Such behavior did not go unnoticed by the other doctors. He wasnt paranoid. Their suffering becomes yours. Santa Clarita Diet's Dominic Burgess plays Jerry Summers, a former patient and best friend of Dr Death's. In her deposition, Morgan said Baylor Plano President Jerri Garison called both of them to her office and told them what Summers had said. Hes alive. Duntsch was taken to jail for what Young referred to as a time out but his erratic behavior wouldnt end there. He met Duntsch that day in the physician lounge at Baylor Regional Medical Center at Plano, where the operation occurred. 33 of his 37 surgeries were botched, with two dead and 31 injured for life. It might be Baylor, it might be somebody down in Austin, it might be somebody somewhere, but its the only way you can get your voice out there. Duntsch soon appeared and tried to calm them, assuring them that Passmore would be fine in one or two days. Lee Passmores friends and family heard him before they saw him. A few months after the shoplifting arrest, Duntsch was charged with multiple counts of aggravated assault and injuring an elderly person for the damage he did on the operating table. So, I went back to Dallas. The evidence collected by the DA's office by subpoenaing every hospital on his CVshows Duntsch completes a fraction of these. At this point, Ive had enough and so I called the police.. There was Kellie Martin, who died from massive blood loss after a surgery at Baylor Plano. Young was evicted at least twice. In April 2012, just over four months removed from that initial surgery, Passmore returned to work. He wasn't concerned about the drugs in his system while he did his rounds. Dallas surgeon Randall Kirby says his former colleague, Dr. Christopher Duntsch, managed to commit crimes so heinous that patients everywhere are still struck by fear when they hear about the case . One surgeon described these as never events. They shouldnt ever happen in someones entire career. He says that surgery happened earlier in the week, and that it was he who called Rimlawi and asked him to check on the patient. Henderson actually checked if Duntsch was a real doctor with The University of Tennessee, appalled at the damage to Efurd's spine. There were multiple screw holes nowhere near where they were supposed to be, and a screw had been lodged in another nerve root near the bottom of the spine. She fell pregnant with their first son, Aiden, not long after that. These medical professionals do irreparable harm to their patients. He secured investments in Discgenics from local spine surgeons, including Robertson and Dr. Kevin Foley, a prominent Memphis neurosurgeon under whom Duntsch would spend a year training as part of a minimally invasive spine surgery fellowship at the Semmes-Murphey Clinic, one of the largest neurosurgery practices in the United States. It was sent on a Friday at 4 am. Sproles issued a letter to Duntsch that read: There have been no summary or administrative restrictions or suspensions of Dr. Duntschs Medical Staff membership or clinical privileges during the time he has practiced at Baylor Reg. Plano surgeon Christopher Duntsch left a trail of bodies. He stayed in New York while everyone. He had a room upstairs in the Plano house. The fault also lies with the Texas law. Jackson stars as Christopher Duntsch, the titular nicknamed neurosurgeon, in Peacock's limited series based on the Wondery podcast of the same name (and of course the real-life former doctor's. We talked about marriage pretty quickly. According to Dallas Magazine, Dr. Christopher Duntsch talked a big game. Photo: She says she never saw him drunk or high or suffering from withdrawal symptoms. The 30 Rock alum also heads up the cast of the Peacock series as a doctor, though he plays one of the surgeons working to take Duntsch down. Dubbed "Dr. Death," the case gained national attention, revealing how easy. I dont want to be in your magazine, sir, I apologize, Passmore told me. Some hospitals may be reluctant toreport doctors who have allegedly caused bodily harm topatients. And yet they occurred in Duntschs operating rooms over a period of just two years. Duntsch hired Morgan while he was still with the Minimally Invasive Spine Institute, and she began on August 29, 2011. According to him, Duntsch had a "great work ethic" and no areas of weakness. The eight-part series tells the harrowing true story of Dr. Christopher Duntsch who, across two years, injured 32 of his 38 patients. And yet the actual tragedy is that someone could have stopped it. We need to talk about this, Hoyle said, locking eyes with him. Life After "Death": Lethal Surgeon Sentenced to PrisonWATCH NEXT: Attorney who represented Dr. Duntsch's patients discusses her cases (3 of 5) https://youtu.. It had come from Baylor Regional Medical Center at Plano. The hospital called Rimlawi when it