When Doctors Kill: Who, Why, and How
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fire. Soon after his conviction, Sheppard twice received devastating family news.
On January 7, 1955, his mother shot herself; 11 days later, his father died of cancer.
In both cases, he was permitted to attend the funerals but was required to wear handcuffs.
After more than 6 years of appeals, Sheppard’s attorney died in 1961. Months later, F. Lee Bailey took over as Sheppard’s chief counsel and proved his mettle as an extremely skillful defense counsel. Sheppard served 10 years of his sentence while several appeals were rejected. Finally, his petition for a writ of habeas corpus (a legal action through which a person can seek relief from unlawful detention) was granted by Judge Carl Weinman, the Chief Judge of the United States District Court of Ohio on July 15, 1964. He ordered the state of Ohio either to free Sheppard or to grant him a new trial. Judge Weinman’s decision discussed in great detail the improprieties of the law enforcement authorities and the lower court judge in the investigation and trial of Sam Sheppard. Without addressing the question of guilt or innocence, he carefully documented the inflammatory, pervasive and biased nature of the local newspapers and Cleveland Press that likely affected the outcome of the investigation and ultimately the jury’s decision at trial. Judge Weinman The Fugitive
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supported his conclusions with extensive quotations from newspaper articles and cited in detail the following discussion between Dorothy Kilgalen, a well-known journalist, and Judge Blythin who presided over the trial:
She stated that on, what was to the best of her recollection, the first day of trial, someone told her that Judge Blythin would like to see her in Chambers. The following is Miss Kilgallen’s statement regarding her conversation with the judge: He was very affable. He shook hands with me and said, ‘I am very glad to see you, Miss Kilgallen.
I watch you on television very frequently and enjoy the program.’ And he said, ‘But what brings you to Cleveland?’ And I said, ‘Well, your Honor, this trial.’ And he said,
‘But why come all the way from New York to Cleveland to cover this trial?’ And I said,
‘Well, it has all the ingredients of what in newspaper business we call a good murder.
It has a very attractive victim, who was pregnant, and the accused is a very important member of the community, a respectable, very attractive man.’ And I said, ‘Then added to that, you have the fact that it is a mystery as to who did it.’ And Judge Blythin said,
‘Mystery? It’s an open and shut case.’ And I said, ‘Well, what do you mean, Judge Blythin?’ I was a little taken aback because usually, I have talked to many judges in their chambers, but usually they don’t give me an opinion on a case before it’s over. And so I said, ‘What do you mean Judge Blythin?’ And he said, ‘Well, he is guilty as hell.
There is no question about it.’
Judge Weinman concluded that the Sheppard trial had been “a mockery of justice”
because of numerous legal flaws. There was no way Sheppard could have had a fair trial since the jury had been prejudiced by the media and the judge presiding over the trial had convicted him prior to the opening arguments.
On June 6, 1966 the U.S. Supreme Court held that Sheppard’s conviction was the result of a clearly unfair trial in which the defendant was denied due process, that a “carnival atmosphere” had permeated the trial, and that the trial judge had refused to sequester the jury or order them to ignore and disregard media reports of the case. The Justices’ opinion accepted Dorothy Kilgallen’s claim that the judge had told her on the very first day of trial that Sheppard was “guilty as hell” and the defense’s contention that Coroner Gerber had said on the morning of the crime,
“Well, men, it is evident the doctor did this, so let’s go get the confession out of him.” The Supreme Court instructed “that Sheppard be released from custody unless the state puts him to its charges again within a reasonable time.” Therefore, the State of Ohio put Dr. Sam Sheppard on trial again on November 1, 1966. The prosecutor’s brief opening statement was notable for what he did not mention – no faked injuries, no “surgical instrument,” and no talk of affairs or impending divorce.
It was during this trial that Paul Kirk, a well-known criminologist, presented blood spatter evidence he collected in Sheppard’s home in 1955 which proved crucial to his eventual acquittal. He further contended that Marilyn had broken two teeth when she bit the assailant and that Sheppard did not have any bite marks. He also documented that some of the blood on the stairs could not have been from Marilyn but had to be from the fleeing assailant (a claim later verified by DNA fingerprinting).
Following new federal guidelines, the jury was sequestered for the duration of the trial, their phone calls were monitored, and their newspapers were censored.
No television cameras were allowed in the courtroom and seating for news reporters was markedly restricted. The trial concluded in a matter of days with a unanimous verdict of “not guilty.”
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4 America’s Contribution to Medical Mayhem
Sam Sheppard was again a free man but obviously not the successful doctor who had gone to jail 12 years before. A 2 year attempt to return to medical practice failed after he was sued by two patients for malpractice. Later, Sheppard briefly worked as a professional wrestler, going by the ring name “The Killer”. Just 6 months before his death, Sheppard married his wrestling partner’s 20-year-old daughter. He died on April 6, 1970 of liver failure due to chronic alcoholism 4 years after his release from prison. Sam Sheppard never was a free man after all.
