US doctor may have killed 60

A 45 year old doctor has been sentenced to life imprisonment in a federal court in New York for murdering three patients in a Long Island hospital seven years ago. But Dr Michael Swango, who is already in prison for possession of narcotics and fraud, is thought to have murdered many more patients—possibly as many as 60—and several colleagues.

His case has similarities to that of Harold Shipman, the English GP who was sent to prison in February for murdering 15 of his patients and who is suspected of killing many more (5 February, p 331). In all of Shipman's murders, and some of Swango's, the method used was lethal injections. In both cases the doctors got away with their crimes over a long period—20 years in the case of Swango and possibly 30 in the case of Shipman.

Last week Swango was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole in a maximum security penitentiary in Colorado. In a plea bargain to avoid execution, Swango admitted to Judge Jacob Mishler that he had administered a toxic substance “that was likely to cause death” to three patients.

At his trial, prosecutors read from Swango's diaries, which show him to have been a devotee of books such as The Torture Doctor and other thrillers in which doctors believed they had God-like powers over life and death. When asked for a motive, principal prosecutor assistant US attorney Gary Brown said: “Basically, Dr Swango liked to kill people.”

In the courtroom the stepdaughter of one of the patients who Swango was convicted of killing said that the institutions in which the murders occurred should also be held accountable.

Swango is thought to have first started killing patients when he was a medical student at Southern Illinois University. After five patients under his care died mysteriously, he became known as “Double-O Swango—licensed to kill.”

Swango later worked at Ohio State University where he had an internship. In 1986 he had his licence to practice medicine suspended when he went to prison for attempting to poison his colleagues. On his release in 1987, however, he was able to enter a residency in internal medicine in South Dakota.

When his past caught up with him there, he went on to secure a psychiatric residency in New York state, before fleeing to Zimbabwe, where he was again suspected of poisoning patients—and again dismissed. From there he moved on to practise in Zambia, where he was suspected and fired once again.

James Stewart, the author of a book on the case (Blind Eye: How the Medical Establishment let a Doctor Get Away with Murder), said that the case shows that US legislation creating a data bank to monitor incompetent or criminal physicians has been an abject failure.

Dr Michael Swango: “Basically, liked to kill people”

(Credit: AP PHOTO/ED BETZ)