, I know he's a victim
(36:56):
Very original swango.
I've never heard this before,yeah, so he had gone a little
too far with his deception andeven created false legal
documents, such as fake prisondischarge sheets and forged
docketing statements.
He used these documents tosupport his claims that he had
been imprisoned over that minorfight rather than premeditated
(37:18):
poisoning of his colleagues.
He even went so far as to typeup a letter from the governor of
Virginia stating that thegovernor had moved to completely
restore all of Swango's rightsas a citizen.
Dr Jeffrey Schultz was thehospital director that couldn't
wait to bring Swango on board togive the young man a second
(37:40):
chance.
However, these documents andother doubts began to wait on
him.
He reached out to the police inQuincy, illinois, to find out
the truth.
Of course, he found out that,you know, everything was all a
lie.
Dr Schultz immediatelysuspended Swango's application
process and authorities inIllinois were alerted to the
(38:01):
fact that Swango was forgingdocuments, which is a serious
criminal offense.
Prosecutors then beganexploring the possibility of
charging Swango with forgery,but by the time they could build
a solid case, he had alreadymoved on Chart note.
(38:22):
Welcome to the chart notesegment where we learn about
what's happening in medicine andhealthcare.
Okay, so I've recently beenhearing a lot about using AI to
help how do I say, write notesat work.
Have you been hearing aboutthis?
Yeah, yeah, that so.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
I first heard about this from Adam.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
He was saying that a local hospital was going to
start trialing this, or theyalready were.
So basically what that lookslike is they use this AI
platform and the platformlistens to the entire encounter
and then helps summarize andcome up with a chart note for
you, and then you only have tolook, look it over, make sure
(39:19):
it's accurate.
So I wanted to look a littlemore into this Um.
So I found um at the universityof Pennsylvania that they did a
study on this.
So the study was on clinicianexperiences with ambient scribe
technology to assist withdocumentation, burden and
efficiency, and this study wasactually just published in the
JMA network open.
(39:40):
You talked about JMA in yourlast episode and in my head I
was like doesn't everyone justcall that jama?
Is that just a me thing?
Yeah, oh yeah, I guess if it'soffensive, sorry, I mean I want
to call it I don't want tooffend anyone, but that's pretty
(40:01):
cool acronym so okay, just abrief overview of the study um.
It explored how ai scribetechnology could reduce the time
doctors spend on documentation,thus improving their
interactions with patients.
The AI tool listens todoctor-patient conversations and
accurately transcribes notesinto electric health records.
(40:21):
The study involved 46clinicians and showed a 20%
reduction in time spentinteracting with EHRs during and
after patient visits, includinga 30% reduction in.
This is cute pajama time, Iknow, so they called.
Pajama time is known as workdone after hours.
(40:45):
I mean, I hate work after hours, but I love that they call it
pajama time.
Speaker 1 (40:51):
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
Yeah, clinicians gained around two extra minutes
of face-to-face time withpatients per visit and 15
minutes of personal time eachday.
One doctor reported savingabout two hours of documentation
time each week.
Speaker 1 (41:08):
Yeah, these time savings allow doctors to focus
more on patient care, which iscritical for both the
clinician-patient relationshipand physician well-being.
Speaker 2 (41:21):
One doctor noted that the AI scribe drastically
reduced their documentationburden and helped them engage
with patients withoutdistraction, which I feel like I
could resonate with.
That, because when I was inclinic, compassion fatigue is a
real thing.
When you're burned out, it just, it drains every ounce in every
(41:42):
corner of you.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
So yeah, yeah, and you're busy thinking okay, how
am I going to?
Quantify this or qualify thisin writing and did I ask all the
the points that I'm required toask?
Speaker 2 (42:00):
it's a lot, it's a lot.
Get this down, but still getthis um, so at the end of the
study, most clinicians rated thesystem as fairly easy to use,
with 65% either recommending orpassively recommending it.
