Original subtitles

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-Christopher Duntsch, he was smart and driven.

He wanted to establish some kind of neurosurgery empire.

If you were to meet him,

he was charismatic and confident,

but he was certainly a narcissist

who couldn't admit his own mistakes.

Duntsch lasted less then a week at Dallas Medical Center.

He operated on three patients, three days in a row.

The first one was Shirley Mock,

the second was Floella Brown, who passed away,

and the third was Mary Efurd.

**

-Dr. Duntsch completely butchered

Mary Efurd's surgery, and Dr. Henderson was called in

to see if he could reverse any of the damage

that Dr. Duntsch had done.

-When I was first exposed

to what he had done to Mary Efurd,

it was proper to call it an assault.

It really wasn't a surgery.

Had she not had early intervention,

she probably would have been bedfast

for the rest of her life.

**

-Dr. Henderson contacted me and said,

"This case is so egregious,

Mary Efurd and her family need a lawyer's help

in addition to what I'm doing."

-Anybody with any basic understanding of anatomy

wouldn't have done what he did.

This was outside the realm of believability.

I thought he was an imposter.

[ Monitor beeping ]

-Dr. Henderson raised the suggestion

that Dr. Duntsch could have been an imposter.

In other words, someone with no medical training whatsoever

who somehow had convinced a hospital

to give him privileges to operate on people.

I just couldn't even conceive of it at the time.

-At that point, Dr. Henderson really just began

his crusade into stopping this man.

-Dr. Henderson started investigating the training,

which I thought was brilliant.

-I spoke to his fellowship trainer

at the Semmes Murphey Clinic, and I said,

"You know, I got a question of whether or not

this is the same Dr. Duntsch you trained."

And I sent him a picture that was in the credentialing files

at Dallas Medical Center of Dr. Duntsch.

And he responded that, "Yes, that's the same person."

You know, I said, "How can this happen?"

-I don't know how you get out of a program

with that high powered a name and reputation

and not be able to operate.

-Before the fellowship, Duntsch graduated with an MD PhD.

He went on to a residency in neurosurgery

at the University of Tennessee.

-In his senior clinical year at University of Tennessee,

there were 201 cases that he was involved with.

Only 20 of those were elective cervical

or lumbar-disc procedures.

That's just astonishing that it's that few.

-That was grossly inadequate.

Grossly inadequate.

-And these are the things

with which he got into trouble in Dallas.

-The school, they say, "Oh, no,

he did have the requisite number of surgeries."

How many surgeries he did is the secondary point

to the fact that here in Dallas, he couldn't operate.

**

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-Duntsch had resigned from Baylor Plano

with no mark on his record,

and he was at Dallas Medical Center

operating for only three days.

Duntsch had been given temporary privileges

to operate at Dallas Medical Center

while they were finishing the credentialing process.

And then when they pulled those privileges,

they didn't have to report it

because they were just temporary.

-Dallas Medical Center did not report him

to the National Practitioner Databank,

and they did not report him to the state medical board.

-The culture is, "Rather than us taking on the risk

of legal liability,

let's just kick that can on down the road

and let it become somebody else's problem."

-Dr. Kirby and Dr. Henderson

are going to anybody they can think of

to try and stop Duntsch from operating.

They want to get his license suspended.

They're, you know, trying to get an investigation done.

-It wasn't until I talked to Dr. Henderson

that we could see that there was a pattern going on

that we thought could never occur.

Patients were waking up worse than when they started...

or they were dying.

We saw that this guy was not gonna stop operating.

He was gonna continue to seek privileges

at other institutions to continue his disastrous career.

-What Dr. Kirby and Dr. Henderson didn't know

is that Duntsch had gotten himself privileges

at South Hampton Community Hospital in Dallas.

**

South Hampton Community Hospital is a lower-tier hospital,

and so getting a great neurosurgeon

like supposedly Christopher Duntsch was

would have been very exciting for them.

He would have brought them a lot of money.

-Dr. Duntsch had these impeccable credentials,

and if a doctor is clean on the databank,

then the hospital presumes there have been no problems.

-Certainly a neurosurgeon would have seemed like a huge asset,

but they should have known that there was a reason

that he was not working at Baylor Plano

or Dallas Medical Center.

By then, the red flags were out there.

