Medical Murders

Fatigue, nausea, and cramping are all symptoms that dialysis patients regularly face, as they rely on their medical professionals to do the work that their kidneys once did. But in 2008, at a clinic in Lufkin, Texas, these ailing convalescents dealt with far worse. One of the nurses among them was administering bleach, in lieu of care. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When malpractice occurs, justice often lies with the hospitals who hired the malicious professional in the first place. But it was all too easy for Texas institutions to turn a blind eye to Dr. Christopher Duntsch's medical indiscretions in 2012. Duntsch, in turn, hopped from one facility to the next, falling deeper into a deluded rampage, until his egregious oversights caught the attention of two sleuthing doctors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When Dr. Christopher Duntsch was ousted from the biotech startup he co-founded, he pursued a new career in medicine as a spinal surgeon. He was inexperienced, inept, and arrogant — but his charm secured glowing reviews and second chances everywhere he went. By the time alarm bells started ringing, his hospital employer was in too deep to let their investment walk away. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In 1986, Donald Harvey began a new job at a hospital in Ohio, where he moved from suffocating patients to poisoning them in lethal experiments. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Donald Harvey was a hospital orderly in Kentucky and Ohio who killed dozens of patients in the 1970s. He was also a neo-Nazi who learned witchcraft, and would regularly summon a spirit he called Duncan to choose his next victim. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the late 1980s and early ‘90s, a young respiratory therapist made medicine his whole life. But the extra shifts and multiple jobs started taking a toll — and it wasn’t long before rumors began circulating that Efren Saldivar’s “magic syringe” was putting patients in body bags. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Even though he helped produce life-saving vaccines and water purification practices, Dr. Shiro Ishii’s biowarfare facilities and epidemics launched by his team are likely responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Coming out of the influenza pandemic of 1918, Dr. Shiro Ishii wondered if disease could be used as a weapon. After invading Manchuria in the early 1930s, Japan authorized him to conduct horrific experiments on Chinese locals to determine the effectiveness of biological warfare. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After getting away with two murders in 2008, Anthony Garcia tried returning to medicine — but repeated rejections left him spiraling. Once again, he focused his revenge on Creighton University doctors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Wanting to make his parents proud, Anthony Garcia tried to complete his residency to become a doctor. Four failed attempts at four different institutions later, Garcia knew a path in medicine wasn’t for him — so he set out on a quest to enact revenge. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hoping for a miracle cure, British heiresses Claire and Dora Williamson traveled to Linda Hazzard’s sanatorium in Washington in 1911. But when their childhood nurse becomes concerned for their welfare, it’s a race against time — and Hazzard — to free them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the early 1900s, Dr. Linda Hazzard claimed that her special starvation regimens could cure any ailment. What her patients didn’t realize was that she wasn’t even a real doctor — and they were more likely to die under her care than recover. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In June 2001, San Diego toxicologist Kristin Rossum was arrested on suspicion of murdering her husband, 26-year-old Greg de Villers. While her family defended her in the media, investigators discovered one piece of evidence that would clinch their case. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When Greg de Villers died of an apparent suicide in 2000, his wife Kristin was distraught. But an investigation revealed he had been murdered with a lethal dose of fentanyl — and Kristin had the knowledge, the means, and the motive to do it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A two-year murder spree at an Indiana hospital ended in 1995, after a nursing supervisor began investigating their high number of patient fatalities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

With his wife Michele’s death ruled as natural, Martin was free to devote himself to a new life. He began by introducing his mistress as the family’s new nanny, stealing one daughter’s identity, and sexually assaulting another. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In 2007, a Utah physician murdered his wife of nearly 30 years and tried to make it look like an accident. Martin MacNeill had been a master manipulator all his life, forging his way into medical school and masquerading as a good Mormon husband. This would be his most ambitious con yet — but there’s one thing he didn’t account for: his daughter’s suspicions, and the lengths they’d go to pursue justice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After Joseph Michael Swango was caught poisoning colleagues, he was arrested and sentenced to two years. Once free, he returned to the medical world, securing various gigs across America before fleeing the country when his past caught up to him. Once abroad, he claimed even more lives — eventually becoming wanted for murder in two countries. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Between 1981 and 1997, Dr. Michael Swango targeted both helpless patients and unsuspecting colleagues in his quest for mayhem. But before he carried out his murderous practice, he was a medical school student with an unhealthy obsession for calamity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In 1987, their sick game began to lose its appeal — and Cathy began to lose her grip on Gwen. Their relationship became more volatile than ever. As both women began confiding in others about their murders, one person finally took their story to the police. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In Michigan in 1986, a heated love affair between two nurse's aides was strengthened by pranks and a devil-may-care attitude toward authority. But their games turned deadly when they began targeting patients who couldn’t fight back. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A German nurse claimed at least 87 — and possibly up to 300 — lives in the 2000s. Niels Högel is thought to be Germany’s most prolific serial killer since World War II. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Despite court battles that stretched on for years, Jeffrey MacDonald stuck to his narrative about what happened the night his wife and daughters were murdered. During that time, a new suspect emerged, evidence was reanalyzed, and an FBI analyst determined a more likely story — one that didn’t involve killer hippies high on acid. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Six months after the infamous Manson murders, an Army surgeon at Fort Bragg alleged that a hippie cult brutally murdered his pregnant wife and two young daughters. Authorities weren’t convinced by Jeffrey MacDonald’s story. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

