Dr. Death 2: The Crimes of Michael Swango

hello everybody welcome back to another brand new episode of the casual criminalist as always i am your host simon and today dr death part two no uh harold shipman did not come back to life get released from prison and kill more people that uh you'd have heard about that he died in prison fortunately this is about another doctor who killed people so well less woo what happens here is i have a script in front of me put together by the uh the writer for this podcast callum thank you callum i am going to read it i was reading the reviews thank you for all the fantastic reviews that people leave for this show if you're watching this on youtube it also goes out as a podcast people can leave reviews of a podcast and people say wonderful things about the show i think it has like five point nine uh four point nine is kind of five point nine stars that would be better than five stars 4.9 stars and there's like a thousand something reviews which is amazing seeing as the show is only like six months old so thank you everybody that is crazy um and what i was saying is someone was describing this as simon cold reads the script and i totally forgot that that's what this is called whereas like if you're new here i've never read this before i will go on this exploration with you dear listener and we will find out about michael swango dr death number two and uh then afterwards jen our fine video and audio producer will add some audios and images if you're watching this and all those other things for you to enjoy so thank you to callum and jen and le and thank you for listening and your fine reviews thank you and let's jump into it [Music] the very first episode i penned for this fine show thanks callum as well i mean praising yourself there focused on the most murderous md in history i i was i know i always seem to do this we'll get half a line in and already i want to go on an aside but md in the uk means something very different to md in the u.s like if you're a medical doctor in the uk it's like isn't it latin it's like medici doctor rana's or whatever it stands for but like that's what doctors will have they'll be like dr so and so md whereas md in the uk to me always meant managing director like of a company um we don't have the md afterwards at least in common usage it's just doctor so and so and people will correct you if they think you're not uh you're a medical doctor and you're not most murderous empty in history great britain's harold shipman needless to say i haven't been within 100 feet of a clinic ever since finger cross this burning sensation clears up by itself apparently i was at the doctors yesterday if you had your faith in the medical profession shaken by that story i'm still alive i haven't been murdered i think because just remember like harold shipman really bad dude but it's really really rare if you two had your faith shaken in the medical profession by that story then i'm sorry to announce that we're bringing you the sequel in today's cash crim i like this brand new shortening of the podcast title that you've come up with calen we're going to look at america's very own contender for the title of doctor death and potentially one of the most prolific serial killers in the country's history like his british counterpart this doctor managed to worm his way into the confidence of his employers and patients for years while secretly carrying out one of the worst crime sprees the profession has ever seen and if you're a regular listener i think it was a couple of episodes ago we were like discussing which countries had the most serial killers and it's the us and the uk and i was like really alarmed by this and then people were saying in the comments i think it was on the youtube video for it that that statistic is probably reflected by also the fact that the us and the uk have generally quite good policing um like detectives following up on stuff and serial killers getting caught whereas maybe we've had a couple of serial killers or like bad crime dudes i think it was in south africa and it's like maybe there there's the syrians getting away with a bit more anyway zimbabwe oh we're back in africa doing the rounds zimbabwe 1995. farmer canias musa ziwa is lying asleep at maneni hospital the lutheran mission project in the rural south of the country earlier that week his left foot had to be amputated to the heel after the painful sores on his toes turned septic the operation was a success and mr moussa ziwa was eagerly awaiting a prosthetic foot promised to him by a swedish charity but his condition was about to take a turn for the worse thanks to the man in charge of treating him are we supposed to be in the u.s i thought this was i thought this was the america america's one maybe he moves there i guess he moves there let's find out in the middle of the night the farmer awoke to see the silhouette of a visitor by his bedside and the glint of a needle in their hand moses were later recounted i woke up to see dr mike standing over my bed with an injection isn't isn't dr mike like a really big youtuber different dr mike definitely a different doctor mike which he put in my buttocks then he put it back in his jacket pocket waved goodbye and walked away i was trying to get back to sleep but i felt my whole body go numb he tried to cry out for help but no sound escaped his mouth after a few minutes a burning sensation in his limbs he managed a horse cry that brought one of the nurses to his side once he was stabilized musical cried out that man he's no good he tried to kill me the nurse went to confront doctor mike who denied ever going into was room at all regardless nobody ever let the good doctor near mr muzaziwa alone after that which i mean even if they were like it was just a hallucination then and and they don't suspect dr mike at all they're still not going to let him near the patient because the patient will be like visibly upset by dr mike's arrival although i get the strong feeling that dr mike is going to turn out to be a bit of a psycho what was this guy's name dr michael yeah michael swango is dr mike dr mike's a psycho let's move on the sisters at moneni hospital i'm sorry about the pronunciation i don't know if that's correct uh had harbored suspicions about the newest member of staff for some time now mike's full name was michael j swango a blonde-haired blue-eyed middle-aged doctor from the usa who'd joined them earlier that year whoa i assume that this dr swango was a zimbabwe doctor who emigrated to the u.s i don't imagine there is usually a ton of immigration from the united states to zimbabwe other than doctors without borders and such