couldnt reach his colleague. Duntsch allegedly arrivedat the hospital three hours after the surgery wasplanned to start and began the procedure. But Dr. William Rohr did editorialize in his conclusion: The collection of blood was most likely the result of a therapeutic misadventure. Duntsch blames the death on an allergy to fentanyl, a powerful narcotic often used in intubation. Dr. Duntsch eventually began a long-term romantic relationship with Wendy Renee Young while in Memphis. Hed found a few months that were not accounted for in Duntschs educational history. He rode the desk until he couldnt, when things in the county got too busy and all the examiners were required to take calls away from the office to cover the 200-odd scene visits. At first, Passmore didnt think much about the way Duntsch and his assistant, Kimberly Morgan, interacted. I dont know if hes there to harm me or what his true intentions were, Wendy Young said of the harrowing alleged encounter with Christopher Duntsch. That only lasted for a short while, as he dove deep into the role to bring out the evil of the real-life character in the eight-episode series, he told New York Post. But hed make troubling, bizarre pronouncements, like Everybodys doing it wrong. The Staircase (The O.G.). At this point, Im like freaking out, and I just, I leave.. She was a National . Passmore was allowed to resign and still access his long-term disability insurance, which he says hed paid into for more than 10 years. The real question isn't why Dr. Duntsch did what he did. Duntsch harmed many of his patients, including his childhood friend Jerry Summers. Before he cheated, before he lied. Because how can I do anything I want and cross every discipline boundary like its [sic] a playground and never ever lose., Duntsch also said he was prepared to embrace the very darkest part of himself. Duntsch placed a surgical cage where the disc was, to widen the opening around the nerve roots and relieve the pressure that was causing Passmores pain. Baylor calls the allegations against it extremely frustrating and difficult and reiterates that Duntsch came with references from multiple sources who worked with him in his residency and fellowship training programs., To put these misleading allegations into fair context, Baylor Plano is part of a hospital system that has made substantial investments over several decades to continuously enhance the quality of care we provide our patients, and we have gained many recognitions for these processes. (He also appears in no yearbooks from the University of Tennessee Health Science Center at the time in which he says he earned his Ph.D., and the school declined to verify his claims, citing afederal privacy law.) In July 2015, indictments came through. During Brown's surgery, Duntsch pierced her vertebral artery. He was ultimately convicted of injuring an elderly person in connection with Mary Efurds case and was sentenced to life behind bars. Dallas County Jail/AP, Duntsch filed for bankruptcy and was arrested in Denver for driving under the influence on Jan. 10, 2014, according to, Ultimately, on that case, he ended up getting 12 months (of) probation and a small fine, Michelle Shughart, assistant district attorney in Dallas County, told, Duntsch is now living out his life behind bars, but Young told CNBC's, starring Joshua Jackson, Alec Baldwin and Christian Slater. After his license was revoked from the Texas Medical Board, Young and Duntsch were evicted from their home. But that isn't the scariest part. He was born in Montana, but his family settled in a suburb east of Memphis where the median household income is about $30,000 higher than the rest of the country. Kukekov had discovered stem cells in human brain tumors, which presented a huge potential for the development of new cancer drugs. Somebody knocks back and I am like Who in the f---is in my house, Young recalled in the four-part Peacock docuseries, (And if you want to dive even deeper into the story, you can also watch the scripted drama, on Peacock, starring Joshua Jackson, Alec Baldwin, and Christian Slater. Get all your true crime news from Oxygen. By this time his wife and he had separated and he also filed for bankruptcy. Lee Passmore cant feel his feet. Christopher Duntschs case is perhaps unique to the justice systemits incredibly rare for a surgeon to be indicted, much less convicted, for the care he or she provided. (She says this was a misunderstanding, that she had asked him to retrieve Aiden and bring him to the hospital.) Soon though, red flags began to pop up. Wendy Young knew her ex-boyfriend Christopher Duntschs medical career was unraveling, but she wasnt prepared for what she said was his bizarre behavior that coincided with his fall from grace as a surgeon. Death after botching 33 of38 surgeries over a two-year span, inside the apartment