The study's co-authorsemphasize that the technology is
improving daily and is likelyto transform how outpatient
primary care providers operate.
(42:20):
Penn Medicine's goal is to usetools like this to strengthen
the clinician-patientrelationship, reduce cognitive
burdens and restore valuabletime for both providers and
patients.
Speaker 1 (42:37):
I love this because I mean they're already doing it
with co-pilot for MicrosoftTeams meetings, where the
minutes are just getting written.
I mean you can always go backand be like the minutes are just
getting written.
I mean you can always go backand be like, oh, that wasn't
quite right, but a lot of timesit's scarily on point and better
than someone who's trying torun a meeting and write notes at
the same time.
(42:57):
So I can imagine it's a similarthing with.
I mean, we've had medicalscribes, but still that's
another person who has to be,you know, educated in the
medical field and sit there andtake notes and we have to pay
that person.
And yeah, that takes time fromthe.
You know that allows thephysician to have more time, but
(43:18):
it's still another physicalperson that you have to employ
who has to have a certain skillset.
So if we're going to use AI, Imean I say, bring it.
But then, you know, part of meis like, yeah, they're going to
bring it and they're going to gonot so that we can keep up with
the status quo.
Now they're going to say, ohwell, now that you have that,
you can do something in aquarter of the time and it's
(43:41):
like, oh god, that's not truebecause we're already
overextended.
So yeah, I know, yeah yeah,it's.
It's like we've relieved a bitof this burden now how?
Speaker 2 (43:59):
can we add some more?
That was kind of my concernwith it.
Speaker 1 (44:04):
But if it's just, it sounds amazing to relieve some
of that, right, I, I would havekilled for that quantity, for
quality then, but that's notbuying us anything.
Yeah, yeah yes, and that's whatI was gonna say is like I just
(44:26):
got so burnt on sacrificingquality for quantity.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
So as long as it doesn't turn into one of those
and maybe that just is dependenton where you're at yes, write
in listeners.
Yeah, but anyway, that'sanother story for another day.
But I would be curious to knowif anybody is already using this
.
Do you like it?
Do you hate it?
What are your fears?
I feel like AI is coming andgoing to be utilized more and
(44:54):
more and more and more whetherwe want it or not.
Speaker 1 (44:56):
So we better just lean into it, and I know what
the answer is, you know, and alot of times they'll get
something that's not the rightanswer.
So it's like it's only as goodas yeah, exactly yeah, it's only
as good as yeah, exactly yeah,it's definitely Wikipedia stage.
Speaker 2 (45:15):
So, yeah, I think it has potential, as long as it's
quality that it's like it's kindof at its.
Wikipedia stage Like how do weget it better?
Speaker 1 (45:19):
Anything.
Speaker 2 (45:20):
So I don't know what the answer is, but anyway,
that's a bigger thing, but I'mso yeah, well, and also they
talked about, or so we had sometraining one time and now we're
(45:40):
rambling.
But, um, I'll make this asshort as possible.
Um, but we had this thing on aiand it was like you can't put
students personal information,or so, let's say, patients
personal information in there,etc.
Because once it's out in ai,it's kind of like out in the
world.
Speaker 1 (45:57):
So that was another thing, is like if this ai tool
or scribe or whatever isliterally a part of your
appointment, is that?
Speaker 2 (46:07):
kind of going to be lost in cyberspace like your
personal, personal information.
Speaker 1 (46:11):
Yeah, no, I agree, that's part of it.
Yeah, agreed, private or not.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
So that's a little scary.
Okay, back to the story.
All right, folks, we are now atthe University of South Dakota
where, with the same forgeddocuments, swango had applied
and been accepted.
(46:43):
This is also where he met nurseKristen Kinney.
Nurse Kristen Kinney, kristenwas engaged at the time to a
local doctor, but wasimmediately enamored by the
charisma of Swango and all ofthe attention he was showing her
.
Feeling like Swango had more tooffer, she broke off her
engagement.