but let's carry on the arrival of an experienced american physician seemed like a godsend for the isolated hospital at the time however their blessing quickly turned into a curse for one the guy wore the exact same pair of blue corduroy trousers every day and came to work stinking of sweat and he also seemed somewhat well majorly incompetent swango struggled with even some of the most basic medical tasks which the staff attributed to his highly specific specialization in neurosurgery they still went to medical school didn't he you got to go through isn't it like six years of medical school where you learn all the basic [ __ ] and they're like okay you're a doctor now congratulations now you have to go work in a hospital for many many years and actually become a competent doctor and then you have to go like neurosurgery you're gonna be like 30 something before you're actually a neurosurgeon right do you just forget all the basic [ __ ] that wasn't the worst of it one nurse speaking under condition of anonymity explained people with simple illnesses or who were on the road to recovery kept dying on his ward he liked to do ward rounds on his own and often prescribed multi drugs to individual patients which is not the way a real doctor behaves is dr mike a real doctor did he just come over from the u.s with like a a printed out yeah like harvard medical school certificate from his epson printer and be like yeah yeah real doctor welcome i'm here to save the day the nurses noticed that the hospital's death rate was increasing worryingly fast and this latest incident seemed like all the confirmation that they needed dr mike was to blame the next morning moussa siwa found the cap of the doctor's secret syringe it had dropped under his bed well done dr moyne evidence disposal is not ever a strong point of our profiled criminals is it but when the nurse took this evidence to management swango accused them of rumor-mongering and the sisters were silenced by management so dr mike was allowed to continue spreading the stench of death and body odor around many hospitals throughout the rest of 1995. a few months after mr mizuziwa's unexpected bout of paralysis another amputee experienced a similar fit this was the hospital's foreman philemon chippoco who fell into critical condition not long after receiving aftercare from the doctor he died before anyone could come to his rescue then at the start of 1996 edith naguenye who was employed by dr mike as a cleaner fell unexpectedly ill the doctor drove her to the hospital drenched in sweat and clutching her chest by the next day she was dead dr mike it seems you are brazenly just killing people in the hospital but not just the patients the the cleaners was the cleaners or the managers or something the hospital's foreman i don't know what former news is in a hospital but you're killing the staff you're killing the patients you're killing you're cleaner dude you're gonna get caught why haven't you been caught already the angel of death by this point the nurses were absolutely convinced that dr mike was more concerned with taking lives than saving them the pattern was painfully obvious but why is no one calling the police the nurse is like yeah yeah yeah that doctor 100 killing people but we'll just talk about it in the coffee room but unless they could prove it beyond a doubt it was their word against his yeah but there's loads of them i would get it if it's like ah you know doctor versus nurse also even if it was there's got to be some sort of ethics review board to take this accusation seriously and at least you know make an effort to vaguely look into things like the increasing death rate anyway but unless they could prove it beyond a doubt it was their word against his they finally got their big break one evening in the spring of 1996 when a shrill cry rang out from the maternity ward dr mike get out of the maternity ward you psycho when the sisters rushed to investigate they found dr mike by an expectant mother's bedside she was shouting that the doctor had just injected something into her iv at first mike said that his patient was just hallucinating but quickly changed his story he was merely flushing water through the tubes when the woman started sweating profusely and vomiting it was obvious he was up to something more sinister the nurses weren't buying mike's excuses and the testimony of the pregnant woman who survived unscathed by the way thankfully now arrest dr mike and put him in prison forever was why is this so long this script is so long this is not a short episode why is this not ending on this page with mr mike with dr mike being caught having his medical license revoked shortly after they strap him to a chair or they they 19 they're probably not killing zimbabwe people in zimbabwe in the late 90s but let's just put him in a really horrible prison forever simon you need to go through the court of law and stuff i'm like yes yes i know we'll take it through the court of law and all of that stuff and then we'll imprison him forever the nurses weren't buying mike's excuses and the testimony of the pregnant woman who survived unscathed by the way was enough to finally turn the medical director against dr mike by this point the nurses believed that he was responsible for the deaths of nine patients as well as the two attempted killings we've witnessed as one sister hove put it we thought he was an angel of mercy come to save people when he first arrived because we were so short of doctors but he turned out to be an angel of death however since no autopsies had been carried out on his alleged victims the best hospital could do was dismiss the grim reaper from his post and report him to the medical board wait you caught him injecting like this poison into a pregnant woman's iv there's got to be more than this that is definitely a crime when local police got involved they found a refrigerator in the doctor's home filled with a secret stash of medicines ah okay he's a doctor i doesn't necessarily mean murder unless those medicines are murder medicines like what's in there oh just like strychnine just tons of strychnine he must have smuggled them into zimbabwe illegally and concealed them from his colleagues all that time when the cops questioned him about the contraband he was outright offended saying i thought i'd come to a jungle and out of the goodness of my heart i brought my own drugs what an absolute saint you are mike bob gildoff would be proud feed the fleeing that is bob geldof right who did live aid i am remembering that right right fleeing to bulawayo but in reality this kind-hearted doctor had wreaked havoc on the people of that community by