Fiendish Killers

by Anne Williams

  twenty-five years later

  Twenty-five years after MacDonald was convicted of murder, Bernie Segal is still frustrated with the outcome of the case. He is convinced the trial was corrupt and that vital evidence was either lost or withheld from the defence. The courts chose not to believe the evidence of Helena Stoeckley even though the details she gave to the police could be corroborated. For example, she said she had tried to ride a rocking horse at the MacDonald house on the night of the murders, but the spring was broken. The only people who knew about that spring was the MacDonald family so it was not something she could have fabricated.

  Forty-four-year-old Kathryn married Jeffrey MacDonald on August 30, 2002, after reading his story and writing to him in prison. Three times a week she makes the long drive to visit her husband at the Cumberland Federal Prison in Maryland. With a new life waiting for him outside, MacDonald applied for parole. With the help of his loyal wife, MacDonald continues to fight and he still says that he knows one day he will be free. MacDonald will be eligible to reapply for parole in 2020 when he will be seventy-six years old.

  Whether or not MacDonald was a fiendish killer or not will always be a matter of contention, but regardless of that his story still makes very interesting reading.

  Doctor Michael Swango

  Michael Joseph Swango, could be described as the ‘Doctor of Death’, because he was suspected of administering lethal injections to as many as thirty-five of his patients between 1983 and 1997. Swango was well aware of his good looks, popularity and charisma, all of which he used to his advantage to cover a web of lies and suspicious operations.

  early signs

  Michael Swango studied medicine at Southern Illinois University, and it was here that the early signs of his macabre nature started to show. Many of his fellow students described him as being ‘nuts’ as the demanding workload forced them to work in close proximity with each other. Despite being a bright pupil, Swango was lazy and lacked the enthusiasm of the other students. He found the written part of his course a breeze, but when it came to the practical side he struggled even to identify the position of a human heart. On one occasion, when he was required to dissect a cadaver, he made such a mess of it that he became the laughing stock of the class. Swango seemed to be unaffected by this ridicule and let it ride over him.

  Two other traits manifested themselves during his training. One was a complete lack of bedside manner and the other was a morbid interest in death. He seemed to show an abnormal curiosity in any terminally ill patients and, as soon as they passed away, he used to scratch ‘DIED’ across their charts in large red letters. While attending university, Swango worked for the Ambulance Service and, even though it meant he missed out on valuable study time, it gave him a chance to see the blood and gore the job afforded. The sight of blood seemed to excite him and he loved nothing better than to try and prise loose unfortunate victims of road accidents.

  During his last year at university, Swango’s father died and, although he was never close to the man he decided to do the honourable thing and attend his funeral. At the graveside his mother handed Swango a scrapbook, which his father had kept showing the world’s worst disasters. Swango was fascinated and thumbed through the pages in delight, exclaiming, ‘Hell, I guess Dad wasn’t such a bad guy after all.’

  Inspired by what his father had done, Swango continued to scour the papers for any interesting articles that went into gory details and added more pages to the scrapbook.

  Swango failed to graduate with the rest of his class in 1982, and was forced to retake some of his course work. Despite a poor recommendation from Southern Illinois University, Swango managed to get a surgical internship at Ohio State University. The university had a reputation for its professionalism and it soon became obvious to Swango’s superiors that he wasn’t really competent to practise medicine. He had a brusque bedside manner and seemed to be indifferent to his patient’s feelings. His fellow interns described him as strange and wondered whether he was ever really paying attention to what was being taught.

  unethical practises

  On January 31, 1984, Swango walked into the room of a neurosurgery patient by the name of Ruth Barrick. He was supposed to check her intravenous drip, but the attending nurse wondered why an intern was making the check so late in the morning, something which was normally carried out by a doctor. Against her better judgement, the nurse left Swango on his own as he had requested. She returned to the room about twenty minutes later to find Swango gone and the patient turning blue and gasping for breath. The nurse called the emergency team, who were able to resuscitate her and she made a full recovery. The hospital physicians, how-ever, were puzzled as to what had caused such an unexpected respiratory failure.

  The following week, another nurse noticed an unsual reading on the gauge of an intravenous tube. She called a doctor to check it and Swango answered the call. He asked the nurse to leave him with the patient, but when she was concerned about the amount of time he was taking, she went back inside the room to see if there was a problem. Swango told her abruptly that there was no problem and seemed to be angry at the interruption. When Swango finally left the room, the nurse went back in to check the dressing that she had applied earlier. The patient was gasping for breath and, despite emergency treatment, did not recover. While the team tried to resuscitate the patient, Swango merely stood at the base of the bed doing nothing, seemingly totally unaffected by the whole thing.