covered in blood, holding her gun in one hand and a knife in the other, she said. Passmore also learned about Kenneth Fennell, a 68-year-old who alleged in a lawsuit that, during a November procedure, Duntsch operated on the wrong body part. Ignatova believes this to be deliberate. Brings new meaning to the phrase Sunday Funday. He didnt contact a lawyer, although he wrestled with the decision. In September, according to police reports . Multiple lawsuits allege that Baylor did not report Duntsch to the National Practitioner Data Bank, which was created by Congress to be a private clearinghouse of physicians who have been suspended or had their privileges revoked. . This led to another 20 patients suffering. I have lost both companies. He would file for bankruptcy years later, and the filings show that Duntsch has had no managerial role with Discgenics since 2012, when he was removed as a board member and as chief science officer. Summers declined an interview in Memphis and would not answer questions on the phone. It's thrilling if uncomfortable to listen. She woke up with severe pain and couldnt stand. The damage is irreversible. By 2011, Duntsch had been sued by Discgenics former chief operating officer, a high school pal who joined when it was founded. His investors took him to court. But patient advocates and the surgeons that mobilized to rid him of his license say that Duntsch was the perfect storm. For years, hed focused on research. According to Duntsch's colleagueDr. Randall Kirby, Glidewell's procedure was so botched that"Duntsch was forcibly restrained from continuing the surgery by the [operating room] team.". "The Sun", "Sun", "Sun Online" are registered trademarks or trade names of News . The deal required Duntsch to gain privileges at Baylor Regional Medical Center at Plano. It is during this period that Duntschs carefully built faade began showing its first cracks. There is no way to communicate what happened there, without a 20-page document of disclosures and events and responsible parties, Duntsch once wrote of Brown and Efurd. Of that set, two died and 31 were paralyzed or seriously injured. You dont get to walk away from two or three years of medical training, in the middle of an internship or a residency, get to take time off and be slotted directly in the position you left in with no questions asked. Martin was a 55-year-old woman who had lived with back pain for nearly a year after a fall in her kitchen. Hed received a letter from University General Hospital in South Dallas, verifying Duntschs training. Duntsch has maimed or killed. Hoyle, the surgeon who exposed the incision in Passmore, had also filed a complaint with the board. Duntsch pleaded not guilty. She describes investigators with binoculars camped out on their street in a white van, trying to see into their home. He has left a novels worth of defenses on the web, in PDFs, and in comments below news stories. The thing is, if you dont push this, with everybody else settling, theyre getting away with it again., 750 North St.Paul St. Dawsons Creek heartthrob Jackson stars as the titular character of Dr Death, which ended up becoming Duntschs nickname after the accusations came out. In April 2015, he was arrested for stealing $887.30 in Walmart merchandise: five pairs of sunglasses, five watches, two pairs of shoes, four ties, two briefcases, a wallet, cologne, necklaces, a walkie-talkie. Wendy Renee Young says she met Duntsch in 2011 at the Beauty Shopin Memphis, a bar and restaurant that borrowed its shtick from its past life as a curl-and-dye shop owned by Elvis Presleys ex-wife. Did these doctors truly not see though Duntsch? In real life, after helping the ADA Michelle Shughart send Duntsch to jail, Dr Henderson continues to practice medicine in Texas. He thought about how all that might have been stolen from him in a matter of hours. According to Dallas Magazine, a woman named Megan Kane remembered how Duntsch partied with her onhis birthday. His dad is a physical therapist. Also Read: Made For Love: Who Are Caleb Foote Parents? I cried when they said life imprisonment, Young said of the verdict. Likely due to Duntsch'sattemptto staunch the blood loss, Brown suffered a buildup of pressure in her brain. To be a good doctor, you have to be a good human being. It was a downward spiral pretty rapidly after he lost his license, Young said in the docuseries. Christopher Duntsch was disorganized and undeliberate. While applying to Baylor Regional Medical Center in Plano, TX, Duntsch also provided Dr. Jon Robertson as a reference. I cannot recall a physician being indicted for aggravated assault for acts committed during surgery, says Toby Shook, a Dallas defense attorney who spent 23 years working as a Dallas County prosecutor. I dont want to be on Channel 8, I dont want to be on Inside Edition. It took the Texas