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Speaker 6: You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking
Speaker 6: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 6: written about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker, DTK. Every week,
Speaker 6: another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous
Speaker 6: killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 6: journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Speaker 5: Good Evening. When Veterans Hospital patients on the road to
Speaker 5: recovery suddenly die in increasing numbers, it's up to VA
Speaker 5: Special Agent in Charge Bruce Sackman to find out why.
Speaker 5: His shocking discovery rips open the hidden world of what
Speaker 5: goes on behind the bedside curtains when a killer doctor
Speaker 5: or nurse decides a patient must die behind the murder curtain.
Speaker 5: Is the true story of Bruce Sackman, Special Agent in
Speaker 5: Charge of the Department of Veterans Affairs, Office of Inspector General.
Speaker 5: Sackman's main responsibilities had been investigating white collar crimes such
Speaker 5: as embezzlement. When he is drawn into the macabre world
Speaker 5: of doctors and nurses who murder their patients, Sackman evolves
Speaker 5: from an investigator of routine cases to the world's leading
Speaker 5: expert on medical serial killers msks, doctors and nurses who
Speaker 5: fly their evil trade hidden behind the privacy curtain at
Speaker 5: a patient's bedside. Behind the Murder Curtain tells how this
Speaker 5: dedicated investigator brought down four msks in veterans' hospitals while
Speaker 5: developing the Red Flag's Protocol, which is now taught to
Speaker 5: investigators in forensic nurses throughout the world as a tool
Speaker 5: for stop an MSK. The book that we were featuring
Speaker 5: this evening is Behind the Murder Curtain. Special Agent Bruce
Speaker 5: Sackman hunts doctors and nurses who kill our veterans with
Speaker 5: my special guest, special agent and journalist and author Bruce Sackman.
Speaker 6: Welcome to the.
Speaker 5: Program, and thank you very much for this interview.
Speaker 2: Bruce Sackman, and thank you very much for inviting me.
Speaker 2: I'm looking forward to having an important discussion about this
Speaker 2: very interesting topic.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, absolutely congratulations on this book. It's as I said
Speaker 5: before the program, it really takes the reader along on
Speaker 5: this journey to put away some of the most terrible
Speaker 5: serial killers in history. Here the medical serial killers really
Speaker 5: praying on the most vulnerable of all. Let's first talk
Speaker 5: about we mentioned special Agent in charge of Veterans Administration
Speaker 5: off of an Inspector general. That's a multiful VA OLA
Speaker 5: OLG parton me, and you said it in your book.
Speaker 5: You're responsible for an area ranging from West Virginia to Maine,
Speaker 5: including two hundred and fifty thousand Veterans Administration employees. Tell
Speaker 5: us just a little bit about what the special Agent
Speaker 5: in charge and we talked about it in the beginning
Speaker 5: of what you were typically employed to do. Tell us
Speaker 5: a little bit about your background.
Speaker 2: Sure, well, in I think it was around nineteen seventy eight,
Speaker 2: Congress actually created Offices of Inspector Generals and just about
Speaker 2: every major federal agency. And the purpose of oigs, as
Speaker 2: they now in Office of Inspector Generals is to ferret
Speaker 2: out fraud, waste, and abuse in the programs of that
Speaker 2: particular agency. So before I came to the VA, I
Speaker 2: did similar work in the Department of Defense, and then
Speaker 2: in nine eighty I came over to the VA as
Speaker 2: a special agent and eventually rose to the position of
Speaker 2: Special Agent in Charge, and in that capacity I was
Speaker 2: responsible for all major criminal investigations for all the VA.
Speaker 2: Hospitals and regional offices outpatient clinics from West Virginia to Maine.
Speaker 2: But normally, my normal investigative inventory was white collar crime cases,
Speaker 2: you know, embezzlement's, frauds, bribery, theft. It wasn't until I
Speaker 2: got a call one day from the chief of psychiatry
Speaker 2: at the Northport, VA Hospital sort of changed my life.
Speaker 2: That's when she called me up and she said, Bruce,
Speaker 2: you're not going to believe this, but we actually have
Speaker 2: a doctor working here and there's a news story about
Speaker 2: him where he was imprisoned for poisoning his co workers
Speaker 2: and now he's working here as a doctor. How could
Speaker 2: that be? It was a great question, and that's what
Speaker 2: started me on this journey that took me really now
Speaker 2: all over the world doing these kind of cases.
Speaker 5: Now you talk about. This was October ninety five, and
Speaker 5: as you mentioned, you got a call from doctor thomasin
Speaker 5: if I mispronounced her name, at the psychiatrist at Northport.
Speaker 5: And you introduce your you introduce your partner, which is
Speaker 5: a little bit different than you, and you describe both
Speaker 5: your characters, but you guys are a dynamic partnership. Tell
Speaker 5: us a little bit about this agent Tom Valerie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, agent Tom Valerie and I were, you know,
Speaker 2: the sort of polar opposites in a lot of respects.
Speaker 2: Tom was really a rough and tough you know. He
Speaker 2: was a volunteer fireman. He was incredible. He would fight
Speaker 2: a fire all night and then change his clothes and
Speaker 2: come to work the next day. He's actually the kind
Speaker 2: of guy that you'd want to have if you were
Speaker 2: in a fox hole. And me, I'm a little different.
Speaker 2: I'm more of your white collar crime Brooks Brothers dress
Speaker 2: type of investigator, you know, more of a scientific approach
Speaker 2: than He's more of a dirty Harry and I was
Speaker 2: more of a Colombo I think would be the easiest
Speaker 2: way to describe it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Now, you guys had he had mentioned to you
Speaker 5: and you had missed this program. But we talked about
Speaker 5: this program that was on twenty twenty, I believe. But
Speaker 5: they talked about that this double O Swango license to
Speaker 5: Kill doctor Death, and they were talking about killing patients
Speaker 5: at this hospital, and they mentioned about the poisoning of
Speaker 5: paramedics previously. Now with that, you said your duty was
Speaker 5: to get the bottom of the Swango story. What's the
Speaker 5: first thing you did? You talk about meeting up with
Speaker 5: the VA police chief. Tell us what you did first
Speaker 5: in this duty to get to the bottom of the
Speaker 5: swangle story.
Speaker 2: Well, the first thing I did I grabbed harm and
Speaker 2: I said, well, let's hop in the car. We were
Speaker 2: in Manhattan. Let's hop in the car and go out
Speaker 2: and meet this guy. So we go to his dorm room,
Speaker 2: and I'll tell you something. He was an incredibly handsome, charming,
Speaker 2: personable sociopath. You know, if I didn't know better, i'd
Speaker 2: want to introduce him to my own daughter. He was
Speaker 2: a handsome x marine doctor. Seemed like a perfect catch,
Speaker 2: you know, And so we started asking him, was saying,
Speaker 2: you know, we heard, we got information that you were actually,
Speaker 2: you know, in prison for poisoning people. And he starts
Speaker 2: going this routine Oh no, no, no, no, you know,
Speaker 2: that's just media hype. It's not true. I was actually
Speaker 2: in jail.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I was a tough ex marine, and I got in
Speaker 2: the bar and brawl. But the governor of the state
Speaker 2: actually restored my civil rights. And he was so cool
Speaker 2: and so charming. He was actually a little too cool
Speaker 2: and too charming. And Tom and I are looking at
Speaker 2: each other and we're going this is something not right here.
