Blind Eye: The Terrifying Story of a Doctor Who Got Away With Murder (16 page)

When Gambs called, asking what Officer Anderson was doing asking questions at the medical school, it came as news to Herdt. The Quincy police request for a background check on a former student had seemed inconsequential—Anderson hadn’t bothered mentioning it to Herdt. Herdt spoke to Anderson, then reported back to Gambs that they were simply doing a routine background check at the request of the Quincy police force. But the suddenly expressed interest of an assistant vice president naturally alerted Herdt and Anderson to the possibility that the matter was less routine than Anderson had assumed.

This was confirmed the next day. Anderson returned to the acting medical director’s office, expecting to review Swango’s files, and was informed that they had been moved to Tzagournis’s office. As had been decided at the previous day’s strategy meeting, Anderson was told to direct his inquiries to Holder. Instead, Anderson went in person to Tzagournis’s office to see the Swango files he thought he’d been promised. He was told to wait. After some time passed, Tzagournis’s secretary told him he had a phone call from Holder, which, Anderson assumed, meant that someone in Tzagournis’s office had called the assistant attorney general. Once Anderson got on the phone, Holder asked him what he was doing there. Once again, Anderson explained the nature of the inquiry and said he simply wanted to review Swango’s personnel file. Holder told him he could not get that information from Tzagournis and suggested that he and Anderson meet to discuss the matter the following week. Anderson returned to headquarters empty-handed.

The Quincy police fared no better in their inquiries at Ohio State. After ignoring the call from Wayne Johnson, Dr. Carey had returned a call from someone who identified himself as a Quincy police officer. But a police secretary said no one by that name worked in the department. Carey leaped to the conclusion that someone might have been impersonating a police officer to gain information about Swango. He apparently didn’t consider the possibility that his secretary might simply have gotten the
name wrong. He resolved not to respond to any more inquiries over the phone.

The following Monday, November 5, 1984, Gambs met with Herdt in his office. Gambs had now been briefed on Swango by Cincione and Holder, who told him about the Cooper incident and the internal investigation conducted by Dr. Whitcomb under Tzagournis’s supervision. Filtered through the eyes of Holder and Cincione, both of whom had been involved in returning Swango to the hospital and allowing him to complete his internship, this account not surprisingly emphasized that the investigation had been thorough and that Swango had been exonerated. Gambs in turn briefed Herdt, who for the first time learned that Swango had been involved in a highly suspicious incident in the Ohio State hospitals.

As a trained investigator, Herdt was less interested in the details of the earlier investigation than in the startling coincidence that someone suspected of tampering with a patient’s IV line had now been arrested and charged with poisoning coworkers at another hospital. The events in Quincy had suddenly shed an entirely new light on Swango; rather than a doctor with no known blemish on his record, he was one accused of a bizarre and potentially deadly felony. The situation cried out for a thorough inquiry carried out by trained investigators, not by doctors. Herdt insisted on discussing the need for such an investigation directly with Holder and Cincione, and Gambs arranged a meeting for the next morning.

Herdt believed that he got along well with the mild-mannered Gambs, who had supported him in several other contentious matters, including the controversial undercover investigation in the hospitals. He expected that once Gambs pointed out the need for outside investigators to Holder and Cincione, the group would quickly authorize a thorough inquiry.

But Herdt’s expectations proved naive. At the meeting, positions hardened almost immediately. Holder and Cincione argued that the matter had already been thoroughly investigated and there was no point in bringing in the police unless they had specific new evidence relating to the events at Ohio State. Now that the events were several months old, the investigative trail would in any event be “stale,” they argued, and unlikely to yield any significant evidence. Gambs agreed. Herdt asked to see Whitcomb’s report and
notes. The OSU administrators replied that there was no written report, and that Whitcomb kept no notes.