By 1996, the nurses who worked with Kristen Gilbert suspected she was lethally injecting patients with epinephrine. Circumstantial evidence piled up against her, but it wasn't until she made a bomb threat that her fate took a turn for the worst. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Kristen Gilbert showed neurotic tendencies and a penchant for lying as young as adolescence, but it wasn't until she became a nurse that these habits grew dangerous. In 1989, after joining the staff at Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Massachusetts, her colleagues began to notice a rise in cardiac arrest deaths. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Despite his promising career as a dentist, Dr. Arthur Warren Waite had no patience when it came to making a fortune. After marrying an heiress in 1915, he attacked her family one by one. Waite's weapon of choice? Deadly bacteria. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Over a dozen children fell mysteriously ill or died in the span of two months at Grantham Hospital, but it wasn’t until 1-year-old Claire Peck succumbed to a potassium overdose that medical staff contacted authorities. Their investigation found only one nurse was present for every emergency: Beverley Allitt. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In a London hospital in the 1990s, nurses tended to the patients of Ward Four unaware that there was a murderer in their midst. But a suspicious rise in fatalities revealed a harrowing truth: someone among them was killing children. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Imprisoned in 1881 for poisoning a wealthy man, Cream served just ten years before he was released. He collected his share of his late father’s fortune, and set sail for England — where he earned his murderous moniker. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the late 1800s, a dashing young doctor named Thomas Neill Cream used chloroform and strychnine to murder sex workers and women seeking abortions. His crimes spread across fifteen years and two continents. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In January 2012, Victorino Chua was arrested at his home in Stockport, England for murder. During the investigation, authorities uncovered a chilling portrait of the nurse who poisoned 22 patients, drafted by Chua himself in a letter to one of his mistresses. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the 1940s, posing as part of the French Resistance, Dr. Petiot promised safe passage to anyone trying to escape Nazi-occupied France. Instead, he took their money, and killed them in his own secret torture chamber. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

One of France’s most prolific serial killers was an early 20th century doctor and statesman. Marcel Petiot grew from a troubled boy into a troublesome soldier who later obtained a medical certification. He established himself in the small town of Villeneuve-sur-Yonn — where he learned that, in the public eye, titles trump virtue. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In 1828, Burke and Hare managed to successfully run a business selling corpses to anatomy professor Robert Knox. For nearly ten months, the duo went unnoticed — until an eye witness accused the men of murder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In 19th-century Edinburgh, two men on the hunt for money found a lucrative industry: grave robbing. But the infamous Burke and Hare didn’t want to dig up corpses. Instead, they delivered death to the gullible, and brought the bodies to one high-paying professor. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The first target of Dr. Green’s vindictiveness was her husband, Mike. A month later, in October 1995, she set fire to their family home… with their three children still inside. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

By the 1990s, the perfectionism that had driven Dr. Debora Green’s once-promising medical career had turned into disillusionment. Her bedside manner deteriorated, along with her second marriage. When her husband asked for a divorce in 1995, she decided to retaliate. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After committing a gruesome double-murder, Dr. Ruxton set to work covering up his foul crime. But his efforts were no match for the groundbreaking forensic investigation that ensued. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Shortly after he began practicing medicine in England, Dr. Ruxton met Isabella Kerr. The intensity between them simmered into volatility — and in 1935, after years of escalating domestic abuse, the Lancaster physician exploded in a murderous rage. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Despite the evidence against him, Dr. Hodel was never convicted of Elizabeth Short’s murder — or any other crime he was accused of in the 1940s and beyond. The skilled physician remained free to hone his dark proclivities until his death in 1999. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In 1999, a former homicide detective flipped through a photo album belonging to his late father. One face stood out above the rest: Elizabeth Short, an aspiring actress whose gruesome murder decades earlier was still unsolved — but not, perhaps, for long. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The “witch” of Ward D in Austria’s Lainz General Hospital led a group of nurses’ aides on a murderous crusade in the 1980s, killing at least 20 — and possibly up to 300 — patients in their care. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After killing three people, Engleman was confident he could continue to outsmart the law — so he plotted a three-victim homicide that would earn him his biggest fortune yet. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Some killers want blood, and some want glory. But more than anything, Missouri dentist Glennon Engleman wanted the hefty life insurance payout that accompanied a well-arranged murder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Employment at a nursing home would’ve been Elizabeth’s crowning career victory, but it proved to be a fast road to burnout. Struggling to provide medical support to so many people, she began taking her anger and exasperation out on her patients. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Starting in 2007, a Canadian nurse began injecting her elderly patients with lethal insulin overdoses. The inconspicuous method allowed her to escape suspicion for nearly a decade. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Over three decades, Amelia Dyer killed upwards of four hundred infants. She conned desperate mothers while fine-tuning the details of her operation, until a bargeman’s discovery in 1896 forced the baby-farmer to have a reckoning. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After her husband died 1869, nurse Amelia Dyer turned to baby-farming to avoid financial ruin. She took out ads in newspapers, and took in unwanted infants for a fee. But for Amelia, this was a business — and she was willing to do anything to keep the money coming. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As criticisms of lobotomy mounted, Dr. Freeman continued performing his dangerous procedure — even without patient consent. Then, with his legacy and career on the line, Freeman spent the final years of his life seeking redemption from patients. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices