so, hate. >> that's how all you started with, too. >> then i've come full circle. it's time for me to die. >> richard kuklinski made and dubious claims to and mob related killings including the death of jimmy hoffa but without proof we may never know. his wife barbara said neither imprisonment more his death will relieve the terror she felt being married to him saying he haunted her in her dreams. i'm donnie wahlberg. good night. >> let's say you're so inclined

to commit murders. you would want to choose a location where death is a common everyday occurrence. if somebody dies in a hospital nobody raises and eyebrow. you could take that curtain and put it around you and the patient and no one is going to see what's going on in there . >> welcome to very scary people. physicians take and oath to do no harm but dr. michael swango did the opposite. from medical school until he was caught michael preyed upon the most vulnerable helpless

patients and unsuspecting coworkers. in his nearly 20-year career he left a trail of depth across several states in two continents. what could make a charismatic physician become a serial killer? part one dr. death, license to kill. >> cindy mckee was a 19-year-old gymnast from a suburb of columbus and went to a champagne, illinois campus. >> i met cindy. when i was student teaching in college, she was one of my gym that ises. she was a team leader. lot of energy. a lot of fun. just a great all around kid.

she had a full ride scholarship to university of illinois. she was going to do great things. she had gotten through her first year of college and her second year is when this happened. she was riding her bike on campus and a young man hit her with his car and pinned her between the curb and the wheel of the car. and she had head injuries. >> she had been taken to a medical facility around the university of illinois. >> she was in a trauma unit. it was very scary. we went to visit her. and she was getting stronger. her body was healing. >> decision was made to bring her back for rehab at a facility at ohio state university

hospital. >> she gets here and i don't know within what, a day or two, she was dead. it was devastating. it was a complete mystery. somebody who was that young, who was recovering for her to just die that fast. >> the last doctor to see cindy mckee was dr. michael swango. >> i started working as a paramedic full-time. one of my first shifts when i walked into the paramedic quarters, the director said here is your new partner. he's a doctor. in my mind i'm thinking why is this guy working as a paramedic for $10 when he could be working

as a physician for a hundred dollars and hour? i remember i asked him he said i got burned out, had to take a leave of absence. technically he's sound. i'm working with him. i'm watching in detail how quickly he can assess the injury and manage the trauma. >> he was a hard worker and very proficient. he loved to work and he loved to deal with medical crises. >> we were friends. we all got along. he fit in. just a down to earth kind of guy like the rest of us. i was getting off shift that morning. mike come in and he set a box of donuts on the table. i thought well this is a pretty good guy bringing in some donuts. so i sat down at the table there. i ate one of the donuts. probably 15, 20 minutes later, i'm feeling sick. down the hall, there was a

bathroom. and i'm vomiting, vomiting, sweating and i could hear somebody else retching. >> the health department went to the donut shop asking if there were other problems, and there wasn't. >> the donuts were gone. there was nothing to test. the health department came in tested the tea the coffee anything in the refrigerator. >> after their investigation they determined it had to be something else that's causing the sickness. >> the next night we had a local football game here. state of illinois requires and ambulance to be on stand by in a football game. i was on that ambulance. swango also signed up to be on that football game with me. halftime he offers me a coke. he said do you want one? i said sure and i'm drinking the

soda and started the third quarter, oh my god i feel like i'm going to get sick. mike come up and said what do you feel like, nausea, vomiting. he snickers, laughs a little bit. very, very odd. two new ihop lunch and dinner menu items for twice the goodness, twice the flavor,