  Twenty-four hours later, nurse Beery was doing her rounds and went into a room to check one of her elderly patients who was recovering from an operation. When she opened the door, she saw an intern injecting something into the patient’s intravenous tube with a syringe. At first Beery assumed that he was attending to a blockage in the tube, which wasn’t abnormal and when Swango realised he was being watched he quickly left the room. Within minutes the patient was shaking uncontrollably and turning blue. The emergency team were able to save her life and as soon as she was strong enough she motioned for a notebook and pencil. She wrote: ‘Someone gave me some med in my IV and paralyzed all of me, lungs, heart, speech.’ When she was able to speak she was able to describe the intern as being tall and blond, a perfect description of Swango. Swango denied having been anywhere near the room, but there were nurses on the floor who were convinced that they had seen him darting out of a lavatory just down the corridor. When one of the nurses went to check the lavatory, she found a syringe that had recently been washed out and wrapped in a piece of tissue.

  With the recent rise in the number of deaths, and the suspicions of several nurses, the staff decided it was time to present their misgivings to the Neurosurgery Professor, Joseph Goodman. However, Goodman wanted to maintain the reputation of the university and only a superficial investigation was carried out. Although he read the reports, the professor never interviewed any of the nurses or the emergency teams who carried out the resuscitations. Swango was considered to be a victim of the staff’s paranoia, and he was taken off probation with full intern privileges.

  The gossip had barely died down, when Swango was transferred to Doan Hall to work surgery rotation. It wasn’t long before another series of mysterious deaths occurred. One patient bled profusely from all her body orifices following an examination by Swango. A twenty-two-year-old woman who was recovering from a simple operation, died after Swango gave her injection as he so politely put it ‘to increase her blood pressure’.

  Putting the suspicious deaths aside, the medical review committee ruled Swango’s performance as ‘poor’ and they failed to offer him a position as a resident physician. Swango was angry when he left the university at the conclusion of his internship in June, and decided to return to Quincy, Illinois. He told his family that he had been the victim of a personality clash with his superiors and he set about seeking another position.

  a second chance

  Back on old territory, Swango managed to get a job with the Adams County Ambulance Corps. Unaware of his backgroun
d, his new employers felt they had gained a real asset to their team, especially with all his medical knowledge. Working twenty-four hour shifts the ambulance teams spent a lot of time in each other’s company and soon formed close friendships bonded by dedication to their job. All, that is, with the exception of the new recruit, who simply didn’t fit in with the rest of the team. Swango quite openly admitted that he was turned on by violence and he started telling stories about his fantasies. Everyone thought he was just a talented ‘crank’ who made up stories to get attention – that is until the incident with the doughnuts.

  The members of the ambulance team used to take it in turns to bring in treats such as biscuits or cakes to have with their coffee. On this particular morning in September, it was Swango’s turn and he brought in an assortment of freshly baked doughnuts. The other four paramedics on duty were delighted and ate them straight away, but within an hour they were to regret being so greedy. One after another they started to complain of stomach cramps, nausea and dizziness, and then they started to vomit and each one had to go home. No one had noticed that Swango was the only one who hadn’t eaten any of the treats.

  The following evening Swango was on duty with a fellow medic when he said he was thirsty and said he was going to buy himself a cola. His co-worker asked if he would get him one as well but after drinking about half the bottle, the medic had to return home complaining of a headache, nausea and dizziness, which lasted for three days.

  Swango immediately became a suspect, and none of his fellow workmates would eat or drink anything that he had touched. Except for one relatively new paramedic who made the mistake of accepting a can of soda from Swango.

  trapped in his own web

  After the latest episode, Swango’s workmates decided to check out the bag that he always carried to work. As soon as Swango was called out on duty, they forced his locker open and rifled through his bag. Inside they found a box of ant poison, which, according to the label, was comprised mainly of arsenic. Aware that they had all been the subjects of poisoning, his colleagues set a trap. The men left a freshly brewed pot of iced tea on the counter when they knew Swango would be on his own.

  When they returned, Swango was no longer around and the men took a sample of the liquid to the local coroner, who arranged for it to be tested. Sure enough it contained traces of arsenic.

  When the sheriff searched Swango’s apartment, amid all the mess he found vials, bottles, syringes and other medical equipment, alongside numerous bottles of chemicals which they suspected to be poison or poisonous compounds. There were several recipes for poisons and the police also found a stash of handguns and a range of knives.

  Swango was arrested and his trial opened on April 22, 1985. It didn’t take too much investigative work for the prosecution to uncover Swango’s dodgy medical past, and at the end of the trial the jury came back with a unanimous guilty verdict. As the judge read out his sentence he turned to the prisoner and said:

  It’s clearly obvious to me that every man, woman and child in this community or anywhere else that you might go is in jeopardy as long as you are a free man . . . You deserve the maximum under the law because there is no excuse for what you have done.