Their relationship progressedvery quickly and Kristen's
(47:09):
parents were eager to meet theman that Kristen was so
impressed with.
For the most part, they feltthe same.
However, they did notice somered flags, such as the fact that
there were about three years ofSuango's life that he just
couldn't account for, from about1984 to 1987,.
Speaker 1 (47:28):
He drew a complete blank about his life.
I was like what, where are yougoing with that?
Speaker 2 (47:32):
Okay, oh, could those be the years that he was
incarcerated for poisoning hisco-workers.
Speaker 1 (47:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (47:43):
So another red flag to her family was the fact that
he supplied little to noinformation about his own
parents and family.
He was the most forthcomingabout his father's military
career and background, which isodd because, as we know, he did
not have a relationship with hisfather.
He said next to nothing abouthis mother, though he was
(48:06):
actually the closest with her.
He simply said that she wasliving in a nursing home in
Missouri, which actually wastrue.
So shortly after he went toprison, she developed an acute
case of Alzheimer's and wasplaced in an assisted living
center.
Despite all the red flagsflying everywhere all the time,
(48:27):
kristen could see no wrong andthe couple was engaged to be
married in May of 1992.
See no wrong.
And the couple was engaged tobe married in may of 1992.
Kristin's mother was quoted tosay this is either the most
wonderful thing in the world forkristin or he's some kind of
nut, I know, yeah.
So the year 1992 seemed to be acomeback year for Swango.
(48:52):
He was happily engaged and hasa residency at the University of
South Dakota.
Him and Kristen moved to SiouxFalls and both worked at Royal C
Johnson Veterans MemorialHospital.
Swango seemed to have turned apage.
There were no mysteriousillnesses and he was reportedly
doing well as a doctor.
(49:12):
He was oh my god, you're doingyour job.
Oh, what a good boy.
He wasn't fabricating any HMPcharts and doing everything by
the books.
By all accounts, he was acompetent and hardworking doctor
with no troubled history at all.
(49:32):
Author Jack Smith, in that bookthat I forgot to tell you about
, wrote that Swango may haveeven convinced himself of this
false narrative because heactually sent in an application
to the American MedicalAssociation Idiot.
After applying, he realizedthat this might raise old red
(50:00):
flags and he tried to quicklywithdraw his application.
However, it was too late.
Not only did the ama reject him, they immediately contacted the
administration at the hospital.
The hospital was extremelyconcerned and determined that
Swango would have to goimmediately.
They wanted to keep theirfindings under wraps, as
hospitals often do, and theyfound out this information right
(50:22):
before Thanksgiving and decidedto wait until the holiday to
let him know of his fate.
Right as they were trying toquietly sweep their findings
under the rug, the DiscoveryChannel aired a documentary
about Swango's case on theirtrue crime series, justice Files
.
I know Several doctors, nursesand other members of the
(50:49):
hospital's medical staff sawthis episode and recognized Dr
Swango.
The airing of the episode ofcourse started the old gossip
mill at every nurse's station,with everyone spilling the beans
on what had aired regarding DrSwango.
Dr Anthony Salem, the directorof the hospital's medical
residency program, quicklycanceled Swango's access to the
(51:12):
pharmacy and terminated him as aresident.
Dr Salem contacted Swango andtold him he did not need to come
to his next shift, but ratherhe should come and meet with him
.
The next day.
Swango showed up as scheduled,but with Kristen, which I
thought was weird.
But he was just acting like hehad no idea what all the fuss
was about.
(51:32):
He said I had an ant problem Iwas trying to deal with.
Dr Salem then played arecording of the episode for him
, but he continued to actindignant and incredulous about
the whole ordeal.
He stuck with his story that hewas convicted wait, that his
(51:53):
conviction for poisoning hiscolleagues had been a great
miscarriage of justice, whichwas completely railroaded by
that biased judge andprosecution.