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>> i have a written to michael over ten years. he's a charming person. this is how he sees a story about him. this is the story after seemly normal man with normal jobs and relationships. there's the occasional bad things he did. >> dr. michael swango graduated with a degree in chemistry with high honors. >> michael swango this is a guy who was and award winning chemist when he graduated. >> i remember talking to his professor. he was the guy that always had the answers. >> one of the brightest students i ever had. i don't know if he was the most

intelligent but he worked extremely hard at his study. >> he could read a book and go through that book in no time and you would ask him questions and he would tell what you he read. after college he went to siu to be a doctor. he would come back to quincy and work as a paramedic part-time during the holidays his vacations and time off. my partner and i had just gotten to the hospital from a call. mike came in. he was working one of the other rigs. he said, i'm going after sodas. would anyone want one. i said, sure. i seen mike walking down the hallways carrying the soda and he stopped and darted and went into a bathroom. pretty soon he came in and he set the sodas on the table and

he set mine down and it was open. i looked at him and said what did you did pee in my soda? he said, no. he said his stomach was upset so he drank a little to settle it. i poured it into and ice with glass, drank probably 3 maybe 4 big drinks of it. pretty soon i was getting sick to my stomach. so i ran into the restroom and i started vomiting and i really thought i was going to die. a lady friend of mine came in to check on me and i looked up and i told her i think something is not right. go out and get the rest of my soda. she came back in and said mike dumped it down the drain. he thought you were sick and you didn't want anymore of it.

the members morning, my phone rang at home and it was mike. he started questioning me, how did you feel? what did you feel like? what did it make you do? how do you feel now? he wanted to know the symptoms and everything. and i'm thinking, this isn't right. >> the paramedic said we think we got something really suspicious going on. we got to get to the bottom of this. they got together themselves and started discussing and skpairg notes. >> i was telling the secretary who was the aunt of one of the paramedics about my soda and i'll never forget the expression on her face her eyes looked at me her mouth dropped open and said the same thing happened to her nephew brent. mike purchased a soda brent

drank it and ten minutes later he was vomiting. she looks at me and says, i think mike is behind this. every time he's around people are getting sick. he's the only one not getting sick. don't take anything from mike. >> no way. it was hard to accept. if you knew mike you would never have guessed him to do something like? >> michael swango seemed to get long with his coworkers fine. he had and odd sense of humor. it would turn the stomach of most people. >> he had this intense fascination with death and dying. >> i recall one time i'm on a call with him and he says brent was your favorite or ultimate ambulance call. he said mine would be a busload of children hitting head on with a tanker truck, the blast blowing kids up against barb

wire fences so he's graph nick detail about the call. >> you hear someone say things like that you know he's not right. >> he was obsessed with violence from early second grade. >> she is scrap books had articles out of magazines. he was taking a high lighter and highlight the details about that individual's death or the scene. >> scrap books of disasters, the more gory the better. >> i think his interest grew and over time just became part of who he was. >> i want you to understand how demeant i think this gentleman was. greg and i are working watching cnn and it was the mass shooting that occurred in san diego at

the mcdonald's. 22 people died that day. swango just watches with a big smile on his face. he says, wouldn't that be great to see? this is unbelievable. i wish i was there to see it all. >> he ran over and got so excited turned the tv up. we looked at him, what's wrong with you. he wanted to see the death and destruction. >> for him violence and death was sexually a rousing. as he got older he became ever more fixated on this working as and appearing on the scene the more cars involved in the crash the more bodies the better. >> there was another bizarre incident there was a call middle of the night.

they get a report incident, ambulance races to see that swango was on top of the vehicle. he's not there to help out. he's there to take pictures. who thinks like that? >> fantasies became realities. voltaren. the joy of movement. ♪ it's the subway series menu. 12 irresistible subs. the most epic sandwich roster ever created. ♪ it's subway's biggest refresh yet! 'twas a wintry day, and at ihop quite soon hot cinnamon apples would be coaxed with a spoon on the fluffiest french toast with red currants on top we wish you a happy holiday, only at ihop.

