Blind Eye: The Terrifying Story of a Doctor Who Got Away With Murder (30 page)

Kristin moved into her aunt’s apartment in Portsmouth. She immediately resumed work as an ICU nurse at Riverside Hospital, where she was rehired by an old friend. She volunteered at a homeless shelter in inner-city Norfolk, where she befriended a young woman with a new baby, showing her how to care for the child and taking her shopping. She also spent more time with her stepfather, now well on his way to recovering from his heart surgery, and with Sharon, who enjoyed hikes with her daughter in Mariners’ Museum Park. She stopped complaining about the headaches. It was almost as though the horrifying experience in South Dakota had never happened.

Suddenly, all that changed. On April 22, Swango showed up in Virginia and moved in with Kristin. They came over to see the Coopers the next day. Al was out, and Sharon greeted him at the front door. Swango looked as if he’d gained some weight, which
surprised Sharon, since he’d always been so determinedly trim and fit. “You look like you’ve put on a few pounds,” she said.

Swango nearly went berserk, ranting and pacing rapidly back and forth in the living room. “I don’t know why you say these things about me!” he shouted, proceeding to denounce her treatment of him. Sharon sat in stunned silence until he calmed down. When he stepped briefly out of the room, she turned to Kristin. “What’s wrong?” she asked. But Kristin looked petrified. “Just be quiet,” she said.

When Swango returned, Sharon tried to make conversation. “What are you going to do?” she asked.

“I want to get everything back on track with Kristin,” he said. It was the last thing Sharon wanted to hear.

After Swango’s return, the Coopers rarely saw or heard from Kristin. It was almost as though she were back in South Dakota.

D
R
. Alan Miller, director of the psychiatric residency program at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, on Long Island, sifted through the many completed applications for the program the school had received during the spring of 1993. SUNY–Stony Brook was one of the medical schools that hadn’t filled its quota on Match Day that year, a situation that triggered an onslaught of résumés from medical school graduates who had similarly failed to connect with their favored choices. A distinguished psychiatrist, the former state commissioner of mental hygiene under New York governor Nelson Rockefeller, Dr. Miller had stepped in for what he thought would be a temporary stint as part-time director, after his predecessor resigned. He was somewhat dismayed, though not surprised, by the quality of the applicants.

At most medical schools, psychiatric residencies were becoming increasingly hard to fill. With many insurance companies limiting coverage for psychiatric care, and with an increased effort to control medical costs, psychiatrists’ job opportunities and incomes had shrunk. Fewer medical school graduates were choosing psychiatry as a specialty, and applications had dwindled, even at SUNY–Stony Brook, launched in 1972 as the crown jewel of New York State’s system of publicly funded medical schools.

The medical school rises like a modernist slab from the fields
of rural Long Island; with a lavish budget, it initially attracted many top specialists. But many of SUNY–Stony Brook’s psychiatric residency applicants now were foreign, mostly graduates of Indian and other Asian institutions. He suspected many were simply using psychiatry as a way of getting into the United States to practice medicine.

Then an application caught Miller’s eye: a graduate of an American medical school, with an excellent transcript, who had also been a Marine Corps sergeant. He pulled the application from the pile and made a note of the name: Michael Swango. Out of that year’s 190 applicants, he easily ranked among the candidates invited to the campus for interviews.

Swango arrived in New York on April 27 for an interview with Miller; the chairman of the department of psychiatry, Fritz Henn; and another professor. Swango was good-looking, charming, and articulate. Dr. Miller was immediately impressed. The conversation had hardly begun, however, when Swango made a startling disclosure. Looking at the three doctors earnestly, he said, “I have to tell you, I’ve served time in jail. I want you to know that.”

Miller was taken aback. So this was why such an attractive candidate had failed to gain a match. “What was all that about?” he asked, curious to know more.

Swango explained that he’d been convicted of battery in Illinois after a barroom brawl got out of hand. He said he hadn’t meant to injure anyone, but that, having been a Marine, he sometimes forgot his own strength. He quickly produced the restoration of civil rights signed by the governor of Virginia, which he said was the equivalent of a pardon. (While Virginia had restored Swango’s right to vote and hold office in Virginia, it did not pardon him—it could not have pardoned him—for a crime committed in Illinois.) Dr. Miller found his statement disarming; it seemed so candid.

