All language subtitles for Very.Scary.People.S02E11.Dr.Death.A.License.to.Kill.Part.1.1080p.MAX.WEB-DL.DD+2.0.H.264-playWEB_track3_[eng]

♪♪

Sackman: Let's say
you're so inclined

to commit a series of murders.

So what profession and what
location might you choose?

You'd want to choose a location

where death is a common,
everyday occurrence.

If somebody dies in a hospital,
nobody raises an eyebrow.

You could take that curtain

and put that curtain around you
and the patient,

and no one's gonna see
what's going on there.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

Welcome to "Very Scary People."

I'm Donnie Wahlberg.

Physicians take an oath
to do no harm,

but Dr. Michael Swango
did just the opposite.

From his early days
in medical school

until the time he was captured,

Michael Swango preyed upon
the most vulnerable --

helpless patients
and unsuspecting co-workers.

In his nearly 20-year career,
he left a trail of death

across several states
and two continents.

What could make
a well-respected,

charismatic physician become

one of the most prolific medical
serial killers in the country?

Here is part one
of "Dr. Death: License to Kill."

♪♪

♪♪

Sharkey: Cindy McGee
was a 19-year-old gymnast

from a suburb of Columbus,

and she was at the Champaign,
Illinois, campus.

Montanari: I met Cindy when I
was student-teaching in college.

She was one of my gymnasts.

She was a team leader.

A 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 gonna do great things.

She'd 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.

O'Brien: She had been taken
to medical facilities

around the University
of Illinois.

Montanari:
She was in a trauma unit.

It was very, 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...
Yeah, it was devastating.

And it was a complete mystery --
somebody who was that young,

who was recovering,
for her to just die that fast.

Jordan: The last doctor
to see Cindy McGee

was Dr. Michael Swango.

♪♪

Unmisig: I started working
as a paramedic

full-time when I was 18.

One of my first shifts

when I walk in
to the paramedic quarters,

the director of the ambulance
says,

"Here's your new partner,
Dr. Michael Swango."

He's a doctor.

In my mind, I'm thinking,

"Why is this guy working
as a paramedic for $10 an hour

when he could be working
as a physician

for $100 an hour?"

I remember I asked him,
and he said,

"Oh, I got burned out.

I had to take a leave
of absence."

Unmisig:
Technically, he was very sound.

I'm working side by side
with him.

I'm watching in detail as to how
quickly he can assess the injury

and how quickly
he can manage the trauma.

Cullumber: He was a hard worker
and very proficient

and he loved to work

and he loved to deal
with medical crises.

We were friends.
We all got along.

He fit in.

He was just a down-to-Earth kind
of guy like the rest of us.

I was getting off shift
that morning,

and Mike come in

and he set a box
of doughnuts on the table.

Unmisig: I thought, "Well,
this is a pretty good guy,

bringing in some doughnuts."

So I sat down
at the table there.

I ate one of the doughnuts.

Probably 15, 20 minutes later,
I am feeling sick.

Down the hall,
there was a bathroom,

and I'm vomiting,
vomiting, sweating,

and I can hear
somebody else retching.

Out walks Alan Ingerson.

I said, "You're sick, too?"
I said, "I'm sick, too."

Myers: The health department
went to the doughnut shop

to see if there'd been
any other complaints

or any other problems
or anything, and there wasn't.

Unmisig:
The doughnuts are gone.

There was really nothing
they could test.

The health department came in
and analyzed the tea

and the coffee
and anything else

that may have been
in the refrigerator.

Myers: And after their
investigation, they determined

that it had to be something else
that's causing the sickness.

Unmisig: The next night, we had
a local football game here.

The state of Illinois requires
an ambulance to be

on standby at football games.

I was on the ambulance.

Swango also signed up to be
on that football game with me.

At halftime,
he offers me a Coke.

He said, "I'm gonna run up
get a Coke. Do you want one?"

