Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Serial killer doctor murdered dozens: The investigator who caught him

Episode Date: September 13, 2018

Bruce Sackman, the president of the Society of Professional Investigators in New York, spent years on the trail of a medical doctor who we now know murdered at least 60 people. Nancy Grace explores the investigation of Dr. Michael Swango with Sackman, who chronicles this case and others in his new book "Behind the Murder Curtain: Special Agent Bruce Sackman Hunts Doctors and Nurses Who Kill Our Veterans."  Southern California prosecutor Wendy Patrick, New York psychologist Caryn Stark, Atlanta juvenile judge & lawyer Ashley Willcott, medical examiner Dr. William Morrone, and Crime Stories reporter Larry Meagher join the discussion in this episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. If you have heard about the murder of Jessica Chambers, do not miss the new docuseries on Oxygen. It's the true story of a teen girl, a cheerleader in Mississippi, who is burned alive. And the story of the man accused of this heinous crime. Is it the right guy on trial? Who is he? And who is Jessica Chambers? And how does such a horrific crime occur? With more questions than answers, this is a case that has captured national headlines, taken over social media, and leaves a small town divided. This is a must-see TV event. It features exclusive interviews that take you inside the investigation as the search for answers and justice goes on. Don't miss it. Unspeakable Crime,

The Killing of Jessica Chambers premieres September 15, 7, 6 central with new episodes every Saturday on Oxygen, the new network for crime. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. When I was growing up in the middle of nothing but tall pine trees and soybean fields, my mother would always say, don't go to the hospital. You'll die. That's where you go to die. You'll die in the hospital.

Well, as it turns out, she was right, especially in light of one particular doctor, Dr. Michael Swango. How, how was a murderous doctor allowed to kill so many patients? It apparently goes all the way back when he was actually a student at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, where he took, guess what, a special interest in dying patients. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us.

Take a listen to this. He had a great mind, was very smart, was a good paramedic. He always kept scrapbooks and he would bring the scrapbooks to work and in his spare time he would go through several different newspapers and cut out stories and paste them into scrapbooks and of course the stories he was always interested in were the ones that included some type of bizarre accident or death. You are hearing John Landis, who worked with Swango at an ambulance service. He's remembering his very first impressions of Dr. Michael Swango, a medical doctor, the guy you're supposed to trust the most. Now, that's very scary for all of us scrapbookers out there however my scrapbooks are full of pictures of the twins and places we've

been and things we've done not unrelated newspaper articles about bizarre deaths joining me the man who literally wrote the book bruce sackackman, the president of the Society of Professional Investigators in New York and author of Behind the Murder Curtain. Special agent Bruce Sackman hunts doctors and nurses who kill. Wendy Patrick, California prosecutor. Karen Stark, renowned New York psychologist. Ashley Wilcott, judge, lawyer, founder of ChildCrimeWatch.com. Special guest, Dr. William Maroney, medical examiner and author of American Narcan, available on Amazon. And Crime Stories investigative reporter, Larry Mayher. First to you, Bruce Sackman.

I'm so intrigued with Dr. Michael Swango. Well, I wouldn't go so far to say interested. It's more like looking at a tarantula under a glass box or when you go to the zoo and you're in the snake house. And it's okay to look at them through some really thick glass. But that's about as close as I want to get. Bruce Sackman, what do we know about Dr. Michael Swango? How many people do you believe he murdered? Well, that's a great question because when you ask medical serial killers and even those that finally agree to cooperate,

they've killed so many people, they can't remember themselves. Swango, as you know, killed people all over the world. Ashley Wilcott, did you hear what he said about, well, when it comes to medical serial killers, okay, you just threw me over the edge right there. Did you hear that? It makes me wonder, Ashley,

how many medical serial killers are wandering around. It's going to be a cold day in H-E-L-L before I put another toe in the hospital. Ashley, did you hear what he said? Like, they're commonplace. Right, exactly. And they can't be commonplace. You have to believe that most medical professionals and doctors are not serial killers. But I think that it does beg the question.