-I was determined to do everything I knew how to do

to stop Dr. Duntsch.

I investigated Dr. Duntsch's training

at the University of Tennessee.

And I spoke to the C.E.O. at Baylor Plano.

I said, "I'm calling about a Dr. Christopher Duntsch."

She let out a little gasp.

She said, "Yes, I'm aware of him."

This is something that kept you up at nights.

-Dr. Henderson and Dr. Kirby were not gonna let it go.

They were really desperate to try to stop Christopher Duntsch.

-I wanted him out of medicine. Period.

-Duntsch had been in Dallas for a year at this point.

He's had 20 surgeries.

Most of them have had bad outcomes,

but he's only halfway done.

In less than eight weeks after Mary Efurd's surgery,

he's operating again.

[ Monitor beeping ]

[ Saw whirring ]

**

[ Birds chirping ]

-We met on a blind date,

and here we are 35 years later.

-35 years, 3 daughters, and 6 grandkids.

-Six grandkids.

Yeah.

-When I got into my early 30s,

I would have pain coming across my shoulder and down my arm,

but it would only last a few days.

By the time I got to my 50s... -It got to a point

where we couldn't handle him being in pain anymore.

**

-Dr. Duntsch assured me

I would be 100% pain free immediately after the surgery.

He definitely had confidence. -Yeah.

He sold himself like a used-car salesman would.

He didn't doubt anything he could do

and he could do it better than any other surgeon in the area.

**

-I had that uneasy feeling when I saw the hospital.

I was like, "How in the world do they do neurosurgery

in this old hospital here?"

But I said, "Jeff, this is your first surgery.

I don't care what the hospital looks like.

Quit being a chicken."

-They trusted him and would go to this lower-tier hospital

despite the fact that they had reservations.

-[ Indistinct speaking over P.A. system ]

-We had a pre-op meeting with Dr. Duntsch

before the surgery.

I had to sign a bunch of paperwork.

The last piece of paper Dr. Duntsch handed me

was a list of complications that may arise during a surgery.

The very last one said death.

**

I looked at him and I said, "Dr. Duntsch, have you lost

any of your patients doing these spinal surgeries?"

He laughed and said no.

He laughed.

**

When I woke up in the recovery room,

I felt like I had been run over by a steamroller.

Dr. Duntsch came into the recovery room,

and he asked me to wiggle my fingers and toes

and that's when I realized that I could not move anything

on the right side of my body from my neck down.

**

How am I gonna take care of my family,

how am I gonna be a mechanic

because I was paralyzed totally on the right side.

Dr. Duntsch looked down at me,

and he said, "I don't know why you're this way.

Everything went perfect in there."

Something went wrong.

**

He tells me, "Don't worry. You're gonna be fine.

It's just a swollen spinal cord."

The spinal cord was swollen. That's true.

It was also cut.

Some medical instrument tore my spinal cord open

and cut it literally halfway across,

but he didn't mention that.

**

He simply told me, "The swelling will go down,

and you'll get back to 100%."

**

-His patients had to trust him. They needed him.

They were in pain, and he said to them, "I can fix you.

I can make you better."

**

That's one of the things

that makes what Christopher Duntsch did

so devious.

**

-One day, I realized that if I took my hip

and kind of swung it forward,

that my right leg would swing forward.

And I said, "Wow, I can walk now."

-Jeff Cheney was making over $100,000 a year

and otherwise healthy

and had just a pretty benign little neck problem,

chip shot of a surgery,

and he'll never work again a day in his life.

-He's still in constant pain.

So his whole life is turned around

to where he pretty much stays home.

-The fact that I can't just reach down

and pick up a grandchild and hold them in my arms,

I feel like I'm missing a lot.

**

-Dr. Duntsch was never upset

about any of these complications,

and he kept repeating the same mistakes over and over again --

excessive bleeding, inability to understand what he was doing.

And he wasn't calling for help.

-How would a neurosurgeon ordinarily react?

They would be mortified

with any one of these horrendous results.

-I was extremely concerned

that Dr. Duntsch had the demeanor

and the opportunity

to inflict harm on subsequent patients

without any remorse and without any trepidation.

**

**

-When I was a kid, I played soccer and football.

My passion and what I was the best at was running.

Back in the day when I ran, I was -- I was skinny.