Medical Board one whole year to investigate and finally revoke Duntsch's license. Unlike a TV series where you get to see the character,a podcast is darker. Even the hospitals that he worked for kept enabling him, according to a report by the Dallas County prosecutors. Duntsch's resume shows a doctorate in microbiology from the St. Jude Children'sResearch Hospital. He gained experience writing grants, and earned more than $3 million in local, state, and federal funding for research projects where he served as principal or co-principal investigator. Christopher Duntsch, once a supremely confident neurosurgeon with a solid rsum and a wealth of potential, fled town in disgrace last year under a scalding cascade . This is accomplished by: Establishing quality . The 51-year-old recently starred in the USA true crime series, Dirty John, opposite Connie Britton. When he finally turned up again, he was made to attended a program for impaired physicians. The statute of limitations made them base their case on only six victims. But today, about five years after the Passmore surgery, Duntsch sits in Lew Sterrett Justice Center awaiting trial, the rare physician to be indicted on multiple counts of aggravated assault related to what happened in his operating rooms. We are committed to achieving this mission by delivering high-quality products that meet or exceed customer requirements. But the media definitely played its part sending Dr. Death where he rightfully belongs, life in prison. Around May 2013, Henderson got a call from Foley, the fellowship supervisor. He was gone until Monday. According to a police report obtained by The Texas Observer, Duntsch was captured on camera trying to steal $887 worth of merchandise, including pants, briefcases, cologne, watches and sun glasses. are both available to stream on Peacock now. No such thing. He filed for bankruptcy in Denver, and wound up selling off the shares in Discgenics for a tenth of their value. By December, Duntsch wrangled privileges at Legacy Surgery Center of Frisco, and Kirby, in his letter to the Texas Medical Board, narrated another grim outcome: Jacqueline Troys vocal cord was paralyzed, and her esophagus and trachea had become connected, an unheard of complication. A corrective surgery happened two weeks later, after she arrived at the emergency room of Texas Health Presbyterian Dallas, where Kirby practiced. The university said, We cant let you see his personnel file. Not long after, Young said Duntsch broke into her apartment for the first time. But its the only way to get anybody to listen. There were two names on the top page: Kellie Martin and Christopher Duntsch. Joshua Jackson as Dr. Christopher Duntsch Asked if he had a chance to meet with Duntsch, who's now serving a life sentence for maiming Mary Efurd during what should have been routine surgery,. The company, Discgenics, is still going, and still holds the patents, listingDuntsch, Ignatova, and Kukekov as the inventors. And not just Dallas County, I don't recall hearing about it anywhere." Christopher Duntsch - AKA Dr. Death - spent 18 months asa practicing surgeon atmultiple Texas hospitals until hehad his license revoked in 2013. According to ProPublica, Duntsch's residency and fellowship records show less than 100 surgeries. The 31 people who survived Dr. Duntsch's scalpel face a struggle for the rest of their lives. He has a job inside the prison. His right leg is as stiff as his pressed blue jeans, and when he walks, he appears to use his hips to heave it forward. They all signed nondisclosure agreements that prohibit them from discussing their cases or their monetary awards. Duntsch moved to Colorado to live with his parents, while Young stayed behind in Dallas with the couple's son. Dallas, Texas 75201. And so shes here, in a Christian coffee shop tucked into a corner of the town square of Springtown, west of Fort Worth, where she lives with her new boyfriends parents. There Duntsch secured a job as a minimally invasive spine surgeon at. The notorious neurosurgeon was forced to declare bankruptcy shortly after and moved back in with his parents in Colorado. Many readers may recognize the name Christopher Duntsch, a doctor who allegedly was negligent in his practice for years before finally being stripped of his medical license. She enlisted Duntsch to help fix it. Because of a valuable patent the company owned, they let him through the gates and out into the world. They dont want to go participate in any extraneous activities, and he was totally fine going to work.. Create your free profile and get access to exclusive content. During this time, out of three procedures, one patient died and another was partially paralyzed. Link your TV provider to stream full episodes and live TV. Her bright blond hair is pulled back into a ponytail, and shes wearing a tank top with yoga