Blind Eye: The Terrifying Story of a Doctor Who Got Away With Murder (26 page)

The Coopers, of course, knew none of this. After their dinner, Kristin walked with them to their car and asked them what they thought of Mike. It was obvious she wanted their approval, and they gave it. Al said, “If you can deal with the gap [in his résumé], then I think you’ve got a winner.”

But both Coopers were more troubled than they let on, and more by the fact that Swango had never visited his ailing mother than by the mysteries in his background.

As they reached their car, Al said to Sharon, “I hope he is what he says he is.”

I
N
late June, just before Swango was due to arrive in Sioux Falls, Dr. Salem decided he should review Swango’s file one more time. This was, after all, the first time he knew of that the university had admitted a convicted felon to its residency program. As Salem went through the materials, everything seemed to be in order—verification of Swango’s degree from SIU, the dean’s letter indicating the problem with his OB/GYN rotation, the certificate of completion of his internship at OSU . . . . Suddenly, Salem recognized that he’d gotten a copy of the OSU certificate from Swango himself, and had never gotten direct verification from Ohio State. So he had his secretary send what he considered a routine inquiry, asking Ohio State to verify the internship and for any other information the school maintained on Swango.

More than a month later, on August 7, Salem received a letter from Ohio State. Incredibly, even though the University now knew that Swango had been accepted to another residency program and would be working in a hospital, it said nothing about the medical school’s investigation of him or about the reopening of the case by Morgan’s office in 1985. It did not send either the Meeks or Morgan reports, both documents of public record. Instead, an associate to Tzagournis at Ohio State replied that both Swango and the University of South Dakota would have to “execute waivers and hold-harmless agreements” before Ohio State would release any information.

Salem thought the legalistic demand was absurd. Since Ohio State raised no red flags about Swango, Salem considered the university to have verified the certificate. He put the Swango file away.

At no point in this process does it seem to have occurred to anyone at the University of South Dakota to check whether the recently inaugurated National Practitioner Data Bank had anything on Swango. But since the act establishing it wasn’t retroactive, the suspension of Swango’s licenses in Illinois and Ohio wouldn’t have shown up. And as the act was being interpreted, hospitals
could
query the data bank before hiring residents; no query was
required.
In any event, the university concluded in an internal report prepared
in December 1992: “Apparently, there is no medical clearing house for information concerning criminal charges such as these. Neither the AMA nor the FSMB [Federation of State Medical Boards] had anything other than information of record.”

S
WANGO
seemed elated by his acceptance at South Dakota. He lavished attention on Kristin, taking her to plays and concerts, the kind of cultural events she’d never experienced. The two spent so much time alone together that the Coopers only saw them once more before they left for South Dakota. Swango mentioned that his favorite movie, which had recently won the Oscar for best picture, was
The Silence of the Lambs
, starring Anthony Hopkins as a diabolical killer. He’d insisted that Kristin see it with him, and he himself had seen it three times. “That’s the sickest movie I’ve ever seen,” Al said, and Kristin chimed in that she found it “disgusting.”

“No, no, you’re wrong,” Swango exclaimed. “It’s a great movie.”

Michael and Kristin left for South Dakota at the end of May, taking both their trucks. The night before, Sharon had an anxiety attack. She called Kristin. “I don’t want you to go,” she said, near tears at the prospect of her daughter moving so far away, with a man she barely knew.

Kristin dismissed Sharon’s concerns, saying she wanted to go: “This is a chance for Mike to get ahead with his career.”

But Sharon wasn’t reassured. She didn’t know why, but she felt frightened. The day Kristin left, she couldn’t stop crying.

CHAPTER
EIGHT

S
IOUX
F
ALLS
, located on a bend in the Big Sioux River close to the Minnesota border, is a city of about 100,000 people, the largest in South Dakota, with modest houses, small, well-tended lawns and shady trees, a small historic district near the downtown, and a low crime rate. People there tend to be polite, unassuming, inconspicuous about their wealth, and accustomed to the long, harsh winters. Kristin Kinney quickly became one of the most popular nurses in the intensive care unit at the Royal C. Johnson Veterans Memorial Hospital, where she began working as soon as she and Michael moved to town. She was vivacious, cheerful, full of greetings and encouragement for the patients and irreverent comments for the doctors. “Did someone piss in your Wheaties?’ she asked one doctor. “My God, you are so grumpy,” she told one of the most dour surgeons. Word of these remarks brought visits from nurses on other floors, curious about the newcomer willing to stand up to the medical staff. Just about everyone called her by her initials, K.K.

Though she was by nature talkative, Kristin initially said nothing about her engagement to Swango or the reasons she had moved from Virginia to South Dakota. Not even Lisa Flinn, a nurse who conducted Kristin’s orientation and often worked the same twelve-hour shifts as she did, knew that Kristin had any connection to Dr. Swango, the new resident who was doing a rotation in internal medicine at the VA hospital. But one day Swango responded to a code on the floor, and after the patient was stable, Flinn noticed that Swango stayed around and chatted with Kristin. “Who is that guy, anyway?” Flinn asked. “I don’t think I’ve met him.”

“Oh, that’s Dr. Swango,” Kristin replied. Only several days later did she tell Flinn that she was engaged to him. Flinn thought Kinney was just being modest, trying not to impress anyone with the fact that she was soon going to be married to a physician, something likely to set her apart, both socially and financially, from the other nurses in the unit.

Flinn and Kinney became close friends, and gradually Kristin confided more about her life to Lisa, who was older and more experienced. Beneath the vivacious surface, it was obvious that Kristin suffered the lingering effects of a difficult childhood. Her mother had taken refuge, with Kristin in a shelter for battered women before her parents divorced. But Kristin had gone to live with her father in order to finish high school with her friends. A heavy drinker, prone to violent outbursts, her father was someone she both loved and feared, and after graduating, she had moved back with her mother. Kristin had suffered a disastrous first marriage, then a bout of Crohn’s disease, a digestive malady characterized by cramps, diarrhea, and weight loss and thought to be brought on by stress. Kristin spoke mostly in generalities about her past, but Lisa knew enough to recognize the symptoms of child abuse. Thank goodness, she thought, that Kristin had finally met someone like the nice new resident, Dr. Swango.

Swango was almost as popular on the ICU floor as Kinney. He was much more skilled in emergency medicine than most of the other new residents; he was even teaching a course in advanced cardiac life support. The nurses didn’t want to think of themselves as provincial or prejudiced, but they also liked the fact that English was his native tongue. It was difficult, especially at first, dealing with the many foreign-born doctors who were showing up in the university’s residency program. And, at age thirty-seven when he moved to Sioux Falls, Swango was older than most of the other residents, and seemed mature.

Swango displayed none of the idiosyncrasies that had attracted such attention from the paramedics in Quincy. Eager to put his past behind him, he seemed to have turned over a new leaf in Sioux Falls. Most of the nursing staff found him handsome, calm, and reassuring. Several of them nicknamed him the Virginian, after the 1960s TV series hero played by James Drury, because Drury’s character
was so cool and, of course, he had come from Virginia. Swango seemed pleased by the comparison and liked the nickname.

Swango quickly developed a reputation for being good in emergencies, and always seemed to show up when codes were called. Flinn noticed him at several code emergencies; they seemed to excite him. Kinney sometimes mentioned that Michael had phoned her at work, and if she was having a bad day in the ICU—an unusual number of emergencies, accidents, or deaths—he’d say she was “lucky” and that he envied her. But no one in Sioux Falls knew about Swango’s scrapbooks, and he didn’t make any of the comments about sex and disaster that had haunted him at his trial in Quincy. Flinn and the other nurses didn’t give Swango’s comments to Kristin much thought. He was interested in emergency medicine, so it seemed to follow that he’d be interested in their work in intensive care.

When Swango finished his month’s rotation at the VA hospital, he brought in a cake and a card, thanking the nurses for “all your help.” The gesture caused grumbling among the other new residents, who complained that Swango was just currying favor with the nursing staff and trying to make them look bad by comparison.