Why do I have to believe that? Well, because it can't be true. You can't. You know, doctors are generally, like most people in most occupations, generally people are good. But you have those outliers. And this is an outlier of a serial killer. But I am going to say this, Nancy, it's certainly not the only one. Well, Dr. William Maroney, hold on just a moment. You're a doctor. You've worked in a hospital. Have you noticed how many people die in the hospital dr william

how am i supposed to know who dies of natural causes and if there's not another dr michael swango walking around well the first thing is anytime anybody dies in a hospital it's only investigated in the first 24 hours so if somebody has been a patient and they've been in for a chronic disease, the assumption by the medical staff, including the doctors and the nurses and the county officials, is that that person succumbed to their natural chronic disease. And there's very little effort for people to look into an investigation only the first 24 hours trauma poisoning or medical errors after that it's transparent it's a fog you lose these people and that's how people lose track well i've just got to tell you a story that I've never shared before. You all know that my dad passed away recently and we were all with him. And after he passed away, everybody left the

room, my mom, my brother, my sister, everybody that was with them except me. And I just could not bring myself to leave his body. Let me tell you something, that nurse, I still see her. I want to slap that grin right off her face. She came in there like he was just went with the sheets that she's just packing the bed up. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. Whoa, lady. And she said, you're not supposed to be in here. I said, I'm staying with my father until his body is at the funeral home. And you can call the security and drag me out if you want to. But I can tell you this much. You're going down with me, lady. She just wanted to like fold him up in the sheets and just take him away. I mean, she really acted like his body was just a problem.

I mean, my dad's body was still warm. He hadn't been gone 15 minutes. It was awful. Bruce Sackman, I'm going off on a tangent here, but I'm jumping off the diving board. William Maroney just put right in front of me, Dr. Maroney, because Bruce Sackman, I don't think we really know how many people Dr. Michael Swango killed. I mean, if they get rid of the patient within the 15 minutes after they die, the family is still mourning and grieving and upset. They don't even have time to think, wow, was this expected? Was this a surprise? And I think that's one of the things Swango had going for him. I'm back to my original question.

How many people do you think he killed, Bruce? Well, it's been estimated 60. Oh, my stars. But that's a rough estimate because even he doesn't even remember how many people he killed. I've got a quote from your book, Bruce. You say, quote, he hovered over their bedsides, studied their charts, and asked questions about what kind of pain they were in and how they were bearing it. He had this bizarre, special interest in dying patients. And that interest was less medical than a Hannibal Lecter-ish, I believe. What do you think, Bruce? Oh, absolutely. He had a fascination with death. He would poison his patients and then sit there in the room with the door closed or the curtain behind around him and the patient and just sit there and watch and just

watch the patient expire. And then he would really enjoy calling the family and telling the family that dad had just passed away. To the real shock of the family, because they thought dad was actually improving. You know, many of them had actually gone on vacation. They had visited dad, then left, only to get a phone call from Slango saying, hey, I'm sorry your dad passed away, goodbye.

I hardly even know what to say to that, Bruce Sackman. only to get a phone call from Swango saying, hey, I'm sorry your dad passed away. Goodbye. I hardly even know what to say to that. Bruce Sackman, author of Behind the Murder Curtain. Listen to this. They were talking about a call that they had in the middle of the night. And it was, I think, a one vehicle accident. They arrive on scene only to see Swango on top of the roof of the car in plain clothes. He starts firing off pictures. He had pictures of the individuals in that car. Speaking of horrific crimes, let me switch gears, guys. If you've heard about the murder of Jessica Chambers,

you do not want to miss this new docuseries on oxygen. The true story of a teen girl, a cheerleader in Mississippi, burned alive. And the story of a man accused of this horrific crime. Is the right guy on trial? Who is he? And who is Jessica Chambers, the teen girl? How does such a horrific crime occur? With more questions than answers, it's a case that has captured the national headlines,

