BEHIND THE MURDER CURTAIN-Bruce Sackman

Sackman's main responsibilities had been investigating white collar crimes such as embezzlement. When he is drawn into the macabre world of doctors and nurses who murder their patients, Sackman evolves from an investigator of routine cases to the world's leading expert on medical serial killers msks, doctors and nurses who fly their evil trade hidden behind the privacy curtain at

a patient's bedside. Behind the Murder Curtain tells how this dedicated investigator brought down four msks in veterans' hospitals while developing the Red Flag's Protocol, which is now taught to investigators in forensic nurses throughout the world as a tool for stop an MSK. The book that we were featuring

this evening is Behind the Murder Curtain. Special Agent Bruce Sackman hunts doctors and nurses who kill our veterans with my special guest, special agent and journalist and author Bruce Sackman.

You're responsible for an area ranging from West Virginia to Maine, including two hundred and fifty thousand Veterans Administration employees. Tell us just a little bit about what the special Agent in charge and we talked about it in the beginning of what you were typically employed to do. Tell us a little bit about your background.

particular agency. So before I came to the VA, I did similar work in the Department of Defense, and then in nine eighty I came over to the VA as a special agent and eventually rose to the position of Special Agent in Charge, and in that capacity I was responsible for all major criminal investigations for all the VA. Hospitals and regional offices outpatient clinics from West Virginia to Maine. But normally, my normal investigative inventory was white collar crime cases,

you know, embezzlement's, frauds, bribery, theft. It wasn't until I got a call one day from the chief of psychiatry at the Northport, VA Hospital sort of changed my life. That's when she called me up and she said, Bruce, you're not going to believe this, but we actually have a doctor working here and there's a news story about him where he was imprisoned for poisoning his co workers and now he's working here as a doctor. How could

that be? It was a great question, and that's what started me on this journey that took me really now all over the world doing these kind of cases.

I'm more of your white collar crime Brooks Brothers dress type of investigator, you know, more of a scientific approach than He's more of a dirty Harry and I was more of a Colombo I think would be the easiest way to describe it.

the VA police chief. Tell us what you did first in this duty to get to the bottom of the swangle story.

a handsome x marine doctor. Seemed like a perfect catch, you know, And so we started asking him, was saying, you know, we heard, we got information that you were actually, you know, in prison for poisoning people. And he starts going this routine Oh no, no, no, no, you know, that's just media hype. It's not true. I was actually in jail.

This guy is just too cool and too charming. So we left because we didn't have any evidence that he actually harmed anybody at the VA hospital, and we try to get a search warrant, but the US attorney at the time said, well, well, you know, Bruce, you don't have any evidence that anybody was harmed in Northport. Well, the next thing, you know, Swango leaves. We don't know where he went. Turned up in Africa, turned up in Zimbabwe, Africa. And when he's in Zabwe in Zimbabwe, he killed women

and children and pregnant women. Really everybody was sort of just the target of opportunity for him. And then we started to do his whole background investigation, So who is this guy and how did he get to us after spending time in jail for poisoning people. I couldn't believe it that we could actually hire a doctor who spent years in prison for poisoning his coworkers. It seems like

an impossible story that nobody would believe. But when you start to look in the background of Michael Swango, it's very very scary. You know, it actually starts when he was in a medical school in Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, and he would visit patients and the patients would just die unexpectedly. Nobody really made a big stink of it. He just refused to believe that he was

actually responsible for patients coding well. He didn't really do his homework too well, and they kept him in medical school for a year longer. But you know, his fellow students wrote a letter to the dean and they said, you know, Dean, we don't think Swango should be a doctor. Don't trust this guy. And Adan said, I don't care what you think. You're only students. I'm the dean. We'll keep this guy a little longer and we'll make him a deal. We'll make him a doctor. So he becomes

a doctor. Next thing, you know, he does his internship at Ohio State University and once again, patients start dying unexpectedly. Now there was one particular patient. It's a very moving story. Her name was Cynthia McGee. Cynthia McGhee was a young gymnast. She actually got in a car accident. She was hit by another student. She's improving until she gets a visit from you know who, doctor Swango. Next thing. You know,

she dies unexpectedly. So the police go out and they charge this other student who hit her in the car with vehiculo homicide. But he didn't kill Cynthia McGhee. It was actually Swangle that killed Cynthia McGhee. Well, the Ohio state people started to look at some of the cases that Swango was doing, but they couldn't develop enough evidence to charge him with anything. So Swango leaves. He becomes a paramedic. He goes back to his hometown of Quincy, Illinois.

