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tv   Very Scary People  CNN  December 17, 2022 11:00pm-12:00am PST

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>> 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.
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>> he came out of this patient's room, the patient was dead. >> he was telling us that there was a doctor that went by his room every single night, pushing a cart, and pointing at him saying, "you're next." ♪ ♪ welcome to "very scare yes people." i'm donnie wahlberg. on the surface he seemed like a hero, but there was nothing heroic about dr. swank goe. he was, in fact, a dangerous killer, obsessed with poison and death. he reveled in human suffering.
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dr. swango's murder spree spanned nearly two decades. how did this healer-turned-serial killer get away with this for so long? here's part two of "dr. death -- you're next." >> michael swango. he just looks like the kind of guy you would want to be your doctor. >> i have tried my utmost to be the best person and the best physician i can be. and that's all anyone can do. >> he was a very polite, good-looking young man who was very articulate. a former marine. there was nothing that was not glowing about him. >> but people think swango may be using his brilliant mind and medical skills to play with people's lives. >> this was a person who should not be licensed to practice medicine. >> michael swango was a convicted felon. >> he had poisoned his
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co-workers as an emt in quincy, illinois. >> i'm not thinking that that doughnut that i'm eating is laced with poison. nobody thinks that the cup with soda is going to be injected with arsenic. that's what makes him so dangerous. >> he was trying to kill me. >> you had this trail, this trail of death and illness under suspicious causes, that were attached to this doctor. >> when he was in medical school, his fellow students referred to him as "00 swango, licensed to kill." >> he had the highest death rate of any of the intissues down there. >> swango was dismissed from the surgical residency program at the ohio state university hospitals. >> nurses all afraid to be around him. they sensed something is wrong with this man. >> according to reports, swango was suspected of killing at least one patient there. >> cindy mckee was a 19-year-old gymnast. she was in a trauma unit, but we
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could see she was getting better. >> she's actually improving until she gets a visit from michael swango. then she dies unexpectedly. >> there have been some warning signs, but they really didn't add up those things at the time. >> some doctor was poisoning people. >> this was a murder. >> after serving two years of his five-year sentence for poisoning his colleagues, dr. michael swango is released from centralia prison in august of 1987. >> after he got out, i didn't know whether he would be coming after for revenge or not. >> the news media outlets were somewhat concerned because we knew we were portraying him in a not good light. but i don't think the general public had any real concern, because he was not on anybody's radar. >> back then, he didn't have a 24-hour news cycle. this would have stayed a local story, and people outside that region would not know who he was. and he used that to his
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advantage because he still wanted to practice medicine, and he still wanted to kill people. >> and that's exactly what he did. >> michael swango has been a first-year resident, a student fall, in sioux falls for the past five months. he worked in all three hospitals here. but it wasn't until this story aired on "the justice file" that people began worrying about dr. swango. >> we got a tip from someone who worked at one of the hospitals. this person recognized him on a show she had watched the night before, was called "justice files." it talked about how he had poisoned his co-workers. and she was like, what in the world is this guy doing in our medical residency program and treating patients? this guy could be dangerous. >> the story on the discovery channel series "justice files" was actually a repeat.
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it had originally aired on abc's "20/20" on february 13th, 1986. while dr. michael swango was in prison for poisoning his colleagues, he sat down for an interview with john stossel. >> we got permission from the prison in illinois to interview him. and he was very convincing. >> i'm not guilty. i didn't do those things. >> in that abc news program "20/20," dr. michael swango had an answer for everything. >> i would say, what about the ant poison? "i had an ant problem." >> i don't know anything about ants. all i know is i had an apt problem and i took care of it as best i could. >> what about all these other poisons? "oh, if you looked at any suburban home, you'd find lots of things the lawyers could spin as a poison." okay. started to wonder. >> you hear the horrendous things he's been accused of and been found guilty of and you
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think, this has to be some kind of a monster. but that's not how he comes across. >> the crime did not fit the person in front of you. >> when the report came up and think they put a picture up of mike and said he was accused of poisoning his co-workers, you could have knocked me over with a feather. because i couldn't believe it. >> the staff at all three medical centers where dr. michael swango worked were shocked. no one was more surprised than his fiancee, a nurse named kristin kinney, also known as k.k. >> k.k. worked with us. and she also didn't believe it. she just said, "not the mike i know." >> i thought he was guilty going in. and then during the interview, i had doubts. and by the end of it, i was thinking, maybe he didn't do it.
