‘My Ex-Fiance Surgeon Turned Out To Be A Monster’ | This Morning

now this next story is an unbelievable one uh when Bonita Alexander met the claim surgeon Paulo macarini in 2013 she thought and understandably she' met the man of her dreams Charming intelligent and a pioneer of groundbreaking new surgery Paulo was celebrated with one of the world's brightest minds but all was not what it seemed a new Netflix documentary bad surgeon under the knife tells the incredible true story of our poo K the world but before we chat to Manita about what happened let's take a look I was engaged to a monster Paulo was an absolute fraudster and that's why we have to stop him Pao marcarini treated people as human labras the first liver transplant the first kidney transplant the first heart transplant did they go all well no I think that this is the future was this guy a superhero a super surgeon and the love of my life or was he a dangerous con man and a [Applause] killer I mean it's fascinating Bonita joined us live from New York good morning bonita thanks for joining us um good morning take us back to the very beginning when did you first meet Paulo and what were your first impressions of him I first met him in 2013 when I was working on a story about regenerative medicine which is this very exciting promising field where basically we're working to the point where you make new organs in the lab for people so that we get rid of Oregon donation and eliminate a whole host of problems and he was at the Forefront of this field he was considered the Pioneer in this field his nickname was the Super surgeon the Miracle Man he worked at kolinska in Stockholm the place that Awards the Nobel Prize in medicine he was rumored to be in contention for a Nobel Prize himself and he was considered to be a daring Pioneer he was taking risks that nobody else in the world was willing to take doing something that literally nobody else in the world was doing and he seemed to be incredibly devoted and caring and Incredibly devoted to giving hope to people who had no other hope so he was a very intriguing man and Bita you you know you're an investigative journalist yourself so you are the first thing you're going to do is ask is think about asking not necessarily be cynical but ask questions about the person you're going to meet so I don't imagine you chucked yourself into this like lockstock straight away no of course not and at the time though in 2013 there was no negative information revealed publicly yet about Dr Paulo marcarini he was the Super surgeon he was this very Innovative daring medical Pioneer that almost had a reputation like he walked on water I mean people thought he was like a god I mean he was bringing so much Prestige and accolades and money and everything else to Carol linsa and they were talking about building a whole instit ude around him and these groundbreaking procedures he was doing and people were in awe of him and you were in awe of him Bonita cuz from that first moment you met it was that kind of that magnetic attraction you know he was Charming he made that eye contact with you immediately and you kind of like had to kind of go hang on a minute I'm here to interview him like what's going on yeah I mean before I met him I had obviously done a lot of research I had read a lot about him I had seen TV interviews with him he was interviewed the time he had been the subject of many documentaries there was a joke in the office that he was a George Clooney lookalike because he's this very sort of Dashing Charming you know very attractive Italian man and so we were all sort of joking that we were going to meet George Clooney I was intrigued by him I think everybody was you know he's an intriguing man and when we first met you know he came around the corner where we were waiting to meet him prior to the interview and he gave me this little sly little smile he's very flirtatious with men and women and he gave me the smile and he looked at me and something happened I probably started blushing I felt like a silly little school girl and I I thought what is this and my immediate thought was whatever the hell that is let's let's dismiss that let's get rid of it Focus but I thought it was just like a celebrity crush you know I like everybody I was very enamored with Dr Paulo marcarini the whole world was and uh I mean it it catapulted your relationship sh really quickly you know it was like lots of romantic gestures from him um you kind of just fell hookline and sinker for him I guess and then he proposed to you in this you know very romantic gestures you were flying all over the world you're going to Venice I mean it was he I'm sure completely yeah we were friends first and that's important because I think that's how he began to sort of draw me in it's this very cunning meticulous weaving of this Web of Life lies and I now believe he targeted me from day one and what endeared me to him was he was such a good listener at the time I was in a very vulnerable place my ex-husband the father of our beautiful then nine-year-old daughter was dying of brain cancer and I started talking to Paulo after she was pouring my heart out to him and he was such a good listener and I thought so caring because he seemed to care about this little girl that he' never met and that's how I got drawn in I mean when you're vulnerable what do you want you want somebody to put their arms around you and tell you that everything's going to be okay and he was that person for me and once I fell for him it was sort of like a fairy tale which in hindsight should have been a red flag you know it was love bombing an overdrive it was romance on steroids I mean everything was just over the top but this continued