Poor boy, this was a prettyeye-opening for Kristen.
She had absolutely no idea ofhis dark past.
The media was, of course, allover the story and following
(52:16):
Swango and Kristen around.
She was very torn because onone hand she wanted to support
her partner, but on the otherhand she didn't feel like she
could trust him.
Eventually she met up with anold colleague to share her
frustrations and everything thathad been going on, and she told
her friend I need out and askedif she could live with her and
her husband for a while.
(52:36):
She also disclosed that Swangohad been discussing the idea of
moving overseas so that he couldwork somewhere far away from
the charges that were hauntinghim.
She began to self-medicate withProzac and drink heavily, but
she also began to growsuspicious that Swango had been
slipping something into herdrinks.
She started to have strangeheadaches and migraines that
(53:00):
came out of nowhere.
She feared she was having thesame symptoms that Swango's
previous victims had, likely dueto a combination of everything
going on and Kristen justdealing with this the best she
could.
She felt like she was losingher mind.
Yeah, and on a very cold nightin late October of 93, she was
(53:22):
found by police walking down avery busy street in Sioux Falls
without any clothes on.
This earned her a trip to thepsychiatric ward, where she was
held for four days before shewas deemed stable enough to be
released.
She stayed with Swango for afew weeks following discharge
before she decided to pack upher things and head back to her
parents in Virginia.
(53:43):
Kristen's parents were sorelieved that she came back and
hoped that this would be the endof their relationship.
Her headaches also seemed todisappear once she was no longer
in Swango's presence.
Shocking, but less than twoweeks later, on April 23rd of 93
(54:04):
, swango and Kristen arrived ather parents' house arm in arm.
He came to Virginia to share thegreat news with Kristen that he
received a residency, this timefor a psychiatric position, at
the State University of New Yorkat Stony Brook on Long Island.
(54:25):
Well, yeah, so Dr Alan Millerwas the director of the resident
psychiatry program and he hadan in-person interview with
Swango and other faculty memberswho were just all so impressed
by him.
Swango did reveal to them atthe interview that he had served
time in jail and that he justwanted to be forthcoming, and he
wanted them to know that.
Yeah, he used the same old liesthat he used in South Dakota
(54:51):
that he had been incarceratednot for poisoning but for a bar
brawl.
He used the same forged legaldocuments to bolster the claims
and, of course, they did acursory check of his references,
but superficial cross-checksbetween institutions failed to
raise any red flags and I'm notdone with this yet.
Any red flags and not done withthis yet.
(55:16):
So I'm sure you could guess howhis uh, psychiatry, a
psychiatry residency was going.
Patients began dying undermysterious circumstances.
These patients yeah, I know.
So, yeah, the patients wouldpresent so he's at a VA hospital
and the patients would presentto the clinic with symptoms
similar to a severe cold orpneumonia and end up being
(55:37):
hospitalized for conditions thatwere completely unrelated to
why they went there in the firstplace.
Presume, like maybe if you'reimpatient at the hospital, they
have, like psychiatry, comearound just to like check on you
yeah, well, especially becauseotherwise why are you impatient
(55:57):
at all?
Speaker 1 (55:57):
But if he's going into psychiatry, like that was
his focus, how are you killingpsychiatric patients, like I
understand if someone comes inwith a disease or like a cardiac
?
Speaker 2 (56:07):
issue.
Well, you know just, uh, hissame old antics.
These Well, you know just hissame old antics.
These people are coming in withmental health issues.
I don't know that we've reallygot much into yet but Physical,
there were patient familyinterviews and the patients
would tell their family membersthat there was a doctor that
would visit them late everynight and tell them you're next.
(56:30):
Families later shared yeah, I'mjust like picturing him, like
pointing and being like you'renext.
Families later shared ininterviews that sadly, they
thought that their family memberwas just hallucinating because
(56:52):
they were sick.
But it turned out to be so muchmore than that he was.