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>> i was a newspaper reporter editor in quincy, illinois. we had a call that some paramedics had been getting sick while they were on the job. that's basically all we knew at the time. >> you know i thought well there's a flu going around or something and i kind of blew it off. >> we were suspicious. then greg gets sick. >> the story unraveled. >> paramedics suspected their colleague dr. michael swango could be responsible for their mysterious illnesses but apart from their suspicion and his fascination with death there was no evidence this man could be responsible for do them any harm. >> he's a doctor he's one that you trust. here he has the hands to heal and to help. >> he is and engaging personable

smart articulate person. >> why would he do something like that? this is crazy. >> michael swango was born october 21st, 1954. his given name was joseph but he went by his middle name. >> according to family members in his mother eyes michael could do no wrong. he had a half brother older brother younger brother. his family went to quincy, illinois. his dead was a military man served a long time in vietnam retired from the military went back to vietnam with the usaid. >> his father was known to be a very strict authoritarian figure. when they would have guests to the house the kids would be marched in formation into the living room to meet the guest and told at ease attention dismissed. >> his mother by all accounts

favored him. he was the only child of of the 3 sent to a private school. >> he was very bright. valedictorian high school class. >> he was considered pretty much the star of the family. he really was quite and excellent musician. when he first went to college it was in music gifted with a clarinet, he had a music scholarship. >> mike was just a normal guy. he was pretty straight laced but he was easley agitated. people would just kid him all the time. and of course, rooming with him, i would hear about it. and there would be times where he would be absolutely lit. he would pace the floor. you know, and i would say you know, you just got to let that go. >> but swango did not take slight very well because

everybody held him up as and example of perfection. >> for somebody that is super sensitive that feels humiliating and that caused him to do something dramatic. he surprised everybody left his music scholarship and joins the united states marines. >> in the marines he received and honorable discharge after two years. >> when he got out of the marines he continue his education back in quincy. at some point he liked the idea of medicine. he finished college and was accepted to southern illinois medical school. >> in the first half of medical school, he was pretty disciplined in terms of having to do well enough on his tests and exams. >> but he had several problems. there was already somebody dying or coding when he was around. >> there were people who immediately pointed to him as having engainldz in highly

suspicious behavior. >> the reason for it was he had the highest death rate of any of the interns down there and they felt it was more than just coincidence. >> when he was in medical school his fellow students referred to him as double-o swango license to kill. >> students petitioned their university not to graduate him. >> they wrote a letter to the dean and the dean said i think we should give this young man another chance. >> matter was settled when he was asked to repeat his last year of his education which he did. then he got a really good offer of a residency at ohio state university. >> dr. swango spent a year at ohio state university hospital before returning to quincy. there his fellow paramedics starting getting really sick. his colleagues believed he was responsible for their mysterious

illness but they didn't have any proof. >> the paramedics themselves started saying, you know, why is it it seems like any time you work with them, you get sick. you work with him, i get sick. it was apparent to them hey this guy is doing something to us. >> at that point i think there was no indication we were being poisoned. we just wanted to find out was going on. >> these paramedics set up a fake ambulance run so that they would have and opportunity to go through dr. swango's possessions at the headquarters without him there. >> i'm working with swango. he sent us out on a fake call, 30 minute drive, enough time to go through his bag and find out what he's using. we want to catch him and we are looking for anything possible that we can use as evidence.

>> we wanted his bag, looked in it and there was all the bottles of ant poison. >> poison which contains arsenic. >> arsenic is poison of ancient time. doesn't take much to poison people. hard to detect if eaten and easy to put in various foods. people when they eat it usually talk about gastrointestinal problems, nausea vomiting diarrhea and if i'm a physician i would think he has bad g.i. bingo every symptom it said, i had. after that i was convinced i had been poisoned. r.

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>> welcome back to very scary people. dr. michael swango former marine and suspected physician was considered a star in his hometown of quincy, illinois but in the fall of 1984 that all began to change when his colleagues in the paramedic unit became convinced that swango was put potentially lethal doses of ant killer in their food and drink. >> the paramedics had noticed

that mike had bottles of ant poison in his locker at work. >> it contained traces of arsenic. they've changed that compound to make it safer. there's one bottle that it was full, one that's empty. so at that point in time that's really our first independents case of what he's using and we said we are not playing around here. my aunt, is working at the hospital. she's friends with the director of lab and she says if i bring you something, will you examine it for arsenic. it was on a friday. my partner and i were working the ambulance. we had just made a pitcher of tea with no sweetener in it or sugar and we got a call. when we came back from the call my partner picked his last tea

up and took a sip of it and said this tastes terrible, it's sweet. greg tasted it. sure enough. it was sweet. boy, just like that i felt that stomach starting again. so, we knew we had something in the drink. >> ant poison that's sweet, sugary and it attracts the ants and the arsenic kills them. >> he contacted my aunt. she gave to it the lab where the lab analyzed the tea. >> it came back with the arsenic. >> found twice the lethal dose to kill somebody. this is real. >> we thought, what do we do now? we had a candidate running for president coming to quincy. >> as the sun peaked over the horizon, walter mondale was on the move whistle stop through illinois missouri iowa.

