Blind Eye: The Terrifying Story of a Doctor Who Got Away With Murder (17 page)

But Rohal, the medical board supervisor, had been talking to authorities in Quincy. The police chief there, Charles Gruber, and Rohal had attended the same police institute in Louisville; Gruber had called Rohal to complain that, as Rohal bluntly told the meeting, “the hospital was blocking the OSU police investigation.” Rohal added that, according to the Quincy police, “other deaths might have happened here.”

That potentially explosive assertion brought a flurry of denials. Tzagournis emphasized that “there are no other incidents in the files” and reiterated that “we want to give [all] information to the police.” In fact, among the files locked in the filing cabinet at the hospital was at least one other “incident”—the one involving Rein Walter, the patient who had turned blue and died unexpectedly.

The seriousness of the latest developments was underscored by the arrival of Richard Jackson, the university vice president, about fifteen minutes into the meeting. Jackson, too, now proclaimed his
support for a police investigation: “We ought to get on with this, get to the bottom of this.”

Herdt was skeptical, but he nonetheless briefed the group on the limited progress his staff had made, mentioning that Anderson had failed to gain access to Swango’s files. Tzagournis turned to Holder. “Can we give them our notes?”

“They’ve always been available,” Holder said, a remark that prompted Herdt to write an exclamation point in his notes.

Ohio State also moved to minimize damage from the fact that Carey, in his June letter to the medical board, had erroneously referred to a patient’s “demise,” something the
Plain Dealer
reporters were asking about. Without correcting the reporters, Tzagournis ordered Dr. Carey to amend his June 1984 letter about Swango to the medical board. Carey did so, stating that “the patient referred to did not die and ultimately recovered.” The correction obviously put the university in a more favorable light, and the urgency of the matter was underscored by the fact that Holder personally hand-delivered it to the medical board that day.

The next morning, January 31, the story the university had so hoped to avoid finally broke.
The Plain Dealer
ran a six-column banner headline, “Medic Probed in OSU Deaths.” Written by Webb and Sharkey, the article began, “An Illinois surgeon, charged in the non-fatal poisonings of six paramedics in Quincy, is under investigation in connection with several patient deaths at Ohio State University Hospital, The Plain Dealer has learned.”

The article continued, “While at OSU, the medical school investigated Swango in the death of a woman patient, a source familiar with the investigation said. Swango was cleared at the time of any wrongdoing.” Like Dr. Carey’s letter to the medical board, the passage evidently referred to the Cooper incident, repeating the error that the patient had died.

Despite the previous day’s meeting, not to mention the months of meetings, memos, and deliberations that preceded it, an Ohio State spokesman flatly denied the thrust of the article: “OSU spokesman Scott Mueller denied the medical school had been asked for information concerning Swango’s activities at OSU by any investigative agency,” the paper reported. But the article quoted Quincy authorities contradicting Ohio State’s denial.

A Quincy police official said detectives have been in contact with OSU police concerning the patient deaths, but said the detectives were not getting much cooperation.

“We are having a hard time verifying some of our information about what happened at Ohio State,” the official said.

Ohio State officials were horrified. When Boyanowski saw the blaring headline, he ran into the hospital’s lobby and purchased all of that day’s copies of
The Plain Dealer
so patients wouldn’t see the article and panic. The article also caused alarm at Fisher-Titus Hospital, where Swango had just completed a twenty-four-hour shift in the emergency room that ended at eight
A.M
. on Wednesday. As soon as he read the article, Dr. Thomas tried to reach Swango at home, but there wasn’t any answer. The hospital immediately suspended Swango’s hospital privileges.

(Swango had considered fleeing, but Dumas had persuaded him to return to Quincy, where he was scheduled for a court hearing the next day. Swango and Dumas were en route when Dr. Thomas called.)