Speaker 2: This guy is just too cool and too charming. So
Speaker 2: we left because we didn't have any evidence that he
Speaker 2: actually harmed anybody at the VA hospital, and we try
Speaker 2: to get a search warrant, but the US attorney at
Speaker 2: the time said, well, well, you know, Bruce, you don't have
Speaker 2: any evidence that anybody was harmed in Northport. Well, the
Speaker 2: next thing, you know, Swango leaves. We don't know where
Speaker 2: he went. Turned up in Africa, turned up in Zimbabwe, Africa.
Speaker 2: And when he's in Zabwe in Zimbabwe, he killed women
Speaker 2: and children and pregnant women. Really everybody was sort of
Speaker 2: just the target of opportunity for him. And then we
Speaker 2: started to do his whole background investigation, So who is
Speaker 2: this guy and how did he get to us after
Speaker 2: spending time in jail for poisoning people. I couldn't believe
Speaker 2: it that we could actually hire a doctor who spent
Speaker 2: years in prison for poisoning his coworkers. It seems like
Speaker 2: an impossible story that nobody would believe. But when you
Speaker 2: start to look in the background of Michael Swango, it's
Speaker 2: very very scary. You know, it actually starts when he
Speaker 2: was in a medical school in Southern Illinois University School
Speaker 2: of Medicine, and he would visit patients and the patients
Speaker 2: would just die unexpectedly. Nobody really made a big stink
Speaker 2: of it. He just refused to believe that he was
Speaker 2: actually responsible for patients coding well. He didn't really do
Speaker 2: his homework too well, and they kept him in medical
Speaker 2: school for a year longer. But you know, his fellow
Speaker 2: students wrote a letter to the dean and they said,
Speaker 2: you know, Dean, we don't think Swango should be a doctor.
Speaker 2: Don't trust this guy. And Adan said, I don't care
Speaker 2: what you think. You're only students. I'm the dean. We'll
Speaker 2: keep this guy a little longer and we'll make him
Speaker 2: a deal. We'll make him a doctor. So he becomes
Speaker 2: a doctor. Next thing, you know, he does his internship
Speaker 2: at Ohio State University and once again, patients start dying unexpectedly.
Speaker 2: Now there was one particular patient. It's a very moving story.
Speaker 2: Her name was Cynthia McGee. Cynthia McGhee was a young gymnast.
Speaker 2: She actually got in a car accident. She was hit
Speaker 2: by another student. She's improving until she gets a visit
Speaker 2: from you know who, doctor Swango. Next thing. You know,
Speaker 2: she dies unexpectedly. So the police go out and they
Speaker 2: charge this other student who hit her in the car
Speaker 2: with vehiculo homicide. But he didn't kill Cynthia McGhee. It
Speaker 2: was actually Swangle that killed Cynthia McGhee. Well, the Ohio
Speaker 2: state people started to look at some of the cases
Speaker 2: that Swango was doing, but they couldn't develop enough evidence
Speaker 2: to charge him with anything. So Swango leaves. He becomes
Speaker 2: a paramedic. He goes back to his hometown of Quincy, Illinois.
Speaker 2: He becomes a paramedic, and one day he invites the
Speaker 2: paramedics in for donuts. You know, they worked hard at night,
Speaker 2: they wanted to have donuts. So what he does is
Speaker 2: he sprinkles arsenic on the donuts and leaves. Then they
Speaker 2: all get sick, and he starts calling up each one
Speaker 2: of them. He wants to know all the details of
Speaker 2: their sudden illness, Well, exactly what happened, and you know,
Speaker 2: and then did you throw up, did you have stomach pains?
Speaker 2: Did you have this? Did you have that? He was
Speaker 2: actually sort of reliving the thrill of the experience of
Speaker 2: these people getting sick. Well, these people were pretty smart
Speaker 2: and they called the police, and the police did a
Speaker 2: search warrant of his home and they found arsenic and
Speaker 2: they found books on poisoning. So he got sentenced to
Speaker 2: five years in jail. And you would say, well, that's
Speaker 2: the last we're gonna have a hear of this guy.
Speaker 2: Well not true, not true, because he came out of prison,
Speaker 2: fooled around with some name changing there for a while,
Speaker 2: and came up with this story, you know, being an
Speaker 2: ex marine and he was in a barroom fight and
Speaker 2: he brings out this piece of paper showing that the
Speaker 2: governor of the state of Virginia has restored his civil rights.
Speaker 2: Everything was totally bogus. But back then, you know, pre
Speaker 2: internet days especially, you know, physician credentialing was not like
Speaker 2: it is today. And they said, okay, great, come on board.
Speaker 2: We need doctors, we need doctors. And the next thing
Speaker 2: you know, he's at a hospital out Wes and he's
Speaker 2: doing great. He's doing great. He meets a young lady,
Speaker 2: they get engaged. He actually makes the mistake of reapplying
Speaker 2: for membership in the AMA, and the AMA discovers his
Speaker 2: background and the next thing you know, everybody in the
Speaker 2: town is talking about him. The radio shows talking about him.
Speaker 2: So it's time for him to leave again. And this
Speaker 2: really affects his fiance. So his fiance leaves him, goes home,
Speaker 2: goes back to mom and dad and said, you know,
Speaker 2: I really love this Michael Swango. I feel so terrible.
Speaker 2: I feel like my whole life is coming to an end.
Speaker 2: So she goes to a park, takes out a gun
Speaker 2: and blows the brains out right in the park. Well
Speaker 2: you can't blame Swango for that, can you? Well, yes
Speaker 2: you can, because even though the body was cremated, Mom
Speaker 2: kept the lock of her hair and we had the
Speaker 2: hair tested and it was loaded with arsenic. Swango was
Speaker 2: even poisoning his own fiance. Everybody for him a target
Speaker 2: of opportunity. So then eventually he winds up in my hometown,
Speaker 2: the Northport Via. Now what's really interesting here is at
Speaker 2: the north Port Via he went for a residency and
Speaker 2: gets in Watfield in psychiatry. So what does that mean.
Speaker 2: That means that you have to go in front of
Speaker 2: a board of trained psychiatrists and convince them more that
Speaker 2: you should be in their residency program. And he was
Speaker 2: such a smooth talker, so calm, so glib that he
Speaker 2: fooled this entire board of trained psychiatrists and said, yeah,
Speaker 2: come on the program. We love you. Come on on.
Speaker 2: Next thing. He goes to the VA and that's where
Speaker 2: he meets me. He goes to Africa, he kills people,
Speaker 2: anybody and everybody he met. I think he either killed
Speaker 2: to try to kill in Africa, and then he was
Speaker 2: going to go on I think it was the Saudi Arabia,
Speaker 2: but he had to get his passport renewed. So he
Speaker 2: comes back to the United States and we arrested him,
Speaker 2: but not for murder because we didn't have any proof
Speaker 2: that he had murdered anybody at the VA. But we
Speaker 2: had plenty of proof that he lied on his application
Speaker 2: to the VA about being in prison for poisoning his coworkers.
Speaker 2: So he pled guilty to that and he got three
Speaker 2: years in jail. Now we had a window of three
Speaker 2: years to try to prove that he had killed people
Speaker 2: at the VA hospital in Northport, and this became a
Speaker 2: federal crime. And the reason why it's a federal crime
Speaker 2: is because the VA hospital is on the exclusive it's
Speaker 2: called the Exclusive Territory of the United States. It's like
Speaker 2: a military base. So even though it's on Long Island.
