Anton Floquet/NBCUniversal, I knocked on my door. Since no one else knew what was wrong, they couldn't save her. After graduating as a physician with above-average grades, he had his whole life ahead of him. 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 Dr Death: The Undoctored Story.. Dr. Duntsch eventually began a long-term romantic relationship with Wendy Renee Young while in Memphis. He says he showed the postoperative imaging to 16 radiologists over six months, all of whom said Morguloff was normal. Christopher Duntsch's medical license was suspended by the State Board after heavy lobbying from his former colleagues and wounded patients on June 26, 2013. It's thrilling if uncomfortable to listen. Digging into Christopher Duntsch's personal and professional life, Dr. Death paints a detailed portrait of a possible sociopath. Duntsch allegedly arrivedat the hospital three hours after the surgery wasplanned to start and began the procedure. Beil's somber reporting on the Wondery podcast titled Dr. Death will send chills down your spine. "Dr. Death," which was shot earlier this year in the Albuquerque area and debuted July 15 on the Peacock streaming service, is the story of Christopher Duntsch, who is now serving a life sentence . At the time, Young was giving birth to their second boy. Duntsch filed patents for each discovery, and two companies were soon created. He performed his first operation at Dallas Medical Center on July 24, 2012; the hospital issued temporary privileges while it verified his credentials. 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 . 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. We discovered it.. I didnt really know how to feel anymore, but while he was out in Colorado we kept in contact.. Passmore says the space above a disc in his lower spine had been blown out in the first surgery, and Duntsch returned to pick out the pieces. 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. All Duntsch got was a slap on the wrist while his blood-soaked foray into the OR continued. Around this time, Drs. That said; the 12 jurors did what the Texas Medical Board should have done. And what stops another physicianfrom turning into the next Dr. Death? Duntsch wrote that he accepted he was a cold-blooded killer. He discovered a significant esophageal injury that belabored Glidewells breathing and found a sponge that had been left in the soft tissue of his neck. Photo: Meanwhile, Brown went brain dead and passed away. Facebook Dr. Christopher Duntsch on his first day as a neurosurgeon. The procedure was routine and involved removing bone tissue in the spine to alleviate pressure on afflicted nerves. He ran two labs, is listed as one of three inventors on a successful patent, raised millions of dollars in grant funding, and once gave a tour to the governor of Tennessee as he explained the stem cell research occurring at the university. A string of arrests for DWI, shoplifting, and more followed. Summers declined an interview in Memphis and would not answer questions on the phone. Duntsch calls thisand most other claimsnonsense. Christopher Duntsch was born in Montana and spent most of his youth in Memphis, Tennessee. 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 the story about Christopher Duntsch finally broke, it affected his patients, or rather, hisvictims, but many people missed it. 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 was evicted at least twice. According to court documents, Rimlawi soon grew suspicious of Duntsch. At Baylor Regional Medical Center, during a simple laminectomy, Duntsch slashed one of Martin's major arteries butrefused to admit his mistake. I look at my children, I felt like, How am I gonna explain this to them?. There was Kellie Martin, who died from massive blood loss after a surgery at Baylor Plano. Medical Center at Plano.. Christopher Duntsch was just a regular guy who became Dr. Death after he decided to be a neurosurgeon. Wendy Renee Young is the mother of three children. We moved in together within three months, and then I became pregnant.. Duntschcrammed a surgical sponge into the wound, then sewed it up. Sadly, being moral and good aren't therequisites schools need to let someone become a doctor. We certainly would not knowingly allow one person to compromise the level of quality care that we have worked so hard and invested so much to achieve for our patients and our community.. I knocked on my door. He thought about how all that might have been stolen from him in a matter of hours. Mary Efurd, 74, was to have two vertebrae fused, linked by a metal plate. The university said, We cant let you see his personnel file. If he wasnt doing research, he was out with Jerry Summers, partying, Morgan said in the deposition. The two met at a Memphis strip club. He works out, he reads, he studies the Bible. The Dallas County DA, along with fighting against these very laws, was also running out of time. At the time, Kane was dating Jerry Summer, a childhood friend of Duntsch. Dallas most important news stories of the week, delivered to your inbox each Sunday. He also had a credit card in his name connected to Duntschs account and would drive him around, balance his checkbooks, pick up dry cleaning. Governor Greg Abbott, then the attorney general, even waded into the whole mess, filing a brief in Passmores suit in support of the law. I am ready to leave the love and kindness and goodness and patience that I mix with everything else that I am and become a cold blooded killer. They met as Duntsch was looking for opportunities in an operating room somewhere. 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. This is notably weird, considering Christopher Duntsch trained underDr. Boop, so you'd assume that theyoperated together as part of the whole learning surgery process. Such behavior did not go unnoticed by the other doctors. He kind of let himself into my apartment by climbing up my balcony, she said. He was friendly, and we had good conversation. I'm the only clean minimally invasive guy in the whole state." A couple of months later, FloellaBrown came to Duntsch for a cervical fusion to alleviate her neck and shoulder pain. In the months following his surgery, Passmore focused on recovery and getting back to work. And not just Dallas CountyI dont recall hearing about it anywhere.. Most of the time, she said, their relationship was confined to his office. A longtime field agent for the Collin County Medical Examiner, Passmore needed knowledge from his training at scenes. When he stepped off the bed for the first time after surgery, the feeling on the bottom of his feet had vanished. 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. 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. An "In Memoriam" tribute for him is shown at the end of the final episode of the Peacock series. and a Ph.D. Other doctors had to perform surgery to save his life. Their suffering becomes yours. The monster in the white coat is all too real. Because of a valuable patent the company owned, they let him through the gates and out into the world. Armed with Baylors declaration that it never amended his privileges, Duntsch found work in four months. After his arrest, he still had those loving parents. I agree completely with Dr. Hoyles complaint to the board when he stated that Dr. Duntsch is the most careless, clueless, and dangerous spine surgeon either of us has ever seen, Kirby wrote. But it was growing increasingly clear that his opportunities were running out. Every patient mentioned in this story who has sued, except for Passmore, has settled. In it, he is yelling at Maria Lopez, the medical board investigator assigned to Duntsch's case in January 2013, demanding to know why he was still practicing. Hed received a letter from University General Hospital in South Dallas, verifying Duntschs training. He was constantly involved in research, and, around 2006, he saw a way to commercialize discoveries by renowned Russian stem cell scientists Valery Kukekov and Tatyana Ignatova, a husband-and-wife team. Duntsch had allegedly tried to steal the pair of pants by changing into the new pair in a Wal-Mart dressing room and placing his own pants into the shopping cart. Theres no blank here for that.. 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. Passmore is still fighting. Matt Goodman is the online editorial director for. In a long running series of complaints, a Texas doctor has been found guilty of a felony in one medical malpractice case. 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. No autopsy was done (at the familys request) but it is well-documented that the stroke was due to a left vertebral artery injury due to Dr. Duntschs horrendous surgical technique, wrote surgeon Randall Kirby in a letter to the Texas Medical Board. Maybe thats how they do it in Tennessee, but according to my training, thats not how they do it here. Duntsch was also picked up wandering near a Chase Bank in North Dallas and taken to Green Oaks psychiatric hospital for an evaluation. His screams poured out of Baylor Planos intensive care unit and down the hallway, creating a panic in his mother. Morgan was present in the operating room during Passmores surgery. "The Sun", "Sun", "Sun Online" are registered trademarks or trade names of News . It was a downward spiral pretty rapidly after he lost his license, Young said in the docuseries. Its less than a millimeter from the spinal canal. 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. Duntsch has a court date next month for the shoplifting case along with the unrelated matter of a criminal trespass complaint filed against him last fall. 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. Henderson actually checked if Duntsch was a real doctor with The University of Tennessee, appalled at the damage to Efurd's spine. Six weeks after her death on March 12, 2012, the medical examiner ruled her fate an accident. In many ways, Morgan was the opposite of Young. His father, Donald, was a missionary and a physical therapist. He harmed the very people who trusted him. Duntsch hired Morgan while he was still with the Minimally Invasive Spine Institute, and she began on August 29, 2011. Due to his actions, Brown suffered a stroke that night, but Duntsch didn't responded to hospital pages. As these cases became public record, rumors circulated of late-night partying leading into early-morning rounds, and whispers of drug and alcohol abuse became shouts. Through his career, reports of him doing rounds under the influence were commonplace. Brown lost so much blood that the operating room team had to mop the floor with towels, all whileDuntschcomplained he couldn't see her spine to operate. He recorded conversations with Foley, the head of the fellowship program, and Boop, the chairman. In the two years he practiced as a spine surgeon across four Dallas institutions, Duntsch operated on 37 people. AnnaSophia Robb, 27, portrays Michelle Shughart, the assistant district attorney on Dr. Death's case. She suffered a massive posterior circulation stroke and was transferred to UT Southwestern Medical Center. And of course, there are many in the medical field who go above and beyond the call of duty. Dubbed angels of death, they leave a trail of damage andloss for many reasons: human fallibility, malaise, or malice. She didnt think much of it at first. During Brown's surgery, Duntsch pierced her vertebral artery. There was a dissection of one patients esophagus, and screws that an indictment labeled far too long that caused significant blood loss in another patient. If a person died in the fourth-floor apartment of a complex in Collin County, Passmore was the one who hiked up those four flights with somewhere around 20 pounds of gear on his back and got that body back down. Last week, she had her third child, this one with her new partner. He announced that he would be removing the ligament that separates the disc from the spinal canal. A husband and wife pair of Russian stem cell scientists, Valery Kukekov and Tatyana Ignatova entered the picture. Duntschs legal woes were only just beginning. Neurosurgeon residents need to complete 1,000 surgeries as training requirements. I dont want my name out there. Duntschmade the incision in the wrong place before nicking a vertebral artery, confusing the muscles in Glidewell's neck for a tumor, cutting into his vocal cords, and removing a piece of hisesophagus. She describes investigators with binoculars camped out on their street in a white van, trying to see into their home. Later, attorneys would sit on the stairwell of her Skillman Street apartment. In November 2011, Passmore was hooked on prescription opiates. In the deposition, she states that Duntsch snorted cocaine from a handy pile he kept on a dresser at his home. Like Boop, Dr. Robertson also gave Duntsch a great review. When Duntsch tried to reposition it, he stripped a screw; the cage wasnt going anywhere. Only time will tell story about Christopher Duntsch finally broke, discovered stem cells in human brain tumors, Duntsch, Ignatova, and Kukekov as the inventors, Neurosurgeon residents need to complete 1,000 surgeries, Page would see Duntsch mixing a vodka orange, At Health Grades Duntsch had 4.3 out of 5 stars, Dr. Robertson also gave Duntsch a great review, Attorney James Girards was representing Lee Passmore, one of the doctors he spoke to likened Duntsch to Hannibal Lecter, the school refused to verify or deny his claims, according to a report by the Dallas County prosecutors, According to the prosecutors, TMB had many complaints on file, irreparably damaged by Dr. Death's grievous malpractices, It took the Texas Medical Board one whole year to investigate, Henderson actually checked if Duntsch was a real doctor with The University of Tennessee, Hospitals are liable only if the plaintiff can prove that the hospital was also malicious, the same law also helps these very hospitals, For the DA though she proved to be a good witness, A string of arrests for DWI, shoplifting, and more followed, Becker's Hospital Review covered the 13 worst physicians of 2017, as named by Medscape, Dr. Death is now also going to be a TV show, Will it help patients protect their rights. By this time, Summers, the childhood friend, had come to live with Duntsch, too. He had a lot of animus to me personally. 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. I dont have feeling in my feet, and I will slip and fall off that damn ladder, he says today. Of that set, two died and 31 were paralyzed or seriously injured. She needed drug tests. 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. 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. He went back to the sourcethe University of Tennessee Health Science Center. Later, he filed for bankruptcy and moved in with his parents in Colorado. NovoStem Therapeutics, which attempted to monetize the cancer stem cell discovery, failed after taking a funding hit during the 2008 recession. Was he was only in it for the research prestige and the money? 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. She told D Magazine they named the boys Aiden and Preston. Thats when we stumbled across the gap, Passmore says. 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. His childhood was seemingly great. Duntsch harmed many of his patients, including his childhood friend Jerry Summers. They all signed nondisclosure agreements that prohibit them from discussing their cases or their monetary awards. I dont know if hes there to harm me or what his true intentions were, she said in the docuseries. Don tried to convince the jury that his son cared for his patients. In March 2012, Duntsch performed alaminectomy on Kellie Martin to reduce her back pain after afallat home. His mother, Susan, taught school. After youve spent a night using cocaine, most people become paranoid and want to stay in the house. According to the prosecutors, TMB had many complaints on file. The real question is:Why couldn't anyone stop him in time? The Accreditation Council of Graduate Medical Education has strict rules about residency programs. His dad is a physical therapist. Duntsch could have turned it into something good and meaningful. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). He stayed at the University of Tennessee for his surgical residency, spending the standard five years on neurosurgery and one year learning general surgery. DiscGenics' mission is to improve the lives of those debilitated by degenerative diseases of the spine through development of innovative regenerative therapies. A bold pronouncement, yet after just one sloppy, dangerous surgery, Hoyle vowednever to work with Duntsch again. He lost everything, so having to face the reality was very hard for him.. This way, no one recognizes them as the inventors. But what Duntsch hadnt counted on was the Dallas County District Attorneys Office. At the time, Duntsch was accused of injuring 33 out of 38 patients in less than two years before the Texas Medical Board revoked his license. And yet, the names of the latter are incorrect and misspelled. Morgan didnt follow Duntsch after Baylor Plano. Duntsch maintains that the practice didnt meet the promises it agreed to, and that it still owes him money. His CV proclaims that he earned a doctorate in microbiology from the prestigious St. Jude Childrens Research Hospital, graduating summa cum laude. (Neither responded to requests for comment for this story.) Then he also took prescription painkillers and ate a paper blotter of LSD. The couple had two children together. Martin paid with her lifebecause her doctor was too proud to say he screwed up. Many ofDuntsch's patient-turned-victims filed malpractice suits, according to Dallas News. Dr. Christopher Duntsch When he moved to Dallas in late 2010, Duntsch was 41 years old, fresh out of a residency program at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center's Department of. Duntsch says he was so distraught by Browns outcome that he placed a screw in Efurd 3 millimeters away from where it shouldve been, damaging a nerve root. This is accomplished by: Establishing quality . He also needed his legs. Duntsch had another surgery scheduled the day that Brown suffered her stroke. Unequivocally, testified an expert witness, a neurosurgeon should stop practicing after incurring multiple patient deaths and severe outcomes. 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. Henderson was brought in to operate two days later. It was hearsay, he contended. He was shocked at the CT scan: the spinal fusion hardware sat in her soft tissue. She says he was prone to hyperbole, and, yeah, he had a questionable sense of humor. Duntsch was taken to jail for what Young referred to as a time out but his erratic behavior wouldnt end there. 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. 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 . Not long after, Young said Duntsch broke into her apartment for the first time. ), The door opened and Young found Duntsch, who had earned the moniker, The encounter was just one of a series of troubling incidents after Duntschwho, once referred to himself as a mixture of God, Einstein and the Antichrist, Photo: His mom was a teacher. In reality, he makes everything so, so much worse. Saul Elbein writes in the Texas Observer that Dr. Hendersonsent him a recording of his complaint to the Texas Medical Board. According to ProPublica, Duntsch's residency and fellowship records show less than 100 surgeries. 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. While the show features the exes as the parents to one son, they had two kids together in real life. Also present, according to Kane, was Jerry Summers, the childhood friend who would later wake up a quadriplegic after a Duntsch operation. With such goings-on, Duntsch got himself kicked out of his own company. 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. According to Irving-based physician recruitment firm Merritt Hawkins, a single neurosurgeon produced his or her hospital an average revenue of $2.45 million in 2015. 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. That July, Duntsch was firing off panicked emails to his business partners at 4 am on a Monday morning: My reputation has been ruined, he wrote. Plus, she was struggling financially. However, in the Peacock series, the couple is parents to only one child. 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. And not just Dallas County, I don't recall hearing about it anywhere." 53, and Andre Agassi, 52, are proud parents as they . Get an all-access pass to never-before-seen content, free digital evidence kits, and much more! 2020 THE SUN, US, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED | TERMS OF USE | PRIVACY | YOUR AD CHOICES | SITEMAP, Joshua Jackson (right) portrays Christopher Duntsch, aka Dr Death, on the new Peacock limited series, Alec Baldwin (right) plays Dr Robert Henderson, The role of Dr Randall Kirby is portrayed by Christian Slater (right), Credit: Dallas Surgical Specialists/ Barbara Nitke/Peacock, AnnaSophia Robb (right) takes on the role of Michelle Shughart, Dominic Burgess (right) is Jerry Summers on the series, Molly Griggs (right) portrays Wendy Young on Dr Death, Dr Death - Trailer for the Peacock series based on the true story of Christopher Duntsch, Dr Death cast vs real people See photos of Christopher Duntsch, Michelle Shughart & more. I dont want to be in your magazine, sir, I apologize, Passmore told me. His father, Donald, was a physical therapist and Christian missionary, and his mother, Susan, was a schoolteacher. The evidence collected by the DA's office by subpoenaing every hospital on his CVshows Duntsch completes a fraction of these. There are some who believe that he never wanted to be in the ORat all. Namely, that hed been up all night snorting eight balls of cocaine (3.5 grams each) with Duntsch. When he finally turned up again, he was made to attended a program for impaired physicians. While Ignatova and Kukekov say they were in the labs, Duntsch focused on raising money. From the top of his class to life in prison: things did not go as he planned. As the eldest of four, his parents remember him as a precocious boy. Duntsch was also arrested for driving under the influence while staying with his parents in Colorado and found himself in handcuffs another time in April of 2015 after he was arrested for stealing $887.30 in Walmart merchandise, according to the D Magazine. According to him, Duntsch had a "great work ethic" and no areas of weakness. And scary as it may seem, it's only when we listen to podcasts like these, do we realize the reality of medical horror stories. By this time his wife and he had separated and he also filed for bankruptcy. 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.

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