forged a ‘Restoration of Civil Rights’ letter from then Governor Gerald L. Baliles of Virginia, stating that Baliles had reinstated Swango's right to vote and serve on a jury – based on reports from friends and colleagues that Swango had committed no additional crimes after his misdemeanor, and that he was leading a commendable lifestyle.
Swango established a genuine position at Sanford, but in October made the blunder of attempting to join the American Medical Association (AMA). The AMA did a more methodical background check than the medical center and found out about the poisoning conviction. That Thanksgiving day, The Discovery Channel aired an episode of Justice Files that included a segment on Swango. In the course of the AMA report and phone calls from terrified colleagues, Sanford Medical Center fired Swango.
The AMA quickly lost track of Swango as he’d managed to find a job in the Psychiatric Residency Program at the Stony Brook School of Medicine. His first rotation was in the Internal Medicine Department at the Veteran Affairs Medical Center in Northport, New York. Once again, his patients began dying for no reason, and four months later his wife, Kinney, committed suicide. Sharon Cooper, Kinney’s mom, was dismayed to find out a person with Swango's history could be permitted to practice medicine. She contacted a friend of Kinney's who was a nurse at Sanford. The nurse advised Sanford's Dean, Robert Talley, about Swango's whereabouts. Talley then telephoned Jordan Cohen, the dean at Stony Brook. Under extreme questioning from Alan Miller, the head of Stony Brook's Psychiatry department, Swango admitted that he had lied about his poisoning conviction in Illinois, and he was fired on the spot. The ensuing public outcry resulted in Cohen and Miller being forced to quit as well before the year was out. Before he resigned, however, Cohen, with knowledge about the past mistakes of other medical facilities, sent a warning about Swango to all the one hundred and twenty-five medical schools, and the one thousand teaching hospitals across the U.S, successfully disenabling Swango from receiving a medical residency anywhere in the United States of America.
Since the incidents at the Veteran Affair’s facility, federal authorities had gotten involved. Swango dropped out of sight until June of 1994, at which point the FBI discovered he was living in Atlanta, Georgia, working as a chemist at a computer equipment company's wastewater facility. The FBI notified the company and Swango was fired for lying on his job application. The FBI then obtained a warrant charging Swango with using falsified credentials to achieve entry to the Veteran Affair’s Hospital.
By the time the warrant was executed, however, Swango had fled to Zimbabwe. There, he got a job at Mnene Lutheran Mission Hospital in the centre of the country, again based on phony documents, and again his patients began dying without explanation. As the Medical Director, Dr. Zishiri, had suspicions, Swango was suspended, but because the hospital was unable to complete satisfactory autopsies, no solid conclusions could be drawn to press charges. During his deferment, Swango hired a prominent lawyer by the name of David Coltart to facilitate him in returning to clinical practice. He also appealed to the authorities at Mpilo Hospital, Bulawayo, to permit him in the interim to continue working there voluntarily. This was opposed, however, by Dr. Abdollah Mesbah, a surgical resident, who had frequently found Swango snooping around on the wards and in ICU even when not on call. He’d suspected that some unexpected deaths could have been related to Swango, but he’d had no proof at that point.
Swango rented a room from a widow in Bulawayo who became ferociously sick after Swango prepared a meal for her and a friend. The woman consulted a local surgeon, Dr. Michael Cotton, who suspected arsenic poisoning and convinced her to send hair samples for forensic analysis to Pretoria. In due course, these clippings established toxic levels of arsenic in the hair. The lab reports were passed on by the Zimbabwe Central Intelligence Division, then through Interpol, and on to the FBI, who then visited Zimbabwe to interview Dr. Cotton, and the Pathologist in Bulawayo, Dr. Stanford Mathe.
Swango, however, had scented that the trap was about to be set and crossed the border into Zambia and then Namibia where he found temporary medical work. In March of 1997, he applied for a job at the Royal Hospital in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, using a counterfeit resume. While all this was taking place, Veteran Affair’s Criminal Investigator Tom Valery consulted with Dr. Charlene Thomesen, a Forensic Psychiatrist, to help him with the case. She was able to analyze documents and data, and formulate a psychological profile of Dr. Swango, giving her evaluation of why he had committed such horrific crimes. Tom Valery was called by the FBI to discuss holding Swango. Valery then called Drug Enforcement Agency Agent Richard Thomesen who was stationed in the Manhattan DEA Office to discuss the investigation. Thomesen's conversation focused on Swango lying on his government application to work at the Department of Veterans Affairs, where he prescribed narcotic medications. This, and other proof, was sufficient for Immigration and Naturalization Service agents to arrest Swango in June of 1997 during a stopover at Chicago’s O'Hare International Airport on his way to Saudi Arabia.
Arrest for Fraud
Faced with stiff evidence of his deceitful activities and the possibility of an extended inquest into his time in Zimbabwe, Swango pleaded guilty to defrauding the government in March of 1998 and in July was sentenced to three and a half years in prison. The sentencing judge ordered that Swango not be permitted to prepare or deliver food, or have any association with the preparation or distribution of drugs. He was charged with no counts of murder at this point, however. Not yet anyway. The FBI wanted to get their ducks in a row before charging him for his killings and needed hard evidence.
While Swango was serving his time, the fed’s accumulated a substantial dossier of Swango's crimes. As part of that investigation, prosecutors obtained a warrant to exhume the bodies of three of his former patients and found poisonous chemicals in them. They also found indications that he had paralyzed Barron Harris, another patient, with an injection; Harris later lapsed into a coma and died. Furthermore, prosecutors found evidence that Swango had lied about the death of Cynthia Ann McGee, a patient to whom he had been attending while employed as an intern at OSU. Swango claimed she had suffered a heart blockage, but he had in fact killed her by injecting her with potassium that congested her heart. On July 11, 2000, less than a week before he was scheduled to be released from prison on the fraud charge, Federal prosecutors on Long Island, New York, filed a criminal injustice charging Swango with three counts of murder, one count of assault, and one count each of false statements, mail deception, and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. At the same time, Zimbabwean authorities charged him with poisoning seven patients, five of whom had died.
Murder Charges, Sentence
Swango was officially indicted on July 17, 2000, and insisted that he was not guilty. On September 6, however, he capitulated and pled guilty of murder and fraud charges. Had he not done so, he faced the possibility of the death penalty and extradition to Zimbabwe. At his sentencing trial, prosecutors read shocking passages from Swango's notebook, describing the elation he felt during his crimes. Judge Mishler sentenced him to three consecutive life terms. He is currently incarcerated at The United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility (ADX) in Florence, Colorado. The FBI believes he may be responsible for as many as sixty deaths, which would make him one of the most inexhaustible serial killers in American history.
Dr. Marcel Petiot
Born: January 17, 1897
Place: Auxerre, France
Killing Span: 1926 – 1944