I said, "Sure."

I'm drinking this soda,

and start of the third quarter,
I'm like,

"Oh, my God, I feel like
I'm gonna get sick again.

This is unbelievable."

And Mike Swango comes up to me,
and he goes,

"What do you feel like?"

I said, "I feel like very
similar to the previous day."

And he says, "Nausea, vomiting?"

He snickers a little bit,
laughs a little bit.

Very, very odd.

♪♪

I have tried my utmost
to be the best person

and the best physician I can be,
and that's all anyone can do.

Kreth: I've written to Michael
Swango for over 10 years.

He is an extremely
charming person.

This is how he sees a story
about him.

Dr. Michael Swango graduated
with a degree in chemistry

with high honors
from Quincy College.

Valery:
Michael Swango -- this is a guy

who was an award-winning chemist
when he graduated.

Walker: I remember talking
to his professor.

He was the guy
that always had the answers.

Cook: One of the brightest
students I ever had.

Now, I don't know if he was
the most intelligent,

but he worked extremely hard
at his studies.

Myers: He could read a book

and go through that book
in no time

and close it,
and you could open it up

and ask him any questions
out of it,

and he could tell you
exactly what he read.

And after college, he went
into SIU to become a doctor.

He would come back to Quincy

and work as a paramedic
part-time during the holidays

and then 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."

And I seen Mike walking down
the hallways

carrying a 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.

And I looked at it,
and I looked at him and I said,

"What, did you go
in the bathroom

and pee in my soda?" jokingly.

And he says, "No, no, no,
I wouldn't do that."

What he told me was that
his stomach was upset,

so he drank a little bit
to settle his stomach.

Okay, I believed him.

I poured it into a glass
with ice,

drank probably three,
maybe four 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 gonna die.

I really did.

A lady friend of mine
came in to check on me

and I looked up and I told her,
I said,

"I think something's not right.

Go out and get the rest
of my soda."

She came back in and she said,

"Well, Mike dumped it
down the drain.

He thought you was sick
and didn't want any more of it."

♪♪

The next 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."

Meyer: The paramedics said,

"We think we got something
really suspicious going on,

and we got to get to
the bottom of this."

And they got together themselves

and started discussing
and comparing notes.

Myers:
I was telling the secretary,

who was the aunt of one
of the other paramedics.

I was telling her about my soda,

and I'll never forget
the expression on her face.

Her eyes looked at me,
and her mouth dropped open.

She said, "The same thing
happened to Brent,"

her nephew
at the football game.

Mike went and purchased soda,

came back, Brent drank it,
in 10 minutes,

he was behind
the ambulance vomiting.

Unmisig: My aunt, she was
putting two and two together.

She looks at me.

She says, "I think
Mike's behind this.

Every time he's around,
people are getting sick.

He's the only one
that doesn't get sick.

Don't take anything from Mike."

And we thought, "No way."

It was hard to accept
'cause if you knew Mike,

you would've never guessed him
to do something like this.

Cullumber: Michael Swango,
he seemed to get along

with his co-workers just fine.

Now, they did admit that he had,
really, an odd sense of humor

that would turn the stomach
of most people.

He had this intense fascination
with death and dying.

I recall one time where I'm on
a call with him and he says,

"Brent, what's your favorite
or ultimate ambulance call?"

He says, "Well, mine would be
a busload of children

hitting head on with
a tanker truck full of gasoline.

It'd blow up."

And as he's approaching
the scene,

seeing the charred bodies
hanging out of the buses,

the blast blowing kids up
against barbed-wire fences.

So he's very graphic in detail

about this ultimate
ambulance call.

You hear someone say things like
that, you know he's not right.

Stewart: He was obsessed
with violence and death

from as early
as the second grade.

He started keeping scrapbooks
of violent crimes,

accidents, homicides.

Unmisig: And these scrapbooks,

they had articles
out of magazines.

And he was taking a highlighter,

and he would highlight
the graphic details

about that individual's death
or about that scene.

Scrapbooks of disasters.

The more gory, the better.

Neer: I think that this interest
grew and, over time,

just became a part
of who he was.

I want you to understand
how demented

I think this gentleman was.

Man on television: Right now,
I got eyeball on him.

Unmisig: Greg and I are working,
and we're watching CNN.

They're getting ready to go in.
We're watching them.

And it the mass shooting
that occurred

in San Diego at the McDonald's.

22 people die that day.

Michael Swango just watches
with a big smile on his face.

He goes, "Wouldn't that
be great to see?

My God, you know, this is --
this is unbelievable.

I wish I was there
to see it all."

Myers: And he got so excited

and ran over
and 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 arousing.

Stewart: As he got older,

he became
ever more fixated on this,

working as an emergency
medical technician,

so he'd be there at these scenes
of these horrible incidents.

He just loved being an EMT,
appearing on the scene.

The more cars involved
in the crash,

the more bodies, the better.

Unmisig: There was another
bizarre incident

where there was a call
in the middle of the night.

They get a report
of a car accident.

The ambulance races to the scene
only to see that Swango

was on top of the vehicle.

He's not there to help them out.

He's just there to take pictures
of these individuals

inside this car.
Who thinks like that?

Saathoff: Death and destruction
were fantasies for him

but fantasies
that also became realities.

♪♪

Cullumber:
I was a newspaper reporter

and editor in Quincy, Illinois.

We had a call that some
paramedics had been getting sick

while they were on the job,

and 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're suspicious.

There's something
weird going on.

Then Greg gets sick.

Then, from there, the story
just kind of unraveled.

Jordan: Paramedics suspected
that their colleague,

Dr. Michael Swango,
could be responsible

for their mysterious illnesses,
but apart from their suspicions

and his bizarre
fascination with death,

there really was
just no evidence

that this charismatic man
could be responsible

or do them any harm.

Unmisig: He's a doctor.
He's one that you trust.

Here he has the hands
to heal and to help.

He is an engaging, personable,
smart, articulate person.

Why would he do something
like that? This is crazy.

Jordan: Michael Swango was born
on October 21, 1954,

in an Army base
in Tacoma, Washington.

His given name was actually
Joseph Michael,

but he went by his middle name.

According to family members,
in his mother's eyes,

Michael Swango
could do no wrong.

He had a half-brother, an older
brother, younger brother.

McCarthy: His family moved
to Quincy, Illinois.

His dad was a military man.

Served a long time in Vietnam.

And then when he retired
from the military,

he went back to Vietnam
with the USAID.

Neer: His father was known
to be a very strict

and 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 then told,

"At ease, attention, at ease,"
and then, "Dismissed."

His mother, by all accounts,
favored him.

He was the only child
of the three

who was sent
to a private school.

He's very bright.

He was valedictorian
of his high-school class.

And he was considered pretty
much the star of the family.

Saathoff: He really was quite
an excellent musician.

When he first went to college
in Millikin, it was in music.

Gifted with the clarinet.
He got a music scholarship.

Wolfe: Mike was just
kind of a normal guy.

He was pretty straight-laced,
but he was easily agitated.

People would just kid him
all the time.

And, of course,
rooming with him,

I would hear about it.

And, boy, there would be times

where he would be
absolutely lit.

He would pace the floor,
you know, and I would tell him,

I said, "You know,
you just got to let that go."

But Swango did not take slights
very well at all

because everyone held him up
as this example of perfection.

Saathoff: For someone
who is super sensitive,

that feels humiliating,

and that caused him
to do something dramatic.

Neer:
He surprised everybody.

Left his music scholarship

and then joins
the United States Marines.

In the Marines, he received
an honorable discharge

after two years.

McCarthy:
When he got out of the Marines,

he went to continue
his education back in Quincy.

