“He
could look at himself in a mirror and tell himself that he was one of the most
powerful and dangerous men in the world- he could feel he was a god in disguise…”
portion
of the personal notebook from Michael Swango: medical serial killer.
This
quote might give us a glimpse into why Michael Swango killed at least 60 people…all
those whose care was left in his hands. , but it is hard to understand the
how-how did he get away with killing for so long? Was it due to a “broken
system of background checks and the failure of hospital administrators to
believe one of their own might be a killer”?
Michael
Swango is what is called a medical murderer. His access to patients gave him
easy access to victims. And being in the medical establishment assured him that
he would not be that closely scrutinized.
Michael grew up in a military family with a strict and
alcoholic father. There was a great deal of tension at home, not only from the
father who was a hard taskmaster when he was at home but also the mother who created
her share of tension. She saw Michael as exceptional, compared to his other
brothers. She felt Michael would be underchallenged in the local high school,
so she sent him to Christian Brothers High School. His brothers were sent to
the local public high school; this certainly sent a message to the other
brothers that somehow they were lesser minds than their brother. This couldn’t
help but create tension among the brothers.
Michael not only excelled academically, but he read music,
sang, played the piano and
He made top grades his first two years, but then, when
his girlfriend dumped him, he withdrew from his academics, and the summer after
his second year, he quit school altogether and joined the Marines. When he
returned from the Marines, he had decided to become a doctor, so he returned to
Quincy College to take classes in chemistry and biology. In his record, he lied
and included a Bronze Star and Purple Heart that he did not have. He also
developed a fascination with poisons and did heavy research on the subject.
One has to wonder what happened to him in the Marines
that not only made him want to be a doctor but to develop such an interest in
poisons. From then on, his focus was to get into medical school and gain access
to patients; in addition, he spent most of his time researching poisons. This
is the time period when he developed an interest in violent deaths and began to
keep a scrapbook of stories from the newspaper on car accidents and violent
deaths.
As side employment, Michael got a job as an ambulance
driver, which gave him access to the real thing, violence in the flesh. He
never missed a chance to go out on a run to car accidents, even if it meant
missing classes and postponing studying.
At Southern Illinois University Medical School, there
were mixed reviews from his professors. He took unscrupulous shortcuts in
projects and tests. It seems he was more interested in becoming a doctor than
learning to be a doctor. The other students saw him as lazy, incompetent and
strange, calling him Double O Swango, license to kill. What a prophetic
nickname.
He took a job as an EMT, having been previously fired
from his job as an ambulance driver. The other EMTs noticed that when Michael
made the coffee or brought in donuts for the crew, the staff got violently ill.
His fellow EMTs set up a sting where they put a pitcher of iced tea in the
break room and left it alone. After they were sure Michael had been in the room,
they had it tested and found it laced with arsenic. He was arrested, and arsenic and other poisons
were found in his car. He was convicted of aggravated battery and received a
sentence of five years.
When
the law school dean reviewed the case, he concluded that the medical school
should have more closely investigated Swango, but Michael had never been accused
of any crime before, so this seems more like 20/20 hindsight. Attempted murder charges
were considered but there was just not enough evidence. One would assume,
though, that Michael’s medical career was over—right?
In 1991, he changed his name to Daniel J. Adams and began
working at Sanford USD Medical Center in Sioux Falls with forged documents, one
being a fact sheet from the Illinois Department of Corrections changing his
crime from a felony to a misdemeanor fistfight, another being a letter from the
governor restoring his right to vote and letters from friends and colleagues
saying he was now leading an exemplary life. All this allowed him to practice
medicine; he was back in business, giving him the access to drugs and patients
he needed.
Things were going well at Sanford until he made the mistake of trying to join the AMA, whose background check was more detailed and
came up with his conviction for poisoning, Sanford fired him.
That Thanksgiving, the television program Justice Files ran an episode that
included Michael. This certainly meant an end to any medical career for
Michael, right? No, again he found a way back in.
The AMA lost track of Michael, and he ended up at the State
University of New York at Stony Brook School of Medicine. The first place he
was posted was the VA Hospital in Northport where patients began dying at a
distressing rate. The first one was on the very first day Michael arrived at
the VA. The mother of a girlfriend who
had committed suicide began a campaign again Michael which eventually ended
with his being fired from Stony Brook. The Dean of Stony Brook also got fired
and alerted all 125 medical schools and 1, 000 teaching hospital about Swango.