The Columbus Dispatch
, whose chairman, John W. Wolfe, had been a member of the hospital board until the previous October, had long been perceived as a cheerleader for Ohio State and its hospitals. But the
Dispatch
had to follow the
Plain Dealer
story in its afternoon edition. The relatively brief, unbylined article reported that Swango was under investigation by OSU police and added that “months ago the university launched an investigation into five patient deaths.” The article said, accurately, that Swango had been investigated “in connection with a patient’s respiratory arrest during his residency, but was later cleared.” The
Dispatch
, managing to evade both the Ohio State public relations office and Holder, had interviewed Dr. Carey. He told the paper that Swango had been dropped from the residency program, but said nothing about patient deaths or suspicions that Swango had tampered with anyone’s IV. “It was how he got along with people,” he explained. “How he responded to calls. The residents thought he was a little funny, but there was nothing specific. They say he had a preoccupation with war; he talked about it a lot.”

The promised cooperation with the police that had been stressed at the previous day’s meeting quickly evaporated under the pressure of the negative publicity and suspicions of leaks. When Herdt met with Gambs and Jackson that afternoon, he had to leave the room briefly. He didn’t take his briefcase, and later, Jackson demanded to know whether he had a tape recorder inside. Furious, Herdt opened the case to prove it contained only papers. Jackson, Gambs, and Boyanowski, who later joined the meeting, were extremely upset by the press coverage, and the discussion soon lapsed into mutual recriminations and accusations of leaking.

Worse was to come, as the Illinois authorities publicly vented their frustrations with Ohio State. The next day,
The Plain Dealer
followed the previous day’s scoop with this headline: “OSU Covered Up, Poison Prober Says”:

Wayne L. Johnson, former Adams County (Ill.) coroner, said the medical school tried to cover up an incident last year involving a woman patient who suffered a mysterious seizure after Dr. Michael Swango reportedly injected something into the patient’s intravenous tube. Johnson said when he reported the incident to campus police, the medical school refused to give police any records concerning Swango.

“OSU needs to be shaken up on this crud,” Johnson said angrily. “This was a very serious situation. They didn’t want to tell me anything.”

Johnson was also angry that OSU had allowed Swango to return to Quincy and obtain a job in a hospital without alerting anyone. “I have to find fault with OSU for not making his home [Quincy] aware of the circumstances out there,” Johnson told
The Plain Dealer.
“They didn’t do anything. They just covered it up.”

The paper also quoted an unnamed medical school faculty member, who was similarly angry that no one had been warned about Swango after the Cooper incident. “They kept a lid on it,” the faculty member told the paper. “You would have thought they would alert us to keep an eye on him, but they did not.”

Ohio State also had to retract the denial it had given
The Plain Dealer
the previous day, reporting that the university spokesman,
Mueller, “admitted that [investigative agencies had indeed sought information concerning Swango’s time at OSU]. He said the false information was given to him by the office of the medical school dean, Dr. Manuel Tzagournis.”
¹⁰

The next day, Anne Ritchie, the nurse who had been so shaken when Ruth Barrick died just after Swango treated her, called Herdt. The articles about Swango had confirmed her worst fears of the previous February. She told Herdt she felt she must speak out, because no one in the hospital had followed up after she reported the incident the day it happened. She told Herdt how upset she’d been when Swango ordered the heart monitor. Herdt was startled. Although he had heard some talk of mysterious deaths connected to Swango, Tzagournis had denied that there had been any such deaths. Ritchie’s account suggested otherwise, and fueled Herdt’s mounting concern that the hospital was blocking the investigation.

Jan Dickson, the hospital official in charge of the nurses, who had argued for a more thorough inquiry the previous February, was summoned by Tzagournis and Holder and asked for her recollections of the February 1984 meetings at which Swango was discussed. She described them as well as she could, mentioning that she had circulated the nurses’ typed accounts as well as Cooper’s handwritten notes, and that she had specifically cited the suspicious deaths linked to Swango.

Dickson could tell Tzagournis and Holder weren’t happy with these answers. She felt that they were less interested in establishing what had actually happened than in coordinating a defense that hospital officials had no reason to be concerned about anything beyond the Cooper incident. As she later described her perception of the meeting, “I had a strong feeling they were cross-examining me. It was not subtle. I felt pressure. They wanted me to recall it differently. I kept saying, ‘No, no, no. That is not how it happened.’ ”

Dickson said she assumed that Whitcomb’s written report of his investigation would support her recollection. Tzagournis said there was no written report.