People used to call me "Stick."

Over time, just from running constantly,

I developed degenerative disc disease.

I went to Dr. Duntsch's office.

He took my X-rays and he said,

"You should have had surgery five years ago.

We need to get you in and get you in now."

And so we literally scheduled the surgery

at the surgery center in Frisco

two or three days after I saw him.

-While Duntsch was at South Hampton Community Hospital,

he was also operating at Legacy Surgery Center in Frisco.

Surgery centers are for outpatients

when there's a low risk of complications.

**

**

-The night before my surgery, I started Googling.

I saw that a patient, Kellie Martin, had died.

I called Dr. Duntsch up,

and I said, "I saw this online."

Immediately, he started yelling and cussing at me,

saying, "How dare you?

I can't believe that you're accusing me of killing someone."

He said the patient died from having an allergic reaction

to the anesthesia.

**

[ Monitor beeping ]

The day of my surgery,

the anesthesiologist gave me the anesthesia

and immediately...

just made me start throwing up,

like, uncontrollably.

Uncontrollably.

It all happened so fast.

Dr. Duntsch said, "Put him under."

**

He put this mask over me, and they knock me out.

I remember just thinking, "Oh, gosh, this is it.

I'm gonna die."

**

**

-As I was coming to,

the pain was actually getting worse and worse.

This pain was just like someone had a jackhammer

with a knife on the end,

and they were just holding it into my spine.

Dr. Duntsch insisted that this was normal.

He said, "You're overreacting.

I'm gonna call you in pain medicine,

and you'll be fine."

He prescribed me two Percocets every two hours.

So that was 24 a day.

When we went to fill the prescription

the second time, the pharmacist said,

"I cannot fill this medication

because the doctor is going to kill the patient."

**

At this point, I'm thinking, "This is wrong,"

but I was in so much pain,

I was wanting anything I can do to help it.

**

You know, from him loading up all the medications in me,

I had to deal with addiction.

It caused a lot of tension in my marriage,

and we ended up going through a divorce.

I actually ended up losing my job

because I couldn't focus on anything

but my back surgery.

So this whole thing changed my life in so many ways.

I wanted to go to a doctor that could look at it

and tell me, "Hey, what's really going on here?"

And he told me, "Dr. Duntsch never touched your spine.

Your hardware is literally floating

in between your bone and your muscle tissue."

**

I immediately started crying.

**

The hell that I had gone through...

was for nothing.

**

-A lot of things went through my mind.

Could he have been chemically altered to the point

where he just became completely incompetent

as a surgeon and as a physician?

Could he have permanent brain damage from either chemicals

or some other organic reason, meaning a tumor?

Or is this just a sociologic, pathologic personality

that has flipped and become a destroyer instead of a healer?

**

-A lot of Christopher Duntsch's behavior

really aligns with a pattern that we call psychopathy --

lack of remorse, superficial, glib charm,

callous disregard for other people,

impulsivity, entitlement,

manipulation.

That laundry list is pretty much him.

-By January of 2013, Duntsch had been maiming

and killing patients in Dallas for over a year.

Dr. Kirby and Dr. Henderson were still continuing

on their quest to stop him,

but they were struggling to get the attention

of the Texas Medical Board or anyone else.

**

-Dr. Duntsch is a real danger to society

that is still on the loose

with a license to practice in Texas.

-We were not getting any traction.

He was still operating.

He was still injuring people, and we kind of felt

that we were gonna have to push harder and harder

until we got him taken care of.

-So I called the state medical board,

and I had a conversation with Marie Lopez,

the chief investigator for the Texas Medical Board.

I decided to record it.

That way I didn't have to get off the phone

and spend 30 minutes, an hour, three hours

reconstructing the conversation.

-During this time, people are calling the medical board.

Dr. Henderson called the medical board.

Dr. Kirby called the medical board.

Patients' families were calling the medical board.

Attorneys were calling the medical board.

-This was something so far out of the ordinary.

I don't think they were comprehending the horror

of what was going on up here in Dallas.

-From a legal standpoint, I think the Texas Medical Board

thinks they followed the rules and regulations to the letter,

which if that is true, hooray for them,

but that doesn't help society.

That doesn't help the other patients

that Duntsch maimed for life.

**

**

-I was in college at the time when I met Philip,

and I came home.