And at some point,
he liked the idea of medicine.

He finished college
and was accepted

to Southern Illinois University
medical school.

Saathoff: In the first half
of medical school,

he was pretty disciplined

in terms of having to do well
enough on his tests and exams.

McCarthy:
But he had several problems.

There was always somebody dying
or coding when he was around.

There were people who
immediately pointed to him

as having engaged
in highly suspicious behavior.

And 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 the
university not to graduate him.

And they wrote a letter
to the Dean, and the Dean said,

"I think we should give
this young man another chance."

The matter was settled when he
was asked just to repeat

his last year
of his education, which he did.

And then he got a really good
offer of a residency

at Ohio State University.

Jordan: Dr. Swango spent a year

at the Ohio State
University hospital

before returning to Quincy,

and there his fellow paramedics
started getting really sick.

His colleagues believed
that he was responsible

for their mysterious illness,

but they just didn't have
any proof.

Meyer: The paramedics themselves
started saying, "You know,

why is it that it seems like
anytime you work with him,

you get sick,
I work with him, I get sick?"

It was apparent to them that,

"Hey, this guy's doing
something to us."

But, at that point in time,
I think that there was

no indication
that we're being poisoned.

We just wanted to find out
what was going on.

These paramedics set up
a fake ambulance run

so that they would have
an opportunity

to go through Dr. Swango's
possessions

that were in the paramedic
headquarters without him there.

I'm working with Swango.

They 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're
looking for anything possible

that we can use as evidence.

Myers:
We found his bag, looked in it,

and there was all the bottles
of Terro ant killer.

Terro ant poison,
which contains arsenic.

Holstege: Arsenic is
a poisoning of antiquity,

goes way back in time.

Potent toxin,
reportedly tasteless,

doesn't take very much
to poison people.

So very hard for us to be able
to detect if we're eating it

and very easy for a poisoner
to put on various foods.

People, when they eat it,
usually talk about

having gastrointestinal problems
initially --

nausea, vomiting, diarrhea.

And if I was a physician
seeing that patient,

I'd think he had a bad GI bug.

We looked it up
on the poison index.

Bingo.

Every symptom that it said
it had, I had.

Well, after that, I was
convinced I had been poisoned.

♪♪

♪♪

Welcome back
to "Very Scary People."

Dr. Michael Swango,

a former Marine
and respected 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 paramedics unit

became convinced that Dr. Swango

was putting potentially
lethal doses of ant killer

in their food and drink.

The paramedics had noticed

that Mike had bottles
of Terro ant poison

in his personal locker at work.

Terro ant poison
contained traces of arsenic,

which was used back in the time.

They have since changed
that compound to make it safer.

Unmisig: There was one bottle
that was full

and one that's empty.

So at that point in time,

that's really our first
indication of what he's using.

And we said, "We're not
playing around here."

My aunt is working
at the hospital.

And she's friends
with the director of lab.

And she says, "If I bring
you something,

will you examine it
for arsenic?"

Myers: 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 or anything.

And we got a call.

When we came back from the call,

my partner picked
his glass of tea up

and he took a little sip of it
and he sat down.

He goes, "Oh, this tastes
terrible. This is sweet."

Greg tasted it, and sure enough,
it was sweetened.

Boy, just like that, I felt
that stomach starting again.

So we knew we had
something in the drink.

Meyer: Terro ant poison --
it's sweet, sugary,

and it attracts the ants

and it's got arsenic in it
and that's what kills them.

Unmisig: He contacted my aunt,
and then she gave it to the lab,

where the lab analyzed
the tea...

And it came back
with the arsenic.

Unmisig: ...and found twice the
lethal dose to kill somebody.

This is real.

And we thought,
"What do we do now?"

We had a candidate running
for President coming to Quincy.

Reporter: As the sun peeked over
the horizon in Quincy, Illinois,

Walter Mondale
was already on the move

to whistle-stop through
Illinois, Missouri, and Iowa.

