He was a gifted medical student and doctor and a former Marine. He moved on to Ohio State University Medical Center, where more serious concerns were raised by staff. Did something happen that nobody noticed? He also said, in his experience as an investigator, whistleblowers to crimes would often face blowback in the form of accusations of paranoia, which could make it unappealing for an individual to step forward with shocking claims. He planted several false clues in the bombs to mislead authorities, however, his own work would lead to his downfall. Still, when the course was over and the hospital asked participants to write down what they enjoyed most about the class, Swango wrote, "Kristin Kinney." Swango attached himself to Kristin. [29] Despite having very little formal education, Guzmans Sinona cartel grew to control 40%-60% of the drug trade in Mexico. At one point in the 2010s, law enforcement determined that despite being less than 0.10% of the prison population, they were responsible for 18% of prison murders. Michael Swango aka David J. Adams, Michael Kirk, Jack Kirk, Michael Swan, Dr. Death is believed to have committed as many as 60 murders including his patients and colleagues. Not only were the killings performed by a certified doctor who was sworn by oath to do no harm in hospitals surrounded by other patients and medical colleagues but he also managed to elude criminal charges for years while continuously finding employment in new locations. During his time there, several employees sought medical attention with complaints of persistent and increasing stomach pains. And he was not what Sackman was expecting. [1] Nonetheless, it was another decade before OSU formally conceded it should have called in outside investigators. Michael Swango is a convicted serial killer who used his position as a medical student, paramedic and later as a physicianto poison colleagues and patients. local. [4] Attempts to track down the leaks that Hanssen was responsible for were complicated by the fact that there was a second mole, Aldrich Ames, working within the FBI at the same time. In 2003 the mosque was shut down by police as part of investigation into their possible production of the poison ricin, but al-Masri continued to give sermons from outside the gates. While there, he murdered at least three victims by lethal injection Thomas Sammarco, 73, George Siano, 60, and Aldo Serini, 62, according to, After Stony Brook was tipped off to Swangos nefarious history, he was fired and effectively blacklisted from the medical industry in the U.S., reported, Before police could conduct a full investigation into the suspicious deaths at the Northport VA Hospital, Swango fled the country to Zimbabwe. There were still many victims in Zimbabwe. His subsequent guilty plea that October in the McGee murder earned him another life sentence, according to CBS News. In 1985, it's where a judge sentenced him to five years in prison. These clippings confirmed toxic levels of arsenic in the hair. He immediately jumped back into the medical profession, claiming his battery conviction was the result of a bar fight, and at one point changing his name to David Jackson Adams. 10 Secret Prisons Governments Are Hiding From Us, Photo Credit: United States Marshal Service /, Photo Credit: Federal Bureau of Prisoners employee /, Photo Credit: North Carolina criminal records /, Top 10 Notorious Killers Who Were Murdered In Prison, Top 10 Horrific Facts About Robert Black, Britain's, Top 10 Actors Who Relived Their Worst Moments On Camera, Top 10 Celebs with the Worst Interior Design Taste, 10 Historical Shoe Rituals and Superstitions You Might Not Know About, 10 Unusual and Incredible Reinterpretations of Classic Artworks, 10 Ancient Fertility Treatments You Wouldnt Want to Use Today, 10 Inventive Ways People Survived Winter Before Electricity, 10 Bleak Facts about Victorian Workhouses, 10 Amazing Archeological Discoveries Made by Dogs, 10 Macabre Murder Tales From Asia That Will Make You Sick, 10 Forensic Science Tools You Didnt Know Existed, 10 Disturbing Times Women Married Convicted Cold-blooded Killers. The Swango case almost sounded too sensationalistic to be believed, Sackman said. Swango was released from prison in 1987, after serving only two years. I dont see how he could control himself, and the more work he did, the better he got at it.. Being as difficult as these cases can be to prove the investigations are expensive and time-consuming and theres no guarantee of eventually bringing a killer like Swango to justice. ?s former teacher and attorney Dan Cook summed it up best. He was also fascinated with Nazis