He had just not long gotten out of the Navy.

-We'd just talk, you know.

Have fun, joke around.

And, you know, I just felt, you know, that connection.

-And he proposed to me about, how long was it,

maybe two, three months after meeting me.

-Yeah.

-And we've been married almost 25 years.

Three boys. -I knew she was the one.

I could just feel it. [ Laughs ]

-[ Laughs ]

-As a truck driver, you know,

70-hour work week and doing a lot of lifting.

I ended up getting a herniated disk in my neck.

I researched the surgery.

The procedure is 45 minutes to an hour.

-He's already looking to the insides and outs

of how they do it, you know?

-I can tell you step for step how to make the cut.

-Yeah.

-I think I screened maybe five...

-Five. About five. -...five or six surgeons.

Christopher Duntsch's record was just 5-star reviews.

-Dr. Duntsch had an ability

to scrub the Internet of all the negative comments.

They never lasted more than a day.

-His office looked professional.

Had a magazine there that was called "The Best Doctors,"

so we even saw him on the magazine.

-Of course I-I drilled him, you know,

asking him, you know, questions about

how many surgeries has he done.

He said he'd done thousands of those surgeries, of course.

**

**

-"What's going on?

We went from a 45-minute, hour procedure,

in and out, to we've been in here for six to eight hours.

I can't believe this is happening."

-I woke up and all I know

is I was in pain and I couldn't move.

"What did he do to me?"

**

-He couldn't feel anything.

You know, I knew something

didn't go right with that surgery.

**

-I was paralyzed.

I had no feeling from the chest down.

-Dr. Duntsch came in and spoke with me a brief moment.

I mean, it was very brief.

**

And he was out of the picture.

He was nowhere to be found.

**

-When I first got down to rehab,

the first thing that they told me,

I would not be able to walk again.

Dr. Duntsch damaged the spinal cord.

Our children have so much further to go in life.

I'm not just fighting for me, I'm fighting for all of them.

**

When I got out of rehab, I was using a walker.

Even to this day, I have a nerve injury.

My pain level gets so high,

it stimulates the nervous system.

I'm passing out.

[ Siren wailing ]

You call the paramedics around here,

and you don't even got to give them an address.

-They know us. -They already know.

-Mayfield. -They talking about me.

[ Wailing continues ]

-Because of the new, you know, norm for us, you know,

it's just, it's hard, but we get through it.

-Yeah.

This is -- this is my rock, you know.

I can't -- I can't even imagine it,

you know, not -- not having her.

**

-Same here. I could not.

I'm telling you, he's my love.

Whatever he needs, I don't mind it.

I don't care because I love him.

**

-No one hears about Dr. Duntsch for months.

I was under the impression that he was reported

to the National Practitioner Databank.

I was under the impression the Texas Medical Board

was gonna do something imminently

to take his license away.

**

A few months later, I received an e-mail to go to a dinner.

The University General Hospital wanted to introduce

their new minimally invasive spine surgeon,

and I-I couldn't believe it.

**

It was Christopher Duntsch.

**

-So this group of investors from Houston,

some of whom were doctors,

purchased South Hampton Community Hospital

out of bankruptcy.

They renamed it University General,

even though it was not associated

with any university.

-When University General Hospital

purchased South Hampton,

they would've been looking at all of their money makers,

and Christopher Duntsch, as a neurosurgeon,

certainly would've been a big asset for them.

-They were gonna fix up the facilities.

They were going to make Duntsch the director of their new,

state-of-the-art neurosurgery department.

-I found out who the owner of University General Hospital was,

and he was an anesthesiologist I trained with in Houston.

The doctor's name was Hassan Chahadeh.

And I called him on the phone.

I said, like, "Listen, you're gonna have

nothing but trouble with Dr. Duntsch."

"Under no circumstances

should this man be in your operating room.

He's gonna hurt somebody, and it's gonna be the end

of your hospital as you know it because he's a disaster."

**

Dr. Chahadeh did say something to me

that really disturbed me.

When Dr. Duntsch applied for privileges

at University General Hospital, his record looked clean.

-Had the other hospitals reported it,

University General would've been notified.

That's the point of the databank.

**

-I was extremely frustrated with the Texas Medical Board.