illegally administrating those drugs to patients in massive overdoses while all this was unfolding mr mossazuwa returned to his farm on a pair of crutches unable to work and without any kind of compensation victims of medical malpractice like that in the states can usually sue for big big bucks but in this case it ended up being it ended up being dr mike that launched a lawsuit against the hospital first he ran away in shame to the town of bulawayo about 200 miles north and established himself in an affluent suburban community on the outskirts of town there he started attending a white presbyterian church and bible study group where he was introduced to top human rights lawyer david coulthard he convinced quarter to advocate for him in an attempt to keep his zimbabwean medical license and as the lawyer put it he struck such a pathetic victim pose when he came into my office he portrayed himself as someone who had come to africa to help rural black people and he was treated in an abominable fashion now dr mike you came here to you came there to kill people you psycho of course clearly those ignorant country folk never understood the complexities of modern medicine who are they to deny a pregnant woman her arsenic savage amazingly news reports from this time seemed to suggest he was eventually successful in suing his old employer dude that lawyer is too good yeah sometimes you know where someone that like like allegedly oj's lawyer whoever that was too good allegedly there's there's problem i don't like lawyers who are too good with the help of his world-class victim complex dr mike managed to get his community of white christians on his side and he was even able to land a short-lived position at another hospital while his case was under review one of his fellow churchgoers widow lynette o'hare even offered him a place to stay mike started renting a room in her home which once belonged to the woman's daughter whispers of murder and malpractice had started emerging in the papers by this point but it never really bothered landlady her community vouched for dr mike as a good young christian man i say young man because mike had told the people in his new hometown that he was 27 years old knocking a full 15 years off his actual age that's a big difference i feel people know the difference between someone who's 42 and 27. although i don't always know because people like simon you must be like at least 50 and i'm like bro i'm 33 and they're like what oh i should like i don't know moisturize or some [ __ ] that might have been able to help his romantic prospects among the eligible young women of bulawayo but he wasn't very lucky in love regardless shortly after moving into mrs o'hare's place mike was rejected by a woman from his church sending him into a world-class sulk maybe it was that you never changed your trousers sorry pants as my american listeners might say dude you all the same weird blue corduroys and like that smell like when someone's been for a run and it's like i'm smart you smell a little bit sweaty it's like okay that's fine when you are wearing those same nasty trick you get that like homeless smell you stink like that really stenchy smell that kind of offends the the back of the throat and the nostrils it's like that's not good that's not good mike no one likes that you might be a neurosurgeon but if you have really smelly trousers people are still not going to like you attendant from hell after being shot down by his love interest he locked himself in his room like an angsty teenager with the curtains drawn he only emerged to collect the breakfast left him by his door and to leave the empty plates outside afterwards despite repeated attempts to coax him out nobody caught sight of him for a full five weeks that's okay he doesn't need to shower anyway he's not into that when he eventually emerged from his muggy cave he took to borrowing the landlady's car and found another woman to chase a young divorcee across town over the next few weeks her hair started noticing food alcohol and money missing from her cabinets even some of her daughter's underwear disappeared uh oh you weirdo i mean what a surprise what a surprise the psycho guy is a weirdo her good christian lad was turning out to be a tenant from hell and things are about to get far worse please don't kill the landlady one day when mike was out at work the cleaning lady went into his room to tidy up and made a horrific discovery in her chilling retelling of the of her ordeal o'hare describes how the cleaner came to her and said to her in a grave tone that she better come and look are they going to find a body in this how do they get in there and whose body is it this is not good together they crept into the doctor's room and over to his dresser in the corner or they're gonna find like some weird trophies like some blood slides from dexter or something damn dude inside cunningly concealed and put that in like a quote were some bacon sandwiches [Music] oh yes a pile of feasty stale bacon sandwiches pieced together from breakfast leftovers but to hear o'hare tell it you'd think she'd found a pile of severed hands this isn't so bad he's stealing your money i'd be more if like my tenant was keeping like weird like crusty food in their room i'd be like clean up but if they were stealing my money i'd be like get out it's a difference no uh what did you say i knew then that this was an insane mind and i felt sick with terror i also began to believe he could have been guilty of the allegations he stayed in his room for five weeks is a bit of a weirdo he takes your daughter's underwear and you're like crusty bacon sandwiches that's the thing that pushed it over the edge for me it's hardly a case-breaking development but this was the tipping point that made the landlady live in fear of dr mike from then on out she paid her cleaner and cook to come live with her terrified of what the bacon sandwich psychopath's next move might be oh hair or whatever you're also a bit strange aren't you time running out as we already know he was capable of far worse stuff than stockpiling breakfast goods after dr mike realized his relationship with o'hare had sad irreparably he turned his poisonous tactics against her one day after inviting a friend over for a meal the landlady and her dinner guest started violently vomiting they went to a clinic in town where the resident physician dr michael cotton suspected arsenic poisoning i wonder who did that he encouraged the widow to send samples of her hair down to south africa for testing meanwhile she asked her launcher to kindly gtfo he never showed a flicker of emotion during the eviction and o'hare thought the