Years later, aided by a Supreme Court ruling that required prosecutors to disclose exculpatory evidence, police records that were suppressed in the 1954 and 1966 trials were made available to Sam R. Sheppard, the doctor’s son. Among the evidence collected by the police in 1954 was a plaster impression of a freshly made pry mark found on the basement door of the Sheppard house with a copy of a detective’s report describing evidence of forced entry with a wedge-like tool.
Given that the prosecution’s case against Sam Sheppard was based, to a great extent, on the lack of evidence of forcible entry into the home, this disclosure would have been critical during the initial trial. More significantly, a wood chip from the Sheppards’ stairway with blood on it was made available for examination.
It was recovered from a trail of blood leading from the bedroom to the main floor and down the basement steps. Prosecutors assumed it was Marilyn’s blood that had dripped from the murder weapon. However in 1997, DNA testing determined that the blood on the stairway was not Marilyn’s. Rather, it was consistent with Richard Eberling’s DNA, a window-washer for the Sheppards. When questioned, Eberling told authorities he had dripped blood on the Sheppards’ steps 2 days before the murder when he had accidentally cut himself. However, a former employee of Eberling’s, Vern Lund, had since testified that he washed thes’ windows on July 2, not Eberling. Another former employee, Ed Wilbert, told of the hostile feelings Eberling had for Marilyn because she had caught him stealing and threatened to spread the word. He was arrested by authorities in 1959, 5 years after the murder, with Marilyn’s ring in his possession. Eberling’s history suggests periods of psychotic anger in association with a string of suspicious deaths, culminating with his arrest and conviction for the murder of an elderly woman in 1989. His fellow inmates have recounted Eberling’s admission that he killed Marilyn Sheppard, wearing a bushy wig to cover his premature baldness and to avoid recognition. He said that when Dr. Sheppard came to her aid, he knocked him out twice. He may have been telling the truth – or he may have been trying to increase his stature in the prison hierarchy.
Some experts still vehemently deny Sheppard’s innocence but their arguments are not watertight. Although there are still many unanswered questions, given the recently released exculpatory evidence and the newly available DNA analysis, it would be a stretch to conclude that Dr. Sheppard was “guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.” Armed with this new evidence, Sam R. Shep
pard sued the state of Ohio for wrongful imprisonment. He not only wanted his father to be considered not guilty, he sought a proclamation of innocence. To his dismay, the jury denied his claim.
Dr. Poison
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Dr. Poison
Between 1984 and 1997, Dr. Michael Swango (nicknamed “Dr. Poison”) of Tacoma, Washington, became one of America’s most prolific serial killers. Over that time span, he likely killed between 30 and 60 patients both in the United States and Africa by poisoning them with arsenic. Swango graduated from the Southern Illinois University Medical School in April 1983 and was admitted into the internship program at the Ohio State University Hospital that July. While working as an intern he murdered Cynthia McGee by injecting her with a lethal dose of potassium in January 1984. One month later, Swango assaulted another patient by injecting her with poison but she survived the attack. After suspecting him of the latter crime, the hospital removed him from the residency program and the Ohio authorities began a covert murder investigation. No charges were filed and Swango left the state, leaving his past behind him. In 1985, Dr. Swango started working at the Adams County, Illinois, Ambulance Service as an emergency medical technician. While there he poisoned several of his co-workers with arsenic. He was arrested for aggravated battery and subsequently sentenced to 5 years in prison.
In 1992, after he falsified facts about his prior criminal conviction, he was hired by the University of South Dakota and assigned to work as a resident at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Sioux Falls. However he was promptly discharged from the program after hospital administrators became aware of his criminal record. A year later, Swango applied for and obtained a position at the State University of Stony Brook Medical School which ran a residency program at the Northport VA Medical Center. During the application process, he explained that his criminal conviction in Illinois stemmed from a barroom brawl. Once on the job, Swango murdered three patients by injecting them with toxic substances. Swango also injected poison into another hospital patient who fortunately survived the incident. In October 1993, Dr. Swango was discharged from his position and applied for a job as a physician at the Zimbabwe Association of Church Hospitals before charges were filed. He flew to Africa and started working at Mnene Hospital in Zimbabwe. There he continued his murderous ways by administering injections of a variety of poisons into two of his patients who luckily survived the attacks. Swango was suspended from practice at Mnene Hospital in July 1995 but could not be prosecuted in the United States for his crimes for technical reasons. In 1997, after once again lying about his past. Swango obtained employment as a physician through KAMA Enterprises, Inc., an employment agency in Portland, Oregon. He was assigned to work as a physician at the Royal Hospital in Dharan, Saudi Arabia and in June 1997
booked a flight from Africa to Chicago en route to Saudi Arabia.
Upon arrival to the United States he was arrested and indicted on six counts of making false statements to the government and violating controlled substance statutes. In March 1998, he plead guilty to one of the six charges and was sentenced to a 3½-year prison term which was scheduled to expire on July 15, 2000. While still incarcerated, Swango was indicted for the murder of three of his victims as well as attempted murder. In announcing the indictment, United States Attorney 42
4 America’s Contribution to Medical Mayhem
Loretta E. Lynch stated, “Through a web of lies and deception, Michael Swango inveigled his way into the confidence of hospital administrators across the country and the world. Once in their trust and employ, he utilized his skills to search for victims and take their lives.” Swango was tried and convicted of only one murder and sentenced to life without parole. Dr. Swango’s final death tally is unclear. What is certain is that several murders could have been avoided if his employers had followed proper procedures and looked into his past. Dr. Michael Swango should be considered the poster boy for criminal background checks.