They said there was an ongoing investigation,

and Dr. Henderson and I felt

if there was an ongoing investigation,

they weren't doing it fast enough.

-I didn't know he had gone on to other hospitals.

I was devastated. I was devastated

because I thought we had put this fire out.

We just thought, you know, that process

would be a matter of days, weeks,

or certainly just a month or two

and his license would be revoked.

-Dr. Chahadeh wanted that process to play out

before he did anything

because Dr. Chahadeh was worried about his facility

getting sued by Dr. Duntsch.

He said, "We've given him full privileges,

and we don't have enough ammo down here yet

to take the privileges away.

He hasn't done anything wrong yet."

And I told him, "Well, something will happen.

I don't know when, but it will happen."

**

-I had a motorcycle accident in 2004,

and it bucked me off on my head,

broke my back in a couple of places.

I had had three surgeries, but in 2013,

I started experiencing neck pain.

Dr. Duntsch's medical website,

there was, like, an infomercial

where it showed him doing surgery on someone.

And I thought, you know, I finally found someone

that's gonna be able to fix me.

-Pamela Trusty is a great patient that I recently treated.

She has done very well.

-Dr. Duntsch operated on me in December 2012.

He had a very charismatic personality.

When I had gone in for my post-op checkup,

Dr. Duntsch told me that he had been selected

as Dallas' number-one neurosurgeon.

And that his staff had elected me to be on TV

saying how great he was.

And I said, "Okay," you know,

because here I am, a poor old country girl.

I thought, "Man, this is great.

You know, I'm gonna be on TV."

-One of the reasons they had selected you was because

your case was so successful, your surgery was so successful.

-Right. -You could still walk.

That was the success. -I could walk.

-You could still walk.

-And I was on this top side of the ground.

-Right.

-Duntsch was so good at charming people.

He convinced Pam Trusty to make this infomercial,

even though she was still in pain.

And he convinced her that it was temporary or that it was normal.

-C5 and 6, I believe it were, were just smashed together

and pinching a nerve.

And that's what was causing all that pain.

-This infomercial that he had purchased,

they did not act as though it was a paid advertisement.

They purposely spoke of the award that Duntsch had won.

-Duntsch just paid for it.

It was just marketing. It wasn't an award.

Pam Trusty's case illustrates how persuasive he was

and the degree to which he was willing to lie

to get what he needed.

-It's a miracle.

Dr. Duntsch is one great man.

Jeffrey Glidewell went to Dr. Duntsch

because of my commercial.

I felt like it was because of me, you know.

And the words...

Excuse me.

**

...that will ever haunt me is, "He was one great man."

-Which they told you to say

so that he could find more victims.

**

**

**

**

-On the way to the hospital,

as we pulled out of our driveway,

a black cat ran across the road in front of the car

and, you know, I just look at my wife,

and I'm like, "No way, you know. That's not a good sign."

A superstitious person would have already turned around

and went back home, but I didn't.

[ Chuckling ] I regret it to this day.

**

When I woke up after surgery, I was paralyzed 100%

on my left side, and plus I couldn't talk.

My wife told me that during my neck surgery,

they encountered a tumor in my throat.

It started bleeding so bad, they had to abort surgery.

Basically they stopped the bleeding and closed me up.

-Dr. Duntsch felt that he had encountered

an unexpected tumor.

-With Jeff Glidewell, he mistakes

part of his esophagus for a tumor and cuts it out,

but it wasn't a tumor.

-So Jeff had about a quarter-size hole

in his esophagus.

-I got to speak to Duntsch.

I believed his story because I didn't have any reason

not to believe what he's telling me isn't true.

He ran into a tumor.

And I'm like, "Well, what about my voice?

Why can't I feel my arm?

I want to know what happened that paralyzed me."

He looked me right in the eyes, and I'll never forget that

because he didn't have an expression.

He said, "I just don't know what to tell you about that."

And he just turned around and walked off.

Well, I couldn't talk because during surgery,

Dr. Duntsch severed my left vocal cord...

...and damaged the right one.

And he had damaged a lot of nerves also,

and that's why I was paralyzed on the left side.

-He also hits an artery,

so there's a lot of bleeding going on.

To fix that bleeding,

Duntsch stuffs a sponge into Mr. Glidewell,

and he ends up just sewing Mr. Glidewell up

with that sponge in his neck.