ordeal was all was finally over poisoned them with arsenic how again how have you not been arrested yet however two days later she started having car issues a mechanic found the problem her brake lines are cut it could have been more if if that's it this couldn't be it's even more like crazy stereotypical crazy person two kilograms of sugar have been poured into a fuel tank what are you doing she i mean i know it ruins cars but it's like why why you're so crazy she reported it to the police not long after the lab results came back toxic levels of arsenic were detected o'hare is terrified that the doctor would come back to finish the job so she hired a security guard for her home the police came to investigate the car first but mike wasn't available for questioning the landlady never knew where he disappeared to after moving out of her house but she was certain he would come back for her when the proof of poisoning arrived a warrant for mike's arrest was issued at god damn last what is going on police while the search was still ongoing the zimbabwean cid uh filed a report with the fbi via interpol informing them that one of their citizens was terrorizing the locals the moment the file reached their desk mentioning the blonde american doctor with the penchant poisoning alarm bell started blaring did he leave america because he was poisoning people is that why he's in zimbabwe i mean it would kind of make sense because like that emigration's a bit weird and he's clearly not a do-gooder going there to like help out with their lack of doctors is he is he he murdered people already and he left didn't he how did they not catch him already surely that's like they're gonna do background checks or something no this was the 1990s they have computers get it together for the past couple of years they've been on the hunt for this murderous doctor after he had simply vanished off the face of the earth although callum has a little thing in here which says simon if you want to break this into two parts begin here good news dear listen we're not breaking it into two parts you get this all in one because i've only been recording for like 20 odd minutes so it wouldn't be a long episode and well let's just carry on shall we this you didn't need to know this it's highlighted in red here so it's like don't read it simon what am i doing just carry on simon a little bit of professionalism would be nice doctor death origins as it turns out this dr michael swango was actually a suspected serial killer and known fraudster high up on the fbi's wanted list he was suspected of using a wide range of aliases and false documents to defraud his employers not unlike his fake reference letters and cv that he used to land the zimbabwe job wait is he not he's please at least be a doctor we've titled the episode dr michael swango so i'm assuming he has some sort of medical degree from somewhere he's like a doctor of guitar or something originally spangled held from quincy illinois where he was born in 1954. from an early age he was obsessed with gore and catastrophe with a particular affinity for stories for the holocaust dude what is wrong with you with his mother's questionable encouragement he would compare scrapbooks of newspaper clippings detailing car wrecks and murders jesus how awful it sounds like your average true crime fan also i mean you might love true crime and enjoy it as an adult but please don't be encouraging your kids to like clip murders and put them in a scrapbook or you are going to be listening to a true crime podcast one day about your own children okay casual criminalist warning right there after an aborted attempt to follow his father's footsteps in the marines mike decided to go into the medical field eventually studying at the southern illinois university school of medicine it was there that his peers first started noticing that something wasn't quite right about his bedside manner what a shock for the guy who loves gore and horror and enjoys the horrors of the holocaust one report mentions that he was known as lazy preferring to work as an ambulance attendant rather than concentrate on his studies christ if volunteer emt work is considered lazy what the hell would they make my student days yeah i'm like i don't know emergency rooms amulet stuff whatever you see i'm like that is intense i know a guy who's uh an emt it seems really intense like that does not seem like easy work by any stretch of the imagination like my life is so easy i mean i feel like i work pretty hard i run a lot of shows but my life is like objectively easy compared to like actual hard jobs like mining i don't know i was like that was a hard day at work i get home from work how was it it's a really long day and always like but at least i wasn't mining it was during these ride-alongs that young suango got his first taste of death biographies mentioned that he was visibly fascinated with watching people pass away it gave him a bigger rush than actually saving people the more violent the injury the more desperate he was to be at the scene it's not exactly clear when he decided to start expediting the death process himself but we do know that an unusual number of patients ended up in critical condition whenever he was on the wards at least five of them died within the first couple of years in fact so many sick folk died under his care his classmates dubbed him double o swango license to kill guys when you're at medical school and you're dubbing one of your classmates as having a license to kill you need to you need to check yourself before you wreck yourself and maybe wreck his career apparently he took the joke pretty damn literally getting a medical degree was the perfect cover for someone obsessed with ending lives especially just for the sake of it yet he came extremely close to losing his golden ticket early on they called him double o license to kill how did he complete medical school what is going on again it was discovered that swango was faking checkups during his hospital rounds and he was almost kicked out of the university a unanimous decision was needed from the disciplinary committee to send him packing but under pressure from swango's lawyer one member decided to give him a second chance hester rank up there near the guy who denied hitler's art school application oh my god dude internship swanger got his act together and started a surgical internship at ohio state university hospital in 1983. after he was entered into the rotation the nurses started noticing an alarming spike in unexpected deaths but just like the sisters in zimbabwe they were dismissed as paranoid some of the other doctors noticed that when swango brought in