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but boy, i was wrong. because that's exactly what he did. >> this is a common scene at all three sioux falls hospitals. employees reviewing files. files of patients who were treated by dr. michael swank goe. >> the hospitals did their own investigations. and what they told me is that they looked at every case that he had anything to do with. >> and a review of all the patients did ultimately conclude that he had had nothing to do with anything that had happened here. but the fear with swango was high. we didn't know at the time if he was a danger to anybody but a patient. >> we had had a christmas party. the party was at, oh, one of our nurse's house. and her husband was a detective on the police force. and so he literally followed mike everywhere he went, to make sure that he wasn't putting
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anything in any of the food or whatever. all of us were pretty okay with that. >> dr. michael swango is suspended from working in the sioux falls hospitals because he lied about his past. governor george mickelson wants swango fired immediately. he wants to know the whole story of how dr. swango ended up here. >> we talked to the admissions director from the university of south dakota medical school. and that was really kind of enlightening. because swango didn't put down that he had a felony. but he explained it away by saying, well it was, is a misunderstanding. >> swango did admit that he was in prison, he just didn't tell the truth why. >> why he had been there. >> he lied, he said he was in a bar fight. >> he had a story about him coming to some woman's aid in a bar restaurant when he was being harassed by some other people and getting into a fistfight, and he hurt people. >> i end up ultimately talking to the head of the department at university of south dakota.
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and he was kind of astonished to learn that michael swango had been convicted of administering a toxic substance. >> i was not aware of the full facts or the full circumstances surrounding his situation. >> i think he just talked his way into these places. and people would believe him because he was believable. >> the whistle was blown. and they kicked him out. >> i want to clearly acknowledge that we made a mistake in admitting this person into our program. >> he wanted to do an interview with me, on camera, just to try to convince people that he was innocent. >> michael swango says he should be allowed to stay in the residency program because he did nothing wrong. >> we discussed fully what the implications were of coming into the program. the possibility of completing three years and then being licensed. that was certainly something that i deserved to have the chance to do. >> when it got toward the end of
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this whole investigation, he was talking to everybody about everything, anything. you know, just to try to convince people that he was, you know, innocent. >> despite his claims of innocence, dr. michael swango was officially dismissed from the medical school program in south dakota. and in the spring of 1993, he and his fiancee kristin kinney left town. >> when they went into his house after he was gone, it was full of poisons. >> and after he left sioux falls, supposedly the behavior really did not change. it was like he skirted right under the law. >> my father's name was thomas marco. he was in the army, world war ii. my father was confined to a wheelchair from an accident at
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work. but he went into the va for his checkups and stuff like that. he was there for an examination. he was fairly healthy. then all of a sudden, he got sick when he was there. and the nurse had told us that he had a staph infection in the brain. and they put him in icu. every time we went up to visit him, he was telling us that there was a doctor that went by his room every single night, pushing a cart, and pointing at him saying, "you're next." he was just a young, nice-looking doctor who we now know is michael swango.
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michael swango's story was out. >> the twisted odyssey of dr. swango begins in 1982 with mysterious deaths in medical school. yet he advanced to prestigious ohio state where he's linked to more deaths and moves on to quincy, illinois, where he is convicted and jailed for poisoning co-workers with arsenic. yet in 1992, he's practicing medicine again in south dakota.
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a year later, he's on long island. >> and it followed him to new york where he was now practicing medicine. >> how does this happen? how does he keep getting into these places? >> i got a call from the chief of psychiatry at the northport va medical center and she said, "you know, bruce, you're not going to believe this, but there's actually a fit here, working here at the va, and he's suspected of killing people." seemed impossible to me. but, you don't know until you check it out. >> maybe there's something there, maybe there's not, let's take a look, see what's going on. we found michael swango. and let me tell you something, he was the most handsome, charming person you'd ever want to meet. you know, if i didn't know better, i'd want to introduce him to my daughter. we talked to him briefly. we said, "you know, doctor, we heard that there's some story in the news about you actually poisoning people, is that true?"