Myers: Mike wanted to volunteer
to work the ambulance

to follow the guy around,
and we thought, "No way."

We're not sure
what he's capable of.

Myers: So we went
to the administrator

and started talking to him
and telling him all about it.

That's when the police
were called.

Detective Meyer then came in
and started taking our reports.

Meyer: They start laying out
all these facts

and all these things.

My head was just swimming
before the day was over

because I'm thinking,

"What on Earth
am I getting into here?"

Cullumber: For the life of them,
they couldn't figure out

why he would do what he did.

Myers: My theory was
he wanted us sick

so he could work our shift
'cause he filled in a lot.

But I don't think that today.

Unmisig: I think
that we were guinea pigs.

He's right there.

So he knows how much
he's given me.

He's seeing the effects,
how long it's taking.

He's asking me questions.

I think he's using this
as calculation.

Neer: Poisoning is
very passive-aggressive.

You have an interaction
with the victim,

and you get to actually
watch them and delight

in the discomfort
that they're experiencing.

Cashman: I think
he was just using them

kind of as a lab experiment

to see how much arsenic
it took to kill somebody.

Myers: But we have
circumstantial evidence.

We don't have anyone seeing him
put the poison in the drinks

or the doughnuts or anything.

I thought, "How am I gonna be
able to prove all this?"

Holstege: We have a window
of opportunity

to detect these toxins.

So we'll start looking
for hair, nails,

other places where it might
embed for a longer time.

Meyer: We had to take hair
samples from all of them

because arsenic tends
to show up in your hair.

The state crime lab came back

and said that there was abnormal
amounts of arsenic

in some
of the paramedics' hair.

Brent Unmisig, in particular,
got dosed twice.

Brent Unmisig will tell you
that he was close to death.

Unmisig:
What would have happened if I would've drank all that?

'Cause I only drank half of it,
and I'm in bed for three days.

Would they have been able to
link the evidence to my death

if, in fact, I died?

We documented everything we had.

We sent it over to the state's
attorney's office,

and then we went from there
to the arrest situation.

Jordan: 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 enlisted the help
of the county coroner,

Wayne Johnson,
to help bring him in.

Myers: Mike was dying to become
a deputy coroner.

He wanted to be
in the coroner's office,

and how they ended up
getting him to come in was,

after they got the warrants,

he called him up
and told him that,

"Yeah, I've decided you can
become a deputy coroner,

but I need you to come
into the county jail

to take your picture
for your I.D."

And when he walked in
to get his picture,

that's when he was arrested.

Meyer: We wanted to search
his apartment.

So we requested
a search warrant.

And then we made a beeline
for where Mike lived.

The landlord let us in,

and we were absolutely
astonished.

This guy had a chemistry lab
in his kitchen.

Unmisig: They found poisons.

All different kinds of poisons.

Meyer: He had strychnine,

all kinds of poisons
for killing rats and mice.

15, 20 bottles
of Terro ant poison.

We're taking these pictures
and we're going around,

saying, "Do you see
any ant infestations?"

"No. No."

And we searched
his whole apartment -- no ants.

Unmisig: And they found recipe
cards on how to make poison.

You know, like the cyanide bomb,
ricin, botulism.

3x5 cards, just like somebody
would have in their kitchen

in a box of recipes.

He had a book that had a chapter

on how to poison the water
system of a municipality.

Meyer: And all the pieces
started coming together

like a giant puzzle.

And now I knew in my mind,
as an investigator,

"We got him now.
We got him."

But he often was smarter
than everybody else in the room,

and he did get away with
many years of horrible stuff.

♪♪

Jordan: Michael Swango was
facing seven charges

of aggravated battery

for the alleged poisoning
of his co-workers.

He made bail and was out
in the community,

which made many people
very uneasy.

Unmisig: We're standing outside
of the hospital.