a bucket of fried chicken to share around the staff room anyone who ate it started vomiting violently that would seem like a harassment prank compared to what he did next i i feel like i'm overdoing the shock in this episode but again it really is incredible that none of this is ever taken further it's just absolutely bizarre at 11 p.m on the 14th of january 1984 double o swango was called to the bedside of cynthia anne mcgee she was clocking a fever of over 39 degrees that's 102 fahrenheit for our american friends he was supposed to just take a blood sample from the teenager but once the nurses left the room he slipped a secret syringe out of his coat pocket at midnight the alarm started blaring a code blue and cynthia was dying fast the nurses found her unresponsive and her face was pale blue nobody could figure out why the heart of a generally healthy young woman had suddenly stopped beating nobody but swango of course his diagnosis a deadly injection of potassium this was exemplary of swango's modus operandi he would stalk the wards looking for patients to murder without raising suspicion those on potentially lethal medications were the easiest all he had to do was administer a slightly larger dose than usual if that wasn't possible he'd prescribe them something strong enough to do the job be aware if you go to your doctor with a headache and they'd suggest a whopping dose of morphine he's probably not to be trusted if that wasn't possible swango would just straight up poison his victims with recipes from his handwritten poison cookbooks back home eventually he was caught doing just that i believe in the medical profession today because there were cases of you know a doctor accidentally prescribing you know instead of 10 milligrams 100 milligrams of people dying that now there are checks and balances in place so maybe the pharmacist will also check to make sure that it's not crazy or there'll be computer programs that that check i remember reading about this somewhere or hearing about it but yeah i guess even in the 90s it was easier or was 80s sorry 1980s we jumped back in time on february the 7th 1984 69 year old rina cooper awoke to find swango injecting something into her iv just moments before she suffered a seizure a nurse reported that he had a funny grin on his face as he left the room it couldn't have been any more obvious if he was rubbing his hands together and laughing like a cartoon villain and honestly who would blame him because no one seems to actually do anything about it when he does these terrible crimes this was enough for the administrators to launch an investigation into swango's month-long spree of malice finally which cleared the young doctor of any wrongdoing how how they asked him to take the rest of the week off then shifted him to another wing perfect problem solved uh the only real repercussions were that swanger was placed under increased observation for the last few months of his residency and was told they wouldn't be keeping him on afterwards the increased scrutiny did nothing to deter him in fact this is when his patients started deteriorating or dying at an even more alarming rate than before he was just taking out his frustration on the people that he was supposed to protect donuts of death somehow despite his gross incompetence and alarming kill count swango just kept swanning into medical positions without any issues after his internship finished he worked as an ambulance emt in adams county it didn't take long until his colleagues got sick of him like pretty much everyone else in his professional life it might have had something to do with his questionable social skills for example one of his old colleagues brent unmessig recalled how swango once described his perfect accident a school bus crashing with a petrol tanker spreading charred bodies over the road it's a bit of a conversation killer yeah my dude what is wrong with you it's like yeah yeah the perfect accident loads of children dying from horrible burns and traumatic injuries you're a doctor mike in october he tried to make amends for all this uncomfortable weirdness swango brought in a peace offering of coffee and donuts for five of his colleagues you could probably guess what happened next the entire crew fell violently ill by the time they figured out why the remaining donuts were gone still it didn't take a genius to crack the case all they needed was some evidence isn't circumstantial evidence enough at some point i mean do you really need a donut to prove that eating all the donuts made you sick really still go search his home and find the poison doughnut making kit or whatever when swango was out on a call later that week they forced open his locker smart and inside were two bottles of ant poison and a handful of syringes after swanger was arrested detectives found a stockpile of these poisons at his house including copious amounts of arsenic when the news broke the nurses at his old internship collectively shouted told you so yeah guys how about you did something about it i mean i guess they they they wanted to or was that the nurses in zimbabwe they should have done something about it everyone should have done something about it way earlier than now and the hospital was torn to shreds for ignoring the potential poisoner on their payroll still the worst of his crimes all the horrible murder stuff remained undetected what do you think he was doing with those syringes swango was sentenced to five years for aggravated battery not long enough but at least there's some curriculum mortae a stretch of deal time for poisoning should be enough to exclude someone from medical work forever and sure michael michael suango lost his cupboardhead license to kill and or cure but it only took a bit of ingenuity to get right back in the game his talent for forgery and fraudment that he continued a brazen campaign of poisoning and murder throughout the late 80s and 90s here's how his resume from those days reads counselor career advice center virginia 1989. after serving just two years of his sentence no god again wtf uh swango left prison behind and took on work as a career advice counselor in virginia his own career was going so damn well after all dude you just got out of prison the last thing i want a career counselor to be is someone who just got out of jail it's like you went to jail for a battery no i don't i don't need your advice on what i should be doing with my life however he was fired at the end of the year when his bosses discovered he was sleeping in the basement and working on his tragedy scrapbooks on company time shortly after he met his future fiance nurse kristin kinney who broke off