All language subtitles for Very.Scary.People.S02E12.Dr.Death.Youre.Next.Part.2.1080p.MAX.WEB-DL.DD+2.0.H.264-playWEB_track3_[eng]

♪♪

Gardner: There was a series
of unexplained deaths

on wards where he worked.

Man: When he came out
of this patient's room,

the patient was dead.

Fischer: 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 Scary People."

I'm Donnie Wahlberg.

Michael Swango --
former Marine,

award-winning scholar,
trusted physician.

On the surface,
he seemed like a hero,

but there was nothing heroic
about Dr. Swango.

He was, in fact,
a dangerous killer,

obsessed with poison and death.

He reveled in human suffering.

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,

and there was nothing
that was not glowing about him.

Reporter:
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.

Lower: Michael Swango
was a convicted felon.

He had poisoned his 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 gonna 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 "Double-O Swango --
License to kill."

He had the highest death rate

of any of the interns
down there.

Lower:
Swango was dismissed

from the surgical
residency program

at the Ohio State University
hospitals.

Nurses are all afraid
to be around him.

They sense something is wrong
with this man.

Lower:
According to reports,

Swango was suspected of killing
at least one patient there.

Montanari: Cindy McGee was
a 19-year-old gymnast.

She was in a trauma unit.

But we could see
she was getting better.

Sackman:
She's actually improving

until she gets a visit
from Michael Swango.

Then she dies unexpectedly.

There may 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 murderer.

Jordan: 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,

you know, in a not-good light.

But I don't think the general
public had any real concern

'cause he was not
on anybody's radar.

Back then, you didn't have
a 24-hour news cycle,

and this would've stayed
a local story

and people outside that region
would not know who he was.

And he used that
to his advantage

because he still wanted
to practice medicine,

and he still wanted
to kill people.

And that's exactly
what he did.

♪♪

Lower: Michael Swango has been
a first-year resident,

a student doctor, 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 Files,"

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.

It 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."

Jordan: The story on
the Discovery Channel series

"Justice Files"
was actually a repeat.

It had originally aired
on ABC's "20/20"

on February 13, 1986.

While Dr. Michael Swango
was in prison

for poisoning his colleagues,

he sat down for an interview
with John Stossel.

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, "Well, what about
the ant poison?"

"I had an ant problem."

I don't know anything
about ants.

All I know is I had
an ant problem,

and I took care of it
as best I could.

"What about all these
other poisons?"

"Oh, if you looked
in any suburban home,

you'd find lots of things

that the lawyers could spin
as a poison."

Okay.
Started to wonder.

You hear of the horrendous
things that he's accused of

and that he's been
found guilty of.

And, you know, you just think,

"Well, this has to be
some kind of a monster,"

but that's not
how he comes across.

Wipf: The crime did not fit
the person in front of you.

When the report came on

and they put a picture up
of Mike

and said that he was accused
of poisoning his co-workers,

you could've knocked me
over with a feather

because I couldn't believe it.

Jordan: The staff
at all three medical centers

where Dr. Michael Swango worked
were shocked,

but no one was more
surprised than his fiancée,

a nurse named Kristin Kinney,
also known as K.K.

Wipf: 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."

♪♪

♪♪

Lower:
Dr. Michael Swango's future

in the internal medicine
residency program

here in Sioux Falls
is uncertain

after the Discovery Channel
aired a program

on Swango's conviction
for poisoning paramedics.

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.

Lower: This is a common scene

at all three
Sioux Falls hospitals,

employees reviewing files --

files of patients who were
treated by Dr. Michael Swango.

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.

Wipf:
We had had a Christmas party.

The party was at one
of our nurses' 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 anything

in any of the food or whatever.

All of us were
pretty okay with that.

Reporter #1:
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.

Lower: We talked
to the admissions' director

from the University
of South Dakota medical school,

and that was really
kind of enlightening

because Swango did put down
that he had a felony,

but he explained it away
by saying,

"Well, it was
a misunderstanding."