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"oh, no, no, no." this was all just a big misunderstanding. and i said, "well, thank you very much, doc, you know, i really appreciate that. but could we just take a look around your room?" that's when his attitude completely changed. then he said, "no, you can't, and this interview is over." >> just the way his eyes were. uncomfortably sneaky looking. sinister. >> and tom and i are looking at each other. something's not right here. the decision was made, get him out of the hospital. get him out. then the next thing you know, a few days later, michael swango's gone. don't know where he is. >> so the fbi typically doesn't work murder cases. but in this instance, because it involved a va hospital, the property belongs to the united states government. then it automatically falls under fbi jurisdiction. >> the fbi tracked him to atlanta, georgia, before the
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trail went cold. >> and he was working for, my understanding, a water treatment facility. which was quite alarming. by this time we had learned that he had an intense interest in poisoning that he had previously been arrested for poisoning co-workers, and he was suspected of poisoning and killing patients in several hospitals. anybody with that history would look upon a water treatment facility as, in our estimation, a potential opportunity. >> then they went looking for him, and he was gone. >> and he disappeared. >> and then we lost track of him. >> at that point, he's a fugitive. we consulted with the bau, the behavioral science unit. they were of this opinion this offender would still be in the medical field somewhere. ease going to be using some of those skills, and he's going to be killing people. >> so we started really doing a pretty robust investigation of his time at the va hospital in
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northport, on long island. >> by that time, we didn't have any evidence that he actually had harmed anybody at the northport va medical center. >> but they did know he was guilty of something. >> they weren't sure about the suspicious deaths. they were sure that he had lied about his background. he lied about the fact that he had qualified as a physician. he graduated from medical school, but he hadn't become licensed in any way. and he lied about that. >> he still needed to complete his residency. >> he also lied about an assault conviction. he said it was a fight in a bar. >> swango then took it one step further, creating falsified documents that appeared to absolve him of all these charges. >> i've got a document in my briefcase that he forged. illinois department of corrections, it said he was in there on aggravated battery, it said he hit someone with his fist. didn't say anything about poisoning. >> he forged a letter saying he'd had his sentence commuted
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and his civil rights restored by the government of virginia, which i thought was kind of interesting. i don't think a governor of virginia can do that, since it was an illinois case, but he did a lot of things like that and they bought it all the time. >> swango's lieing wasn't just bad judgment. if you lie on a federal job application, it's actually a felony, punishable by time in prison. >> there was a flat-out lie to a federal agent, in this case the head doctor at the hospital where he was interviewed. >> if you lie on your application, that's a false statement to the government. something we call 18 usc 1001, a false statement charge. >> it's like one of the mildest felonies we charge people with, but that would be something we could at least capture him with. and we knew he was much more dangerous than that. >> the government had an abundance of concern that he would continue to poison people, continue to murder people.
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the concern was, get hill him off the street as quickly as possible with what we have. >> we indicted him for perjury. and we filed a warrant. and the warrant gets filed not only in the united states, but internationally. if you see this guy, arrest him. >> so that's the best we could do at that point. >> but four more years would transpire before there was a break in this case that pointed them in the right direction of where michael swango was. right now, the worst place to be is stuck in-between. accelerate your investments or pull back? change the plan or stay the course? that's why northern trust is here. with specialized expertise... a history of success through every economic climate... and proven strategies rooted in data and analytics. giving you more control. clarity. and confidence. for now and whatever's next northern trust wealth management.
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♪ welcome back to "very scary people." 1993, dr. michael swango, prolific poisner and suspected serial killer, vanished. many believed he fled the country. the fbi and interpol launched an international manhunt. after more than four years, his trail had gone cold. then authorities got the break they needed when michael swango tried to sneak back into the united states. >> i got a call from an fbi agent saying, "do you know a person by the name of mike swango?" my heart sank. because i thought, oh, god, what -- what's going on? i said, "yeah, that's my case." he says, "well, we have him here in chicago." >> michael swango was coming back into the united states.
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he comes into chicago, they ask you to present your passport. the passport officials scan it. then all of a sudden what popped up, there's a warrant for his arrest. >> we had an arrest warrant for him ready for fraud, not for murder, and we grabbed him on that. >> and they detained him, and they took him back to new york. >> today swango was arraigned on a federal fraud charge in connection with lies he allegedly made to get hired as a resident in 1993. >> i got all the evidence he was traveling with when he was arrested and all of his travel documents. and he had a really interesting passport. >> now what we learned by looking at his passport was that he had been in africa. >> so it turned out that when he left northport, he eventually found his way to zimbabwe. so now we're going to have to look at what happened in s zimbabwe.