He becomes a paramedic, and one day he invites the paramedics in for donuts. You know, they worked hard at night, they wanted to have donuts. So what he does is he sprinkles arsenic on the donuts and leaves. Then they all get sick, and he starts calling up each one of them. He wants to know all the details of their sudden illness, Well, exactly what happened, and you know, and then did you throw up, did you have stomach pains?

Did you have this? Did you have that? He was actually sort of reliving the thrill of the experience of these people getting sick. Well, these people were pretty smart and they called the police, and the police did a search warrant of his home and they found arsenic and they found books on poisoning. So he got sentenced to five years in jail. And you would say, well, that's the last we're gonna have a hear of this guy.

Well not true, not true, because he came out of prison, fooled around with some name changing there for a while, and came up with this story, you know, being an ex marine and he was in a barroom fight and he brings out this piece of paper showing that the governor of the state of Virginia has restored his civil rights. Everything was totally bogus. But back then, you know, pre internet days especially, you know, physician credentialing was not like

it is today. And they said, okay, great, come on board. We need doctors, we need doctors. And the next thing you know, he's at a hospital out Wes and he's doing great. He's doing great. He meets a young lady, they get engaged. He actually makes the mistake of reapplying for membership in the AMA, and the AMA discovers his background and the next thing you know, everybody in the town is talking about him. The radio shows talking about him. So it's time for him to leave again. And this

really affects his fiance. So his fiance leaves him, goes home, goes back to mom and dad and said, you know, I really love this Michael Swango. I feel so terrible. I feel like my whole life is coming to an end. So she goes to a park, takes out a gun and blows the brains out right in the park. Well you can't blame Swango for that, can you? Well, yes you can, because even though the body was cremated, Mom kept the lock of her hair and we had the

hair tested and it was loaded with arsenic. Swango was even poisoning his own fiance. Everybody for him a target of opportunity. So then eventually he winds up in my hometown, the Northport Via. Now what's really interesting here is at the north Port Via he went for a residency and gets in Watfield in psychiatry. So what does that mean. That means that you have to go in front of a board of trained psychiatrists and convince them more that

you should be in their residency program. And he was such a smooth talker, so calm, so glib that he fooled this entire board of trained psychiatrists and said, yeah, come on the program. We love you. Come on on. Next thing. He goes to the VA and that's where he meets me. He goes to Africa, he kills people, anybody and everybody he met. I think he either killed to try to kill in Africa, and then he was going to go on I think it was the Saudi Arabia,

but he had to get his passport renewed. So he comes back to the United States and we arrested him, but not for murder because we didn't have any proof that he had murdered anybody at the VA. But we had plenty of proof that he lied on his application to the VA about being in prison for poisoning his coworkers. So he pled guilty to that and he got three years in jail. Now we had a window of three years to try to prove that he had killed people at the VA hospital in Northport, and this became a

federal crime. And the reason why it's a federal crime is because the VA hospital is on the exclusive it's called the Exclusive Territory of the United States. It's like a military base. So even though it's on Long Island. It's a federal case because the VA hospital, but it was on federal property. So what we did this is when I first met doctor Michael Boden, Doctor Michael Boddam, one of the world's pre eminent forensic medical examiners. And I went to him and I said, Dr Bonnen, tell

you the truth. I've never done a homicide case. Never. I'm basically a white collar crime guy. But I know I've got a killer here. Can you help me? And you know I met him up at the New York State Police and the New York State Police they didn't want to get involved in the case. But Michael Bonnen said, Bruce, I'm your man. I'll do it with you and I'll teach you. So I was fortunate enough to have as my private tutor, you might say, you know, the world's