Before he left, Swango gave Miller three references. After making one or two calls, Dr. Miller was satisfied; he assumed the admissions staff would pursue the usual inquiries.
¹²
SUNY–Stony Brook
did confirm that Swango had graduated from SIU and had satisfactorily completed a year’s internship at Ohio State. None of the SUNY correspondence triggered any mention of Swango’s now notorious history; even the SIU dean’s letter that mentioned his failure to graduate on time had now fallen by the wayside. Unlike administrators at South Dakota, SUNY officials didn’t contact the Federation of State Medical Boards, so they weren’t aware that Swango’s licenses had been suspended in Ohio and Illinois. As in South Dakota, there’s no indication anyone even knew the National Practitioner Data Bank was in operation. Nor did it occur to anyone to check with judicial or prison authorities or with the police about the battery conviction that Swango admitted, or even to find out what Swango had been doing in the years since his release from prison. He told them nothing of his aborted residency in South Dakota.

Dr. Miller and the other doctors who interviewed Swango briefly discussed the fact that they were seriously considering admitting to their residency program a convicted feion who had spent time in prison. But they gave the matter even less thought, and were generally less apprehensive, than Dr. Salem had been at the University of South Dakota. They had heard not one word about poison. It seemed to them there had been a miscarriage of justice of some sort, and that Swango’s crime wasn’t related to the practice of medicine. In any event, as a resident he’d be under their supervision. When all was said and done, Swango was still one of their most appealing candidates. As Dr. Miller later put it, he and his colleagues—all eminent psychiatrists—were “entranced” by Swango.

On June 1, 1993, Swango was formally accepted as one of twelve psychiatric residents at SUNY–Stony Brook.

A
FTER
a gap of two months, Kristin resumed her journal in May, an indication that her revived spirits were beginning to flag in Michael’s presence. “I’m ecstatic that he has the offer,” she wrote of the Stony Brook acceptance.

But the people don’t know the nature of the battery, and the fear is overwhelming. I’ve had difficulty the last two days. I know in my mind it is unrealistic to worry about what could happen, but everything is too fresh from South Dakota. It would be a miracle for him to complete a residency without it ever coming up. I wish he didn’t have to go through this. The majority of my anxiety is watching him deal with this. He does a terrific job hiding his anxiety but I can feel it constantly. This is an exhausting life.

Though the Coopers had seen little of their daughter or Swango, Kristin was eager to celebrate Father’s Day with Al. The two couples met for lunch at Nick’s Seafood Pavilion on Chesapeake Bay on June 20. The Coopers growing dislike of Swango only hardened as he talked incessantly, boasting that he had been accepted at two medical residency programs, and had chosen one in New York. He talked as though he’d just gotten out of medical school, hadn’t been in prison, hadn’t been dismissed in South Dakota, and had nothing to look forward to but a bright future. Kristin listened meekly, betraying none of the anxiety she had confided in her journal. She said almost nothing, which the Coopers thought was worrisome and out of character. It was as though Swango had gained some mysterious hold over her.

When Sharon heard that Swango would be moving to New York State, she asked Kristin, “Will you be going with him?”

“No, not for a while at least,” she said.

Despite Swango’s enthusiasm, Al Cooper was skeptical. “Michael, after all these problems, what if they hear about them?” he asked.

“What they don’t know, they don’t know,” Swango confidently replied.

Later, when Al and Sharon returned to their car, they spoke of their unease about Kristin’s demeanor. “Something’s wrong,” Al said.

Michael left for Long Island a week later. Kristin’s ambivalence is evident in a journal entry written that day:

Michael departed for his residency. A month ago, I wanted him to go. I felt ready for him to go. I just wanted to get the separation over with. He’s been gone five hours
now and I miss him so much. I went to see the movie “Cliffhanger,” and when I came out I looked for Mike-O at my side. I thought I was in Sioux Falls. I was so confused. I didn’t know where I was. I started crying. I don’t know where to stuff all this anger.