taken over social media, and leaves a small town divided. It's a must-see TV event. Unspeakable crime. The Killing of Jessica Chambers premieres Saturday, September 15th, 7, 6 Central on Oxygen with new episodes every Saturday on Oxygen, the new network for crime. We're right outside the hospital entrance to the ER when he walks up to us. And I'm just absolutely stunned. I'm like, I cannot believe he's here. So he looks at us, walks right on by us, goes through both double doors and proceeded to walk down a hallway. And that led him down another hallway. And at that point in time, I don't know which, you know, I don't know where he's going. But that

hallway to the end of that hallway leads to the exterior doors. And he walked outside. We're standing there just trying to figure out where's he at right now. And he was walking along the sidewalk, and now we actually see him. He was on that sidewalk, walked up to a telephone pole, and then crossed his arms and kicked up his leg up on that pole and just stared at us for the entire time. You were hearing co-worker Brent Unmasig, and he is recalling seeing the killer doctor, Michael Swango,

after he was released on bail following arrests for poisoning co-workers. So it wasn't just his patients and other patients that he murdered under the guise of being a doctor, but co-workers poisoned as well. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us. Bruce Sackman, Wendy Patrick, Karen Stark, Ashley Wilcott, Dr. William Maroney, and Larry Mayher with us. Bruce Sackman wrote the book Behind the Murder Curtain. Bruce, I believe you want to defend doctors in general. Well, I just want to say that medical professionals, you know, really perform miracles every day. And one of the reasons, in my opinion, why medical serial killers are so successful is because they work in this environment where doctors and nurses are saving people every day.

So when an outlier like this comes to surface, people find it impossible to believe that this person is actually killing people. They refuse to believe that one of their co-workers is a drug. Oh, Bruce Sackman, you are totally, you're preaching to the choir because Wendy Patrick, a veteran California prosecutor, I mean, if I could put a doctor on the stand or a nurse, a dentist, anybody even related to helping other people to the medical field, juries would love them, particularly if they wore their doctor coat or their nurse outfit or their scrubs. I mean, juries love them. And there's a reason for that. We trust doctors. We love doctors. They've saved many of our family members. Let me point out that when my dad finally passed away, do you know that doctors had saved his life multiple times?

He had his first coronary thrombosis in his 30s, and he had his life saved over and over and over until he finally went to heaven, Wendy. So, I mean, juries respond very positively to doctors. Oh, they absolutely do, Nancy. And my heart goes out to you and your family for your father. But you're in the perfect position to know that we rely on doctors to perform miracles, not murder. This particular Dr. Swango, if you look at his record, as we're now unfortunately doing in retrospect, this is what I talked about in my last book, Red Flags. This was somebody who the man behind the mask was visible to so many people

along the way. And that dates back to when he was in medical school. So it's too bad that we cannot prospectively pick up and actually investigate like Bruce has done a great job of now. Prospectively, these isolated incidents should have been huge red flags that there was something wrong. Focus became fixation, became motivation behind these killings. And the fact that we don't even know how many, but maybe the number is 60 is almost unfathomable. Well, if there's 60, I guarantee you there are more. Dr. William Maroney, I don't know if it was like this for you in medical school, but it was like this for me in law school. Believe it or not, Dr. Maroney, I was so shy and quiet when I went to law school. I know, I know, I know. Hard to believe. I wouldn't even raise my hand ever. And I would look around and

listen. I'm like, wow, they're so smart. Little did I know they were all just BSing. You know how lawyers are. They just can't shut the hay up. Well, they're like that in law school. But Dr. Maroney, even in law school, there would be complete jackasses. Okay. And you knew then who were the jackasses. Turns out those are the people that got disbarred. Those are the people that never have the discipline to pass the bar. Those are the people that got in trouble.