an engagement to get together with him swango himself had recently married his university sweetheart but it would only last a short while why would anyone marry this dude he doesn't seem to have any social skills he smells bad like why why he was in jail i mean obviously that sounds bad people who've been to jail and stuff obviously live reformed lives but we know this guy is not reformed and we know he should have been in jail for a much longer time alright i don't think he's exactly what you'd describe as a catch is tru is what i'm trying to say here next lab technician at ati cole virginia 1989-1991 some employees reported mysteriously falling sick with stomach pains and dizziness during his time there the mysterious illnesses got progressively worse one of the executives nearly slipped into a coma in the hospital nobody ever traced the cause back to the disgraced md meanwhile at coal services several employees including the president of the company began suffering from sudden belts of severe stomach cramping nausea dizziness and muscle weakness some of them were hospitalized and one of the executives of the company was nearly comatose poisoning was fun and all but dublo swango was desperate to get back into the field after leaving the lab tag job he divorced his wife shacked up with kinney and set his sights on regaining his license dude you were imprisoned for battery on your patience good luck with that although somehow i get the feeling he's going to get it back which cause just given how this episode's gone so far and given how hit everything is it's just gonna be like he's getting that license back isn't he jesus i hope not resident doctor god he did resident doctor sanford usd medical center's house to go to 1992. mike legally changed his name to daniel j adams and started seeking out a fresh medical license in a new state his employers were under the impression thanks to the forged prison documents and a fake letter from virginia's governor that he was only locked up for six months for fist fighting with a colleague a misdemeanor rather than a felony just like that dr death was back treating patients i don't think you just change your name that's it it's like easily untraceable if you change your name surely not there's gonna be some sort of paper trail it's 1992. really really it was then that he made the acquaintance of a 60 year old carpeter baron harris he came in with a simple case of pneumonia but slipped into a coma overnight his wife claimed swango injected him with an unknown sedative in the small as of the morning when he asked the doctor about her husband's death he put on his trademark psychopathic smile and replied i hope it wasn't anything we did why it's because you know you're gonna get away with it because you've gotten away with it forever ah baron died less than two months later mike starring role justice falls 1993. on thanksgiving day the discovery channel aired a episode of this popular true crime show the staff at stanford usd recognized a familiar face in the segment on a certain convicted poisoner it was the guy currently mixing up medicines to inject into their patients this episode was released around the same time as a background check from the american medical association came to light esswango had tried to join them earlier that year how is that you're not doing a more thorough background check when you hire a doctor at a hospital i feel like that you know places there should be thorough background checks primary schools schools in general hospitals like places where there are places where there are people at risk like children and sick people who are placing trusted doctors gay together establishments they weren't the only ones shocked by the horrific track record swang's fiance also had no idea about the nature and severity of his crimes she threatened to leave him and then over the next few months she started suffering from the same chronic migraines and nausea at one point a policeman found her wandering the streets naked and confused when she eventually ran away to her mother's place in april 1993 her strange ailment stopped shocking unfortunately though her abuser showed up to take her back just a few days later my dude like no don't go with him don't go with him please please i know this is so complicated because there's all sorts of psychological stuff going on there but just don't hey resident doctor new york state university medical school 1994. so crazy but so crazy he's now a resident doctor again and he was literally caught by like whatever this catching people show is on discovery god damn wait this career quite deservedly in ruin swango dropped off the radar for a while before landing this job on the east coast kinney was to stay behind in virginia until he got himself established at first he was poised posted in a veterans affair clinic in northport a few months into this placement swango was short of fun so he selfishly emptied out his partner's bank account and called to let her know this would be the last time he ever spoke to her a few days later christine killed herself shot herself in the chest the mental stress of her his betrayals must have been too much to bear nothing sad this would prove to be dr death's undoing because the young woman's grieving mother went on the warpath before kristen committed suicide she'd revealed where her ex-lover had disappeared to and so swango was once again outed as a fraud when the mother reported him to the medical authorities he was immediately dismissed and when the story reached the press the deans of both colleges which hired him soon followed good because they should have been doing some sort of checking it's insane that there is not any level of checking why the new york state university dean's last acting post was to send out a mass warning to every single teaching hospital and med school from coast to coast double suango was now finally blackboard from the profession in america that is fugitive on the fbi various on the run various locations 1994 to 1996. shortly after swango landed back on the unemployment line the fbi announced that they had a warrant for his arrest he was wanted on suspicion of using fake credentials to enter the government-run va hospital a federal crime let's get him on something just get him on something like the tax evasion in al capone just get him on something and get him in prison he went on the run and then managed to track him down to a water treatment plant in atlanta by the time they kicked the door down he had already slipped away and you know where the story goes from there on the road again it would be years before the fbi could pick up the trail again