Michael Swango

Additionally, prosecutors found evidence that Swango lied about the death of Cynthia Ann McGee, a patient he treated during his internship at OSU. Swango claimed she suffered heart failure; he had killed her by giving her a potassium injection that stopped her heart. On July 11, 2000, less than a week before he was due to be released from prison on the fraud charge, federal prosecutors on Long Island filed a criminal complaint charging Swango with three counts of murder, one count of assault and one count each of false statements, mail fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. At the same time, Zimbabwean authorities charged him with poisoning seven patients, five of whom died.

Swango was formally indicted on July 17, 2000 and pleaded not guilty. On September 6, he pleaded guilty to the three murder counts, as well as counts of wire fraud and mail fraud, before Judge Jacob Mishler. Had he not done so, he faced the possibility of the death penalty in both countries. At his sentencing hearing, Swango admitted to causing three murders, lying about his role in causing a fourth death, and lying about his 1985 conviction.

Faced with hard evidence of his fraudulent activities and the possibility of an extended inquiry into his time in Zimbabwe, Swango pleaded guilty to defrauding the government in March 1998. In July 1998, he was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison. The sentencing judge ordered that Swango not be allowed to prepare or deliver food, or have any involvement in preparing or distributing drugs.

In the meantime, Swango had sensed that the net was closing in on him. He crossed the border to Zambia and subsequently to Namibia, where he found temporary medical work. He was charged in absentia with poisonings. In March 1997, he applied for a job at the Royal Hospital in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, using a false résumé.

While all this was happening, VA Office of the Inspector General Criminal Investigator Tom Valery consulted with Charlene Thomesen, a forensic psychiatrist. Because of her considerable clinical expertise, Thomesen was able to review documents and evidence and give a criminal profile of Swango, along with her assessment of why he had committed such crimes. Valery was called by the FBI to discuss holding Swango. He called then-Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Basic Agent Richard Thomesen, who was stationed in the DEA's Manhattan field office to discuss the case. Thomesen's conversation focused on Swango lying on his government application to work at the VA, where he prescribed narcotic medications. There was enough evidence for INS agents to arrest Swango in June 1997 on a layover at Chicago-O'Hare International Airport on his way to Saudi Arabia.

Since the latest Swango incident took place at a Veterans Affairs facility, federal authorities got involved. Swango dropped out of sight until mid-1994, when the FBI found out he was living in Atlanta and working as a chemist at a computer equipment company's wastewater facility. Soon after the FBI alerted the company, Swango was fired for lying on his job application. The FBI obtained a warrant charging Swango with using fraudulent credentials to gain entry to a Veterans Affairs hospital.

By that time, Swango had fled the country. In November 1994, he went to Zimbabwe and used forged documents to obtain a job at Mnene Lutheran Mission Hospital in the center of the country. Again, his patients began dying mysteriously. As a result of suspicions of the medical director there, Dr. Zishiri, Swango was suspended. Because of the failure to perform adequate autopsies, no firm conclusions could be drawn.

The government used this time to amass a dossier of Swango's crimes. As part of that investigation, prosecutors exhumed the bodies of three patients and found poisonous chemicals in them. They also found evidence that Swango paralyzed patient Baron Harris with an injection of what was supposedly a sedative. The sedative caused him to lapse into a coma, and Harris died on November 9, 1993.

In 1991, Swango legally changed his name to "Daniel J. Adams" and tried to apply for a residency program at Ohio Valley Medical Center in Wheeling, West Virginia. In July 1992, he began working at Sanford USD Medical Center in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. In both cases, Swango forged several legal documents that he used to reestablish himself as a physician and respected member of society. He forged a fact sheet from the Illinois Department of Corrections that falsified his criminal record, stating that he had been convicted of a misdemeanor for getting into a fistfight with a co-worker and received six months in prison, rather than the five years for felony poisoning that he served.

In 1989, Swango, now released from prison, found work as a counselor at the state career development center in Newport News, Virginia. He was forced out after being caught working on a scrapbook of disasters on work time. Swango then found a job as a laboratory technician for ATICoal in Newport News, now Vanguard Energy, a division of CITA Logistics. During his time there, several employees sought medical attention with complaints of persistent and increasing stomach pains. Around this time, Swango met Kristin Lynn Kinney, a nurse at Riverside Hospital. The two fell in love and planned to marry once they got settled. He was employed until 1991, when he resigned his position to seek out a new position as a doctor.

In July 1984, Swango returned to Quincy and began working as an emergency medical technician with the Adams County Ambulance Corps even though he had been fired from an ambulance service in Springfield for making a heart patient drive to the hospital. Soon, many of the paramedics on staff began noticing that whenever Swango prepared the coffee or brought any food in, several of them usually became violently ill, with no apparent cause. In October of that year, Swango was arrested by the Quincy Police Department after arsenic and other poisons were found in his possession. On August 23, 1985, Swango was convicted of aggravated battery for poisoning co-workers. He was sentenced to five years' imprisonment.

The nurses reported their concerns to administrators, but were met with accusations of paranoia. Swango was cleared by a cursory investigation in 1984. However, his work had been so slovenly that OSU pulled its residency offer after his internship ended in June. Later, it emerged that OSU officials feared that Swango would sue if he were fired without cause, and resolved to get him away from the hospital as soon as possible after his internship ended.

Despite a very poor evaluation in his dean's letter from SIU, Swango got a surgical internship at Ohio State University Medical Center in 1983, to be followed by a residency in neurosurgery. While he worked in Rhodes Hall at OSU, nurses noticed that apparently healthy patients began dying mysteriously with alarming frequency. Each time, Swango had been the floor intern. One nurse caught him injecting some "medicine" into a patient who later became strangely ill.

Swango served in the Marine Corps, graduating from recruit training at Marine Corps Recruit Depot, San Diego. He received an honorable discharge in 1976. He saw no action overseas during his service, but his training in the Marines left him with a commitment to physical exercise. When not studying, he was frequently seen jogging or performing calisthenics on the Quincy University campus, and he was known to perform pushups as a form of self-punishment when criticized by instructors. Swango graduated from Quincy summa cum laude and was given the American Chemical Society Award. Following his graduation, Swango went to medical school at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine (SIU).

Michael Swango was born in Tacoma, Washington and raised in Quincy, Illinois, the middle child of Muriel and John Virgil Swango. Swango's father was a career U.S. Army officer who served in the Vietnam War, was listed in Who's Who in Government 1972-1973, and was troubled by alcoholism. Upon his return from Vietnam, the elder Swango became depressed and was divorced by Muriel. Growing up, Swango saw little of his father and as a result, was closer to his mother. He was valedictorian of his 1972 Quincy Catholic Boys High School class. During high school he played clarinet in the band.

Joseph Michael Swango (born October 21, 1954), also known under the aliases David J. Adams, Michael Kirk, Jack Kirk, and Michael Swan, as well as the press nickname Dr. Death, is an American former physician and an admitted serial killer. Swango has been estimated to have been involved in as many as sixty fatal poisonings of patients and colleagues, though he only admitted to causing four deaths. He was sentenced in 2000 to three consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole, and is serving that sentence at the ADX Florence supermax prison near Florence, Colorado.