Speaker 2: It's a federal case because the VA hospital, but it
Speaker 2: was on federal property. So what we did this is
Speaker 2: when I first met doctor Michael Boden, Doctor Michael Boddam,
Speaker 2: one of the world's pre eminent forensic medical examiners. And
Speaker 2: I went to him and I said, Dr Bonnen, tell
Speaker 2: you the truth. I've never done a homicide case. Never.
Speaker 2: I'm basically a white collar crime guy. But I know
Speaker 2: I've got a killer here. Can you help me? And
Speaker 2: you know I met him up at the New York
Speaker 2: State Police and the New York State Police they didn't
Speaker 2: want to get involved in the case. But Michael Bonnen said, Bruce,
Speaker 2: I'm your man. I'll do it with you and I'll
Speaker 2: teach you. So I was fortunate enough to have as
Speaker 2: my private tutor, you might say, you know, the world's
Speaker 2: best forensic medical examiner. And he told me exactly what
Speaker 2: to do. He says, Bruce, what we have to do.
Speaker 2: We have to look at all the medical records of
Speaker 2: all the patients that were at the VA Northboard at
Speaker 2: the time that Swangle was there, and we have to
Speaker 2: try to make a determination based on a review of
Speaker 2: the medical records if any of these people died when
Speaker 2: they should not have died. In other words, they did
Speaker 2: not die from their direct disease processes. It was not
Speaker 2: a natural death. It was a poisoning. And Michael Bonnan
Speaker 2: describes natural death like this. He says, Bruce, natural death,
Speaker 2: it's like if you set off a fan and the
Speaker 2: blaze just gradually stop. But these people, he says, were
Speaker 2: bright like a light bulb, and like you turned off
Speaker 2: the light bulb in their dark. So they're bright one
Speaker 2: minute and they're dark. And we found a number of
Speaker 2: patients that were actually improving before they met Swango. The
Speaker 2: family would go on vacation. They say, Okay, Dad, I'm
Speaker 2: so glad to see you improving. You know, we're going
Speaker 2: to Disney World. We'll see you when we come back,
Speaker 2: only to get a call from Michael Swango that, you know,
Speaker 2: Dad had expired unexpectedly. So what was the murder weapon?
Speaker 2: That was not an easy thing to determine, all right.
Speaker 2: We had to show that the deaths were consistent with
Speaker 2: some sort of poisoning. In the case of Michael Swangle,
Speaker 2: it was something called suck and choline. In the hospital,
Speaker 2: they referred to it as sucks. What it is is
Speaker 2: a drug that they give you if they want to
Speaker 2: put a tube down you to intubate you. The other
Speaker 2: drug is called epinephrine, which is adrenaline which will speed
Speaker 2: up the heart. And we made a determination first by
Speaker 2: reviewing the medical records that a number of patients, and
Speaker 2: we narrowed it down to about three or four patients
Speaker 2: that died when they should have not have died. There
Speaker 2: was no reason in the medical records to determine why
Speaker 2: the patients died when they did. You know, a lot
Speaker 2: of times if you have a family one in the hospital,
Speaker 2: they're really sick, you know, you know that they're going
Speaker 2: to pass. The staff knows that they're going to pass.
Speaker 2: It's not unexpected. But these people all died unexpectedly. Well,
Speaker 2: the next thing we had to do after looking at
Speaker 2: the medical records, we had to exhume the bodies. Now,
Speaker 2: I had never done anything like this before in my life. Okay,
Speaker 2: next thing I know, we're ringing the doorbells of other
Speaker 2: family members and were saying, you know, and missus Jones,
Speaker 2: I'm from the VA. I'd like to have your permission
Speaker 2: to exhume your father's body from the cemetery because we
Speaker 2: think some foul play has happened. Could you imagine getting
Speaker 2: a visit like that. You imagine hearing something like that. Incredible.
Speaker 2: But the people were super nice. They were really nice,
Speaker 2: and they said okay, you know, okay, but we had
Speaker 2: a court order anyway. So next thing, you know, for
Speaker 2: the first time, I found myself in a cemetery and
Speaker 2: there's a back hole, and the back hole is moving
Speaker 2: all the dirt, and then all of a sudden, you know,
Speaker 2: there's a crane and it comes in. It picks up
Speaker 2: the coffin from the ground. I had never done anything
Speaker 2: like this. I'm looking at my partner. I was going, boy,
Speaker 2: we really started that he had, didn't we. Next thing,
Speaker 2: I see Michael Bonden jumps into the ground where the
Speaker 2: coffin had been, and he's taking soil samples and I'm saying,
Speaker 2: doctor Bondon, what is that for. He says, well, you know, Bruce,
Speaker 2: if there's arsenic in the soil and we find arsenic
Speaker 2: in the body, they're gonna claim that the arsenic from
Speaker 2: the soil kind of seeped into the body and that's
Speaker 2: why there's arsenic in the body, not because the poisoning.
Speaker 2: So we take the body to the local medical examiner,
Speaker 2: and I had never been in a morgue before, and
Speaker 2: he saw people cut up in various states. And the
Speaker 2: next thing you know, we're opening up the coffin and
Speaker 2: we pull the body up and Michael Boden and the
Speaker 2: local medical examining it examiner around on Long Island. His
Speaker 2: name was doctor Charles Wetley. And I'm just sitting there
Speaker 2: watching and learning, and they're cutting the body open and
Speaker 2: they're examining parts, and they made a determination that these
Speaker 2: people did not die from what was on their death certificate,
Speaker 2: which is almost always the same being myocardial and function
Speaker 2: or some sort of heart ailment. And doctor Biden said,
Speaker 2: there's nothing wrong with this guy's heart. Look at that,
Speaker 2: and you take it out and you show it to
Speaker 2: me like I knew what I was looking at. And okay,
Speaker 2: do you say that. You know here the first time
Speaker 2: anybody handed a heart to me, and he's showing me this,
Speaker 2: and then he said, no, look, Bruce, we have to
Speaker 2: do the toxicology and that's going to take time because
Speaker 2: we I'm pretty certain that these people were poisoned and
Speaker 2: it looks like it's consistent with either an epinephrine or
Speaker 2: a suxonal colling. And that's when I met doctor Readers
Speaker 2: of Doctor Rita's is the owner of the National Medical Services,
Speaker 2: probably the world's I don't know if it's the largest,
Speaker 2: but certainly one of the most prestigious private forensic labs
Speaker 2: in the world. And I said, how are we going
Speaker 2: to find this an embombed tissue? How do you find
Speaker 2: traces of that finefrin and suckinal cal in an embombed tissue?
Speaker 2: And he said, Hey, Bruce, don't worry, he says, we
Speaker 2: have this new machine. It's called the high pressure liquid
Speaker 2: chromatography tandem mass spectrometer. Holy cow, what the hell is
Speaker 2: that said? Don't worry about it, Bruce. But what we
Speaker 2: do is we actually take a sample and we test
Speaker 2: it and it runs up and down, and we tested
Speaker 2: through all of this and we come out and we're
Speaker 2: pretty sure what we found. And based on that machine,
Speaker 2: he says, we found sucksonal calling and epinefrine in bodies
Speaker 2: of these veterans that should have never had those drugs.
Speaker 2: Those drugs should have never been administered to them. And
Speaker 2: now it's time for Swango to come out of jail.