best forensic medical examiner. And he told me exactly what to do. He says, Bruce, what we have to do. We have to look at all the medical records of all the patients that were at the VA Northboard at the time that Swangle was there, and we have to try to make a determination based on a review of the medical records if any of these people died when they should not have died. In other words, they did not die from their direct disease processes. It was not

a natural death. It was a poisoning. And Michael Bonnan describes natural death like this. He says, Bruce, natural death, it's like if you set off a fan and the blaze just gradually stop. But these people, he says, were bright like a light bulb, and like you turned off the light bulb in their dark. So they're bright one minute and they're dark. And we found a number of patients that were actually improving before they met Swango. The family would go on vacation. They say, Okay, Dad, I'm

so glad to see you improving. You know, we're going to Disney World. We'll see you when we come back, only to get a call from Michael Swango that, you know, Dad had expired unexpectedly. So what was the murder weapon? That was not an easy thing to determine, all right. We had to show that the deaths were consistent with some sort of poisoning. In the case of Michael Swangle, it was something called suck and choline. In the hospital,

they referred to it as sucks. What it is is a drug that they give you if they want to put a tube down you to intubate you. The other drug is called epinephrine, which is adrenaline which will speed up the heart. And we made a determination first by reviewing the medical records that a number of patients, and we narrowed it down to about three or four patients that died when they should have not have died. There was no reason in the medical records to determine why

the patients died when they did. You know, a lot of times if you have a family one in the hospital, they're really sick, you know, you know that they're going to pass. The staff knows that they're going to pass. It's not unexpected. But these people all died unexpectedly. Well, the next thing we had to do after looking at the medical records, we had to exhume the bodies. Now,

I had never done anything like this before in my life. Okay, next thing I know, we're ringing the doorbells of other family members and were saying, you know, and missus Jones, I'm from the VA. I'd like to have your permission to exhume your father's body from the cemetery because we think some foul play has happened. Could you imagine getting a visit like that. You imagine hearing something like that. Incredible.

But the people were super nice. They were really nice, and they said okay, you know, okay, but we had a court order anyway. So next thing, you know, for the first time, I found myself in a cemetery and there's a back hole, and the back hole is moving all the dirt, and then all of a sudden, you know, there's a crane and it comes in. It picks up the coffin from the ground. I had never done anything like this. I'm looking at my partner. I was going, boy,

we really started that he had, didn't we. Next thing, I see Michael Bonden jumps into the ground where the coffin had been, and he's taking soil samples and I'm saying, doctor Bondon, what is that for. He says, well, you know, Bruce, if there's arsenic in the soil and we find arsenic in the body, they're gonna claim that the arsenic from the soil kind of seeped into the body and that's why there's arsenic in the body, not because the poisoning.

So we take the body to the local medical examiner, and I had never been in a morgue before, and he saw people cut up in various states. And the next thing you know, we're opening up the coffin and we pull the body up and Michael Boden and the local medical examining it examiner around on Long Island. His

name was doctor Charles Wetley. And I'm just sitting there watching and learning, and they're cutting the body open and they're examining parts, and they made a determination that these people did not die from what was on their death certificate, which is almost always the same being myocardial and function or some sort of heart ailment. And doctor Biden said, there's nothing wrong with this guy's heart. Look at that, and you take it out and you show it to

me like I knew what I was looking at. And okay, do you say that. You know here the first time anybody handed a heart to me, and he's showing me this, and then he said, no, look, Bruce, we have to do the toxicology and that's going to take time because we I'm pretty certain that these people were poisoned and it looks like it's consistent with either an epinephrine or

a suxonal colling. And that's when I met doctor Readers of Doctor Rita's is the owner of the National Medical Services, probably the world's I don't know if it's the largest, but certainly one of the most prestigious private forensic labs in the world. And I said, how are we going to find this an embombed tissue? How do you find traces of that finefrin and suckinal cal in an embombed tissue? And he said, Hey, Bruce, don't worry, he says, we

have this new machine. It's called the high pressure liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometer. Holy cow, what the hell is that said? Don't worry about it, Bruce. But what we do is we actually take a sample and we test it and it runs up and down, and we tested through all of this and we come out and we're pretty sure what we found. And based on that machine, he says, we found sucksonal calling and epinefrine in bodies of these veterans that should have never had those drugs.