Herdt was shocked. Both he and Anderson, who had accompanied him to the meeting, pointed out that they could hardly produce any new evidence unless they were allowed to investigate. And in any event, Swango’s arrest in Illinois was by itself basis enough to reopen the inquiry. But Gambs and the lawyers were adamant. As Herdt wrote in notes to himself immediately after the meeting, Gambs “stated that he sees no basis of a crime happening as was the finding of an already completed investigation. He thought it strange for the police to be investigating matters where there is no crime!” He “sees little point in pursuing this further.” In a parenthesis, Herdt continued: “I don’t understand his reasoning here; why is he seemingly against our being involved? Why is he saying this?”

All Herdt managed to extract was an agreement that the police could look into any satanic or occult involvement by Swango while he was at Ohio State, a line of inquiry triggered by the books and paraphernalia on the occult found in his Quincy apartment. But even that limited investigation was to be kept out of the hospital. For now, Holder and Cincione specifically barred the OSU police from speaking to any doctors, patients, or former patients, such as Cooper.

Holder and Cincione left. Furious, Herdt stayed behind to vent his anger at Gambs. But Gambs warned him off: “In my view,” he said, “the OSU police should not be pursuing this any further.”

“You’re stonewalling,” Herdt angrily accused.

Gambs shrugged. Even if Herdt did investigate, “it will only end in the same result anyway,” he said. But if Herdt insisted on pursuing the matter, he should write a memo, which Gambs would pass on to Holder. Herdt took notes as Gambs dictated the questions that he should address:

What is it that the police intend to investigate in this matter?

On what basis?

Specifically, what parts of this investigation by Hospitals staff did the police have doubts or questions about?

Herdt was insulted and angry. He thought such a memo would only waste time, and being made to write it at all was an infringement of the autonomy he thought he’d been promised when he took the job.

Herdt and Anderson left at noon. As Herdt wrote in his notes, “I departed . . .
depressed, shocked, saddened
and visibly
upset.”

Anderson spoke to Wayne Johnson, who reported that Anderson feared he might be fired. “If I don’t cool it” on the Swango investigation, he said, “they’ll have my job.”
⁹

A
FTER
the frustrating meeting with Gambs, Holder, and Cincione, the OSU police investigation made scant progress. Herdt wrote a three-page memo responding to Gambs’s questions, arguing that the developments in Illinois all but mandated a renewed investigation; that he had learned of other incidents besides the one involving Cooper, including some patient deaths, which ought to be investigated; and finally, that the investigation conducted by Whitcomb was “inadequate.”

Herdt’s memo—the first
written
criticism of the medical school’s own investigation—not only offered a politically charged assertion, given the mutual suspicion between the doctors and the police, but could also be expected to fuel the adverse publicity the university wanted to avoid. It was one thing to investigate Swango, another to investigate the university’s handling of the affair. Gambs wrote back that he found the memo unpersuasive, and again expressed doubt that there was any point in further investigation. He also asked for another memo detailing precisely how Herdt proposed to conduct his investigation. But the exchange of memos had already taken a month; Herdt refused to waste any more time on what he considered a stalling tactic.

Anderson had not made any progress with Holder, either. No one in the police force had yet reviewed any of the hospital’s files on Swango.

Except for some halfhearted inquiries into satanic practices in and around Columbus, the police inquiry ground to a halt. Anderson, who remained in charge day to day, went on vacation in December.
Hospital officials seemed confident that the whole matter would soon blow over, as it had four months earlier.

Then, on December 12, Gambs received an ominous call from Thomas Prunte, the lawyer for the Ohio State Medical Board who had corresponded with Dr. Carey before the board approved Swango’s application for a medical license. Prunte also called the OSU police. He had just heard from the Illinois state attorney general, who was looking into Swango’s Illinois medical license, and had subsequently spoken to Quincy police. He had thus learned of the Swango matter from Illinois authorities—not from anyone in Ohio, and certainly not from anyone at Ohio State. Now the medical board had assigned its own investigator, Charles Eley, to the matter.

Word of the call from Prunte brought Herdt’s frustrations to the boiling point. That same day, he drafted a memo to himself: “If so requested, I will submit my resignation. But first, I will complete this investigation at whatever cost. I’d come to OSU proud of my personal integrity after 15 years as a law enforcement officer and I intended to remain here or leave with it intact . . . . I would never involve myself or department personnel in any type of so-called cover-up. And I believed the ‘shit would hit the fan’ very soon.”