throughout the course of our two-year relationship this wasn't just something he did at the beginning he was incredibly romantic to the point that people were envious you know I'd come home from trips and people would be hanging on the edge of their seat you know what did he do now what did he do now and people told us that we had renewed their hope and love so it felt very genuine I felt like I was floating on clouds it was you know I was blissfully happy but it felt real it felt genuine well I guess I mean for two years it was right I mean so so when when did the the the the the suspicions and the seeds of doubt first appear for you what was it the first inkling I had that anything was wrong was in November of 2014 we were supposed to get married on July 11th of 2015 and an article came out in the New York Times talking about allegations of scientific misconduct against him at kolinska in Sweden these were not criminal allegations yet we were talking about misrepresentations in scientific papers this was the first clue I had that anything like this was going on and I was angry I'm his fiance and he hadn't talked to me about that at all and that was when I think I first started having some doubts little red flags were going off and in the six months preceding our wedding we were arguing a lot one of the things that we were arguing about constantly he had flown me literally all over the world these beautiful trips everywhere he had never taken me to Barcelona which is where we were supposed to be moving after the wedding where he lived I was giving up everything I quit my job I pulled my daughter out out of her very difficult to get into private school and we were supposed to be riding off into the sunset living in this house in Barcelona and I kept saying to him who the hell marries a man without seeing the house where they're going to live it just doesn't make sense and then there were things about the wedding also that were not making sense I had a lot of questions but they were small red flags you know it wasn't like somebody was standing on a football field with a giant flag saying alert alert con man but they were building and then six I guess it was 8 weeks before the wedding um is when it all exploded and when I discovered that he was lying about everything you flew to Barcelona didn't you Ben you went kind of undercover you had a blonde wig on and you tell us what you found tell us tell us what what you what you found when you got to Barcelona when I first found out that he was lying about everything I mean he was literally lying about everything nothing about our wedding was true it was some sick twisted fantasy in his head even though we had hundreds of guests coming from all over the world allowed people to book plane tickets book hotels allowed me to spend money on wedding dresses on and on and on none of the venues were ever booked none of the people he said the dignitaries that were coming to the wedding he didn't know them he it was all some sick twisted lie he had told me when I first met him that he was separated which was well established he lived in Barcelona his wife lived in Italy and he said he had just never gotten divorced because it was complicated they're Catholic it's Italy he told me his divorce was Final and that's why he was able to propose to me he was never divorced he never could have legally married me in the first place but the last piece of the puzzle for me was Barcelona I knew there had to be a damn good reason he had never let me go to that house in Barcelona and so I spent about two months investigating him I hired a private investigator I was trying to gather all the information I could before I confronted him I wanted hard indisputable evidence to present him with because one of the things that he does so well and he did it not just with me but with everybody he conned you know doctors scientists institutions he's extraordinarily skilled at pulling the wool over people's eyes by convincing you that he's telling the truth you ask him a question and he makes you start doubting yourself you know because he's rapid fire with his responses I would never lie to you and boom boom boom boom boom he's got all the facts so I wanted to go to Barcelona when he didn't know I was coming it was kind of the surprise attack I went there with a couple of girlfriends and what I found was in this house where I was supposed to be moving and I went there days after what was supposed to be our wedding he was hiding another family this was not the Italian wife that he had never divorced this was another woman and two young children and so now I knew about three families it's me and my daughter in New York the Italian wife in Italy that he never Divorced with two children and now a third family here in Barcelona and that was the moment for me where I just fell apart had been investigating for two months and sort of in just hardcore journalist mode and you see it in bad sech and I just I just lose it it was just that's when the devastation and the Heartbreak really hit me we hope you're doing it right now and thanks so much for joining us I really appreciate it I know it's probably a inhospitable time for you to speaking to us as well so we appreciate that as well um thank you bad sergeon uh love under the knife is available to uh stream on Netflix now we contacted Mr M's lawyer he told us his client denies all allegations made against him

Channel: This Morning

Views: 205,340

Keywords: this morning, this morning itv, holly willoughby, phillip schofield, this morning funniest moments, this morning interviews, alison hammond, itv

Id: r9Y5-OWsmpI

Length: 11min 15sec (675 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 14 2023