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>> they put together a team of investigators, and they hoped that africa would be able to offer them the clues that would help them build their case. >> we had to get to africa. we thought, if he got sloppy anywhere, going to take a chance, it would be over there. >> maybe he's done something in africa that could help inform us about what these murders were here in the united states. >> zimbabwe is the most beautiful country in the world. it's a world of wonders. >> it's a beautiful country. it was my first time in africa when i traveled over there. >> at that particular time, zimbabwe was in the middle of the aids epidemic. >> there was a shortage of
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doctors in zimbabwe. and there were many foreign doctors who came to practice because of the shortage. >> michael had come through the evangelical lutheran church, and there was a pathway for bringing foreign doctors over. >> when he got to africa, people at the hospital asked him, what is your background, why are you coming here? he would tell them, "well, i've been so blessed, i think it's time i gave back." and people were dying to hear that and believe it. >> swango was assigned to the hospital. >> the people he treated were mostly obstetric patients who were delivering babies. >> within a short period of time, the staff realized that he was deficient in some of the most basic medical procedures, certainly in obstetrics. and so that was the first sign of potential trouble. >> we learned he also might be connected to some suspicious deaths that occurred at the
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hospital during the time that he worked there. >> i go up to the hospital, people were talking. "this doctor has been here, been injecting people." his syringes were always loaded, and before they knew it, the patient was either dead or their jaws locked. by that time, i think i had heard enough to understand that this doctor from america was up to no good. >> the u.s. team included forensic pathologist dr. michael baden. he was looking for poison in several of swango's possible victims. >> we had hired local grave diggers, we would transfer the bodies where dr. michael baden would do autopsies. >> we were able to talk to a live witness. >> there were two or three cases where there were people who experienced some sort of intense pain right after he injected them with something. >> there was this rush of
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adrenaline, to the point where they thought they were going to have a heart attack and die. and this elderly gentleman that i spoke to in zimbabwe said exactly that. he said, "i thought i was going to have a heart attack and die." >> in hospital, he said dr. michael swango pulled down his pajama shorts. then he rammed his syringe, loaded with some pinkish fluids, and injected him. within a short while, he felt his jaws locking. and the whole body going numb. >> other survivors shared terrifying tales. >> one of them was a pregnant woman. >> gina, she was pregnant, she was going into labor. >> and swango injected something into her iv bag, and she felt this intense shooting of pain through her body, and then this
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rigidity. she could barely move. but she caught the attention of some staff, and she said "he put something in my iv." we believe it was probably suck noel colleen. >> it's a paralytic. it keeps every muscle in the body from moving. they're cognizant, they know what's going on. then they realize they can't breathe. terrifying experience. >> took the iv bag down, threw it off, started another one, and basically saved those two lives, the baby and the mom. >> and at that point, there was an investigation. and he was suspended from working in the hospital. and he hired an attorney to fight his suspension from the hospital. >> i then started representing him. and seeing these bizarre allegations leveled against him, i then said to him, "well, i need to see your professional qualifications to prove that you are a competent doctor." and that was never forthcoming.
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and i kept asking him, and he gave a variety of excuses. to such an extent that by the time we got to the labor hearing, i was starting to question the veracity of what he's saying. >> the fbi learned that during the two years that dr. michael swango lived in africa, he not only worked for but also volunteered at several hospitals throughout zimbabwe. and the alleged misdeeds were not just happening inside hospital walls. >> here's a guy who has been poisoning people around the united states, now in africa. >> he showed himself to use arsenic in the quincy case. so right away, you know that's something you're always going to have to look for. >> we found five girlfriends. we asked them, "when you were with him, did you ever get sick?" one by one they all went, wait a minute, oh my god. and they realized they had the same symptoms as all these others who were poisoned with
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arsenic. >> at the end of their investigation, zimbabwe authorities had uncovered enough evidence of poisoning to charge dr. michael swango with five counts of murder. >> and at this time, the africans had put out to several countries a warning about him. so he couldn't get hired at a hospital. >> the word was out. he had a feeling his time in africa was done. >> when border officials came to arrest him, he literally climbed out a window and escaped. next thing you know, he's on a plane. >> this guy knew exactly when to leave. >> he returned to the united states. he wasn't coming back to the united states to live in the united states, he was coming back in to get back out. >> turns out he was on his way to saudi arabia. >> he had gotten a job in saudi arabia. and before he could go, he had to have a u.s. visa. >> the requirement was that he could not get a work visa in another country. he had to get it in the country where he lived.
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>> if he hadn't returned, i'm not sure what would have happened from that point on. >> he may have killed more people in saudi arabia. that's what would have happened. i just -- i think as long as he was in a medical facility, he was going to kill people.