Yeah, he was also said to bebadgering patient spouses to
sign do not resuscitatedirectives.
So two weeks after he began atStony Brook, he placed a call to
Kristen back in Virginia.
At Stony Brook he placed a callto Kristen back in Virginia.
(57:14):
It's not entirely clear whatwent on during the conversation,
but Kristen's next doorneighbor heard a lot of
hysterical crying and shoutingthrough the walls of the
apartment.
Kristen called her mom and wasnoted to seem strangely devoid
of emotion.
Kristen calmed her by tellingher mom I'm fine, I love you.
But Kristen's mom had a gutfeeling that something was wrong
and wanted to check on herright.
(57:35):
Yep, and a little plug to mymom.
Uh, my mom calls this the momworry button, and she said it.
It never goes away.
So swango had even calledkristen's mom saying you know
you should go check on her.
She pretty upset.
Despite her gut feeling andgrowing concerns, her husband
told her she's 27.
Give her some space.
(57:56):
And this is like no fault tohim saying this right Like.
But at the advice of herhusband she decided to give
Kristen space.
The next night they received aphone call from police
requesting they come down to thestation for an incident
involving their daughter.
Speaker 1 (58:11):
A phone call from police, requesting they come
down to the station for anincident involving their
daughter.
Speaker 2 (58:14):
They arrived at the station and learned that Kristen
had been found dead, slumpedagainst a tree.
She had apparently taken herown life.
There was a note addressed toher parents.
That was extremely odd and itread I love you both so much, I
just didn't want to be hereanymore.
Found day-day living a constantstruggle with my thoughts I'd
(58:36):
say I'm sorry, but I'm not.
Speaker 1 (58:38):
I feel that sense of peace, peace of mind that I've
been looking for.
It's nice, I'll be seeing youfrom beyond the grave.
Oh, come on.
Speaker 2 (58:47):
Someone who's about to take my life doesn't write
like that.
Speaker 1 (58:49):
No what an ass.
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2 (58:52):
Yeah, I'll be seeing you like no yeah no, not at all
no, no and and just ending it,I'll be seeing you when she just
had called her mom no, oh yeah.
Her parents never believed shewould or could commit suicide
and couldn't help but wonder ifit was the constant
psychological pushing andshoving from Swango that driven
(59:15):
her there.
An autopsy, though, revealedthat she had been poisoned with
lethal doses of cyanide, andagain, my research showed that
this was two weeks after he hadbeen in New York.
So I don't know if it's likehow he finally got a two-week
(59:35):
lethal dose I mean, nobody doesthat to themselves, I don't know
but clearly he was the culpritof having that in her system?
Speaker 1 (59:42):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (59:48):
Yeah.
So this is where things take alittle bit of a turn again for
swango.
So through the grieving ofkristin's mother, she found
correspondence with one ofkristin's former co-workers at
the hospital in south dakota andit was because of their
exchanges that the folks insouth dakota were tipped off
(01:00:08):
that swango's latest residencywas in New York.
She was horrified to learn thatsomeone with Swango's history
was allowed to continuepracticing medicine.
The news of his residencyeventually reached the dean of
the University of South DakotaMedical Center and he alerted
the dean of Stony Brook, jordanCohen.
(01:00:28):
After all of the disturbingdetails were shared with Cohen,
he immediately notified thedepartment chair, who contacted
Dr Miller, and then Dr Millerarranged an immediate meeting
with Swango to question himabout the allegations.
Dr Miller suspended Swango'sresidency Finally, and Jordan
(01:00:48):
Cohen sent warning letters toevery single medical school in
the nation.
And Jordan Cohen sent warningletters to every single medical
school in the nation detailingSwango's disturbing background
and advised them not to considerhis applications.
So he was eventuallyblacklisted at every hospital in
the United States.
Thank God, states, thank God.
(01:01:11):
Swango showed back up atMiller's office the next day,
begging and pleading for him tobe lenient and not suspend his
residency Wah wah wah.