I feel so lonely here. I feel beaten, so beaten. I have so much to do I just don’t feel like doing anything. I have $200 left in my checkbook. I’m financially drained and mentally as well.

Still, she added, “I know it will get better.”

M
ICHAEL
S
WANGO’S
residency began on July 1. He rented a room in Centereach, Long Island, from Carol Tamburo, a landlady who often rented to people connected to the university. He had introduced himself over the phone, and she had agreed to let him spend one night there without having met him. She quickly offered him a lease once they met. She found him charming and personable and was impressed that he was a doctor, though she found it odd that he insisted she call him “Mike” rather than “Dr. Swango.”

For his first rotation, Swango—or Kirk, as he introduced himself to some people, Kirk being the name of the starship captain in
Star Trek
—was assigned to internal medicine at the sprawling, modern Veterans Administration hospital in Northport, Long Island, one of the two hospitals affiliated with the Stony Brook medical school. A nineteenth-century whaling port, Northport is a quaint town on the north shore of Long Island Sound that seems far from New York City, just an hour’s drive away. Swango moved into a dormitory provided by the VA for hospital residents, and he also rented a storage room from the VA. Though he now had hospital privileges—he had even boasted to his landlady that he had access to “every medicine chest in the hospital”—no one thought to check his background with the National Practitioner Data Bank. Thanks to his recent work experience in South Dakota, Swango was more poised and skilled than most of his colleagues, and he garnered favorable reviews from the medical school faculty. Some of them teased Dr. Miller, saving, “Why is a guy this good in psychiatry? He should be in internal medicine.”

One of Swango’s first patients at the VA hospital was Dominic Buffalino, an organizer for the Long Island Republican Party, World War II veteran, and former construction supervisor for Grumman Aircraft. He had entered the VA hospital after he developed some lung congestion. Although his family thought he was suffering from little more than a severe cold, they did fear the condition might develop into pneumonia.

On July 1, the day Swango began his residency, Buffalino was resting comfortably, his condition stable. But he was running a fever, and an IV line was supplying antibiotics in an effort to curb his infection. His wife, Teresa, was visiting with him, as she had every day. The couple had never spent a day apart in their entire marriage. Several doctors had been in and out of the room, but then a young resident arrived, introduced himself as Dr. Michael Swango, and indicated he would now be the primary doctor in charge of her husband. Teresa found him pleasant and reassuring.

The next morning, Teresa was leaving the Buffalinos’ home in nearby Huntington Station to return to the hospital when the phone rang. She went back inside to answer it. “I’m sorry to inform you your husband is dead,” Dr. Swango said. “We didn’t expect him to expire.”

Teresa was stunned by the news. She began to sob hysterically. “Stay on the phone,” Swango said. “Don’t hang up. Talk to me.” Finally Teresa was able to ask if she could come to the hospital. “By all means,” Swango replied. “Come up here.”

When Teresa and her brother-in-law, Andrew Buffalino, arrived at the hospital, Swango was waiting there to see them. They went into the room where Dominic’s body still lay, and Teresa again lost her composure.

The rest of the day was a blur, but she later remembered hearing something to the effect that her husband had been paralyzed. She couldn’t understand why someone suffering from pneumonia would be paralyzed.

A
L
and Sharon Cooper spent the first two weeks of July vacationing in North Carolina. They had begged Kristin to join them, but she insisted she had to keep working to make more money. They didn’t understand why she’d had to use the credit card they gave her, and borrow money from them, loans she carefully documented in a
notebook and promised to repay. They had no idea her savings had been drained by Swango.

On the evening of July 14, Kristin received a collect call from Michael. Her neighbor became concerned, because during the lengthy conversation she heard Kristin screaming, then sobbing.

Then Kristin called her mother. Sharon was immediately alarmed. Kristin wasn’t herself. She was remote, distant. Her voice seemed flat. “Come stay with us,” Sharon pleaded. “No, Mom, I’m fine,” Kristin insisted. “I love you.”

When she hung up, Sharon broke into sobs. “There’s something terribly wrong with Kristin. I’m leaving, I’m going down there,” she told Al.