Speaker 2: Remember we sent them in jail for lying to the government,
Speaker 2: not for murder, and he thought he was just gonna
Speaker 2: walk away. Not so fast, Michael Swango, Not so fast, okay,
Speaker 2: because we're preparing an indictment charging you with the murder
Speaker 2: of three veterans at the Northport Via Medical Center. And
Speaker 2: by the way, Michael, by the way, if we go
Speaker 2: to trial, and even if we should lose the trial,
Speaker 2: your troubles are not over because the government of Zimbabwe
Speaker 2: has just issued an extradition for you. So you know what,
Speaker 2: if we lose, We're just gonna put you on the
Speaker 2: plane and drop you off on the tarmac in Zimbabwe.
Speaker 2: Good luck buddy over there. Okay. So Michael Swango decided
Speaker 2: to plead guilt and save us the trouble and actually
Speaker 2: the family really the trouble of going through a trial
Speaker 2: and listening through all this. And then it was time
Speaker 2: for a sentencing and he stands up in front of
Speaker 2: the federal judge out on Long Island and the judge
Speaker 2: asks them he says, all right, explain to me, doctor Swango,
Speaker 2: exactly what you did. And doctor Swango, standing at attention
Speaker 2: like a like a marine, said, you know, I poisoned
Speaker 2: these people using a paralytic. He didn't actually mention the drugs,
Speaker 2: but he said a paralytic. And then the doctor asked
Speaker 2: him to explain. Then the judge asked him to explain
Speaker 2: exactly what sucks, and acolon is exactly what that benefitness.
Speaker 2: He did. Never showed any remorse for his victims at all,
Speaker 2: never the slightest remorse for any of That sort of
Speaker 2: reminded me of like the Nazi walk criminals at the
Speaker 2: Nuremberg trial. And then as I'm sitting then he sits
Speaker 2: down and his defense attorney puts his arm around Michael
Speaker 2: Swangle like he's a poor victim here. It was one
Speaker 2: of the most disgusting things I had ever seen. Say,
Speaker 2: are you kidding me? This guy killed people all over
Speaker 2: the world, but you know so, then it was time
Speaker 2: for sentencing, and Judge Michela, who was a judge, he
Speaker 2: said something I have never heard before or since. He
Speaker 2: sentenced Michael the three consecutive life terms without the possibility
Speaker 2: of parole in Supermax Federal Penitentiary in Florence, Colorado, the
Speaker 2: most secure in the United States. And he said, then,
Speaker 2: by the way, doctor Swango, if for some reason Congress
Speaker 2: should change the law and allow you to appeal your
Speaker 2: appeal is denied in advance. Holy cow. And I didn't
Speaker 2: even know if such a thing was even legal, but
Speaker 2: he said, wow, that's great. I had never heard of
Speaker 2: anything like that. Yeah, yep. And and that was a
Speaker 2: sort of a quick overview of my life with doctor Swango, which,
Speaker 2: by the way, that's a very short version of a
Speaker 2: seven year investigation.
Speaker 5: You talked about how on earth, and this is always
Speaker 5: the thing that confounds me and other people when they
Speaker 5: read these stories, how was it on earth that he
Speaker 5: bomboozled not just one hospital, but so we didn't go
Speaker 5: into exactly how he did that. He did have the
Speaker 5: lie that the governor had basically restored his civil rights.
Speaker 5: I'd never heard of anything like that. And you say, well,
Speaker 5: it's interesting. There'll be the governor of Virginia anyway in
Speaker 5: the state that he wasn't in. But the other things
Speaker 5: that there was other things in your investigation that you
Speaker 5: found that were crucial in each one of these medical
Speaker 5: centers that they went to, that they didn't do a
Speaker 5: criminal background check, like you say that this would be standard.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know it. Physician credentialing has changed radically, Thank god.
Speaker 2: Since the Swango days. And I tell you, I'll give
Speaker 2: you my opinion why Swango was so successful, particularly at
Speaker 2: this particular time in our history. You know, a lot
Speaker 2: of these hospitals were somewhat remote, and they had a
Speaker 2: lot of foreign applicants, and all of a sudden, here
Speaker 2: comes somebody they haven't seen in a long time, a
Speaker 2: blonde haired, blue eyed ex marine. They said, wow, you know,
Speaker 2: we have all these applicants from India, from China, and
Speaker 2: here comes a blonde hair, blue eyed X marine. Wow.
Speaker 2: So they started to overlook I think some of the
Speaker 2: things they might normally have delved into in greater detail,
Speaker 2: just because they were so surprised that somewhat happy to
Speaker 2: see an applicant that looked and spoke like Michael Swango.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Very interesting, and you say he's in Florence, Colorado
Speaker 5: for the rest of his life. With this investigation as
Speaker 5: well with the Swango which again you talk about this
Speaker 5: being your first foray into much more serious crime. Obviously
Speaker 5: when you're dealing with serial killers and you've jumped from
Speaker 5: where you working on white collar crime. When we come back,
Speaker 5: we're just gonna use this as an opportunity to stop
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Speaker 5: slash murder and use the code murder to get forty
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Speaker 5: for this program. That's murder and talkspace dot com slash murder. Bruce,
Speaker 5: you learned on an incredible amount in the investigation into
Speaker 5: Michael swangoble o'swango, but also that you had assembled this
Speaker 5: team including doctor Boden and doctor Readers, but along the
Speaker 5: way you added some people when necessary. You talk about
Speaker 5: another case with a nurse who kills named Gilbert Kristen,
Speaker 5: a very very interesting case in Northampton, Massachusetts. Tell us
Speaker 5: a little bit about how you got involved with this
Speaker 5: case and what you found. What you knew immediately upon
Speaker 5: entering into this sure case.
Speaker 2: Well, Kristin Gilbert was a nurse at the Northampton Via
Speaker 2: Medical Center. She allegedly killed over thirty of our nation's heroes,
Speaker 2: but we were able to prove at least three murders.
Speaker 2: But this is how it all came to light. You know,
Speaker 2: it takes a lot of courage for staff members to
Speaker 2: come forth with allegations that they think they're co worker
Speaker 2: is actually killing somebody, particularly in the hospital. You know,
Speaker 2: a hospital is a setting where people take an oath
Speaker 2: to heal you know they I mean where people have
Speaker 2: dedicated their lives to make other people better. And that's
Speaker 2: what ninety nine point nine percent of our medical professionals do.
Speaker 2: Many of them perform miracles every day. So if you're
Speaker 2: in an environment where people are performing miracles saving the
Speaker 2: lives of other people, it's pretty hard first to even
Speaker 2: fathom that somebody is intentionally murdering somebody in some ways.
Speaker 2: And I think this was the case of doctor Michael Swango.
Speaker 2: I think he actually chose his profession because it gave
Speaker 2: him an opportunity to kill in an environment like that.
Speaker 2: You know, look, most cops and I put myself in
Speaker 2: this position, didn't become cops because we're good in chemistry
Speaker 2: and biology. You know, we could be very easily intimidated
Speaker 2: by the science in a hospital. And most cops don't
Speaker 2: even want to go in the hospital to do an investigation.
Speaker 2: And look, death is a common everyday occurrence in the hospital.
Speaker 2: You know, if somebody dies at your workplace, you know
Speaker 2: there's going to be an investigation, maybe even the police
Speaker 2: will come. Somebody dies in a hospital, a nursing home,
Speaker 2: it's a daily, everyday occurrence. And look, have you ever
Speaker 2: been on a hospital ward at three o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 2: Not much going on there, is It Just usually based
Speaker 2: maybe a nurse, a nurse's aide, And like the title
Speaker 2: of the book says, that nurse could take the curtain,
Speaker 2: pull that curtain around him or her and the patient
Speaker 2: and nobody's going to see anything that's going on, all right.
Speaker 2: So Kristin Gilbert was such a nurse. She was a
Speaker 2: nurse in the ICU, the intensive care unit, okay, And
Speaker 2: one of the things that their skill bit loved was
Speaker 2: the excited code. And when I say a code, I
Speaker 2: mean that a patient goes into some sort of cardiac
Speaker 2: arrest and the next thing you know, crash cart comes
Speaker 2: running in with all the nurses and the doctors. And
Speaker 2: she'd loved that excitement. And also responding to that code,
Speaker 2: of course, was a VA police officer by regulation who
Speaker 2: happened to be Kristen's boyfriend. So they sort of turned
Speaker 2: the entire code experience into actually some sort of semi
Speaker 2: sexual pleasurable experience for them. They'd be grabbing each other
Speaker 2: during the code. She actually straddled the patients once. Then
Speaker 2: her dress went up and he could see her guarter
Speaker 2: belt and she was just incredible when it came to code.
Speaker 2: As a matter of fact, the doctors out on the
Speaker 2: staff used to say, you know, if I ever coded,
Speaker 2: I would want Christin Gilbert there. She takes charge. She's
Speaker 2: incredible and she would love the excitement of the coach.
Speaker 2: You'd love to show off to everybody what a good
Speaker 2: nurse she was. Now, this all comes down to this
Speaker 2: psychological condition that's known as Munchild's in syndrome by proxy,
Speaker 2: and this is what we believe Kristin Gilbert suffered from,
Speaker 2: if that's the correct term. Munchild's in syndrome is when
Speaker 2: a person will intentionally harm themselves and then seek the
Speaker 2: attention of caregivers because they need to love and they
Speaker 2: need the attention. And Munchild's in syndrome by proxy is
Speaker 2: when a person will harm somebody else bring that other
Speaker 2: person in the hospital to show the hospital staff what
Speaker 2: a caring person they are. There have been many cases
Speaker 2: where moms have actually intentionally harmed their children and brought
Speaker 2: a child into the hospital just to show the hospital. Oh,
Speaker 2: I can't sell much about it. This child. I'm so
Speaker 2: worried about this. Charl Well, Kristen would actually cause the code,
Speaker 2: cause the pain and suffering of the patient, just to
Speaker 2: have a code, just so she could show the staff
Speaker 2: what an excellent care giver she was as a nurse.
Speaker 2: And she you know what, My when I first met Kristen,
Speaker 2: my vision of a serial killer had always been sort
Speaker 2: of a Charles Manson type, you know, crazy looking guy
Speaker 2: with us last figure on his forehead. And here comes
Speaker 2: the typical soccer mom. Oh hi, everybody, I'm bringing my
Speaker 2: kids to soccer and everything's far like the last person
Speaker 2: you would ever think, ever think, until you started doing
Speaker 2: her background investigation, would actually be capable of murdering so
Speaker 2: many patients as she did. So what she did, she
Speaker 2: used to cause the codes, all right, And like I said,
Speaker 2: her boyfriend used to respond with her. And then all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, two nurses and this is how so
Speaker 2: many of these cases start. Two nurses noted something interesting.
Speaker 2: Seems like every time Kristen is on duty, the death
Speaker 2: rate goes up. Kristen takes a few days off, the
Speaker 2: death rate goes down. Kristen takes a vacation, the death
Speaker 2: thread is down. Kristen comes back to work, the death
Speaker 2: rate is up. Always on the ICEEU and always around
Speaker 2: three o'clock in the morning. And there was some of
Speaker 2: the most bizarre instances with Kristen that actually came out
Speaker 2: during the trial. Of course, unlike Swango, she went to trial.
Speaker 2: One of the things that came out there was a
Speaker 2: veteran by the name of Kenneth Cutting. Now, Kristin wanted
Speaker 2: to go home early one day, she wanted to go
Speaker 2: out with her boyfriend. Her boyfriend calls up and says, hey, Kristin,
Speaker 2: if you could get out early today, when will we
Speaker 2: go out. Kristen says, well, you know, I'm supposed to
Speaker 2: take care of his patient here. So she actually goes
Speaker 2: to her supervisor and I'm serious with this story. She
Speaker 2: goes to assist her supervisor and hey, boss, if Kenneth
Speaker 2: Cutting should expire tonight for some reason, can I go
Speaker 2: home early? And the boss is looking at her and says, Kristen,
Speaker 2: what are you talking about. We don't expect Kenneth to expire. Well,
Speaker 2: I guess if he does, you could go home early.
Speaker 2: But I don't know. That's a crazy question. Well guess
Speaker 2: what happened to Kenneth Cutting that night? He expired and
Speaker 2: she went home early. She was incredible, incredibly accurate on
Speaker 2: predicting this, so she could see this patient Dan over there,
Speaker 2: he might expire around twelve thirty three this morning, to
Speaker 2: go involved. That's when it was incredible. So these nurses
Speaker 2: would come forward, and first they went to management. And
Speaker 2: let me tell you, boy that goes over Big Wood management.
Speaker 2: Management will say something like this, excuse me, nurse, did
Speaker 2: you did you actually see Kristin Gilbert anybody? No? Well
Speaker 2: I didn't see. But every time you know she's on duty,
Speaker 2: the death threat goes off, she's out, that death threat
Speaker 2: goes down. Well, does that mean that she's killing people?
Speaker 2: Or it could be there be other explanations for it. Well,
Speaker 2: I guess maybe there could be, you know, other explanations
Speaker 2: for that. And I want to ask you a question,
Speaker 2: miss nurse whistleblower. Is your background so perfect? I mean,
Speaker 2: do you ever use drugs? You know, marijuana or anything worse?
Speaker 2: Is your license up to snuff? The reason why I
Speaker 2: ask these questions is because if you make these allegations,
Speaker 2: then you yourself may actually become under investigation. And you
Speaker 2: sure you want to go forward with this, Well, I'll
Speaker 2: tell you what we'll do. And I've heard this on
Speaker 2: so many cases. They'll tell the whistle blower. They'll say
Speaker 2: something like this, mister miss whistleblower. You know, we I
Speaker 2: want to thank you for bringing these allegations forward to us.
Speaker 2: So what we do is we will appoint the bull
Speaker 2: of our very best physicians in house, of course, nobody
Speaker 2: from the outside, and they'll take a look at the
Speaker 2: medical records of these patients and they'll make a determination
Speaker 2: if any of these patients had died as a result
Speaker 2: of their natural disease processes. And inevitably they come back
Speaker 2: and they say, yes, these patients did die as a
Speaker 2: result of one or more of their natural disease processes,
Speaker 2: and we don't see any evidence of any foul play. Now,
Speaker 2: remember the doctors that are doing this analysis, they all
Speaker 2: work at the hospital. They're not trained in forensics. Even
Speaker 2: the autopsy. If they should do an autopsy, which is
Speaker 2: pretty rare nowadays, it's not the kind of autopsy that
Speaker 2: a forensic medical examiner does looking for cause of death.
Speaker 2: It's more like a confirmatory autopsy. Did one or more
Speaker 2: of these disease processes result in the death of the patient. Yes,
Speaker 2: As a matter of fact, you know, when I first
Speaker 2: got involved in these cases, I would look in the
Speaker 2: patient's medical records, and many of the veterans were older
Speaker 2: and had a lot of medical problems. And I said,
Speaker 2: my god, look at all the medical problems this poor
Speaker 2: vet has. And we have to prove that he was
Speaker 2: actually murdered. I mean, it will look like any one
Speaker 2: of these diseases could have actually caused his death. Very
Speaker 2: very difficult. So now we go with Now we go
Speaker 2: with Kristen Gilbert. What's going to be the cause of death. Well,
Speaker 2: people had actually seen her remove some epinephrine. Remember we
Speaker 2: talked about epinephrine, one of our favorite murder weapons. So
Speaker 2: we go once again to doctor Readers and we say,
Speaker 2: doctor Readers, we have reasonablieve that these patients were poisoned
Speaker 2: with epinephrin. And he said, well, don't worry, Bruce, I
Speaker 2: have this new machine. You remember the name, the high
Speaker 2: pressure etc. Etc. And he comes back and he says,
Speaker 2: and this is their they're exhuming bodies and doing the
Speaker 2: same routine. He says, yes, we could determine that these
Speaker 2: people died as a result of receiving epinefrin they should
Speaker 2: have never received. And then the phone rings from the
Speaker 2: lab and he says, Bruce, and I'm sorry we made
Speaker 2: a mistake. We can't actually say for a fact that
Speaker 2: it's epinephrine, but have a nice trial. And here we
Speaker 2: are about to go to trial. She's already indicted on
Speaker 2: all these murder accounts. But we were able to show
Speaker 2: through doctor Bod and other physicians that the death was
Speaker 2: consistent with epineffrin poisoning. And she was actually convicted and
Speaker 2: also got three consecutive life terms without the possibly possibility parole.
Speaker 2: Now something interesting here, something very interesting with the Gilbert case.
Speaker 2: Because the case occurred on the za federal property. It
Speaker 2: was actually a death penalty case in a state that
Speaker 2: does not have the death penalty. Massachusetts does not have
Speaker 2: the death penalty, so the jury had to actually decide
Speaker 2: a jury in Massachusetts whether she should get the death
Speaker 2: penalty or not because this was on federal property. Well,
Speaker 2: she didn't get the death penalty, and quite frankly, we
Speaker 2: were pretty satisfied with that. Because she was the mother
Speaker 2: of two children. I think the children had suffered enough
Speaker 2: to see their mother executed. If she had been executed,
Speaker 2: she would have been the first woman executed by the
Speaker 2: federal government since Ethel Rosenberg in nineteen forty seven. All right,
Speaker 2: so thank goodness, you know, thank goodness that happened. So anyway,
Speaker 2: she gets sentenced to prison, and I'm sitting in my
Speaker 2: office and all of a sudden, somebody comes in with
Speaker 2: a New York Post article. Apparently Kristin Gilbert had engaged
Speaker 2: in a love affair with Squeaky from in prison. If
Speaker 2: you remember Squeaky from Remember Squeaky attempted to kill President Ford.
Speaker 2: So she's still looking for Notariay Kristen after all of this,
Speaker 2: after all all of this, and and those nurses that
Speaker 2: came forward and brought the allegation to us, even after
Speaker 2: management said to them there's nothing there. Management insisted there
Speaker 2: was nothing there, but we felt different. So not only
Speaker 2: did we have to deal with the crime itself, but
Speaker 2: we had to deal with management that was actually defending
Speaker 2: the employee under suspicion. This also was very common, very
Speaker 2: common in these kinds of cases. And these people killed
Speaker 2: so many people did even when they want to cooperate,
Speaker 2: they can't even remember how many people they killed. You know, Slango,
Speaker 2: they said, how many people have you killed? Now that
Speaker 2: you're pleading guilty, he says, honestly, I don't remember, you know,
Speaker 2: I killed kill people in Africa. I killed people here,
Speaker 2: I kill people there. Unlike your traditional serial killers, if
Speaker 2: there is such a term that killer, maybe you know
Speaker 2: less than under ten. A medical serial killer could take
Speaker 2: that many people out in a week. I mean, there
Speaker 2: was a famous medical serial killer name with Donald Harvey.
Speaker 2: And they asked Donald Harvey when they finally caught him,
Speaker 2: and he had worked at the VA and other hospitals.
Speaker 2: They finally caught him and they asked him that question.
Speaker 2: He says, you know, well, after I killed the first
Speaker 2: eighteen excuse me, yeah, the first eighteen, then I started
Speaker 2: to believe that I was actually ordained by God himself
Speaker 2: to do this because nobody questioned it. Nobody questioned you know,
Speaker 2: it's not so illogical if you think about it. If
Speaker 2: you could kill eighteen people and nobody even questions you,
Speaker 2: maybe you start to think there was some divine intervention here.
Speaker 5: Crazy than the rest of them, you know, would really
Speaker 5: gave him a ego boost. You What we didn't talk about,
Speaker 5: and it's very interesting part of the story too, is that,
Speaker 5: you know, without the help of James Parrot, some of
Speaker 5: this stuff wouldn't have come out. She yes, her behavior
Speaker 5: and her mental illness here eventually caught up with her.
Speaker 5: And this James Parau tell us us a little bit
Speaker 5: about what happened with James Parrau and which led to
Speaker 5: information coming out about Christopher.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, you know, James Barreau was her boyfriend and
Speaker 2: they were hot and heavy for a while, and then
Speaker 2: she started to get crazy on him. She started to
Speaker 2: threaten him, she started to do things with his personal vehicle. Now,
Speaker 2: James Barraul was a Via police officer. He was the
Speaker 2: boyfriend and he was the one that would go to
Speaker 2: the codes. So after a while he started to realize
Speaker 2: that Christin Gilbert is crazy. And Kristin Gilbert actually confessed
Speaker 2: on the phone to him saying that that she did it.
Speaker 2: She killed people, and then she tried to make it
Speaker 2: seem like, hah, I was only kidding, but she really
Speaker 2: wasn't kidding. She really did kill people, you know, and
Speaker 2: she had actually now again with Kristin Gilbert. Interesting thing,
Speaker 2: remember the way we put Swango in jail for lying
Speaker 2: to the government on his application, where we actually put
Speaker 2: Kristin in jail for phoning in a bomb threat to
Speaker 2: the VA hospital. So she was in jail for a walk.
Speaker 2: And by the way, when she was in jail, she
Speaker 2: was writing a book about nurse that kills people. Ye, sure, unbelievable.
Speaker 2: I remember. I remember when we did the search warrant
Speaker 2: in her house. James Parole was there and he started
Speaker 2: to question us, like, you know, where's your warrant? Where's
Speaker 2: this weather? And he knew we had all that, but
Speaker 2: he was just kind of showing off for her at
Speaker 2: the time. And that's when we found something interesting. You know.
Speaker 2: We learned that many of these medical serial killers will
Speaker 2: actually research the particular poison that they're going to use
Speaker 2: to kill people. Even though they may be mds or
Speaker 2: nurses and know the drug, they still like to read
Speaker 2: about it. Now, pre Internet, we used to go to
Speaker 2: the library and see what books these people would take out.
Speaker 2: When we did a search foreign in Kristen Gilbert's house,
Speaker 2: we actually found a book and the dog geared page
Speaker 2: was on epinephrine. So we learned right away that this
Speaker 2: was her drug of choice, that she was very interested
Speaker 2: in this. By the way, she had also tried to
Speaker 2: kill her husband. She had a long history of starting fires,
Speaker 2: of scolding a child. Once you start doing a thorough
Speaker 2: background investigation on the people, you learn about their troubled life.