Those drugs should have never been administered to them. And now it's time for Swango to come out of jail. Remember we sent them in jail for lying to the government, not for murder, and he thought he was just gonna walk away. Not so fast, Michael Swango, Not so fast, okay, because we're preparing an indictment charging you with the murder

of three veterans at the Northport Via Medical Center. And by the way, Michael, by the way, if we go to trial, and even if we should lose the trial, your troubles are not over because the government of Zimbabwe has just issued an extradition for you. So you know what, if we lose, We're just gonna put you on the plane and drop you off on the tarmac in Zimbabwe.

Good luck buddy over there. Okay. So Michael Swango decided to plead guilt and save us the trouble and actually the family really the trouble of going through a trial and listening through all this. And then it was time for a sentencing and he stands up in front of the federal judge out on Long Island and the judge asks them he says, all right, explain to me, doctor Swango, exactly what you did. And doctor Swango, standing at attention like a like a marine, said, you know, I poisoned

these people using a paralytic. He didn't actually mention the drugs, but he said a paralytic. And then the doctor asked him to explain. Then the judge asked him to explain exactly what sucks, and acolon is exactly what that benefitness. He did. Never showed any remorse for his victims at all, never the slightest remorse for any of That sort of reminded me of like the Nazi walk criminals at the

Nuremberg trial. And then as I'm sitting then he sits down and his defense attorney puts his arm around Michael Swangle like he's a poor victim here. It was one of the most disgusting things I had ever seen. Say, are you kidding me? This guy killed people all over the world, but you know so, then it was time for sentencing, and Judge Michela, who was a judge, he

said something I have never heard before or since. He sentenced Michael the three consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole in Supermax Federal Penitentiary in Florence, Colorado, the most secure in the United States. And he said, then, by the way, doctor Swango, if for some reason Congress should change the law and allow you to appeal your appeal is denied in advance. Holy cow. And I didn't even know if such a thing was even legal, but

he said, wow, that's great. I had never heard of anything like that. Yeah, yep. And and that was a sort of a quick overview of my life with doctor Swango, which, by the way, that's a very short version of a seven year investigation.

the state that he wasn't in. But the other things that there was other things in your investigation that you found that were crucial in each one of these medical centers that they went to, that they didn't do a criminal background check, like you say that this would be standard.

blonde haired, blue eyed ex marine. They said, wow, you know, we have all these applicants from India, from China, and here comes a blonde hair, blue eyed X marine. Wow. So they started to overlook I think some of the things they might normally have delved into in greater detail, just because they were so surprised that somewhat happy to see an applicant that looked and spoke like Michael Swango.

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for this program. That's murder and talkspace dot com slash murder. Bruce, you learned on an incredible amount in the investigation into Michael swangoble o'swango, but also that you had assembled this team including doctor Boden and doctor Readers, but along the way you added some people when necessary. You talk about another case with a nurse who kills named Gilbert Kristen, a very very interesting case in Northampton, Massachusetts. Tell us a little bit about how you got involved with this

case and what you found. What you knew immediately upon entering into this sure case.

is actually killing somebody, particularly in the hospital. You know, a hospital is a setting where people take an oath to heal you know they I mean where people have dedicated their lives to make other people better. And that's what ninety nine point nine percent of our medical professionals do.

Many of them perform miracles every day. So if you're in an environment where people are performing miracles saving the lives of other people, it's pretty hard first to even fathom that somebody is intentionally murdering somebody in some ways. And I think this was the case of doctor Michael Swango. I think he actually chose his profession because it gave him an opportunity to kill in an environment like that.

You know, look, most cops and I put myself in this position, didn't become cops because we're good in chemistry and biology. You know, we could be very easily intimidated by the science in a hospital. And most cops don't even want to go in the hospital to do an investigation. And look, death is a common everyday occurrence in the hospital. You know, if somebody dies at your workplace, you know there's going to be an investigation, maybe even the police

will come. Somebody dies in a hospital, a nursing home, it's a daily, everyday occurrence. And look, have you ever been on a hospital ward at three o'clock in the morning. Not much going on there, is It Just usually based maybe a nurse, a nurse's aide, And like the title of the book says, that nurse could take the curtain, pull that curtain around him or her and the patient and nobody's going to see anything that's going on, all right.