  Despite the severity of Swango’s crimes he was only given a five-year sentence to be served at the Centralia Correctional Center in Illinois and his licence to practise medicine in Illinois was revoked.

  not the end of the story

  Swango was released from prison for good behaviour on August 21, 1987, after having only served two years of his sentence. His name had long since left the headlines, but to be on the safe side he decided to put miles between himself and Illinois. Swango moved to Newport News in Virginia, but when he applied for a medical licence, his past caught up with him and he was turned down. His first job at a Career Development Center was brief, as his employers felt he spent far too much time on his peculiar habit of adding pages to his weird scrapbook. From there he obtained a position as a laboratory technician at Aticoal Services, a company responsible for exporting coal. He seemed to fare better in this position and, although his co-workers thought he was a little strange, they were quite prepared to sit and have lunch with him. A big mistake, however, when several of his colleagues fell ill and almost died from severe ‘food poisoning’.

  kristin kinney

  Swango was desperate to get back into the medical profession, but his past record was holding him back. When he first met the attractive, red-haired, twenty-six-year-old, Kristin Kinney, she was engaged to a doctor at Newport News’ Riverside Hospital. Swango was taking a refresher course at the hospital and at first their relationship was purely on a platonic level. Many of Kristin’s friends tried to dissuade her from having a friendship with Swango, as it was common knowledge he had been turned down by the hospital because of some past scandal. Kristin just laughed it off and said they were being unfair.

  Swango continued to apply for medical posts around the country and his diligence paid off when he received a letter in September 1991 from the University of South Dakota. When Swango phoned Dr Anthony Salem, he was congratulated on his excellent CV but asked him to clarify certain episodes he had mentioned in his covering letter. Swango lied and said he had become involved in an unsightly brawl in a bar and had been arrested for battery. Salem said he was impressed with his honesty and invited Swango to come for an interview. Kristin kissed Swango goodbye and wished him luck as he waited for the plane on October 3.

  The interview was held in front of a number of resident internists, who centred their questions on his medical background, but ironically no one bought up the matter of his criminal record. Although many of the interviewers felt there was something not quite right about Swango, his name remained on their shortlist and by June 1992 he was offered a residency.

  To celebrate, Swango proposed to Kristin, who had long since broken off her previous engagement. She accepted his proposal and they planned to move in together in Sioux Falls. Kristin was hired as a nurse at a memorial hospital and she was looking forward to a bright future, despite the continued warnings of her friends and family.

  At first it appears as though their misapprehensions were unfounded, as Swango soon proved himself to be one of the best emergency-situation doctors the hospital had ever had. Kristin made a difference with her bright, attentive personality and very soon the couple were popular and envied by many in their field. However, by October 1992, Swango became far too cocksure and applied for membership in the American Medical Association (AMA), despite the fact that he had obtained his internship under false pretences. For some reason Swango must have assumed that they wouldn’t check his credentials, but this is where he was wrong.

  While the hospital were learning that their talented doctor was not what he appeared, Kristin and some of her colleagues watched a television programme about a doctor who had intentionally infected his workmates with poisoned doughnuts. Kristin was devastated and Swango, who by this time had been dismissed from his post, was in no frame of mind to pacify his girlfriend. Swango ranted and raved that he had been the subject of a set-up, but never once comforted Kristin, leaving her feeling rejected.

  Some of Kristin’s friends at the hospital tried to show their support by inviting her and Swango to a party. However, Kristin noticed that the host followed Swango from room to room and watched him closely whenever he went near the food.

  Kristin started suffering from debilitating headaches. At first she put them down to tension, but as they continued she couldn’t put the niggling thought of her mind that Swango might be putting poison in her food. Using her intuition as a nurse, she decided to get away from Swango and returned to live with her mother in Illinois, where miraculously the headaches stopped. In her heart she wanted to believe that Swango was innocent because she continued to love him despite her suspicions. In the end her emotions got the better of her and Kristin took her own life, leaving a note for Swango saying:

  I love you more! You’re the most prec
ious man I’ve ever known. Love KK

  moving on

  With Kristin gone, Swango concentrated on himself and successfully acquired yet another medical post in the State University of New York. When the matter of his past conviction was raised yet again, Swango used the old guise of a bar room fight and then produced a forged pardon. Once again no one bothered to check whether Swango actually had a practising licence – had they done so they would have realised they were hiring a fraud. Instead, they offered him a position with the Veterans Administration complex on Northport, Long Island.

  Swango was back to his old tricks on the very first evening, when a man who had come into the hospital with a mild dose of pneumonia, mysteriously died after being attended by the new doctor. One by one elderly patients started dying of heart failure when they had appeared relatively healthy just hours before.

  Suspicions reached a height when the wife of an elderly patient, Barron Harris, found Swango in his room with the light off, injecting something into her husband’s neck. When she asked Swango what he was giving her husband, he replied dismissively, ‘vitamins’ and hurried out of the room. When Mrs Harris asked one of the nurses about the injection, the nurse looked shocked and replied, ‘Doctors don’t give shots. That’s what we’re supposed to do.’