and the Holocaust, according to The Washington Post. Your Friend, Michael:Police Officer's Daughter Writes to Serial Killer, Hoping for Answers, 1954: Born James Michael Swango in Tacoma, Washington, 1972: High school valedictorian in Quincy, Illinois, 1976: Honorable discharge from the Marines. If Michael Swango killed as many people as those who investigated him believe, he was astonishingly prolific. Many who knew him say the same thing:. Swango seemed to always be on duty whenever these incidents occurred. That gave us a window to start the investigation and make a determination on whether he had killed anyone, Sackman said. Swango allegedly cheered TV reports of murders, professed his admiration for serial killers and told them that he fantasized about a busload of children being impaled by a tanker, according to the Los Angeles Times. . [11], Since the latest Swango incident took place at a Veterans Affairs facility, federal authorities got involved. 10 Inescapable Prisons People Somehow Escaped From, Like every other medical professional, Dr. Michael Swango swore an oath to do no harm. Swango served in the Marine Corps, graduating from recruit training at Marine Corps Recruit Depot, San Diego. Doctors, toxicologists, forensic nurses. They became ill, and some vomited so hard that blood vessels in their eyes broke, reported the Los Angeles Times. I pressed harder and thats when his friendly nature changed and he asked us to leave, Sackman said. He murdered a number of our nations heroes in Veterans hospitals. Is this April 1? Sackman asked himself. McNairs final and most notorious escape was in 2006 when he packed himself into a shipment of mail leaving the prison. Dr. Michael Swango is one of the prolific medical serial killers in history. Overwhelmingly, medical professionals are the salt of the earth., Courtesy / Sioux Falls Argus Leader file photo. Swango proved to be a very smooth interview, deftly deflecting questions. March1992: Secures a residency at a university hospital in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, using forged documents. He crossed the border to Zambia and subsequently to Namibia, where he found temporary medical work. Most of those cases were what he considered standard fair for his office fraud, prescription drug theft and other graft. The two-part series finale tells the story of Dr Michael Swango - a high school valedictorian, distinguished Marine, and a cunning serial killer. A scathing review by law school dean James Meeks concluded that the hospital should have called in the police, and also revealed several glaring shortcomings in its initial investigation of Swango. However, his work had been so slovenly that OSU pulled its residency offer after his internship ended in June. Prosecutors said Michael Swango killed for pleasure, and they read entries from a handwritten journal in which he mused about "the sweet, husky, close smell of indoor homicide." Another entry suggested that murder was "the only way I have of reminding myself that I'm still alive." Swango, 45, pleaded guilty to three counts of murder in a plea . Authorities in Zimbabwe would later issue a warrant for his arrest on charges that he poisoned seven patients, including five fatalities, according toThe New York Times. "Behind the Murder Curtain: Special Agent Bruce Sackman Hunts Doctors and Nurses Who Kill Our Veterans.". Guzman has had at least four wives, one of which he kidnapped, and at least twelve children, several of whom have also been convicted on drug charges or killed in cartel warfare. 1954. His classmates found him strange and fiercely competitive, according to, Swango seemed to be obsessed with violence and kept scrapbooks of newspaper clippings of disasters, accidents, crime scenes and other incidents, according to, Despite almost getting thrown out of Southern Illinois University, Swango was accepted into an internship program at Ohio State University Medical Center in 1983 that put him on track to become a neurosurgeon. local. Yet investigators suspect that during his crime spree, which spanned 1981 to 1997, Swango may . He is assigned to a Veterans Administration hospital. He entered the hard drug trade under known king-pins Hector Salazar and later Miguel Gallardo until Gallardo was arrested in 1988. [16], The man known as Simon Trinidad was actually named Juvenal Ovidio Ricardo Palmera Pineda and was one of the first high-ranking members of this violent guerilla group to be arrested. Each time, Swango had been the floor intern. Colleagues fall ill and suspect Swango of poisoning them. KHQA? But doctors are revered in American culture, and deaths are a