Once Swango moved on to Sioux Falls’ other university-affiliated hospitals—Sioux Valley and McKennan—the nurses at the VA didn’t see much of him. Occasionally he joined Kristin and some of the other nurses after work at Chi-Chi’s, a popular Mexican restaurant, but usually Kristin went alone. Now and then he and Kristin showed up at a potluck dinner or other social event hosted by someone on the staff. Kristin wrote her parents, assuring them that the relationship with Michael was good, that they were happy and had made new friends. But no one was invited to visit them at the small one-story house they rented on East Fifth Street. Swango was too busy with his residency, and Kinney was also taking courses to finish her bachelor’s degree, besides working extra shifts to earn more money.

In October, things were going so well for Swango in South Dakota that he applied to join the American Medical Association, using his real name, giving his address in South Dakota, and revealing that he was again practicing medicine. For someone trying to conceal his past, it was a highly risky step. Unlike the University of
South Dakota, the AMA official in charge of his file, Nancy Watson, wrote the courthouse in Quincy to obtain a copy of his conviction. To her surprise, her letter prompted a call from Judge Cashman, who was dismayed to learn that Swango was applying to join the AMA and, evidently, was again practicing medicine. “Do you know who this guy is?” he asked Watson, somewhat incredulously.

“Not really,” she replied. Judge Cashman told her about the bizarre events in Quincy, and also told her about the suspicious deaths and ensuing investigation at Ohio State.

Shocked, Watson wrote Swango to say that because his licenses had been revoked in two states, his application would have to be referred to the AMA’s council on ethical and judicial affairs for further investigation. As soon as he received the letter, Swango phoned, leaving a message for Watson that he was withdrawing his application. Evidently he was hoping to forestall any further questions. But Watson mentioned what had happened to several other people on the AMA staff, one of whom happened to know Dr. Robert Talley, the dean of the University of South Dakota medical school.

T
O
the extent he’d had doubts about Swango, Dr. Salem’s concerns were eased by just about everything he’d heard since the new resident arrived in Sioux Falls. Swango seemed to be popular with the staff; he was extremely hardworking; he was courteous, even ingratiating, around Dr. Salem, who had been so instrumental in his admission. Whereas he had performed poorly at Ohio State, all of Swango’s evaluations during his first five months were favorable. The few problems that did surface were strictly of a personal nature, according to Salem, and that was only to be expected in a new resident.

So Swango’s past had all but faded from Salem’s mind by four
P.M
. Wednesday, November 25, 1992, the day before Thanksgiving, when he received a call from Dr. Talley, wanting to know about Swango. Talley reported that he’d just received a call from the AMA, alerting him to the fact that Swango had had “problems” in his past.

“I know,” Dr. Salem replied. “I’ve heard all about them in Illinois.”

“No,” Dr. Talley said, “this was an issue of suspicious deaths at Ohio State.”

Salem was startled. He’d been prepared to tell Talley the story of how Swango had been unjustly convicted of poisoning coworkers in Illinois, but deaths in Ohio? “I have absolutely no knowledge of anything like that,” he said.

Salem suddenly felt all his misgivings about Swango return. He was shocked and worried. He looked quickly at the residents’ schedule and assured Talley that he would personally supervise Swango for the next three days. They agreed that since it was the eve of a holiday, they would say nothing immediately, but that Talley would contact the dean at Ohio State, Tzagournis, on Friday to find out what the AMA official had been talking about.

Salem spent an uneasy Thanksgiving worrying about his earlier failure to follow through on the letter from officials at Ohio State. After the holiday, Talley spoke with Tzagournis. Talley later wrote a confidential memo summarizing the conversation, which he sent to Dr. Salem:

I have contacted an acquaintance of mine who was dean at the time Michael Swango was an intern at Ohio State. Manny Tzagournis states that Michael Swango was aware of the following areas:

1. That a nurse felt he injected something into a patient which was deleterious.

2. He was told of this instance and he would be investigated.

3. He was reassigned to non-clinical duties during the investigation.

4. He was told he could go back to work as the investigation was resolved to everybody’s satisfaction “at the time” and no disciplinary action was taken.