So Kristin Gilbert was such a nurse. She was a nurse in the ICU, the intensive care unit, okay, And one of the things that their skill bit loved was the excited code. And when I say a code, I mean that a patient goes into some sort of cardiac arrest and the next thing you know, crash cart comes running in with all the nurses and the doctors. And she'd loved that excitement. And also responding to that code, of course, was a VA police officer by regulation who

happened to be Kristen's boyfriend. So they sort of turned the entire code experience into actually some sort of semi sexual pleasurable experience for them. They'd be grabbing each other during the code. She actually straddled the patients once. Then her dress went up and he could see her guarter belt and she was just incredible when it came to code. As a matter of fact, the doctors out on the staff used to say, you know, if I ever coded,

I would want Christin Gilbert there. She takes charge. She's incredible and she would love the excitement of the coach. You'd love to show off to everybody what a good nurse she was. Now, this all comes down to this psychological condition that's known as Munchild's in syndrome by proxy, and this is what we believe Kristin Gilbert suffered from,

if that's the correct term. Munchild's in syndrome is when a person will intentionally harm themselves and then seek the attention of caregivers because they need to love and they need the attention. And Munchild's in syndrome by proxy is when a person will harm somebody else bring that other person in the hospital to show the hospital staff what a caring person they are. There have been many cases where moms have actually intentionally harmed their children and brought

a child into the hospital just to show the hospital. Oh, I can't sell much about it. This child. I'm so worried about this. Charl Well, Kristen would actually cause the code, cause the pain and suffering of the patient, just to have a code, just so she could show the staff what an excellent care giver she was as a nurse. And she you know what, My when I first met Kristen, my vision of a serial killer had always been sort of a Charles Manson type, you know, crazy looking guy

with us last figure on his forehead. And here comes the typical soccer mom. Oh hi, everybody, I'm bringing my kids to soccer and everything's far like the last person you would ever think, ever think, until you started doing her background investigation, would actually be capable of murdering so many patients as she did. So what she did, she used to cause the codes, all right, And like I said, her boyfriend used to respond with her. And then all of a sudden, two nurses and this is how so

many of these cases start. Two nurses noted something interesting. Seems like every time Kristen is on duty, the death rate goes up. Kristen takes a few days off, the death rate goes down. Kristen takes a vacation, the death thread is down. Kristen comes back to work, the death rate is up. Always on the ICEEU and always around three o'clock in the morning. And there was some of the most bizarre instances with Kristen that actually came out

during the trial. Of course, unlike Swango, she went to trial. One of the things that came out there was a veteran by the name of Kenneth Cutting. Now, Kristin wanted to go home early one day, she wanted to go out with her boyfriend. Her boyfriend calls up and says, hey, Kristin, if you could get out early today, when will we go out. Kristen says, well, you know, I'm supposed to take care of his patient here. So she actually goes

to her supervisor and I'm serious with this story. She goes to assist her supervisor and hey, boss, if Kenneth Cutting should expire tonight for some reason, can I go home early? And the boss is looking at her and says, Kristen, what are you talking about. We don't expect Kenneth to expire. Well, I guess if he does, you could go home early. But I don't know. That's a crazy question. Well guess what happened to Kenneth Cutting that night? He expired and

she went home early. She was incredible, incredibly accurate on predicting this, so she could see this patient Dan over there, he might expire around twelve thirty three this morning, to go involved. That's when it was incredible. So these nurses would come forward, and first they went to management. And let me tell you, boy that goes over Big Wood management. Management will say something like this, excuse me, nurse, did you did you actually see Kristin Gilbert anybody? No? Well

I didn't see. But every time you know she's on duty, the death threat goes off, she's out, that death threat goes down. Well, does that mean that she's killing people? Or it could be there be other explanations for it. Well, I guess maybe there could be, you know, other explanations for that. And I want to ask you a question, miss nurse whistleblower. Is your background so perfect? I mean, do you ever use drugs? You know, marijuana or anything worse?