pants. While the school refused to verify or deny his claims, he wasn't in any of the yearbooks of that time. Unlike Summers, Brown, 63, suffered from hypertension and was a stroke risk. And who will Dr. Death be? According to his lawsuit, Morguloff wound up with searing pain in his back and left leg from bone fragments lodged in his spinal canal during the operation, which were only discovered eight months later when he sought a second opinion. Its hard to find good conversation with a random person, Young says. On paper, the 40-year-old man who arrived in Dallas in the summer of 2011 was a completely different Christopher Duntsch than the one who was introduced to the public after more than a dozen. On April 9, 2013, Mayfield underwent surgery performed by Duntsch to remove a troublesome disk from his spine. She had brown hair, parted near the middle, that fell just below her shoulders. St. Jude refuted this by saying there was no such program there at that time. This would be the first and last time Hoyle worked next to Duntsch. He promises to take all pain and suffering away. While some called his eventual downfall greed-related, who knows what evil the human mind is capable of. She also says they snorted cocaine from a small pile that he kept on a dresser in his home office. He has taken Baylor Plano to court to change the Texas law requiring patients to prove that a hospital intended to harm them when it granted privileges to someone who was unsafe. This was the time when Dr. Christopher Duntsch started to turn intoDr. Death. Whatever Duntsch set out to be when he first donned that white coat, being a media sensation for all the wrong reasons may not have been his goal. Dubbed angels of death, they leave a trail of damage andloss for many reasons: human fallibility, malaise, or malice. Foley said Duntsch was satisfactory in his fellowship, that he saw no evidence of the things he was accused of in Dallas happening in Memphis. Quality Policy. But she wasnt in the room when he woke up a quadriplegic, telling anyone with ears that Duntsch had been using cocaine the night before the procedure. When he finally came to the hospital, he busied himself with another patient, also on the DA's list, Mary Efurd. Kukekov and Ignatova say Duntsch took more credit than he deserved for the discoveries. NovoStem Therapeutics, which attempted to monetize the cancer stem cell discovery, failed after taking a funding hit during the 2008 recession. Talking to the Dallas Morning News in 2014, Duntsch said he provided the test and was clean. Christopher Duntsch, 44, faces up to life in prison if convicted. Jerry Summers, Duntsch's childhood friend, is now a quadriplegic. The evidence said otherwise. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it. Duntsch'sfinal patient, Jeffrey Glidewell, entered the operating room in2013 to undergo minimally invasive surgery to fix his long-term neck pain. A longtime field agent for the Collin County Medical Examiner, Passmore needed knowledge from his training at scenes. A neurosurgeon reviewing the case for the court found an errant screw had not only opened Brown's arterybut blocked it, and that Duntsch hadmisdiagnosed Brown, operating on the wrong area entirely. Anton Floquet/NBCUniversal, I knocked on my door. A couple of months later, FloellaBrown came to Duntsch for a cervical fusion to alleviate her neck and shoulder pain. He struggles with incontinence. Duntschs legal woes were only just beginning. Facebook Dr. Christopher Duntsch on his first day as a neurosurgeon. Now, one of the several complaints against the . She had family in Dallas and decided shed go with him if he chose that city. Instead, he thought about all those years he spent working and educating himself, all those years of paying bills on time to keep his credit high, of saving money to support his family. She passedfromblood loss in the ICU. Shes 33 now and doesnt live in Dallas anymore. 1. What turned Dr. Christopher Duntsch into Dr. Death? She needed drug tests. Dr. Christopher Duntsch, better known as Doctor Death, is serving a life sentence at a Texas prison today. Duntsch also received 40 percent of all revenue he generated beyond $800,000 each year. After youve spent a night using cocaine, most people become paranoid and want to stay in the house. The Accreditation Council of Graduate Medical Education has strict rules about residency programs. After they all partied through the night, powered by LSD and cocaine, she said she saw Duntsch put on his lab coat to make rounds the next morning. On July 1, 2011, Duntsch and Baylor Plano agreed to an inducement deal. Wendy has reportedly been keeping a low-profile life since ending her relationship with Duntsch and since he went to prison. The intended 45-minute procedure stretched over an hour before Duntsch finally emerged and told Mayfield's