halfway across the world in the last place they expected to find their man yep we're back in zimbabwe but you know who isn't michael swango in late 1996 the doctor sensed that his time was running out the local police were looking to charge him with pouring the sugar into his landlady's car so he fled across the border to zambia we don't know much about what he got up to there but we think we can quite easily fill in the blanks bit of fraud bit of poisoning couple of murders etc etc swango was a compulsive killer who rarely changed his methods who knows how many more lives he ruined in the last months on the run it's believed that he set up for a time in namibia once again walking into medical jobs in a country which was desperate for doctors the fbi issued renewed appeals for information and sent out warnings to all ports of entry in the usa in case the doctor tried to return to home soil that's it doesn't seem very likely does it just gotta fly home to a country with like a fbi like fbi know what's up it's not like regular police they're gonna you know you walk in those borders they're gonna be like mike mike what's up come with me please you're in big trouble lad but nothing came in the trail was going cold once again for a time it looked like michael swango might have slipped through the authority's fingers forever that was until a man was stopped at chicago's o'hare airport in march 1997. wait he did return really amazingly swango just walked right into the net willingly while trying to transit through chicago on his way to saudi arabia using the same old tricks he had recently landed a medical job there thankfully for the people in the middle east dr death's killing spree would be cut short at just four countries and two continents well one that's crazy but also what are you doing transiting through chicago on the way from zimbabwe to saudi arabia did you really need to go across the atlantic twice it's very bizarre although maybe he didn't know he just bought a cheap flight and he gets on the plane and it's can you imagine he gets on the plane and they're like okay we'll be shortly arriving in chicago before the plane then you know before we move to saudi arabia he's like oh god oh uh oh uh-oh what america no the federal ford charges against him were extremely strong with the extensive paper trail of forgeries that he left behind it wasn't exactly difficult to put together a convincing case and swango was sent behind bars once again so how much time are we talking surely after potentially killing no but it's not going to be much time because it's just like i mean fraud as obviously and this is like terrible fraud where he's like getting medical jobs this isn't i mean like i bernie made off fraud and [ __ ] where millions of people or billion lose billions of dollars or whatever happened there it's like yeah that's bad unquestionably bad he definitely deserves a lot of time in prison but this is this is worse right because he's like killing people he's like getting medical jobs and murdering people i feel like this should be a long time even though it just seems to be not murder charges surely after potentially killing dozens of patients not what he's on trial for he was due a hefty stretch of prison time you'd think so but at this point the poisonings were still just suspicions the only thing the fbi could prove was fraud so that's what swango went down on his sentence was amiga 3.5 years handed out in july 1998. the judge stipulated that he wasn't allowed to work anywhere near the prison kitchens or clinic for the duration of his sentence although at this point i wouldn't have been surprised if he was running the infirmary by the end of it yeah because this is just the craziest story of never-ending incompetence justice finally served it'd be pretty anti-climactic to end the story if swango just served a short little sentence then went on to live the rest of his life as a free man so thankfully the fbi weren't just sitting on their hands while he was on the inside the investigation started properly looking into all the similar claims from throughout the years claims which revealed a trail of destruction that was glaringly apparent in retrospect proper autopsies were finally carried out on some of his victims revealing trace amounts of poison still in their systems through witness testimony and lab testing the prosecutors painted a picture of a cold and calculating psychopath fond of paralyzing his victims and watching the life slip out of them among their evidence were some of his notebooks seized from a storage locker in which he described the pleasure that he got from killing we're here again writing down the crimes every when casual criminalist gets merch the the my i'm already looking forward to the don't write down your crimes t-shirts it's just like crime 101 guys don't write that [ __ ] down come on come on now today i derived great pleasure from many murders that's an error swango was once again set for early release in july of 2000 so after two years but the promise of freedom was snatched away from him at the very last moment just one week before the end of his sentence the fbi swooped in and slapped him with three murder charges uh oh that's more than three years and one count each of assault making false statements mail fraud and attempted wire fraud back to jail it was then i mean like just i mean three murder charges you're going away forever do we really need to have like wire fraud mail fraud it's like we got murder guys murders what you wanted all along isn't it dr death pled guilty on all charges including emotionlessly admit emotionlessly admitting to killing the teenager cynthia mcgee all those years ago she would have been well into her 30s by then perhaps with a family of her own it wasn't remorse that inspired swank's honesty but fear pleading guilty allowed him to avoid the threat of extradition to zimbabwe where prosecutors had just filed their own set of charges seven poisonings and five murders in terms of bare quantity it was probably best to go down on three murders rather than five dude anyway you're in prison forever three murders i mean i know there are some like northern european countries that they're like they have the maximum sentence so like you have to be released like does that i swear is it is it like anders breivik the guy who was like killed all those people in that crazy massacre in was it norway he's gonna get out of prison one day because they have some maximum cap or something like that is that right or is he under some psychological thing where there's like theoretically a cap but it'll actually be in there forever because they'll never