Miller knew he couldn't let himstay at Stony Brook, but he did
offer him some advice, sayinggo somewhere that really needs a
doctor somewhere.
that's desperate.
Miller suggested swango make atrip overseas to some
(01:01:42):
impoverished region of thedeveloping world where competent
doctors were scarce resources.
Yeah, with being blacklisted atevery hospital in the united
states, he basically had nochoice but to leave the country
if he ever wanted to practicemedicine again, or should I say,
continue his killing spree.
Yeah, this is the point wherethe FBI enters the story.
They got involved due to hisfalsifying documents and using
(01:02:05):
fraudulent credentials to entera VA hospital, but of course,
swango was nowhere to be foundin New York, and this is where I
leave you listeners to end partone.
That's right, this is a tubata.
Speaker 1 (01:02:21):
Ugh.
Speaker 2 (01:02:28):
I was going to disclose at the beginning that
it was going to be a tubataAmanda.
Speaker 1 (01:02:32):
But I decided to wait for the end.
Are you going to disclose?
Speaker 2 (01:02:34):
at the beginning that it was going to be a two-pata,
amanda, but I decided to waitfor the end.
Speaker 1 (01:02:38):
You're going to drop us here, I was hoping you were
going to say, and they nabbedhim and put him away to rot in
solitary confinement forever andever.
Amen and no no, this guy'sabout to get a new lease on life
.
Speaker 2 (01:02:57):
Why the hell wasn't he I have.
So I know honestly it probablycould have been like a four or
five parter.
There's just so much to thestory.
Again, I will have everythingin the show notes, but I highly
encourage people to, not beforeI finish part two, but to go
look it up and like do a deeperdive, because it's just crazy
and there's no way I could havedone this in one part.
How many second chances.
Speaker 1 (01:03:19):
This guy's a nightmare I don't understand how
he was allowed to get even tothis point, let alone.
It seems like there's going tobe more right.
Second, third, fourth, way toofourth, way too many.
Um, okay, well, I'm not goingto wallow in this too much,
because I'm hoping that nextweek we're going to have some
(01:03:41):
restitution, some feeling oflike.
I hope this guy gets nabbed andsuffers.
So, um, if that doesn't happen,we're going to hear some more
from me, but at this point I'mgoing to.
We're going to hear some morefrom me, but at this point I'm
going to, I'm going to bite mytongue.
Um, I can't wait for part twoand I'm going to bring up our
new, brand new medical mishapsfor our last section.
(01:04:13):
So just lighten the mood,because medical mishaps oh, that
happened unplanned.
I loved it message was an emailfrom our friend who thought of
the segment to begin with,richard marsh from the uk.
Yeah, thank you, richard.
(01:04:34):
He writes hi.
Dr jenna and dr amanda.
Oh, loving the podcast.
However, that third episodefeatured that chap I mean yeah,
thanks, richard, love the ideaaccent that that third episode
featuring that chap operating orfalse diagnosing just to make
money while spitting false hopeand life-charging disabilities.
Speaker 2 (01:04:56):
Please do, please do.
Speaker 1 (01:04:58):
What a guy, what a cad.
I mean, could you be moreBritish, Richard?
Could you be more British?
He goes.
I think everyone would havebeen so saddened and gone blimey
listening to that one.
Speaker 2 (01:05:13):
I'm obsessed.
I'm obsessed.
Speaker 1 (01:05:16):
Maybe your podcast listening moment of fun would be
an uplifting end to the showfeaturing funny medical mishaps
supplied by us listeners.
So let's get the ball rollingwith this one, which I've called
nasal invasion.
Called nasal invasion he'sgonna hate me for this accent
(01:05:37):
because it's it's definitely notcornwall, but I, it's all I can
do, richard, it's all I can do,baby okay, richard, I'm
obsessed with you, suck or crewon a mint okay, I don't know
what crewing it sounds great tome thing.