>> mike wanted to volunteer to work the ambulance to follow the guy around. we were like, no way. we are not sure what he's capable of so we went to the administrator and started telling him about it. that's when the police were called. detective meyer came in and started taking our reports. >> they started laying out all these facts and all these things. my head was swimming before the day was over because i'm thinking what on earth am i getting into here. >> i couldn't figure out why he would do what he did. >> my theory he wanted our shift because he filled in a lot. i don't think that today. >> i think that we were getting things. he's right there. he knows how much he's giving me. he's seeing the effects. he's asking me questions. i think he's using this as calculation. >> poisoning is very

passive-aggressive. you have and interest racks with the victim and you get to watch them and delight in the discomfort they're experiencing. >> i think he was just using them as a lab experiment to see how much arsenic it took to kim somebody. >> but we have circumstanceal evidence. we don't have anyone seeing him put the poison in the drinks or the donuts or anything. >> i not, how am i going to be able to prove all this? >> we have a window of opportunity to detect these actions so we look for hair nailts where it will embed. >> we had to take hair samples because arsenic shows up in hair. state crime lab came back and said there was abnormal amounts of arsenic in paramedics' hair. >> brent got dosed twice. >> he would tell you he was close to death. >> what would happen if i drank

all of it? i drank half of it and in bed three days. >> we documented everything we had. we sent it over to the states attorneys office and we went from there to the arrest situation. >> the paramedics and the police set up a trap to get dr. michael swango to show up at a location where he could be arrested without incident. they got the help of the county coroner wayne johnson to help bring him in. >> mike was dying to become a deputy coroner. he wanted to be in the coroner's office and how they got him in after they got the warrant, they called him to get a picture taken for i.d. and that's when he was arrested. >> we wanted to search his

apartment so we requested a search warrant. then we made a beeline for where mike lived. landlord let us in. we were absolutely astonished. this guy had a chemistry lab in his kitchen. >> they found poisons, all different kind of poisons. >> he had strict nine, poison for rats, ants, taking pictures, do you see any ant infestation? no. we searched his whole apartment. knob ants. >> and they found recipe cards how to make cyanide bombs rice botulism. >> like somebody would have a box of recipes, he had a book

that had a chapter how to poison the water system of a municipality. >> all the pieces started come together like a giant puzzle and i knew in my mind as and investigator we got him now. >> he often was smarter than everybody else in the room and he did get away with many years of horrible stuff. (customer) hi? (burke) happy anniversary. (customer) for what? (burke) every year you're with us,

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>> michael swango was facing 7 charges of agriculture investigated battery for poisoning his coworkers. he made bail which made people very uneasy. >> we are standing outside the hospital. we turn around, here comes swango. he just looks at us and gives us that stare. you don't know what he was thinking. >> so we were trying to run a loose surveillance on this guy but he is nonstop, 24/7. he's all over the place. >> he was not to leave illinois. i ordered him not to leave

quincy but he was violating his bail bond by sneaking over to ohio to practice medicine in emergency rooms while his case was pendzing. >> this whole time while he's out on bond we are just needles and pins where is he going to show up next and do next. >> we kept a close track of him seeing whether he would be a threat to the judges the witnesses or the prosecution team. >> judge cashman knew that michael swan dps go was a dangerous individual. he didn't trust him so there were ice machines around the courthouse so he ordered all the ice machines to be locked because he feared this guy was laying down poison. >> it was too easily accessible. >> we needed to find out more about him. there had to be other things in his past. you don't just get to this point