Is your license up to snuff? The reason why I ask these questions is because if you make these allegations, then you yourself may actually become under investigation. And you sure you want to go forward with this, Well, I'll tell you what we'll do. And I've heard this on so many cases. They'll tell the whistle blower. They'll say something like this, mister miss whistleblower. You know, we I want to thank you for bringing these allegations forward to us.

So what we do is we will appoint the bull of our very best physicians in house, of course, nobody from the outside, and they'll take a look at the medical records of these patients and they'll make a determination if any of these patients had died as a result of their natural disease processes. And inevitably they come back and they say, yes, these patients did die as a result of one or more of their natural disease processes,

and we don't see any evidence of any foul play. Now, remember the doctors that are doing this analysis, they all work at the hospital. They're not trained in forensics. Even the autopsy. If they should do an autopsy, which is pretty rare nowadays, it's not the kind of autopsy that a forensic medical examiner does looking for cause of death. It's more like a confirmatory autopsy. Did one or more

of these disease processes result in the death of the patient. Yes, As a matter of fact, you know, when I first got involved in these cases, I would look in the patient's medical records, and many of the veterans were older and had a lot of medical problems. And I said, my god, look at all the medical problems this poor vet has. And we have to prove that he was actually murdered. I mean, it will look like any one of these diseases could have actually caused his death. Very

very difficult. So now we go with Now we go with Kristen Gilbert. What's going to be the cause of death. Well, people had actually seen her remove some epinephrine. Remember we talked about epinephrine, one of our favorite murder weapons. So we go once again to doctor Readers and we say, doctor Readers, we have reasonablieve that these patients were poisoned with epinephrin. And he said, well, don't worry, Bruce, I have this new machine. You remember the name, the high

pressure etc. Etc. And he comes back and he says, and this is their they're exhuming bodies and doing the same routine. He says, yes, we could determine that these people died as a result of receiving epinefrin they should have never received. And then the phone rings from the lab and he says, Bruce, and I'm sorry we made a mistake. We can't actually say for a fact that it's epinephrine, but have a nice trial. And here we are about to go to trial. She's already indicted on

all these murder accounts. But we were able to show through doctor Bod and other physicians that the death was consistent with epineffrin poisoning. And she was actually convicted and also got three consecutive life terms without the possibly possibility parole. Now something interesting here, something very interesting with the Gilbert case. Because the case occurred on the za federal property. It was actually a death penalty case in a state that

does not have the death penalty. Massachusetts does not have the death penalty, so the jury had to actually decide a jury in Massachusetts whether she should get the death penalty or not because this was on federal property. Well, she didn't get the death penalty, and quite frankly, we were pretty satisfied with that. Because she was the mother of two children. I think the children had suffered enough

to see their mother executed. If she had been executed, she would have been the first woman executed by the federal government since Ethel Rosenberg in nineteen forty seven. All right, so thank goodness, you know, thank goodness that happened. So anyway, she gets sentenced to prison, and I'm sitting in my office and all of a sudden, somebody comes in with a New York Post article. Apparently Kristin Gilbert had engaged

in a love affair with Squeaky from in prison. If you remember Squeaky from Remember Squeaky attempted to kill President Ford. So she's still looking for Notariay Kristen after all of this, after all all of this, and and those nurses that came forward and brought the allegation to us, even after management said to them there's nothing there. Management insisted there

was nothing there, but we felt different. So not only did we have to deal with the crime itself, but we had to deal with management that was actually defending the employee under suspicion. This also was very common, very common in these kinds of cases. And these people killed so many people did even when they want to cooperate, they can't even remember how many people they killed. You know, Slango,

they said, how many people have you killed? Now that you're pleading guilty, he says, honestly, I don't remember, you know, I killed kill people in Africa. I killed people here, I kill people there. Unlike your traditional serial killers, if there is such a term that killer, maybe you know less than under ten. A medical serial killer could take that many people out in a week. I mean, there was a famous medical serial killer name with Donald Harvey.

And they asked Donald Harvey when they finally caught him, and he had worked at the VA and other hospitals. They finally caught him and they asked him that question. He says, you know, well, after I killed the first eighteen excuse me, yeah, the first eighteen, then I started to believe that I was actually ordained by God himself to do this because nobody questioned it. Nobody questioned you know,

it's not so illogical if you think about it. If you could kill eighteen people and nobody even questions you, maybe you start to think there was some divine intervention here.