The nurses were just appalled.

**

-The surgery was on Monday.

By Thursday, Mr. Glidewell was dying.

**

-I got a bacterial infection caused from the sponge

that he had left in my body for three days.

[ Respirator hissing ]

-Gonna give you some tape.

Tilt your head back again.

-He was septic.

He had a bad blood-borne infection.

Pus was pouring out his neck along with saliva.

-Oh, God.

-Dr. Duntsch left the sponge in

because if he pulled the sponge out,

Mr. Glidewell would exsanguinate.

He'd bleed to death.

But, you know, that's not any long-term solution.

That sponge has got to be removed.

You got to take care of whatever you injured.

Dr. Chahadeh called me,

and he said, "Randy, you were right.

We've had a catastrophic event here.

Could you take care of it?"

I go down there, I figured out what happened.

I transferred him to a top-tier hospital.

-They moved me to Methodist in Dallas.

They did emergency surgery.

Of course take the sponge out of my throat.

-We spent about two weeks

taking Mr. Glidewell back and forth to the operating room

to clean up the situation.

-After I moved to Methodist Hospital,

I was called a no-contact patient.

There was no record

that Jeff Glidewell was in the hospital.

Christopher Duntsch had been calling the hospital

and trying to find out what room I was in.

At this point, they don't know

what kind of crazed maniac this guy is.

They don't know if he's gonna come try to kill me

or what his plans are.

-The nursing staff told Dr. Duntsch

there was a sponge in there,

and he ignored them and closed and left the O.R. suite.

So he did it on purpose.

It's a premeditated event.

This was a case of attempted murder.

**

**

-Doing what I do,

I've seen a lot of people with chronic pain problems.

But with Dr. Duntsch's patients,

it was like being in a horror movie.

And, you know, it's difficult to see somebody in so much pain.

**

-I can walk now. I just can't like I used to.

To this day, I'm still angry about the --

what happened to me in my surgery

and that it was allowed to happen.

**

**

-He never, ever, ever should have been allowed

to go from hospital to hospital to hospital to hospital.

The system is there to protect patients

from situations exactly like this.

But every hospital chose Dr. Duntsch over the patient.

**

-Duntsch went on so long because of greed.

Hospitals making more per surgery

than they can get sued for.

-Legal liability for a hospital in Texas is $250,000.

You could ask Jeff Glidewell or Jeff Cheney or Philip Mayfield

whether they'd take $250,000 in exchange

for what they live with every single day.

I-I think not.

-You are not gonna stop hospitals

from hiring bad doctors... -No.

-...with a $250,000 cap.

There's too much money to be made.

**

**

-Well, I got the heads-up from a friend of mine on the board

that Duntsch was trying to reactivate an old application

to Forest Park Dallas that he put in a year and a half before.

And so I wanted to make the medical board aware

that he was still actively

looking for privileges at other hospitals.

So he was gonna continue on if he wasn't stopped.

My number-one priority was get his medical license suspended

so he couldn't operate anymore.

**

I called Marie Lopez,

who's the lead investigator of the Texas Medical Board,

the day I saw Mr. Glidewell and consulted on his case.

The Texas Medical Board needed to understand how bad this was.

I said, like, "Listen. How do we proceed with this?

We have catastrophic surgeries being continually performed

in North Texas by this psychopath, sociopath,

and how do we proceed?"

And she was not very optimistic.

Marie Lopez requested a letter.

**

I wrote, "Let me be blunt.

Christopher Duntsch is an impaired physician,

a sociopath,

and must be stopped from practicing medicine

by the Texas Medical Board immediately."

**

I was very afraid for the citizens of Dallas.

If he got privileges, he'd do the same thing again.

He'd injure or kill somebody else.

Clearly whatever methods Dr. Henderson and I were using

was not working.

-I was concerned about him being out

in the medical environment with the potential

to be a serial maimer or a serial killer.

**

-If you know that you're gonna operate on a patient

and that patient is gonna have a bad outcome --

paralyzed, death --

and you do the surgery anyway,

you're intentionally hurting people.

-I've never seen a case like Mr. Glidewell's.

This was attempted murder, and it wasn't the first time.

In my opinion, we had a serial killer in our medical community.

**

I called the police.

I thought I had the evidence that they could press charges.

**