trying to kill people without having done something to lead up to it so i wanted to go into the past and see where he lived, where he went to school, how long he was interned find out if anybody got sick on his watch, did any patients die. >> the quincy police called the campus police at the ohio state university where he done his internship and wanted to find out more about his background. what they learned was shocking. >> it started out simply as a routine browne investigation courtesy to the police in quincy, illinois. >> they had asked, do you guys know about this guy, what can you find out. >> and it started out that simple and it got more complicated after that. >> he was assigned to the emergency department. he was a very cheerful, affable

eager guy always in a good mood and i was surprised to hear he wasn't going to go continuing his residency and they let him go y. did they let him go? >> we interviewed every nurse in the hospital. we asked tell me what you know about michael swango. we got tidbits he ran in and out of a patient's room, the patient was dead. >> about there were four deaths on the floor where he was working. >> they were all circumstances, but one thing in common was swango was near them as a doctor at some point. he wasn't even their doctor. he was just near them, in the ward. >> such is the case of cindy mcgee. cindy was on her bicycle and a

young man hit her. [boom] >> when they got her stabilized they sent her to ohio state. >> then she dies unexpectedly. >> she had a high fever. i think that was the reason dr. swango was tasked with taking a blood draw and that was to see if she had and infection of some sort. >> seconds later he went out and she turned blue and died. >> the cause of death at the time was deemed pneumonia. >> we didn't know how it happen until later on. >> there may have been some warning signs, had someone thought it unusual that he was exiting the room with a syringe and shortly after that she coded and died. but they really didn't add up those things at the time. >> nobody had bothered to report

it to the osu poly. the hospital conducted and irn internal investigation into the death of cindy mcgee and six other suspicious incidents but they said there was no concrete evidence that dr. michael swango was responsible. >> i think that really could have been the stopping point important swango. he never may have been able to practice medicine again. >> i think that they just said, we've got to get him out of here. >> after the questions arose from the illinois police they opened a criminal investigation with the osu police department. >> i was pretty sthokd this had been going on and no one knew anything until we got the call from quincy. >> that was our first knowledge of anything. >> people were starting to question everything that michael swango has done now in ohio state university. we were getting people who say

yes, i saw him in the room. i always had a strange feeling about this guy. he shows up at places where he's not the sooindz doctor but you could never get anyone to say they actually saw him inject something. >> the nurses all afraid to be around him, they sense something is wrong with this man but is that enough to convict? no. you want to be rich like me? you want to trust me on this one. [inaudible] wow! yeah! it's time to take control of your investing education. cut through the noise with best-in-class education resources that match your preferred style of learning. learn your way. not theirs. td ameritrade. where smart investors get smarter℠. (woman 1) i just switched to verizon business unlimited. it's just right for my little business. unlimited premium data. unlimited hotspot data. (woman 2) you know it's from the most reliable

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police in columbus, ohio, were investigating the suspicious deaths that had occurred at the ohio state university hospital where dr. michael swango had been an intern. entertainment, dr. michael swango was on trial for poisoning his paramedic colleagues in quincy, illinois. >> from the very beginning, it was controversial. because mike swango had a lot of friends that he went to school with who were convinced that he was being railroaded. >> we had a lot of people thinking we were setting mike up and that we were doing this to mike because we didn't like him. >> when it came out, we went through the file at the newspaper, and you know, there was nothing that was not glowing about him. >> his likeability within the community was without question. but then dr. michael swango opted for a bench trial where

only the judge would hear the evidence and make a decision. and that move baffled many in the courtroom. >> it was a bench trial, so the judge cashman was the judge and the jury. >> that was a little curious, frankly, why he waived his right to jury trial. if he had had his case heard in front of a jury, i think he would have had a chance of convincing one or more of the jurors that, how could a doctor do something like this? >> i think he thought that he was so brilliant, he could convince the judge of his innocence. he wanted to go one on one and enjoy that experience. >> what made this case really interesting was that there were no eyewitnesses. it was all circumstantial. >> nobody saw him put arsenic in doughnuts and iced tea. it was not a cut-and-dry case by any means. >> we wanted to find out where