Is that what you english peopledo?
I need to ask my mother.
I know you can suck on a mint,but how do you crew on it?
(01:05:57):
I don't know.
Maybe he'll tell us.
Anyway, he says for me, one ofmy favorite with an o-u-r-i-t
glass and still is even afterthis medical mishap is the good
good old polo.
A polo is a round mini mint.
It's about two centimeters.
I mean, we're gonna just haveto wing it.
(01:06:18):
For those of us in thenon-metric system in damso with
a hole in the middle, the art ofsuccessfully enjoying a mini is
to suck on it until the lastpossible moment before it breaks
and dissolves.
If he was in my late teens thatwhilst attempting this challenge
, um, it all went a bit wrongand I ended up in the yard.
(01:06:40):
I think he was saying he was inhis late teens, I think that's
what that meant and he ended upin the emergency room.
Oh no, was I choking on it?
Was I asphyxiating myself?
No, no, I had in fact managedto get a piece of this mint
lodged into my left nasal cavity.
What, what, how the hell didyou manage that?
It all came about as, duringenjoying the mint, I started to
(01:07:04):
sneeze and, whilst having a loudsneeze, I bit down on the mint,
causing it to break up or, atthe same time, having a sharp
intake of breath, causing a bitof the mint to go towards the
back of my throat and then, as Isneezed against it, went up and
into my left nasal cavitycavity where it became well and
truly stuck.
No amount of aggressive blowing,snorting, blocking the right
(01:07:27):
side of my nose, etc.
Would budge the pesky polo.
Uh, only one thing for it uh,seek professional assistance, if
you will.
So turns out, it was quite astraightforward procedure, if
you know what you're doing.
Um, have you know a minor setof tweezers to extend up your
(01:07:47):
nose in a steady hand?
Bit like playing a game ofoperation.
Do you remember that, apartfrom my nose, uh, my nose was a
buzzer in that situation?
Uh, many thanks to the nursesand doctors for keeping a
straight face whilst undertakingthe procedure yes, I'm sure
they've seen and dealt withworse and more interesting
objects than a patient's nose.
(01:08:09):
Did it hurt?
Well, I wouldn't add it to yourbucket list and um, but you do
have a minty fresh flavor inyour nose for a while.
There you go, and that was fromRichard.
Thank you, richard, and I'm sosorry for slaughtering your
accent.
I can only do posh, richard,only posh.
Speaker 2 (01:08:31):
Thank you, richard, that was amazing.
Thank you, richard, that wasamazing.
Speaker 1 (01:08:34):
Thank you for sending that in, and we have had
several others written in to ussince then.
Yes, medical mishaps, yes, yes.
So, please, please.
This is what makes this fun andengaging.
We want to hear from you, soemail us your medical mishap.
I didn't even know.
I'm so excited.
(01:08:54):
Doctoring the truth atbuzzsproutcom Uh, don't miss a
beat.
Subscribe or follow doctoringthe truth wherever you enjoy
your podcast, for stories thatshock, intrigue and educate.
Trust After all, is a delicatething.
You can support the show thisis new by clicking on a
subscriber link.
When you look at your podcastepisode, there's a subscriber
(01:09:17):
link and you can support us foras low as three dollars a month
and we'll give you a shout outon the show, and we're always
looking for ways to bring youmore rewards in the future.
This might include exclusivecontent, early access to
episodes, fun merch and moreMore.
Be sure to follow us onInstagram at Doctoring the Truth
(01:09:38):
, and Facebook at Doctoring theTruth.
Right, amanda, I paused on thatone and more.
There we go.
But also, please, we get creditfor downloads, so download.
Speaker 2 (01:09:53):
If you ever wonder what it's called, it's just
doctoring the truth at whateverplatform you're on, until then
stay safe and stay suspicious.
Speaker 1 (01:10:02):
Bye, I can't stop bye see you next week, friends, why
am I not able to stop?
I'm still going, okay.
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