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after more than four years as a fugitive, dr. michael swango is finally captured and arrested on a federal count for perjury. >> 1998, swango is convicted of making false statements in connection with his employment at the northport va hospital. >> there in new york, he wasn't on trial for the murders. >> he pled guilty to the perjury charge. >> everyone's watched those old movies of al capone as the mobster who orchestrated murders of hundreds of people. but they get him on income tax evasion. doesn't matter how you get him, you've got to get him. >> the important thing was to keep him incarcerated. >> he was convicted. and he got 3 1/2 years in federal prison.
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>> so the government had a ticking clock to bring murder charges against him to put him away for life and had to make the case in that period of time. >> we had 36 months to try and prove one homicide somewhere in the united states. so that's what we set about to do. >> i do remember walking into the courtroom and turning to the agents and saying to them, "okay, let's not lose this guy again." >> they know they've got a murderer on their hand,s, they've just got to be able to come up with the evidence. >> when you're dealing with poison, it's very, very hard. because we didn't know it was there. >> michael always described poisoning as the perfect crime. no one will know what they are looking for. >> it's like a needle in a haystack. it was going to be a difficult
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case. it was going to be a difficult case. >> 1993, dr. michael swango worked at a veterans hospital in new york state where he had access to every patient. >> that made it very difficult for us, because we literally had to review every medical record of every inpatient at the hospital at that particular time. >> so we assembled this team. we had dr. michael baden, we had nurses that are trained in forensics, and then we had a toxicologist. his name was fred reidus. and they pored through hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of files to determine if these patients expired, not as a result of their natural disease processes, but unexpectedly. and these experts narrowed it down to about three patients that they thought died unexpectedly. it's not in the charts.
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but swango was there or swango was in the room shortly before there was a code called or he had dialogue with the family. so swango would be the last person to go in that room, he would walk out, and sometime later the person was dead. >> the three patients identified at the v at hospital were thomas san marco, aldo serini, and george serrano. >> my accept dad, he went to the korean war when he was, like, 16. he didn't speak too much about it. he wasn't feeling well, and so they took him to the va hospital and they found out that he had lymphoma. we went to visit him, and he was in terrible pain. we had asked the nurse if there was anything that they could give him for pain, and she said, "let me speak to the doctor." and that's when i met dr. swango, and he said that he would give him something for
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pain. i never asked him what it was. and then i got the phone call that he had passed. we never even thought of having an autopsy. >> the problem was, those are complex cases that take a lot of time. and so there's a lot of things that had to be proven. and the time was ticking away. >> dr. michael swango is currently serving time in an oregon federal penitentiary for making false statements to get a job at a long island hospital. with good behavior, he'll be transferred to a halfway house. >> in order to build their case before swango was released from prison, investigators needed actual proof that the three veterans had been poisoned. so they had to ask the families if they had permission to exhume the bodies of their loved ones and test the tissue for toxins. >> i couldn't believe i was getting this phone call. >> they said they had reason to believe my father's death was
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not natural causes. he was poisoned. it started to fall into place. that's the doctor that he was talking about. michael swango. then we all felt very guilty because we didn't believe my father. >> and they believed that two drugs were involved here. one drug is called epinephrine. >> epinephrine is a stimulant. a very large dose of ev effective rin can make your blood pressure go very high, make your heart rate go very high, cause you to have a hemorrhage in your brain. certainly you can get to a dose that can kill somebody. >> the other drug is called suction sa follow coleen. >> it's a quick-acting paralytic. it paralyzes you so you couldn't breathe. >> the question is, are you going to be able to find these poisons in embalmed tissue? and going down to the 11th hour,
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there was not an answer. let's assume we missed the deadline and he was out. >> i didn't want to miss that mark. if i missed that mark, i was not going to find him again, not for a long time. >> butto toxicology's everythin in this case. in the '80s and early '90s, you didn't have the forensic tools that are available today. >> scientific testing has advanced to on a point where scientists are able to make determinations of the presence of various substances in the body, specifically, in tissue, that they weren't able to back in 1993. >> in the first victim, george serrano, we found a drug called epinephrine. in thomas andrew, we found a drug called suck sa follow coleen. >> that's when we decided to move ahead and charge him with the murders. >> but would the charges come in
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time? michael swango's prison term was coming to an end. >> swango was days away from freedom, his current prison term set to expire on july 15th. >> i can't let this guy go. to let him go would be allowing a hurricane you can stop hit a major east coast city. if he gets out, people are going to die. now we've created a brand new way for you to sell your car whether it's a year old, or a few years old we want to buy your car so go to carvana enter your license plate answer a few questions and our techno wizardry calculates your car's value and gives you a real offer in seconds when you're ready we'll come to you pay you on the spot and pick up your car that's it so ditch the old way of selling your car and say hello to the new way at carvana
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>> michael swingle was at one point in time a doctor but instead of using his medical license to become a healer, he embarked upon a career as a killer. i think just days before he was to be released on prison for perjury charges, prosecutors were able to indict him for murder. the fbi went to share the news with him and to let tran40 know he had a decision to make. >> we had the cases together for new york we went out to talk to them and we said we are just here to tell you something and he seemed surprised and we said, what we are here to tell you is that you are smart. you have gotten away with a lot of murders and we may have the murder cases in new york, but we definitely have the murder cases in africa.