I mean, apparently people in medical school knew Swango was a weirdo. Here's what you have. You have a really big amphitheater what you have. You have a really big amphitheater and you have slides and didactic lectures up front. There are people up front paying attention. They can't see anybody behind them. There are some of the people in the middle. Girls are doing their nails. Guys are worried about the test they didn't study for. And then the people in the back are reading the sports page. So you have all sorts of people like this. Oh, man.

I was too afraid to do anything but take copious notes. What I'm saying, Dr. Moroney, is I think you can tell early on who is, let me just say, the bad apple that spoils the whole bunch to Bruce Sackman. Tell me how his murders would go down of 60 plus murders. How did he affect murders within hospitals? Well, Swango liked to work, pardon the pun, the graveyard shift, which was 3 a.m. And if you've ever been on a hospital ward at 3 a.m., there aren't too many people around. So what he would do is that he would either inject or tap a line, usually using a paralytic like succinylcholine or sometimes epinephrine, and he would close the door and put the curtain around him and the patient and sit there for 30 minutes and watch. And then eventually a code

would call and sometimes he would respond to the code or sometimes he wouldn't. And he would take out as many people as he could until he actually got caught, not only here in the United States, but he did the same thing in Zimbabwe. And when he was in Zimbabwe, Africa, he killed women and children and pregnant women and actually got charged with murder there as well, but never served time there because we arrested him here. Larry Mayher joining us from CrimeOnline.com. And Larry, remember this, this guy, this Dr. Michael Swango, he was considered, and I'm getting this from Bruce Sackman's book, Behind the Murder Curtain, and I'm quoting from his book. While he, Swango, was considered a brilliant student with the potential of being a great doctor, no one got the impression he was searching for ways to help those desperate patients.

I'm just trying to figure out what that means. It appeared that what he enjoyed most was being close to their suffering. That's apparently. You know, after I go to you, Larry, we're going to have to go to the shrink here and start. Go ahead, Larry. To get an idea of sort of the arc of his story, when he was in medical school in Illinois, some of his patients died. He then got a residency and internship in Ohio where more patients died. He then got a residency and internship in Ohio, where more patients died. Well, after he was removed from there, he went back to his hometown in Illinois and got a job

as an ambulance attendant, a paramedic. And it Bond, he was convicted of poisoning several of his co-workers by bringing them donuts laced with rat poison and dumping arsenic into a pitcher of iced tea that was in the break room and giving one of his co-workers a poisoned soft drink. He actually served almost three years in prison for that before he went back to killing people in hospitals. I don't understand it. Bruce Sackman, author of Behind the Murder Curtain, he poisoned his co-workers. Why was he allowed to go back into a hospital? Yeah, pretty amazing, isn't it? But this is what happened. He actually forged the number of documents. He had changed his name, forged the number of documents. In fact, he even forged a certificate that reinstated his civil rights from the governor of Virginia. And he had claimed to these medical boards that being a tough ex-Marine, he actually just got in a fistfight, got sentenced to a misdemeanor.

Six months in jail, but the governor restored his civil rights. And they didn't investigate. They didn't go any further. They didn't try to verify it. Oh, my stars. So they accepted it. And the next thing you know, he's treating patients again. Karen Stark, New York psychologist.

Karen, this fascination with death. What is that? It's part of what makes somebody be a serial killer and a murderer, Nancy. It's why people, whenever we talk about why didn't they just get divorced instead of killing their spouse? It's because they enjoy the idea of somebody suffering. And actually, it's something that will turn them on. They get excited about it. And it propels them to keep doing it. And here we have what you would call serial killer heaven for somebody who's interested in killing other people, because they are in a position where they can do whatever they want and kill as many people as they want and very often can continue to go undetected. So he could close that curtain and just sit there and

gleefully watch the person, and I mean gleefully, watch the person slowly die. It was essentially a circumstantial evidence case. No one ever actually saw him put poison in donuts or saw him put poison in iced tea or saw him put poison in soda. When I determined the outcome, I was never any more certain of a guilty verdict than I was of that one. You're hearing Judge Dennis Cashman, who presided at Swango's trial, saying it was, quote, just a circumstantial case. But let me remind everyone, under our jurisprudence system, circumstantial evidence is just as meaningful, just as powerful as direct evidence, which is like DNA or an eyewitness or confession. Yeah, I mean, but bottom line, when you have 60 plus dead bodies and they're all, the only common denominator is you, I think that means a lot to a jury. We are taking your calls.