We turn around.
Here comes Swango.

I'm like, "Oh, my God."

He just kind of looks at us,
each of us,

and kind of just gives
that stare.

You don't know
what he was thinking.

Meyer: So we were trying to run

a loose surveillance
on this guy,

but he is nonstop 24/7.

He is all over the place.

Cashman:
He was not to leave Illinois.

In fact, I ordered him
not to leave the city of Quincy.

But he was violating his bail
bond by sneaking over to Ohio

to practice medicine
in emergency rooms

while his case was pending.

This whole time
when he's out on bond,

we're just like
needles and pins,

where's he gonna show up next
and what is he gonna do next?

Leeper: We had kept a close
track of him,

seeing whether he'd be a threat
to the judge

or witnesses
or the prosecution team.

Unmisig: Judge Cashman,
he knew that Michael Swango

was a very
dangerous individual.

He didn't trust him.

So there were ice machines
around the courthouse,

and so he ordered all
the ice machines to be locked

because he feared this guy
is laying down poison.

It was just too easily
accessible.

I found Swango to not be nearly
the endearing, wonderful guy

that he was thought to be
by so many people.

Gruber: We need to find out
more about him.

There had to be some things
going on in his past.

You don't just get to this point

where you start to try
to kill people

without having done
something to lead up to it.

So, you know, I wanted to go
into the past

and see where he lived,
where did he go to school,

how long he worked,
how long he was an intern,

and then find out if anybody
got sick on his watch.

Did any patients die?

Jordan: The Quincy police called
the campus police

at the Ohio State University,

where he had done
his internship,

and they wanted to find out
more about his background.

And what they learned
was shocking.

It started out simply as

an almost routine
background investigation

as a 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.

Bullock: He was assigned
to the emergency department.

He was a very cheerful,
affable, eager guy

who seemed to always be
in a good mood.

And I was surprised to hear that
he wasn't going to be continuing

his residency,
that they let him go.

That was a little bit hard
to understand

because he seemed to be
such a helpful guy.

Why did they let him go?

Harp: We interviewed every nurse
at OSU hospital.

I said, "Tell me what you know
about Michael Swango."

So we started getting tidbits
of, "Well, you know,

he came out
of this patient's room,

he ran in, he ran back out,
the patient was dead."

There were at least
four suspicious deaths

occurring on the floors
where Dr. Swango was working.

Gardner: They were of all ages
and circumstances,

but the one thing
they had in common

was that 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 as the case of Cindy McGee.

Sharkey: Cindy McGee was
on her bicycle...

...and a young man
hit her with his car.

When they got her stabilized,

they airlifted her
to Ohio State.

She's actually improving
until she gets a visit

from Michael Swango.

Then she dies unexpectedly.

O'Brien: She had a high fever,
and I think that was the reason

Dr. Swango was tasked
with taking a blood draw.

And that was to see if she had
an infection of some sort.

Seconds later, he went out, and
she had turned blue and died.

O'Brien:
The cause of death at the time

was deemed to be
due to pneumonia.

But we didn't know
how it had happened

until a little later on.

O'Brien: There may have been
some warning signs

had someone thought it unusual

that he was exiting the room
with this 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 police department.

Jordan: The hospital conducted
an internal investigation

into the death of Cindy McGee

and six other suspicious
incidents,

but they said that there was
no concrete evidence

that Dr. Michael Swango
was responsible.

I think that really
could've been

the stopping point for Swango.

He may have never been able
to practice medicine again.

I think that they just said,

"We've got to get him
out of here."

O'Brien: After the questions
arose from the Illinois police,

they opened a criminal
investigation here

with the OSU police department.

I was pretty shocked
that this had been going on

and no one knew anything

until the day
we got the call from Quincy.

That was our first knowledge
of anything.

People are 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've always had a strange
feeling about this guy.