She killed people, and then she tried to make it seem like, hah, I was only kidding, but she really wasn't kidding. She really did kill people, you know, and she had actually now again with Kristin Gilbert. Interesting thing, remember the way we put Swango in jail for lying to the government on his application, where we actually put Kristin in jail for phoning in a bomb threat to the VA hospital. So she was in jail for a walk. And by the way, when she was in jail, she

was writing a book about nurse that kills people. Ye, sure, unbelievable. I remember. I remember when we did the search warrant in her house. James Parole was there and he started to question us, like, you know, where's your warrant? Where's this weather? And he knew we had all that, but he was just kind of showing off for her at the time. And that's when we found something interesting. You know.

We learned that many of these medical serial killers will actually research the particular poison that they're going to use to kill people. Even though they may be mds or nurses and know the drug, they still like to read about it. Now, pre Internet, we used to go to the library and see what books these people would take out. When we did a search foreign in Kristen Gilbert's house, we actually found a book and the dog geared page

was on epinephrine. So we learned right away that this was her drug of choice, that she was very interested in this. By the way, she had also tried to kill her husband. She had a long history of starting fires, of scolding a child. Once you start doing a thorough background investigation on the people, you learn about their troubled life. The problem is in many parts of the world, not only even in the United States, it's very difficult to find nurses and physicians who are willing to work. First

of nursing is a very tough job. Nobody has more respect for nurses than I do. They're smart, they're underappreciated, they are super dedicated, and sometimes it's not easy to find nurses. You know, in some places, we have to go all the way to the Philippines. Well, now we go past the Philippines, we all go all the way to Korea, and you know what, if we've become friends from with North Korea, don't be surprised if we start picking up some of their nurses as well. In some

parts of the country, it's very hard. It's a very tough profession. They have a lot of burnout. I mean, they're just the most wonderful people, but it's a very very tough job. So the management will say, hey, look, you know what, if we didn't do such a great job on the background investigation these people, Hey, don't blame us when we had to go to find them. You have to go all over the world to find these people, you know. But and you know what, there have been

other cases around the country of whistleblowers who have not said. Well, there's a famous case about two nurses and in Texas who they were actually the entire compliance department of the small hospital. These two nurses, they complained about a doctor to management, and management gave him the official answer, go back to your off to shut up. We can't find doctors here. He's not harming anybody. Go away. Well, they refuse to go away, and they actually sent an anonymous

letter to the state about this doctor. Well, the doctor finds out about it, and he calls the local sheriff, who happens to be one of his patients, and saying, Sheriff, these two doctors are trying to harm me. I think they're the ones who wrote this anonymous letter to the state.

So the sheriff comes in with a circ quarrant, goes through the nurses computers, finds out the nurses are the ones that wrote the letter to the state and actually charges them with the official misuse of patient information, which is a felony down in that part of Texas. And these two whistleblowers, all they wanted to do is let the state know about a bad doctor. Well, they go to trial, believe it or not, and the jury comes back in the now and they say, are you kidding me?

These nurses deserve a medal for what they did, not to be prosecuted, and they eventually sued the hospital on one. But you know, you got to ask yourself, what kind of message is this being sent to other nurses or other medical professionals that want to come forward to report wrongdoings? They say, man, am I going to get arrested? Am I going to get prosecuted? Like these two nurses in Texas did tell you? I see it all the time

because I still work in hospitals all day long. There's some wonderful nurses and medical professionals who have the courage to come forward. But it does take a lot of courage, and a lot of times the hospital managurement will reject what they're saying without further investigation, or do some half ass internal investigation thinking that they're just going to satisfy the whistleblowers. It's a very tough environment to come forward in, and I have the world of respect for those who have done.