Let's go straight out. Joining us right now from Nevada, a member from law enforcement. Hi, Nevada. Thanks for calling. What's your question? My question is, is that based on what I've been hearing just a little bit this morning, is the fact that if you've got what you just said, a strong case of circumstantial evidence here, my question is, why are we, I mean, there's been cases before decided by strong circumstantial evidence without physical evidence. I'm trying to figure out what the crux of the matter is involving the actual evidence versus the circumstantial. Well, are you saying you think with enough circumstantial evidence someone should be convicted, correct? Correct, yes. I've been doing law enforcement. Let me ask you a question. Yes, I was just about to ask you how long have

you been in law enforcement? Are you a cop? What are you? I've been in law enforcement in the state of Nevada for almost 30 years. I started out as a state trooper. I became a deputy sheriff. I'm an adult probation officer. I was the sheriff of Mineral County, Nevada from 2013 to 2015, and now I'm a federal law enforcement tribal chief on a reservation in central Nevada. Wow, okay. That's certainly a resume. Can I tell you something? Go ahead. I love circumstantial cases because it's like putting a puzzle together for a jury, and they get to put all the pieces out on the card table and make it complete,

and I think jurors like figuring things out. I don't think there's ever a lock on a case, and I love telling juries that circumstantial evidence is just as strong as direct evidence. You know, interesting. That's always the way, right? Ashley Wilcott, I want to follow up on what our friend in Nevada is saying. Ashley Wilcott, judge, lawyer, founder of childCrimeWatch.com. Defense attorneys love to argue, oh, it's just circumstantial evidence. You know what? I call BS on that because circumstantial is just as powerful as direct evidence under the law, right? It is under the law.

And also, Nancy, if you're a good trial attorney and a good prosecutor, you can have a lot of fun, so to speak, with a circumstantial case because it's all about how you present the evidence and connect the dots. And once you connect enough dots, it can often be as compelling, if not more compelling than direct evidence cases. You know, another issue regarding circumstantial versus direct evidence. Very quickly to Wendy Patrick, California prosecutor. I mean, when you have a witness on the stand, like our friend from law enforcement calling him from Nevada right now, jurors very often trust and believe someone that makes a good impression on the stand. So the way that circumstantial evidence unfolds in front of a jury is important. And another thing, Wendy, I mean, who could be a direct witness? We don't. And when you have, as we've been pointing out, the common denominator

is this one particular doctor that always seems to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. When you pair that with the rest of the evidence, the verdict becomes clear. Here's the one other thing about circumstantial evidence. It has to be subject to reasonable interpretations. It would be an unreasonable interpretation to say that lightning could strike over 60 times in one place, even if we didn't have his admissions. So that's another way we say tie goes to the defendant if it's reasonable, but circumstantial evidence really does point to guilt in a case like this overwhelmingly. Back to Bruce Sackman, author of Behind the Murder Curtain, who investigated this case. Bruce, listen to this. And I learned this from your book, so you already know this.

He was obsessed with his appearance and working out. He graduated valedictorian of high school and served in the Marines. And he was a fanatic about his physical condition and was devoted to push-ups push-ups as a form of self-punishment. Okay, can I just say, what a freak. Help me out, Bruce Ackman. Well, that wasn't the only thing that was unusual. When he was at the Northport VA, he used to love to walk around in his scrubs, whether he was on duty or not. And one of the things he'd like to do, he'd like to go into the nurse's area, lie prone on the floor and talk on the phone. And what does that mean? I have no idea. Okay, wait a minute. Wait,

wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, Bruce, Bruce, Bruce. Lie on the floor in the nurse's area. What do you mean by nurse's area? You know, where the nurses would have their break area? He would go in there, lie on the floor in a prone position and talk on the phone for about a half hour. Just a strange bit of behavior. What was he doing, looking at their skirts? No, no, just a strange bit of behavior on his part. Oh, oh, oh, oh.