Holder then insisted that Dickson turn over to him all the nurses’ typed statements, any handwritten notes by Cooper, and any other evidence in her possession. Dickson complied, but, fearing that the evidence might be lost, she secretly photocopied the original handwritten note from Cooper. She was also instructed not to talk to the press under any circumstances, and to refer any calls to Holder.

Though she remained loyal to the hospital, and wouldn’t have spoken to the press in any event, Dickson felt ostracized by Tzagournis, Holder, and other high-ranking administrators after the meeting.

Herdt, too, felt pressure. Top hospital administrators were reeling from the articles in
The Plain Dealer
, especially the comments from authorities in Illinois. They were particularly incensed that Bruce Anderson, the OSU policeman who was reported to have felt threatened with the loss of his job, had declined comment when asked about the matter—even though he was merely complying with instructions not to talk to the press. Gambs told Herdt he should issue a press release saying that Anderson had never been threatened. Herdt refused.

Herdt concluded that, if anything, the defensive, obstructive mentality at the hospital was getting worse. He had never done such a thing before, but at 6:30
P.M
. on February 5, he went over the heads of Gambs, Holder, and Jackson and called university president Jennings at his residence using a campus pay phone so the call couldn’t be traced. Herdt told Jennings he had to meet with him immediately on a matter of extreme urgency. Jennings told him to come over; Herdt arrived at seven
P.M
.

Jennings, who served as president during the tenure of then-governor Richard Celeste, had something of a populist bent and loved to tell jokes that made fun of lawyers. Herdt hoped he would be a sympathetic ear. For an hour and a half Herdt briefed him on the Swango affair and the hospital’s reaction; he even got into the evidence of physician drug use and drunkenness he’d gathered during the undercover operation into loan-sharking. Jennings said he
was “shocked” and had had “no knowledge” of the extent of the problems at the hospital. Jennings promised to protect Herdt by saying that he had initiated the meeting in the wake of all the press coverage.

The next morning, President Jennings met first with Vice President Jackson, then with Jackson and Gambs. Gambs reported to Herdt that Jennings was going to issue a press release announcing that he had asked James E. Meeks, dean of the Ohio State University School of Law, to conduct an investigation into the Swango affair to determine what had happened, how it had been handled by the university, and whether any university policies or procedures had been breached, and to make recommendations. Though Meeks had no experience in criminal investigation, he was widely respected in the community, was trusted by both Jennings and Tzagournis, and, as he later put it, knew where the political “mine fields” were.

That evening, Jackson, chastened by his meeting with Jennings, came to Herdt’s office to apologize. Sitting on Herdt’s leather sofa, he emphasized that he’d relied on what Cincione and Holder had told him. “There was pressure on me” to go along with the lawyers, he said. He had “no knowledge” of how difficult a time Herdt had been having.

Herdt seized on the occasion to express his frustrations, saying he was unhappy working at Ohio State and felt he was a “figurehead.” He told Jackson that Holder was talking with Tzagournis about taking a high-level job at the hospital.

Jackson said he wanted to assure Herdt that he would have his support, and that he felt no personal animosity toward him. “I’m willing to give statements” and “will tell Meeks the truth,” Jackson said.

D
ESPITE
the seeming rapprochement, relations between the OSU police and hospital personnel soon broke down again, this time for good.

The following Monday, now armed with what he believed was a mandate to get to the bottom of the Swango matter, Herdt dispatched one of his senior officers, Richard Harp, and the medical board investigator Charles Eley, who was now coordinating his efforts with Herdt’s, to the hospital to begin interviewing nurses.
They arrived on the ninth floor of Rhodes Hall, asked a few preliminary questions, and left. While the interviews were uneventful, word quickly coursed through the nursing staff that police had been in the hospital asking about Swango. All the nurses knew officially was that Swango had been cleared of any wrongdoing earlier in the year. But many had never been convinced, and, of course, everyone had now been reading the papers. With Swango free on bail, and for all they knew living in the Columbus area, fear of him had returned with a vengeance. Nurses knew that Dickson and Moore had spoken out and that their concerns had been dismissed; many were now afraid that Swango would seek revenge if they said anything.