these people that are very very very common. You know, like, for instance, that they will predict the patients toms and they're uncommonly accurate. You know that they never show any remorse regarding a patient's deaf As a matter of fact, you know something interesting about Swangen. I forgot to mention. After he killed the patient, he loved calling up the family. Imagine getting a call, just calling up the family and telling them exactly how their dad had expired and suffered

during his last moments. Could you imagine getting call like that? And he did that because he was reliving the experience. He was reliving the murder over and over again. And we find that many of these people they worked at three am shift where there's nobody else around. That they thrive on the management of emergencies, thrive on that scenario that involves an adrenaline rush. They tend to be you know, likable and friendly sometimes, but they also tend to avoid

close relationships with other co workers. They thrive on the notoriety of being present at so many code scenes. This is so common. I could point the case they after case all around the world, a recent case in Japan, Germany, a couple of cases in Italy that have surfaced. They're all the same thing. They all enjoyed the excitement of

a code. It's really really pretty scary actually there. And so we actually put together like an a Z list of things that the staff needs to look for and what's common among all these cases, and we find that when people follow it, they tend to identify medical serial killers a lot sooner than having to wait. As Donald Hobby said, for the eighteen people, nobody questions them to happen.

are not familiar with this. Forensic nurses are nurses that are trained and this course the science of nursing, but they're also trained in forensics, and they are wonderful because they can actually bridge the gap between lay people like myselves and the physicians, because physicians could start talking on the language of science that I really don't understand, but forensic nurses really bridge that gap between your law enforcement types and your medical types. And I can tell you this.

In the number of our cases, it was actually the forensic nurses, not the docs, and I love my docs, but it was actually the forensic nurses who determined what they thought was the real cause of death even before the doctors did. They're just an incredible group of people, and it's a fairly new field. I guess it's been around for maybe thirty years or so. It's feeling new.

A lot of times we talk about them in the context of sexual assault nurses, you know, nurses that are trained to test if there's been a rape or a sexual assault. But they're really much more than that. They're really much more than that. It's just a wonderful set

of people as part of any investigative team. Like if I'm going to form a team to look at an MSK, well, of course you'll have your investigators, and you'll have your toxicologists and your medical examiners, and you'll have doctors who are experts in the particular field that the patient was suffering from. But we will also have forensic nurses. And now, of course we add a whole new discipline that we

did not originally have, and that's biomedical engineers. Because everything nowadays is all electronic, or your medical records are electronic. There are so many electronic devices that are hooked up to patients, but most investigators do not know that many of these devices actually record a patient's activity and history. And if you know how to examine these devices, if you know how to extract the data from these devices,

you could find a lot of evidence. Because when I first went into the hospital scene, now remember these people had been buried already, you know, So where's your crime scene? Your crime scene is want the ICU that has already been scrubbed to surgical standards. Many dives, I mean, what

CSI going to find there? They're not going to find anything, but believe it or not, even after the room has been scrubbed to surgical standards and everything that should have been kept or wasn't kept and thrown away, that could still it will be some important electronic evidence and all these medical devices that you see hooked up to the patients. But you have to know how to extract it, you have to know how to save it, you have to

know how to use it. And that's now why we have a biomedical engineer on this team as well, something we didn't have years ago.

the EKG strips were missing. But the Bruces Angels, and this is the name that Michael Bonden gave them, These were these wonderful va forensic nurses who had helped us during the case. They were just sensational. You know, no one investigator, I don't care if you're the reincarnation of Sherlock Holmes. You cannot do this case yourself. You need a team of people to do these cases. One thing.

You need a lot of people, a lot of money, and a lot of time, which is something a lot of police departments do not have.

yet he took the time to escape to Africa. And you say, you know, not to gloat or anything, but you say that could have saved sixty lives.

example of that. Remember when that guy Peter Struck testified in front of Congress. You remember how I mean he just came across. I thought so arrogant and obnoxious. I was getting my flashbacks to.

the curtain. Are going to visit a young girl and a mother and telling the mother to take a hike, and then when he went behind the curtain killed, the young girl came out and said, there you go, your daughter's dead. Go take a look. So, yeah, this is the kind of I mean, Achille, I mean, I don't care who you are, Bundy or Dahmer or anybody. This guy's ranks right up there with the most vile of killers in history. And include a couple more in your

book as well. So kudos to your group as well for this investigation and for the protocol and for ultimately Behind the Murder Curtain. I want to thank you very much, Bruce Sackman for coming on and talking about Behind the Murder Curtain.