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>> dr. michael swango had already been indicted for five murders in zimbabwe, africa and the punishments there , death by hanging. >> there is a treaty between zimbabwe and the united states. >> the extradition treaty which had just been put into effect by the u.s. government and the government of zimbabwe. jim >> jim headed the ratification over to michael swango.'s face changed and he went pale. >> and we said you know we will do is we will go over there, maybe you will beat the charges and maybe you won't. it gives us extra time to finesse our cases here, but he said, know. the only way of coming back from africa is in a body bag. >> that convinced them in short order that he should plead guilty and avoid a trial. >> he thought he would be hanged pretty quickly once he reached zimbabwe and he was looking to make a deal. so he basically said if he would plead guilty if we took africa off the table and the death penalty off of the table and he got to surface time in a secure location.>> and the agreement that michael would
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plead guilty to the three meters at the va hospital in new york and also to the murder of 19-year-old cindy maggie in ohio. >> the first sentencing was out on long island and of course, the families or their. >> remember when he was brought before the judge and we were all there and they sentenced him. michael swango gets up and stands up at attention. like an ex-marine. >> this veteran i did so anyway. >> poisoned these people. he ran through the whole thing. >> what we thought for 20 years was now proven. he is a serial killer. >> he enjoyed sitting on tom san marco watching him code. >> i was free areas. of sulfur is when i think about him. i really am. he just didn't have any remorse in his face. >> he took great joy in saying, your father died. that was part of his joy.
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>> he destroyed us. he really did. >> he did plead guilty to killing cindy maggie. >> dr. michael swango was tasked with taking a blood draw, and he didn't do that. he gave her a shot of potassium, which caused her death through cardiac arrest. >> he said he shot a syringe in her chest and killed her immediately. >> why would he do something like that. he didn't know cindy. or was it an objective for him to kill as many people as he could. >> how many innocent people has he killed? how many is an innocent people has he victimized? select the sad truth is that poisoning is an underdiagnosed crime. i think there are probably a lot of people that have been poisoned and died into nobody
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ever suspected it. >> investigator is believed that every person around michael swango could have been a potential target . like in the case of his former fiancc, kristin kinney, known as kk. shortly after she and michael swango left south dakota, they broke up and she committed suicide.>> i got a phone call from my charge nurse at the hospital and she said kk killed herself. and i just burst into tears. select the family kept a lock of her hair and we had that tested. it was loaded with arsenic. he had been poisoning her for quite some time also. >> at the very least, he seems to be a sick man. at the very most, he is the epitome of evil. >> he was sentenced to life in
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prison without the possibility of parole for the murders he pled guilty to. >> and if he ever gets out, he still have to go back to zimbabwe. >> where he is at, he is in worth the worst of the worst. the fbi labeled him as being one of the most dangerous individuals. i think that describes how dangerous michael swango is to society. >> he was brilliant, charming, and a diabolical killer. >> i know that michael has only been convicted for four murders. he contends there are hundreds. he says the chilling truth is, there were far more than reported and was almost always totally at random. >> it had nothing to do with veterans. it had nothing to do with age. it had nothing to do with illnesses. he liked to kill.
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>> michael swango a serving four life sentences with no chance of parole. authority sadie did not know how many people michael swango murdered but they believe the body count could be as many as 60 worldwide. retired fbi agents. tom and james regularly visit him and present hope they will he will reveal information about other victims. hln reached out to michael swango for comment and he did respond but he would not answer questions about any additional crimes for fear of further prosecution. i'm donnie wahlberg, thank you for watching. good night. hello and welcome to the viewers joining us from the united states and all around the world. had this hour, america braces fo

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