wife the surgery was a success. He said, Its not your case, its another case, and were looking into it. I trust that man wholly. But, he says, It all started coming together in my head that this isnt a one-time mistake.. It was pouring out of the epidural blood vessels and pooling in the disc space. At the time, Young was giving birth to their second boy. Passmore later discovered that, less than a week after his second surgery, Duntsch had operated on 45-year-old Barry Morguloff. Many ofDuntsch's patient-turned-victims filed malpractice suits, according to Dallas News. They turned around, away from the yelling. Their trysts were largely confined to his office at Baylor Plano, the same place where, she said in her deposition, he often drank vodka and did research after hours. Dr. Robert Henderson, a spine surgeon who has practiced in Dallas for more than 30 years, started digging after being assigned corrective surgery on two of Duntschs patients. If he wasnt doing research, he was out with Jerry Summers, partying, Morgan said in the deposition. The Dallas County DA, along with fighting against these very laws, was also running out of time. He told Morgan that Young, who was pregnant at the time with their first son, was his close friend and secretary. I was just like Whatever, Im out of here, Young recalled. Duntsch maintains that the practice didnt meet the promises it agreed to, and that it still owes him money. There are a lot of explanations proposed for why the real-life subject of Peacock's "Dr. Death" limited series, neurosurgeon Dr. Christopher Duntsch (played by Joshua Jackson), maimed and. She says his favorite saying was You can kiss my black ass while Im watching black-girl porn on my monitor. Which may help explain why she didnt report the three-page email he sent on December 9, 2011. Currently, Discgenics has no mention of Duntsch at all, his history with the company, or that he's the massive elephant in the room. He broke into her home a second time in the incident where he was covered in blood and also allegedly began harassing personal injury attorney Kay Van Wey, who represented many of his former patients, in a series of rambling emails. Young says hed been breaking into her apartment, and one day she came home to find him inside, covered in blood. To say that this e-mail proved that Duntsch was notfit to be a doctor would be completely correct. Six weeks after her death on March 12, 2012, the medical examiner ruled her fate an accident. He wrote grants and secured more than $3 million in funding. She also never reported Duntsch up the ladder. Or, they should be: the scientists names are misspelled. They listened, judged and found Duntsch guilty, and sentenced him to life in prison, reports USA Today. Get an all-access pass to never-before-seen content, free digital evidence kits, and much more! His childhood was seemingly great. It said, Anyone close to me thinks that I likely am something between god, einstein, and the antichrist. Not a single doctor, surgeon, staff, or the pathologist of the autopsy every [sic] stated that I surgically caused vascular injury, he wrote. 33 of his surgeries went horribly wrong. If he could do 50Shades of Grey and some scandalous modeling, playing a menacing Dr. Death should be a piece of cake, right? Then it just started to all unravel.. Duntsch had moved from the W to Hotel Zaza and then, finally, to a five-bedroom house not far from the hospital. You, my child, are the only one between me and the other side, he wrote. He did earnhis M.D., doing so well that he was among the 12 percent of medical school graduates in his class named to the elite Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Honor Society. Those are the words that Dr. Christopher Duntsch, a Dallas neurosurgeon, wrote to his girlfriend in 2011 in the midst of a two-year period that left 33 of his 38 patients maimed, wounded or. July 15, 2021 Scott McDermott/Peacock Peacock's new crime drama Dr. Death dramatizes the true story of Christopher Duntsch, a former Dallas-based neurosurgeon who was sentenced to life in. Christopher Duntsch, aka Dr. Death, a former Texas-based neurosurgeon, maimed dozens of his victims and killed at least two. 53, and Andre Agassi, 52, are proud parents as they . Duntsch began cheating on. In one particularly disturbing episode, in March 2015, she said she arrived home to her front door had been locked with a deadbolt from the inside. He said, "What I am being is what I am, one of kind, a mother f****r stone cold killer that can buy or own or steal or ruin or build whatever he wants.". Based on Wondery's viral podcast of the same name, Stan's Dr. Death follows the sinister true story of former American neurosurgeon Dr. Christopher Duntsch, who became known as 'Dr. Death' after he left a trail of maimed patients across various hospitals in Texas.