Jordan: Swango did admit
that he was in prison.

He just didn't tell the truth
about why he had been there.

He lied.
He said he was in a bar fight.

McCarthy:
He had the story about him

coming to some woman's aid
in a bar/restaurant

when she was being harassed
by some other people

and getting into a fist fight
and he hurt people.

I ended up ultimately talking
to the head of the department

at the University
of South Dakota,

and he was kind of astonished
to learn

that Michael Swango
had been convicted

of administering
a toxic substance.

Salem: 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.

It was certainly something
that I deserved

to have the chance to do.

When it got toward the end
of 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.

Jordan:
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 fiancée,

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 Sammarco.

He was in the Army --
World War II.

My father was confined
to a wheelchair

from an accident at work,
but he went into the V.A.

for his checkups
and stuff like that.

He was there for an examination.

He was fairly healthy,
and 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.

♪♪

Michael Swango's story was out.

Reporter #2: The twisted odyssey
of Dr. Swango begins in 1982

with mysterious deaths
in medical school.

Yet he advances
to prestigious Ohio State,

where he's linked
to more deaths.

He 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.

A year later,
he's on Long Island.

Jordan:
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?

Sackman: I got a call
from the chief of psychiatry

at the Northport V.A.
Medical Center,

and she said, "You know, Bruce,
you're not gonna believe this,

but there's actually
a physician here,

working here at the V.A.,

and he's suspected
of killing people."

It 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.

Sackman:
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.

Sackman: We said,
"You know, doctor,

we heard that there's some story

in the news about you
actually poisoning people.

Is that true?"
And he says, "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?"

And that's when his attitude
completely changed.

And 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.

Sackman: And 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 V.A. hospital,

the property belongs
to the United States government,

then it automatically falls
under FBI jurisdiction.

Jordan: The FBI tracked him
to Atlanta, Georgia,

before the trail went cold.

Neer: And he was working for,
in my understanding,

it was
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 that 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.

McCarthy: Then they went looking
for him, and he was gone.

Neer: He disappeared.

And then we lost track of him.

McCarthy:
At that point, he's a fugitive.

We consulted with the BAU,
the behavioral science unit.

And they were of the opinion
that this offender

would still be in
the medical field somewhere.

He's 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 V.A. hospital

in Northport on Long Island.

By that time, we didn't have
any evidence

that he actually
had harmed anybody

at the Northport
V.A. Medical Center.

But they did know
he was guilty of something.

Gardner: 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.

Gardner: He also lied about
an assault conviction.

He said it was a fight in a bar.

Jordan: 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.

It was from the Illinois
Department of Corrections,

and it said he was in there
on aggravated battery,

but it said that he hit
someone with his fist.

Didn't say anything
about poisoning.

Cashman: He forged a letter

saying he had his sentence
commuted

and his civil rights restored
by the governor of Virginia,

which I thought was
kind of interesting,

how the governor of Virginia
could do that

since it was an Illinois case,

but he did a lot of things
like that,

and they bought it all the time.

Jordan: Swango's lying
wasn't just bad judgment.

If you lie on a federal
job application,

it's actually a felony
punishable by time in prison.

Gardner: There was a flat-out
lie to a federal agent,

who in this case
was 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 U.S.C. 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.

The concern was,
"Get him off the street

as quickly as possible
with what we have."

Gardner: 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.

Gagliano: 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.

♪♪

♪♪

Welcome back
to "Very Scary People."

In 1993, Dr. Michael Swango,
a prolific poisoner

and suspected
serial killer, vanished.

Many believed he fled
the country.

The FBI and Interpol launched
an international manhunt,

but 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's going on?"

I said, "Yeah, that's my case."

He says, "Well, we have him
here in Chicago."

♪♪

Neer: Michael Swango was coming
back into the United States.

He comes into Chicago, and you
have to present your passport,

and the passport officials
scan it.

And 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.

Reporter #3:
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
that he was traveling with

when he was arrested
and all of his travel documents.