Since the last incident was in a VA hospital, it was
considered a federal crime, so the FBI got involved. They found Michael working
in Atlanta as a chemist and a warrant was issued for using false credentials to
gain entry to a VA hospital. But before they could arrest him, he fled the
country and ended up in Zimbabwe.
There he got another job at a hospital again with forged
documents. It seems like Michael could have made a healthy living as a forger
since these documents were never questioned. Patients, again, began to die. The
nurses were the first to become suspicious. Swango had a private stash of drugs
and always had two syringes in his pockets, one hidden (not very well since all
the nurses seemed to know about it) and the other in his hand.
One patient had had his left foot amputated and was healing
well. He was just there at the hospital waiting for a prosthesis donated by a
charity. “Dr. Mike” came in one night and injected him with something. The
patient grew numb but was still able to call the nurses who intervened and
were able to save his life, but not his leg. The patient told the nurses who
had done this to him, but Swango denied it and whined that he didn’t know why
people were always accusing him with things like that.. The patient’s life was
never the same and said he didn’t understand why he was not compensated for
what “Dr. Mike” had done; after all the hospital had hired him.
The
deaths at the hospital were traced to him, and he was terminated. He then hired
a human rights lawyer to sue the hospital for wrongful termination. This could
only be called the greatest case of hutzpah in the history of the world. A
throng of Christian believers who had seen Michael as a gift from God there in
Zimbabwe believed this termination was a witch hunt, not knowing the slaughter he
had left behind in the states. This publicity was the last thing the Missionary
Hospital wanted.
Three years later, Michael applied to the Royal Hospital
in Dhahran in Saudi Arabia, again using forged documents… let's just assume
anywhere he goes from now on he uses forged documents.
Back in the states, VA OIG Criminal Investigator
consulted with a forensic psychologist to create a profile of Swango. The DEA
combined focuses on the VA focusing on the crime of lying on an application
in order to be able to prescribe narcotics.
After a meticulous investigation and keeping a careful
track of the airports, Michael was finally arrested by the Immigration and Naturalization
Service at the Chicago-O’Hare airport on his way to Saudi Arabia. The hospitalized
people of Saudi Arabia just became the luckiest patients on the planet.
Because Michael knew they had evidence again him from the
VA hospital and not wanting them to look into what he had done in Zimbabwe, he
decided to plead guilty to defrauding the government. Sentenced to 3-5 years,
the judge said he should not be allowed to prepare food or distribute drugs
while in prison.
During his sentence for misleading the government, the
government was busy gathering evidence against him. They exhumed bodies and
found poison. He had paralyzed one patient who later died.
Just
as Michael thought his time in prison was over, the feds on Long Island charged
him with three counts of murder, one count of assault, one of fraud and making
false statements, and conspiring to commit wire fraud. Simultaneously he was charged
in Zimbabwe with poisoning seven patient, five died.
He originally pled not guilty but changed it to guilty to
avoid the death penalty and extradition to Zimbabwe. He was sentenced to three
consecutive life sentences.
The story of Michael Swango should have been a wake-up
call to the authorities around the world to do more meticulous background
checks before any doctor get access to drugs and patients.
References
Dr. Joeseph Michael Swango. (n.d.). Retrieved from Murderpedia:
https://murderpedia.org/male.S/s/swango-michael.htm
Gelten, L. (2018, SeptemberNew York Post.
LeDuff, C. (2000, September 6). Man to admit
murdering 3 L.I. patients. Retrieved from Murderpedia- The New York
Times: https://murderpedia.org/male.S/s/swango-michael.htm
Leduff, C. (2000, September 7). Prosecutors say
doctor killed to feel a thrill. New York Times.
Profile of Joseph Michael Swango: A License to Kill. (n.d.). Retrieved from ThoughtCo: www.thoughtco.com/profile-of-joseph-michael-swango-973127
The angel of mercy who turned out to be an angel of
death. (1998, February 6).
Retrieved from Murderpedia:
https://murderpedia.org/male.S/s/swango-michael.htm