common occurrence at hospitals. They also found evidence that Swango paralyzed patient Baron Harris with an injection of what was supposedly a sedative. State Rep. Dobos called himself MIT grad for decades. Upload . Some have even formed unlikely friendships. Swango admitted to McGee's poisoning whenhe pleaded guilty in the New York killings so . It was a damning piece of television, which Sackman had just happened to miss when it was broadcast the night before. [28] He escaped prison twice in Mexico but was extradited to the U.S. in 2017 and sentenced to life in prison plus thirty years on ten different charges. While Dr. Michael Joseph Swango eventually pleaded guilty to four murders, his victim count may be as high as 60. [8], Swango established a sterling reputation at Sanford. Virgil Swango was Michael's father. Joseph Michael Swango was born in Tacoma, Washington, in 1954. No doubt Swango wanted these pictures for his scrapbook of death. In the beginning, he shot Vicky Bowman-Hall at a convenience store in Algona. Returning to the U.S. to obtain a visa, he is arrested in a Chicago airport on federal fraud charges. Thirty years after slipping poison into the food and drink of his Quincy co-workers, those who knew him reflected on a life gone wrong. Combine that with his skill in administering poisonous doses of chemicals that were difficult to track and his smooth people skills, it becomes more clear how he was able to avoid detection. Police search his house and find a mini-laboratory of poisons, including handwritten recipes for ricin, botulism and supersaturated cyanide. Swanson went to rob a store and in the process, he had to kill the storekeepers. [16] On September 6, he pleaded guilty to the three murder counts, as well as counts of wire fraud and mail fraud, before Judge Jacob Mishler. In late 1994, Swango used forged documents and false information to secure a job as a physician at Mnene Lutheran Mission Hospital in the city of Bulawayo. And, for a short time, he was also a South Dakotan. "Behind the Murder Curtain: Special Agent Bruce Sackman Hunts Doctors and Nurses Who Kill Our Veterans. [20] He became a mathematics professor, but was an awkward and uncomfortable teacher, and resigned suddenly in 1969. Once again, his patients began dying for no explicable reason. [1] He was valedictorian of his 1972 Quincy Catholic Boys High School class. In August 1985, he was found guilty of aggravated battery and sentenced to five years in prison, reported. We see that you have javascript disabled. Michael Swango was born in Tacoma, Washington and raised in Quincy, Illinois, the middle child of Muriel and John Virgil Swango. [5] In July 1992, he began working at Sanford USD Medical Center in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. [1], In the meantime, Swango had sensed that authorities were closing in on him. Real Name: Joseph Michael Swango Aliases: Michael Kirk, David Jackson Adams, Jack Kirk, Michael Swan, "Double-O Swango" Wanted For: Making False Statements, Questioning in Murders Missing Since: October 1993 Details: On February 7, 1984, at the State University Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, an intern, Dr. Michael Swango, checked on a sixty-nine-year-old woman, Rena Cooper, who was recovering . You can find parts one and two by clicking the links below this article. Again, patients die mysteriously. While in school, Swango worked part-time as a paramedic and would never miss a shift, reported theChicago Tribune. "I don't think there's ill will. [9], Kinney's mother, Sharon Cooper, was horrified to find out that a person with Swango's history could be allowed to practice medicine. Swango ultimately pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three and a half years in prison. Dr. Michael Swango, the notorious Dr. Death, was connected to at least 35 lethal injections and pleaded guilty to a total of four murders. He lied on his applications and he lied to me. Oct.2000: Swango pleads guilty in Columbus to the 1984 slaying of 19-year-old Cynthia McGee, a Dublin native who died at University Hospital while recovering from an automobile accident. His co-workers found him unusually grim. By 1994, Swango had fled overseas to Zimbabwe, where he again tried to establish himself as a doctor. Swango was arrested in October 1984 for poisoning his co-workers, and during a search of his apartment, police found Tero ant poison, books on Satanism, guns, survival knives and recipe cards for pesticides, botulism and cyanide mixtures, according to the Los Angeles Times. He was profiled on ABCs 20/20, vehemently denying the charges against him and any