And he had a really
interesting passport.

Neer: 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 gonna have to look
at what happened in Zimbabwe.

Jordan: 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.

McCarthy:
We had to get to Africa.

We thought if he got sloppy
anywhere,

if he was willing
to take a chance,

it would be over there.

Maybe he's done something in
Africa that can help inform us

about what these murders were
about here in the United States.

♪♪

♪♪

Dongozi: Zimbabwe is the most
beautiful country in the world.

I'm not ashamed to say that.

It's a world of wonders.

Neer:
It's a beautiful country.

It was my first time in Africa,
when I traveled over there.

Valery:
At that particular time,

Zimbabwe was in the middle
of the AIDS epidemic.

There was a shortage
of doctors in Zimbabwe,

and there were many
foreign doctors

who came to practice
because of the shortage.

Neer: Michael had come

through the Evangelical
Lutheran Church,

and there was a pathway for
bringing foreign doctors over.

McCarthy:
When he got to Africa,

people at the hospital
asked him,

"With your background,
why are you coming here?"

And 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 Mnene Mission Hospital.

The people he treated
were mostly obstetric patients

who were delivering babies.

Neer:
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.

Gardner: We learned he also
might be connected

to some suspicious deaths
that occurred at the hospital

during the time
that he worked there.

Jordan: The U.S. team included

forensic pathologist
Dr. Michael Baden,

and he was looking for poison

in several of Swango's
possible victims.

We had hired
local grave diggers,

and we would transport
the bodies back to Bulawayo,

where Dr. Michael Baden would
do autopsies and take samples.

We also were able to actually
talk to a live witness.

And there were two or three
cases where there were people

who experienced
some sort of intense pain

right after he injected him
with something.

Gardner: There was this rush
of adrenaline to the point where

they thought they were gonna
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 gonna
have a heart attack and die."

Other survivors
shared terrifying tales.

And one of them
was a pregnant woman.

Neer: And Swango injected
something into her I.V. bag.

And then she felt this intense
shooting of pain

through her body

and then this rigidity
and she could barely move.

But she caught the attention
of some staff.

And she said, "He put
something in my I.V."

We believe it was
probably succinylcholine.

Holstege: Succinylcholine --
it is a paralytic.

This causes every muscle
in the body to stop working.

You can't move anything.

They're completely cognizant
during that time period.

They know exactly
what's going on.

And then they also realize
they can't breathe.

A terrifying experience.

McCarthy: The nurse
took the I.V. bag down,

threw it out,
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.

Coltart:
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.

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 was saying.

Jordan: 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.

Neer: Here's a guy who has been
poisoning people

around the United States
and now in Africa.

McCarthy: He showed himself to
use arsenic in the Quincy case,

so right away, you know
that's something

you're always gonna
have to look for.

Neer:
We found five girlfriends.

We asked them, "You know,
when you were with him,

did you ever get sick?"

And one by one they all went,
"Wait a minute. Oh, my God."

And they realized
they had the same symptoms

as Brent Unmisig
and all these others

that were poisoned
with arsenic.

Jordan: 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
in a hospital.

McCarthy: The word was out.

He had a feeling his time
in Africa was done.

Neer: When the border officials
came to arrest him,

he literally climbed out
a window and escaped.

And the next thing you know,
he's on a plane.

This guy knew exactly
when to leave.

He returned
to the United States.

Neer: 'Cause he wasn't coming
back in 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.

Valery: He had gotten a job
in Saudi Arabia.

And before he could go,
he had to have a U.S. visa.

Neer: 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.

If he hadn't returned, I'm not
sure what would've happened

in that point in time.

He would've killed more people
in Saudi Arabia.

That's what would've happened.
I just --

I think as long as he was
in a medical facility,

he was gonna kill people.

♪♪

♪♪

Jordan: After more than four
years as a fugitive,

Dr. Michael Swango is finally
captured and arrested

on a federal count for perjury.