I
N
Quincy, Swango was formally arraigned on seven counts of aggravated battery on December 20 and entered a plea of not guilty. To defend him, he hired Daniel Cook, who had taught him history in high school before becoming a lawyer and had considered Swango one of his best students. The court continued Swango’s bail of $5,000. A condition of his release was that he not leave Adams County without the court’s permission, which it granted on one occasion so he could visit his mother and half brother in Florida at Christmas.

Nonetheless, only days after his arrest, at the end of October, Swango had applied for a job as an emergency room physician for the northern Ohio region. Robert Haller II, the regional vice president for National Emergency Service, Inc., in Toledo, had interviewed Swango for the job in November, and was impressed by his credentials, his experience as a paramedic, and his enthusiasm for emergency medicine. Swango remained a licensed physician in both
Ohio and Illinois, and he made no mention of his recent arrest or upcoming trial. Other than
The Quincy Herald-Whig
, no media had carried the story, so Haller knew nothing about it. Haller later said that he introduced Swango to three of the company’s medical directors, “all of whom thought Mike was a very personable and professional young man.”

There was nothing in Swango’s record to suggest otherwise. On the contrary, National Emergency Service verified that Swango had received his medical degree from Southern Illinois and obtained at least two letters of recommendation from Ohio State. Even though Swango was at that very moment once again under investigation, and Ohio State officials now knew he had been charged with poisoning coworkers in Illinois, the university gave National Emergency Service a certificate showing that Swango had satisfactorily completed his internship. The 1984 certificate was signed by both Tzagournis and Carey.

National Emergency Service subcontracts its doctors to area hospitals, and it referred Swango to several of them, including Fisher-Titus Memorial Hospital in Huron County. Dr. Timothy Thomas, who was in charge of emergency services at Fisher-Titus, was impressed by Swango, describing him as “very outgoing . . . he seemed to have interpersonal skills, and he struck me as a pleasant young physician.” Thomas described Swango’s letters of recommendation from Ohio State as “glowing.” Swango told Titus that he had left Ohio State after his internship because he wanted “to take a break” and “pay some bills.” He mentioned having worked briefly in Quincy, but said he was now living at the Harvard Square apartments in northwest Columbus, and would be commuting the ninety miles to work. None of this struck Thomas as out of the ordinary, and no one did any further checking on Swango’s background.

With what must have seemed extraordinary speed and ease for someone facing felony charges, Swango was again working as a doctor.

H
ERDT’S
prediction that news of Swango’s arrest would cause a commotion in Ohio finally materialized. It had taken several months, but an official at the Ohio State Medical Board had tipped off reporters at the Cleveland
Plain Dealer
to Swango’s arrest. On
Wednesday, January 30, 1985, Mary Anne Sharkey, a Columbus-based reporter for
The Plain Dealer
, called the university’s information office for comment. The information office in turn contacted Tzagournis’s office. Sharkey and Gary Webb, an investigative reporter in Cleveland, were asking pointed questions about Swango.
The Plain Dealer
was the most widely circulated and most powerful newspaper in the state; many people at Ohio State felt it harbored a pro-Cleveland bias and was always looking for ways to disparage the rival city of Columbus.

Sharkey’s inquiry prompted a flurry of meetings among medical school and university officials and what seemed to be a sudden change in their attitude toward the police. Tzagournis convened a meeting the afternoon of Sharkey’s call that included Chief Herdt; Holder and Cincione, the lawyers; Boyanowski, now the hospital’s acting executive director; Charles Eley, the medical board investigator; and John Rohal, Eley’s supervisor at the medical board. Tzagournis opened the meeting with the statement that Ohio State and the medical school would “do everything necessary to cooperate” in any investigations. Herdt was amazed. Then Cincione seconded the commitment. Tzagournis added that “a newspaper reporter has learned of the incident.” Suddenly Herdt understood what had prompted the newly conciliatory approach.