connection to the deaths in Ohio. Please enable javascript and refresh the page to continue reading local news. He and his brother Michael Mickey Marcello were convicted of murdering two other mafia brothers Michael and Anthony Tony The Ant Spilotro and dumping Anthonys body in a cornfield. Dr. Death Part 1: A License to Kill: Directed by Brett Kelly. [9] From 1997-2003 he was the imam of the Finsbury Park Mosque in London and voiced his support for terrorism, including 9/11 attacks. It was originally nicknamed the Diamond Tooth Gang because of the glass shards that some members put in their teeth. There, he met the alleged killer in the flesh. She contacted a friend of Kinney who was a nurse at Sanford, who in turn alerted Sanford's dean, Robert Talley, to Swango's whereabouts. [15] Over the span of 1996 to 1998, Rudolph committed four bombing attacks, two at abortion clinics and one at a lesbian bar. In addition to writing his book, Sackman has become an in-demand speaker due to his work in the field of medical killers. Unmisig and John Landis were struck by his charisma. February1985: Ohio State law school dean James Meeks investigates the universitys handling of Swango during his internship. However, he was forced out after being caught working on a scrapbook of disasters on work time. Amid the reports and a sub-par performance record, administrators canceled the residency it had offered him, and he returned to his home town of Quincy, Illinois, to work as an emergency medical technician on an ambulance crew. His father was a prominent U.S. Army officer and Vietnam War veteran, who allegedly bragged about his combat kills and suffered from alcoholism, according to the, He then enrolled in Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, where his troubles began. Guzman has claimed to have indirectly killed 2,000-3,000 people. As part of that investigation, prosecutors exhumed the bodies of three patients and found poisonous chemicals in them. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Aryan Brotherhood today is the largest and most deadly prison gang in the United States.[27]. Michael Swango was sentenced to three life terms for his heinous crimes. He is serving a life sentence. It was those who came forward and told us about it. . But his partner had seen the program, and was sure the reporters working on it would not have gone on the record with their story if they had not been sure. [26] Bingham rose to be a high-ranking member of the organizations leadership council. In 1987, however, he was caught red-handed by a staff member while robbing the offices of the Farmers Union and he shot the man and then killed a truck driver as he fled the building. And when scrutiny would come closing in around him or his superiors would discipline him for infractions, he would eventually move on to another health care outpost, ready to take up another role that put him in a position to begin his work all over again. It was reported on another occasion that he emerged from a dying patient's room with a smile on his face. [15] A week before the indictment was handed up, FBI agents interviewed Swango in prison. He has consulted with foreign police on cases, as well. Soon, many of the paramedics on staff began noticing that whenever Swango prepared the coffee or brought any food in, several of them usually became violently ill, with no apparent cause. 1 Swango killed hospitalized patients, those under his care or others just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Another suggested that murder was"the only way I have of reminding myself that I'm still alive." . [11] In 2012, he was extradited to the U.S., and found guilty of 11 terrorism counts and sentenced to life in prison in 2015. Then he also had the chance to work alone, to draw that curtain around himself and the victim, Sackman said. It takes medical examiners to help prove the causes of deaths that at first blush may seem unremarkable. They told him that on the day he was due to be released, he would be extradited to Zimbabwe to face charges of murder and attempted murder. Swango, awaiting trial and still spending time with a girlfriend in Columbus, contacted Harp and asked to see the items the police had taken. There was enough evidence for Immigration and Naturalization Service agents to arrest Swango in June 1997, on a layover at Chicago O'Hare International Airport on his way to Saudi Arabia. A nurse would later tell police she saw Swango injecting an unknown substance into a patients IV right before they stopped breathing, according to theLos Angeles Times.
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