Reporter #4: In 1998,
Swango is convicted

of making false statements

in connection
with his employment

at the Northport V.A. hospital.

There in New York, he wasn't
on trial for the murders.

He pled guilty
to the perjury charge.

Neer: Everyone's watched
those old movies

about Al Capone as the mobster

who orchestrated the murders
of hundreds of people.

And what did they get him on?
Income-tax evasion.

It doesn't matter how you get
him. You got to get him.

The important thing was
to keep him incarcerated.

He was convicted, and he got
three and a half years

in federal prison.

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.

Gardner: I do remember walking
out of 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 hands.

They 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
if it was there or not.

Dongozi: Michael Swango
always described poisoning

as the perfect crime.

"No one will know
what they're looking for."

It's like a needle
in a haystack.

It was going to be
a difficult case.

It was going to be
a difficult case.

Reporter #5: In 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 Rieders.

And they pored through
hundreds and hundreds

and hundreds of files

to determine if these
patients expired,

not as a result of their
unnatural 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,

but either 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 sometimes
later the person was dead.

The three patients
identified at the V.A. hospital

were Thomas Sammarco,

Aldo Serini, and George Siano.

Conroy: My stepdad,

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 V.A. 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 can 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 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 have to be proven.

And the time was ticking away.

Reporter #6: 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.

Jordan:
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.

Tom said they have reason
to believe

that my father's death
was not natural causes.

He was poisoned.

It started to fall into place.

That's the doctor that he was
talking about, Michael Swango.

And then we all felt
very guilty

'cause we didn't believe
my father.

And they believed that
two drugs were involved here.

One drug is called epinephrine.

Holstege:
Epinephrine is a stimulant.

A very large dose of epinephrine

can make your blood pressure
go very high,

it can make your heart rate
go very high,

it can cause you to have
a hemorrhage in your brain,

and certainly you can get to
a dose that can kill somebody.

Sackman: And the other drug
is called succinylcholine.

Unmisig: It's a very
quick-acting paralytic,

and it paralyzes you
and you can't breathe.

And the big question is,
are you gonna be able to find

these poisons
in embalmed tissue?

Valery:
And going down to the 11th hour,

there was not an answer.

Let's assume we missed
the deadline and he was out?

I didn't want to miss that mark,
because if I missed that mark,

I was not gonna find him again,
not for a long time.

But toxicology is everything
in this case.

Back in the '80s and early '90s,

you didn't have
the forensic-analysis tools

that are at our avail today.

Lynch: Scientific testing
has advanced to 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.

Valery: In the first victim,
George Siano,

we found a drug
called epinephrine.

In Thomas Sammarco,

we found a drug
that is called succinylcholine.

That is why we decided
to move forward

and charge him with the murders.

But would the charge
come in time?

Michael Swango's prison sentence
was coming to an end.

And he was within a week
or two of being released.

Reporter #6: Swango was days
away from freedom.

His current prison term
set to expire on July 15th.

McCarthy:
I can't let this guy go.

To let him go would be like
allowing a hurricane

that you could stop
hit a major east-coast city.

If he gets out,
people are gonna die.

♪♪

Lynch: Michael Swango was,
at one point in time, a doctor.

But instead of using his
medical license to become

a healer, Swango embarked
upon a career as a killer.

Jordan: Just days before
Dr. Michael Swango

was to be released from prison
on the perjury charges,

prosecutors were able
to indict him for murder.

The FBI went to share
that news with him

and to let Michael Swango know
that he had a decision to make.

Neer: We had the cases together
for New York,

and so we went out
to talk to him.

And we said, "We're just here
to tell you something."

And he seemed surprised,
and we said,

"What we're here to tell you
is that you're smart.

You've 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."

Jordan: Dr. Michael Swango had
already been indicted

for five murders
in Zimbabwe, Africa.

And the punishment there --
death by hanging.

There's a treaty between
Zimbabwe and the United States.