he bought these poisons. so we set up a photographic lineup, took it to keller's, which was a farm store, just right down from the quincy police department. well, they immediately pick him out, said this guy's in here all the time buying all the ant poison. but that in and of itself is nothing illegal, right? >> swango, i think, also liked the idea of leaving a trail of evidence, thinking that it would be more exciting for him if he would beat it. he wore his uniform and drove an ambulance to the store where he bought the ant poison and the clerk had a clear memory of him because he bought basically all the ant poison they had in the store, which is enough to kill ants all over town. >> there weren't any ants in his apartment, remember? but now he's got this problem, he's got to account for why he's got all this tero ant poison.

>> he called me up and says "i need you to come witness something. i've got this horrible ant infestation in my house." >> they weren't there when we did the initial search warrant. >> our local exterminator goes in the apartment, collects some of the ants, they're now brown all over his place. later his testimony comes out in the actual trial -- >> yes, is they were ants but these were ants that were nailive to florida. and swango had just been to florida. >> he brought ants from florida when he had gone to florida to see his mother during christmas, that you just don't find those ants in the north and they're not indigenous to illinois. >> now he's trying to plant false evidence, so now i'm feeling even better about the case. >> michael didn't really put on any defense. >> but he put on a strong verbal defense. >> he was going to explain the reason why he had all this poison was, he always had an interest in toxicology. >> in the court, he said "i'm a physician, i'm a chemist, i need to know the antidotes to these."

on the surface it sounds kind of realistic. >> i just simply could not have done these things. that's one of his arguments in the trial. i remember that, he said that. "i just simply could not have done these things." i was thinking, no, you did not "simply" do these things, they were very complicated, very well-thought-out things you did. >> i think he was just experimenting on people. they were his toys to tinker and toy with. he thought he was superior, had a superior intellect. >> he just thought we would never convict him. >> in 1985, a quincy, illinois, judge found dr. swango guilty of poisoning six co-workers there at a paramedic station. the judge in the case called dr. michael swango a danger to society and said he clearly performed evil deeds. >> i found him guilty. he was a doctor, and he kept telling me how he would never violate his hippocratic oath.

well, he violated it in the worst way. >> i was happy with the verdict. yes, i was. >> relief. now we have an opportunity to put this man away. >> at the sentencing hearing, he asked for probation. i can remember him looking at the judge and telling him, he would never get in trouble again, he would be a productive member of society. but i think judge cashman let him know he didn't believe him. >> he got sentenced to the maximum the law allowed for that offense, and that was five years on all counts. >> when judge cashman sent him to prison, we were all kind of surprised by the severity of the sentence. because i'd sat through many cases where a person convicted of aggravated battery just got probation. now in retrospect, we understand why. >> i was convinced that he was a serial killer. and somebody needed to do something. >> about he was sent to prison, we thought the book was closed on him. >> but after serving two years, dr. michael swango is released.

>> now, i didn't think that you could spend time in jail for poisoning people and come out and be a physician. but boy, i was wrong. because that's exactly what he did. >> it is a chilling violation of trust as a doctor, swango had easy access to both poison and patients. >> look at this guy. keep your eyes open. don't turn your back on him. >> i think as long as he was in a medical facility, he was going to kill people. >> swango injected something into her iv bag. and she felt this intense pain through her body, and she could barely move. >> my father's death was not natural causes. >> he was telling us there was a doctor that went by his room every single night, pointing at him saying "you're next." >> this wasn't some mercy killing. he took joy in not just killing folks but telling their families they died. >> this was a person who was dangerous. >> he skirted right under the

law. >> he just kept getting worse and worse and worse and worse. >> at the very least, he seems to be a sick man. at the very most, he's the epitome of e >> dr. michael swango was convicted of poisoning his co-workers and sentenced to five years in prison in illinois. the story could have ended there, but it would be just the beginning. the twisted tale of michael swango, a doctor turned certificatial, continues in part two of "dr. death." thanks for watching. i'm donnie wahlberg. good night . there was a series of unexplained deaths on wards where he worked.