Speaker 2: The problem is in many parts of the world, not
Speaker 2: only even in the United States, it's very difficult to
Speaker 2: find nurses and physicians who are willing to work. First
Speaker 2: of nursing is a very tough job. Nobody has more
Speaker 2: respect for nurses than I do. They're smart, they're underappreciated,
Speaker 2: they are super dedicated, and sometimes it's not easy to
Speaker 2: find nurses. You know, in some places, we have to
Speaker 2: go all the way to the Philippines. Well, now we
Speaker 2: go past the Philippines, we all go all the way
Speaker 2: to Korea, and you know what, if we've become friends
Speaker 2: from with North Korea, don't be surprised if we start
Speaker 2: picking up some of their nurses as well. In some
Speaker 2: parts of the country, it's very hard. It's a very
Speaker 2: tough profession. They have a lot of burnout. I mean,
Speaker 2: they're just the most wonderful people, but it's a very
Speaker 2: very tough job. So the management will say, hey, look,
Speaker 2: you know what, if we didn't do such a great
Speaker 2: job on the background investigation these people, Hey, don't blame
Speaker 2: us when we had to go to find them. You
Speaker 2: have to go all over the world to find these people,
Speaker 2: you know. But and you know what, there have been
Speaker 2: other cases around the country of whistleblowers who have not said. Well,
Speaker 2: there's a famous case about two nurses and in Texas
Speaker 2: who they were actually the entire compliance department of the
Speaker 2: small hospital. These two nurses, they complained about a doctor
Speaker 2: to management, and management gave him the official answer, go
Speaker 2: back to your off to shut up. We can't find
Speaker 2: doctors here. He's not harming anybody. Go away. Well, they
Speaker 2: refuse to go away, and they actually sent an anonymous
Speaker 2: letter to the state about this doctor. Well, the doctor
Speaker 2: finds out about it, and he calls the local sheriff,
Speaker 2: who happens to be one of his patients, and saying, Sheriff,
Speaker 2: these two doctors are trying to harm me. I think
Speaker 2: they're the ones who wrote this anonymous letter to the state.
Speaker 2: So the sheriff comes in with a circ quarrant, goes
Speaker 2: through the nurses computers, finds out the nurses are the
Speaker 2: ones that wrote the letter to the state and actually
Speaker 2: charges them with the official misuse of patient information, which
Speaker 2: is a felony down in that part of Texas. And
Speaker 2: these two whistleblowers, all they wanted to do is let
Speaker 2: the state know about a bad doctor. Well, they go
Speaker 2: to trial, believe it or not, and the jury comes
Speaker 2: back in the now and they say, are you kidding me?
Speaker 2: These nurses deserve a medal for what they did, not
Speaker 2: to be prosecuted, and they eventually sued the hospital on one.
Speaker 2: But you know, you got to ask yourself, what kind
Speaker 2: of message is this being sent to other nurses or
Speaker 2: other medical professionals that want to come forward to report wrongdoings?
Speaker 2: They say, man, am I going to get arrested? Am
Speaker 2: I going to get prosecuted? Like these two nurses in
Speaker 2: Texas did tell you? I see it all the time
Speaker 2: because I still work in hospitals all day long. There's
Speaker 2: some wonderful nurses and medical professionals who have the courage
Speaker 2: to come forward. But it does take a lot of courage,
Speaker 2: and a lot of times the hospital managurement will reject
Speaker 2: what they're saying without further investigation, or do some half
Speaker 2: ass internal investigation thinking that they're just going to satisfy
Speaker 2: the whistleblowers. It's a very tough environment to come forward in,
Speaker 2: and I have the world of respect for those who
Speaker 2: have done.
Speaker 5: So let's talk about the Red Flags protocol. When we're
Speaker 5: on this subject, basically, how did it come to be?
Speaker 5: Talk about the a DIZ, What is it? How is
Speaker 5: it implemented?
Speaker 2: Okay, so after I had a series of these cases,
Speaker 2: I'm saying, you know what, there must be something that
Speaker 2: we could do to educate our staff on how to
Speaker 2: identify these people a lot of some of the common
Speaker 2: and factors that we see in all these people, and
Speaker 2: just to educate the staff to make sure that if
Speaker 2: they see something that's not right, maybe these people are
Speaker 2: actually violating one of the red flags protocols that we
Speaker 2: put together. And we noticed a lot of characteristics about
Speaker 2: these people that are very very very common. You know, like,
Speaker 2: for instance, that they will predict the patients toms and
Speaker 2: they're uncommonly accurate. You know that they never show any
Speaker 2: remorse regarding a patient's deaf As a matter of fact,
Speaker 2: you know something interesting about Swangen. I forgot to mention.
Speaker 2: After he killed the patient, he loved calling up the family.
Speaker 2: Imagine getting a call, just calling up the family and
Speaker 2: telling them exactly how their dad had expired and suffered
Speaker 2: during his last moments. Could you imagine getting call like that?
Speaker 2: And he did that because he was reliving the experience.
Speaker 2: He was reliving the murder over and over again. And
Speaker 2: we find that many of these people they worked at
Speaker 2: three am shift where there's nobody else around. That they
Speaker 2: thrive on the management of emergencies, thrive on that scenario
Speaker 2: that involves an adrenaline rush. They tend to be you know,
Speaker 2: likable and friendly sometimes, but they also tend to avoid
Speaker 2: close relationships with other co workers. They thrive on the
Speaker 2: notoriety of being present at so many code scenes. This
Speaker 2: is so common. I could point the case they after
Speaker 2: case all around the world, a recent case in Japan, Germany,
Speaker 2: a couple of cases in Italy that have surfaced. They're
Speaker 2: all the same thing. They all enjoyed the excitement of
Speaker 2: a code. It's really really pretty scary actually there. And
Speaker 2: so we actually put together like an a Z list
Speaker 2: of things that the staff needs to look for and
Speaker 2: what's common among all these cases, and we find that
Speaker 2: when people follow it, they tend to identify medical serial
Speaker 2: killers a lot sooner than having to wait. As Donald
Speaker 2: Hobby said, for the eighteen people, nobody questions them to happen.
Speaker 5: The protocols are in place federally, you know, what.
Speaker 2: They're really not. It's on an institution by institution basis.
Speaker 2: We tried very hard to get them instituted at the
Speaker 2: VA before I retired, and there was some wonderful forensic
Speaker 2: nurses who were working very hard to make it happen.
Speaker 2: As far as I know, it did not happen. So
Speaker 2: it's all on you know, who's been educated to this.
Speaker 2: It's almost on a person by or some hospital by
Speaker 2: hospital basis. And I should say a few words about
Speaker 2: forensic nursing because I think maybe a lot of listeners
Speaker 2: are not familiar with this. Forensic nurses are nurses that
Speaker 2: are trained and this course the science of nursing, but
Speaker 2: they're also trained in forensics, and they are wonderful because
Speaker 2: they can actually bridge the gap between lay people like
Speaker 2: myselves and the physicians, because physicians could start talking on
Speaker 2: the language of science that I really don't understand, but
Speaker 2: forensic nurses really bridge that gap between your law enforcement
Speaker 2: types and your medical types. And I can tell you this.
Speaker 2: In the number of our cases, it was actually the
Speaker 2: forensic nurses, not the docs, and I love my docs,
Speaker 2: but it was actually the forensic nurses who determined what
Speaker 2: they thought was the real cause of death even before
Speaker 2: the doctors did. They're just an incredible group of people,
Speaker 2: and it's a fairly new field. I guess it's been
Speaker 2: around for maybe thirty years or so. It's feeling new.