Chapter 5
International Men of Mystery: Other
Medical Murderers
When a doctor does go wrong he is the first of criminals.
He has nerve and he has knowledge.
– Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
While the vast majority of physicians attempt to optimally perform their duty to care for the sick, a very small minority of physicians are involved in nefarious activities including homicide. In most of Western society, a police investigation culminates in an arrest followed by a trial by jury. In dictatorial countries, the situation is quite different. First of all, medical murders may be more difficult to commit because of the tight social controls and governmental intervention in the practice of medicine.
Those physicians who succeed in carrying them out, however, may benefit from such regimes’ tendencies to cover up any social or public ills or perceived flaws in the system and to protect members of the ruling, elite class from disgrace. Alternatively, the murderer may be summarily executed and placed on public display as a deterrent to future crimes. No locale is free of physician killers except perhaps the Arctics and very sparsely populated areas with too few physicians and too few potential victims.
East Versus West
In previous chapters we described some of the criminal deeds of the famous (or in famous) doctor serial killers, most of them from United States and England. The USA, with around 6% of the world’s population, has given rise to more than three quarters of all recognized serial killers and trends indicate that their prevalence is increasing. Between 1900 and 1959, there were about 1.7 new serial murder cases per year in the United States. Through the 1960s the figure grew to five a year and by 1980 it had tripled. By 1990, there were 36 cases per year representing a rise of 940% in the space of just three decades. Europe was second with 17 new serial murders per year. Men accounted for 90% of the perpetrators and women were 65%
of the victims.
Serial killers can be found all over the world although at a lower frequency.
It may be argued that in developing countries the lower reported rates of serial J.A. Perper and S.J. Cina, When Doctors Kill: Who, Why, and How, 43
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-1369-2_5, © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010
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5 International Men of Mystery: Other Medical Murderers
killers in general and of serial killer physicians in particular are the result of less effective police monitoring and investigation. Though this is likely true, it also seems likely that the disproportionately high rate of serial killers in developed countries may be related to the celebrity status they are afforded by the media.
If you kill one person, you may make the local news. If you kill five, you will probably end up on national television for a week (maybe longer if nothing else is going on in the world). If you are a physician-murderer, you will probably get a juicy book contract and have your life immortalized in a made-for-TV
movie.
Eastern Europe has had a number of murderous physicians, men of mysterious motives rather than compassionate healers. Dr. Maxim Petrov, a Russian physician and a serial killer, is a case in point. Petrov, born in 1962, worked as an emergency room physician in St. Petersburg, Russia. His modus operandi was to visit elderly patients at their homes, unannounced or on short notice, when he was off duty and when all relatives were likely to be at work. He would usually measure their blood pressure and tell the patients that they needed an injection. He then drugged them and while they were unconscious stole their possessions, taking even the rings and earrings from the victims’ bodies. In all, he anesthetized and robbed about 50
elderly women pensioners. The first few victims did not die – they awoke several hours after his visit to find themselves several rubles poorer. One of the victims, Anastasia Plotnikova, was quoted by newspapers as recalling, “I remember a call at my flat at about 2 p.m. The young man presented himself as a doctor from the local clinic. The doctor took my blood pressure, which appeared to be high, and offered an injectio
n. He spent a lot of time trying to find the vein, and I thought,
“how can a doctor have problems with such a thing?” When I woke, there was fire around me. I cried for help on the balcony. The fire service came but the flat was badly burned.” Plotnikova later discovered that her gold earrings, wedding rings and two packets of tea had been stolen. Another survivor, Valentina Pleshikova, told the local media that she was only saved because her husband returned home early from work. She claimed she also was injected with a substance by Dr. Petrov and fell asleep. When she was awakened, she discovered the gas oven had been turned on and all the windows shut. They later discovered that a set of silver forks and 200 rubles (less than $20) were missing – plus some coffee. The trend toward stealing caffeinated beverages is rather curious. Perhaps the perpetrator was tired after a long shift in the ER. Alternatively, there were no Starbucks stores in St. Petersburg at the time.
On February 2, 1999 during his thirtieth robbery, Dr. Petrov graduated to murder after being surprised by the daughter of an anesthetized patient who returned home unexpectedly and interrupted his robbery. He stabbed her with a screwdriver and then strangled the patient with a stocking. After this incident, he began to inject his victims with lethal mixtures of a variety of different drugs including propanolol (a high blood pressure medication). This drug is not detected on routine toxicology screens; specialized test are required to find it in the blood and you have to be looking for it. He then set fire to their homes to destroy any evidence. The police did not release a drawing of the suspect’s face thinking that he would soon be caught.
East Versus West