Since we're talking about looking at people's skirts, since I was talking about looking at people's skirts anyway, did he have a relationship like a wife or a girlfriend? Yeah, well, that's interesting. Or is she dead too? Well, she's dead, too. Okay. I mean, he had a wife who he divorced from, and thank goodness she survived him. But he had a fiancée. Her name was Kristen Kenney.

She was a nurse that he had met in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. And then what happened in Sioux Falls is that he applied for membership in the AMA. And they said, wait a minute, who is this guy? And at the same time, there was a news show on television about him. And the next thing you know, everybody in the town says, wow, we have this serial killer working here in Sioux Falls. So him and his fiance, they were just on the out. She was a VA nurse. Years later, she went home to Virginia. She went in the park, she took out a gun, and she shot herself. Well, you can't blame Spango for that, can you? Well, actually, you can. Because what happened was that the family kept, she was cremated, but the family kept a lock of her hair.

We analyzed her hair. It was loaded with arsenic. He was actually poisoning his fiance. When she was with him, she used to get all these headaches, and she couldn't understand why. And after they separated, the headaches seemed to stop. But he had poisoned her while they were going together. And the separation between the separation and the poisoning, she just couldn't take it anymore, and she killed herself. Her mom actually wrote a letter to Judge Mishler, who handled his sentencing for the murders out on Long Island,

and the judge read the letter. It was very moving, as you could imagine. I have no doubt that there are more than 60 victims, murder victims of Dr. Michael Swango. Listen. I certainly believe that he's a sick individual and that he does not have the ability to comprehend what he did. If, in fact, our society let him out,

then I think there would probably be more anger. But knowing that he's in a place that he'll never hurt anybody again I'm good with that. He wanted me to call all the paramedics as witnesses for him and you know I think he began to realize finally that the paramedics weren't for him. Well their testimony was very compelling. It was very thorough. The things they had to say about Swango that were relevant and material to the case were so strange and unique, if you will, that it certainly had a ring of truth to it because you wouldn't think anybody could make something up like that. We are talking about the angel of death, Dr. Michael Swango,

accused of 60 murders within hospital settings and elsewhere. Was it necrophilia? What was his motive? And right there, you are hearing about how at trial, he actually wanted to call his co-workers, thinking it would help him. Instead, their testimony was damning. What was their testimony, Bruce Sackman, author of Behind the Murder Curtain? Their testimony was that they came into work one day and he had donuts for them. They ate the donuts. They got sick. And then he would call them up, and he would want to know all the details of their illness. What exactly happened? Did you throw up?

Did you sweat? Did this happen? Did that happen? Asking all these deep, probing questions because he really wanted to find out what happened as a result of him poisoning them. Well, and he wanted to. Go ahead, Karen. Yeah, Nancy. He wanted to relive what had happened. He enjoyed reliving the experience that people would go through when they died.

He was the type of person who, if he had to speak to the family, would give tremendous details about what happened when their loved one died so that he could relive the dying experience because he was so fascinated with the idea of death from the time he was very young. Why didn't the state pursue the death penalty? You've got all these poisonings of co-workers. We know of 60 murders, plus you got the girlfriend whose same M.O. was poisoned with arsenic. Why aren't they seeking the death penalty on him? Well, I could tell you why, and that's because he agreed to plead guilty, and that saved us going to trial, and as you know nancy anything well anything could happen save us from go hold on hold on hold on first to you wendy patrick california prosecutor save us from going to trial save us that's what