Speaker 2: A lot of times we talk about them in the
Speaker 2: context of sexual assault nurses, you know, nurses that are
Speaker 2: trained to test if there's been a rape or a
Speaker 2: sexual assault. But they're really much more than that. They're
Speaker 2: really much more than that. It's just a wonderful set
Speaker 2: of people as part of any investigative team. Like if
Speaker 2: I'm going to form a team to look at an MSK, well,
Speaker 2: of course you'll have your investigators, and you'll have your
Speaker 2: toxicologists and your medical examiners, and you'll have doctors who
Speaker 2: are experts in the particular field that the patient was
Speaker 2: suffering from. But we will also have forensic nurses. And now,
Speaker 2: of course we add a whole new discipline that we
Speaker 2: did not originally have, and that's biomedical engineers. Because everything
Speaker 2: nowadays is all electronic, or your medical records are electronic.
Speaker 2: There are so many electronic devices that are hooked up
Speaker 2: to patients, but most investigators do not know that many
Speaker 2: of these devices actually record a patient's activity and history.
Speaker 2: And if you know how to examine these devices, if
Speaker 2: you know how to extract the data from these devices,
Speaker 2: you could find a lot of evidence. Because when I
Speaker 2: first went into the hospital scene, now remember these people
Speaker 2: had been buried already, you know, So where's your crime scene?
Speaker 2: Your crime scene is want the ICU that has already
Speaker 2: been scrubbed to surgical standards. Many dives, I mean, what
Speaker 2: CSI going to find there? They're not going to find anything,
Speaker 2: but believe it or not, even after the room has
Speaker 2: been scrubbed to surgical standards and everything that should have
Speaker 2: been kept or wasn't kept and thrown away, that could
Speaker 2: still it will be some important electronic evidence and all
Speaker 2: these medical devices that you see hooked up to the patients.
Speaker 2: But you have to know how to extract it, you
Speaker 2: have to know how to save it, you have to
Speaker 2: know how to use it. And that's now why we
Speaker 2: have a biomedical engineer on this team as well, something
Speaker 2: we didn't have years ago.
Speaker 5: You also talk about some incredible technology in this or
Speaker 5: utilizing a program, a computer program. You say that without it,
Speaker 5: it was just crucial in the investigation. I think in
Speaker 5: the Christian Gilbert case, an analyst notebook. Yes, and you
Speaker 5: say you had a team that you called the Bruce's
Speaker 5: Angels crucial in the Gilbert case. You said that was
Speaker 5: a missing EKG printouts that was crucial to that case.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's one of the red flags because you know,
Speaker 2: it's funny and as we're going through the medical records,
Speaker 2: my forensic nurses, those were my Bruce's Angels. They pointed
Speaker 2: out and they said, you know, where are the EKG strips.
Speaker 2: Now this is before electronic medical records, said where the
Speaker 2: EKG strips? Well, what do you need an EKG strip for?
Speaker 6: You?
Speaker 2: See, Bruce, that's like a roadmap that will show us
Speaker 2: that the patient is doing fine, inflation is doing fine.
Speaker 2: Then all of a sudden, some event happens, and that
Speaker 2: will be a map, a roadmap for us to see
Speaker 2: exactly what happened when. But they're missing because christin Gilbert
Speaker 2: had pulled them all out of the file. So that
Speaker 2: was a tremendous red flag, a tremendous red flag that
Speaker 2: the EKG strips were missing. But the Bruces Angels, and
Speaker 2: this is the name that Michael Bonden gave them, These
Speaker 2: were these wonderful va forensic nurses who had helped us
Speaker 2: during the case. They were just sensational. You know, no
Speaker 2: one investigator, I don't care if you're the reincarnation of
Speaker 2: Sherlock Holmes. You cannot do this case yourself. You need
Speaker 2: a team of people to do these cases. One thing.
Speaker 2: You need a lot of people, a lot of money,
Speaker 2: and a lot of time, which is something a lot
Speaker 2: of police departments do not have.
Speaker 5: You also talked about too that we didn't mention it
Speaker 5: is that originally you had made a proposal to the
Speaker 5: FBI when they first contacted you, as they would do
Speaker 5: in a case like this they with the Swango cases.
Speaker 5: You said you recommended that they jail him or and
Speaker 5: convict him for those fraud and then do that necessary
Speaker 5: take that necessary time to build a murder indictment. And
Speaker 5: yet he took the time to escape to Africa. And
Speaker 5: you say, you know, not to gloat or anything, but
Speaker 5: you say that could have saved sixty lives.
Speaker 2: YEP, I mean, look, this is my opinion. You know,
Speaker 2: the FBI, and maybe things are better now because this
Speaker 2: goes back many years, but you know, they just didn't
Speaker 2: cont into the idea of another agency coming in and
Speaker 2: doing these cases and they and not the street agents.
Speaker 2: And certainly there's this one FBI toxicologist who I talk
Speaker 2: about glowingly in the book, Brian Donelly. He was just sensational.
Speaker 2: But unfortunately I ran into a lot of Federal Bureau
Speaker 2: of arrogance in the Swangoh case. And we saw an
Speaker 2: example of that. Remember when that guy Peter Struck testified
Speaker 2: in front of Congress. You remember how I mean he
Speaker 2: just came across. I thought so arrogant and obnoxious. I
Speaker 2: was getting my flashbacks to.
Speaker 3: The time that I had to.
Speaker 2: Talk to them about Swango. They gave me that same
Speaker 2: arrogant and obnoxious attitude, and I said, thank god they
Speaker 2: were not involved in the Christen Gilbert case. Thank goodness
Speaker 2: I didn't have that. But again, some of the individual
Speaker 2: agents and all were fine. It was some of the
Speaker 2: supervisors that I had a really tough time with.
Speaker 5: Well, it's incredible work that you've done and is incredible
Speaker 5: book talking about the phenomena basically, again I haven't read
Speaker 5: the term officially medical serial killers, but certainly when you
Speaker 5: have the numbers that these people did, and then all
Speaker 5: of the incredible stories that you had, like Swango behind
Speaker 5: the curtain. Are going to visit a young girl and
Speaker 5: a mother and telling the mother to take a hike,
Speaker 5: and then when he went behind the curtain killed, the
Speaker 5: young girl came out and said, there you go, your
Speaker 5: daughter's dead. Go take a look. So, yeah, this is
Speaker 5: the kind of I mean, Achille, I mean, I don't
Speaker 5: care who you are, Bundy or Dahmer or anybody. This
Speaker 5: guy's ranks right up there with the most vile of
Speaker 5: killers in history. And include a couple more in your
Speaker 5: book as well. So kudos to your group as well
Speaker 5: for this investigation and for the protocol and for ultimately
Speaker 5: Behind the Murder Curtain. I want to thank you very much,
Speaker 5: Bruce Sackman for coming on and talking about Behind the
Speaker 5: Murder Curtain.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me. I enjoyed it.
Speaker 5: Thank you very much. Is there this is a post
Speaker 5: till press? Uh? Do you have a Facebook page or
Speaker 5: a website if people want?
Speaker 2: Yeah, we have a website. It's Behind the Murder Curtain
Speaker 2: dot com. Easy to remember and you could actually, you know,
Speaker 2: find the book on Amazon, Bonds and Nobles, all the
Speaker 2: usual sites. Right.
Speaker 5: Great, Well, you have a great evening, and thank you
Speaker 5: very much for coming on for this interview.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much, I appreciate it. Good Night, good night.