allow him they'll never say that he's competent to leave or something like that but they do have these maximum sentences but but you know you know where they don't have that the united states of america you can go to prison forever and in this situation that's fantastic especially since the discovery of a white foreign doctor essentially executing impoverished locals was going to go down about as well as you might expect the death penalty was very much on the cards there oh okay so they do have the death penalty or did however the justice department in harare agreed not to pursue extradition so long as swango pled guilty and spent the rest of his life behind bars so that's exactly what he got the good doctor is currently safe and sound in his home country serving three consecutive life sentences at adx florence supermax prison colorado i made a video about adx florence on my channel um geographics and i think he's got a company like that the the boston marathon bomber i think's there uh ted kaczynski the unabombers there it's that in great company with all these other horrible horrible people hardly a satisfying conclusion given the amount of families out there left devastated by his crimes and even worse forever left without the closure of knowing the truth about what really happened to their loved ones yeah i mean if this is what we caught this dude on he's gonna be he did a whole lot worse for sure and allegedly he's in prison forever what's he going to do sue me allegedly though just in case allegedly um i'd say i don't know unless you believe like very much in the death penalty which you know i'm not i i don't know where i fall on this i don't want to have this very one-person debate in meme alone here about what my feelings are on the death penalty but i don't know if you don't believe in the death penalty this is exactly the outcome you want you want him in a massive scary supermax prison in the middle of nowhere forever i'd say that is a satisfying conclusion i mean obviously it'd be better if he never committed his crimes but seeing as he did this seems pretty okay wrap up that brings us to the end of the sickening story of dr michael swango the last person you'd want to see hovering over your hospital bed but there's one last question to answer just how many people did he kill i haven't been very precise on the numbers throughout and there's a good reason for that we don't really know any precise numbers as i mentioned at the beginning there's a good chance he may be among the worst killers in u.s history even though nine or more killings happened abroad all in all despite only being convicted of three murders dublo swango could possibly be responsible for as many as 60 deaths we can arrive at that estimate by looking back through his history and identifying unexplained uh or unexpected deaths which occurred under his care from medical school until his capture it's often impossible to say with certainty though because his methods could be so subtle killing patients with drugs they were already taking anyway at any rate is fair to say michael swango earned the doctor death nickname but how does he stack up against the prior title holder if you cast your mind back to episode 2 you'll remember that the uk's harold shipman racked up a potential 250 victims of course i'm not saying it's a competition that would be sick but if it were we would win mccallum are you saying like uk versus us we have the best doctor serial killer brilliant just saying dismembered appendices number one as part of their investigation into swango the fbi raided a storage lottery rented in virginia inside they found stacks of his macabre scrapbooks a perfectly tied noose and stockpiles of military gear and ammunition potentially collected during his time with the marines i thought he got rejected from the marines but given his genocidal fascinations this made him pretty worried about what might happen if he was set free before the murder charges were served probably a good thing they never let his imprisonment lapse yes the one thing we didn't want to like a week before like fbi or like murder charges murder charges be like don't do it a week after definitely a week before number two the family of one of the victims succeeded in suing the doctor long before he was ever tried for murder in 1984 in the hospital in ohio 21 year old ricky delong was found dead with a lump of gauze stuffed down his throat it was ruled a homicide at the time and ricky's pair has successfully sued swango for the death in 1986 which once again begs the question how the hell did he get away with it for so long yeah that's just straight murder i mean the regular suspect murder as well but you're like that's like not even subtle with the drugs just like yeah just choke him to death like a regular crazy murderer number three swanger tried to whip up some public sympathy after poisoning his fellow paramedics in 1984. he even had the gall to request a tv interview with abc journalist john stassel while behind bars in it he maintained that he was completely innocent of any wrongful deaths or illnesses despite knowing himself that there were dozens more victims left undiscovered and also he admitted it previously anyway that's where we end today's extremely dark episode i hope you enjoyed it i always feel weird but i hope you found it interesting um if you did and you're listening to this as a podcast please do consider leaving a review wherever you listen to your podcasts if it's apple that's even better because then i get up the charts spotify doesn't have reviews so that's that thanks for listening on spotify and just enjoying it you didn't have to do anything just thanks for listening and uh if you're watching this on youtube hello and please like subscribe comment if you fancy it and i'll see you next time oh hey if you've got requests i look at the comments on youtube for the videos so have a look below if you're watching on youtube or if you're listening why not head over to youtube and you can suggest people below and you can also thumbs up the ones you like and those are the ones i'll probably see more of and more likely to make because i know people want them one thing i will say is don't list a whole bunch of people because then people will thumbs up for one of the people in your list and i won't know like they might not all be great suggestions that everyone loves so individual suggestions that's all and it's too complicated but thank you for watching [Music] you

Channel: The Casual Criminalist

Views: 337,953

Keywords: true crime

Id: vX1LvBZF8xU

Length: 50min 3sec (3003 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 16 2021