trial lawyers do that's how they make a living they're supposed to go to trial go to trial that's right nancy there are some cases in which a guilty plea might spare victims the horror and the trauma of having to testify. But these victims are deceased, so that isn't the case here. You could argue, well, the family members don't want to relive it. These are some of the decisions, as you know, Nancy, that go on behind the scenes that oftentimes are frustrating to those of us looking in from the outside, attempting to figure out why a trial lawyer didn't go to trial. Just as a, you know, we always try to extend professional courtesy. We'd love to see what went into those decisions and what went into that decision to allow that type of plea. Wendy, Wendy, Wendy, Wendy Patrick. Look, Wendy, I'm on your side.

You're a California prosecutor. I'm a crime victim, and I was a prosecutor my entire legal career, okay? But I'm just, you know, I'm putting it out there. I'm not taking sides or covering up for people. Sixty dead bodies that we know of, plus the girlfriend, plus the poisonings. Ashley Wilcott, I don't understand it, and I'm calling everybody out. Now, in some jurisdictions, they may not have the death penalty, and there's nothing the prosecutors can do about that. But with 60 bodies, I guarantee you that somewhere the death penalty exists for a guy that sat there in a chair and enjoyed watching his victims die.

One after the next, after the next, after the next. And to boot, he's a doctor, Ashley. And I would suggest that nationwide we see those states that have the death penalty, when you have a serial killer like this, do absolutely go after the death penalty. So I have to believe that there's some evidentiary problem, issue that they preferred to take a plea. I don't know what it was with the dead bodies that they were having difficulty thinking they could prove, or if they ran into some evidence issues like it was incorrectly collected and wouldn't be admissible. I believe there had to have been something like that that caused the prosecution

to say, we need to accept the plea. Out of 60? I know. Out of 60? I don't believe that. I think somebody dropped the ball, and I know for a fact they have the death penalty in Ohio. I mean, Bruce Sackman, I'm stunned. Why no one sought the death penalty on this guy? Well, I actually, in an answer, I believe it was the correct decision. Remember, this guy was sentenced to three consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole.

And he's now in supermax prison in Florence, Colorado. He's never getting out. And if you went to trial. He's evil. You're right. But he didn't plead guilty to 60 murders. You know what, Bruce, hold on. He only plead guilty to three murders, plus the murder later in Ohio.

But remember, there's always a number of issues, particularly with toxicology, and you're talking about embalmed tissue. Oh, please, stop it, Bruce. Stop it. Please. Dr. William Maroney, will you please help me? This guy is the devil. And, you know, very often my view is I just want the conviction. I want the person brought to justice.

And, you know, the jury can do whatever they wish when it comes to sentencing. But, I mean, come on, Dr. Maroney. Maybe I'm projecting about my death. I don't know but 60 dead bodies and sitting there enjoying watching them die this guy is Satan he's Beelzebub walking around he's he's getting three hots and a cot and we're paying for it but the technical issues are is if they brought it to court uh the previous speaker is absolutely right. They didn't collect the toxic.

In many cases, they didn't do the autopsies. You know what? Because these all came across as natural deaths in the course of disease. And when your hair is full of arsenic. So if they would have went after that, it would have been the week. Oh, I guess arsenic just appears in your hair naturally. You know what? I think the two of you have way too much education i want you to take a listen to this a physician

takes a hippocratic oath and you know he's vowed to to preserve and protect and and provide the necessary means to sustain life and here's this guy looking at that oath and just you know basically burning it he violated not only the trust of the patients but the trust of his co-workers certainly well you know what i have to agree with the joint all my guests today that for the most part almost universally doctors nurses are there to help as i pointed out when my dad saved his life over and over saved my life when i nearly died in childbirth. And then Swango comes along. All I can say is this, Dr. Michael Swango, rot in H-E-double-L. Enjoy dinner with Satan. Nancy Grace, Crime Stories, signing off. Goodbye, friends.

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