McCarthy: An extradition treaty,
which had just been

put into effect
by the U.S. government

and the government of Zimbabwe.

Neer: And Jim handed
the ratification over to Swango.

McCarthy: His face changed.
He went pale.

Neer: And we said, "You know
what we'll do, Mike,

is we'll go over there.

Maybe you'll beat the charges,
maybe you won't.

It gives us extra time
to finesse our cases here."

But he said, "No, you know
the only way

I'm coming back from Africa
is in a body bag."

Well, that convinced him
in pretty short order

that he should plead guilty
and avoid a trial.

McCarthy: He thought he'd be
hanged pretty quickly

once he reached Zimbabwe,

and he was looking
to make a deal.

So he basically said
that he would plead guilty

if we took Africa off the table,
the death penalty off the table,

and he got to serve his time
in a secure location.

Jordan: In the agreement,

Michael Swango
would plead guilty

to the three murders at the
V.A. hospital in New York

and also to the murder

of 19-year-old Cindy McGee
in Ohio.

The first sentencing was out
on Long Island,

and, of course,
the families are there.

I remember when he was brought
before the judge

and when we were all there
and they sentenced him.

Swango gets up and he stands up
at attention like an ex-Marine.

McCarthy:
And he admits to the judge,

"This veteran, I gave him
a substance

I knew would kill him
and did so anyway."

Sackman:
"I poisoned these people."

He ran through the whole thing.

What everybody thought
for 20 years was now proven.

He is a serial killer.

He enjoyed sitting
on Tom Sammarco's radiator,

watching him code.

I was furious at that.

I'm still furious
when I think about him.

I really am.

He just didn't have any remorse
in his face.

He took great joy in saying,
"Oh, I have bad news for you,

but your father died."

That was part of his joy.

He destroyed us.
He really did.

I just asked him to rot in Hell.

♪♪

He did plead guilty
to killing Cindy McGee.

Dr. Swango was tasked
with taking a blood draw,

and he didn't do that.

He gave her a shot of potassium,

which then caused her death
due to the cardiac arrest.

Harp: He said he shot a syringe
in her chest

and killed her immediately.

It made you angry.

Why would he do something
like that?

He didn't know Cindy.

Or was it just an objective
for him to kill

as many people as he could?

Gruber: How many innocent people
has he killed?

How many innocent people
has he victimized?

The sad truth is that poisoning
is an under-diagnosed crime,

and I think that there's
probably a lot of people

that have been poisoned and died
and nobody ever suspected it.

Jordan: Investigators believed
that every person

around Michael Swango

could have been
a potential target,

like in the case of
Michael Swango's former fiancée,

Kristin Kinney, known as K.K.

Shortly after she and 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,
"K.K. killed herself,"

and I just burst into tears.

Sackman: The family kept a lock
of her hair,

and we had that lock tested.

It was loaded with arsenic.

So he'd been poisoning her
for quite some time, too.

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

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

Sackman: He was sentenced
to life imprisonment

without the possibility
of parole for the murders

that he pled guilty to.

McCarthy:
And, if he ever gets out,

he still has to go back
to Zimbabwe.

♪♪

Unmisig: Where he's at, he's in
with the worst of the worst.

So the FBI labels him

as being one of
the most dangerous individuals.

I think that describes how
dangerous Swango is to society.

He was brilliant, charming,
and a diabolical killer.

I know that Michael has only
been convicted of four murders.

He contends that there
are hundreds.

He says...

Valery: 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.

♪♪

Michael Swango is serving
four life sentences

with no chance of parole.

Authorities say they don't know
how many people

Swango has murdered

but believe the body count could
be as many as 60 worldwide.

Retired FBI agents Tom Neer
and James McCarthy

regularly visit with him
in prison in the hopes

he will reveal information
about other victims.

HLN reached out to Swango
for comment.

He did respond, but he would not
answer questions

about any additional crimes
for fear of further prosecution.

I'm Donnie Wahlberg.

Thanks for watching.
Good night.