He shows up at places that
he's not the assigned doctor

and he's not on the floor,"

but you can never
get anyone to say

they actually saw him
inject something.

The nurses are all afraid
to be around him.

They sense something is wrong
with this man.

But is that enough to convict?
No.

♪♪

Jordan:
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.

At the same time,
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 files at the newspaper,

and, you know, there was nothing
that was not glowing about him.

Jordan: His likability
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 Judge Cashman
was the judge and the jury.

Cashman: I 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've 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.

♪♪

Cullumber: What made this case
really interesting

was that there were
no eyewitnesses.

It was all circumstantial.

Leeper: Nobody saw him

putting arsenic in doughnuts
and iced tea.

It was not a cut-and-dried case
by any means.

Meyer: We wanted to find out

where he bought
these Terro ant poison,

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
picked him out, says,

"This guy's in here all the time
buying all the ant poison."

But that in and of itself
is nothing illegal, right?

Cashman: 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.

Cashman: 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
that he's got to account for

why he's got
all his Terro ant poison.

He calls me up and he says,

"I need you to come
and witness something."

He says, "I've got this horrible

ant infestation problem
in my house."

They weren't there when they did
the initial search warrant.

And so our local exterminator
goes to his apartment,

goes in there,
collects some of these ants

that are now running
all over his place,

and later his testimony
comes out in the actual trial.

Cullumber:
Yes, these were ants,

but these were ants
that were native to Florida.

And Swango had just been
to Florida.

Cashman: He brought ants
from Florida

when he had gone to Florida

to see his mother
during Christmas,

but you just don't find
those ants in the North,

and they're not indigenous
to Illinois.

Meyer: 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.

Meyer:
He was gonna explain the reason

why he had all this poison

was he always had
an interest in toxicology.

Unmisig: In the court, he said,
"I'm a physician. I'm a chemist.

I need to know the antidotes
to these."

You know, on the surface,
it sounds kind of realistic.

Meyer: "I just simply could not
have done these things."

That's one of his arguments
in the trial.

I remember that.
He was saying,

"I just simply could not
have done these things."

And I'm 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 little toys
to tinker and toy with.

He thought he was superior,
he had a superior intellect.

He just thought we would
never convict him.

♪♪

Reporter #2: In 1985, a Quincy,
Illinois, judge found Dr. Swango

guilty of poisoning
six co-workers there

at a paramedics' station.

The judge in the case
called Dr. Michael Swango,

"a danger to society,"

and said he clearly
performed evil deeds.

Cashman: 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,

and I can remember him
looking at the judge

and telling him how he would
never get in trouble again

and that he could be
a productive member of society.

But I think Judge Cashman
let him know

that he didn't believe him.

Cashman:
He got sentenced to the maximum

that the law allowed
for that offense,

and that was five years
on all counts.

Cullumber: 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.

And now, in retrospect,
we understand why.

I was convinced that
he was a serial killer,

and somebody needed
to do something.

Cullumber:
When he was sent to prison,

we thought the book
was closed on it.

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.

Reporter #3: 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 gonna kill people.

Neer: Swango injected something
into her I.V. 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
that there was a doctor

that went by his room
every single night

pointing at him, saying,
"You're next."

Nitkewicz:
This wasn't some mercy killing.

He took joy in not
just killing these folks

but in telling their families
that they died.

This was a person
who was dangerous.

He skirted right under the law.

It just kept getting worse
and worse and worse and worse.

Cooper: At the very least,
he seems to be a sick man.

At the very most,
he's the epitome of evil.

♪♪

Dr. Michael Swango was convicted
of poisoning his co-workers

and sentenced to five years'
prison in Illinois.

He continues to proclaim
his innocence.

Story could've ended there,

but it would be
just the beginning.

The twisted tale
of Michael Swango,

a doctor turned serial killer

continues on part two
of "Dr. Death."

Thanks for watching.

I'm Donnie Wahlberg.
Good night.