The civil attorneys in these cases were able to land a rather damning e-mail sent from Duntsch to his girlfriend/physical assistant.The girlfriend was Kimberly Morgan, and in the e-mail to her, the ramblings of a mind gone wrong are clear. Ghostbar, Dragonfly at Hotel Zaza. He was friendly, and we had good conversation. Joshua Jackson as Christopher Duntsch in "Dr. Death." (Peacock/Scott McDermott/Peacock) The real Duntsch, a Texas-based surgeon, maimed or killed 33 of 38 surgical patients between 2011 and . Summers had come in for an elective spinal fusion to relieve the pain hed carried for years after a car accident. Joshua Jackson stars as Dr. Christopher Duntsch, a twisted neurosurgeon who goes on a malpractice rampage in the halls of the hospitals that are inattentive and neglectful enough to employ him . 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. 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. 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. Christopher Duntsch was born in Montana and spent most of his youth in Memphis, Tennessee. He called Baylor Plano President Jerri Garison, who was clearly familiar with Duntsch and was just as clear about how little she could say on the matter: He no longer has privileges here, and I have to be very careful about what I say to you. Baylor said it was unable to provide its executives for interviews because of Passmores pending lawsuit. They listened, judged and found Duntsch guilty, and sentenced him to life in prison, reports USA Today. And this was 10 months before Duntsch's last surgery. In September 2014, after he and Young had separated, Duntsch was arrested for jumping the fence of Youngs sisters Garland home and attempting to take their child, Aiden. 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. Medical Center at Plano.. One surgeon described these as never events. They shouldnt ever happen in someones entire career. 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. 679215 Registered office: 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF. Prodigal Son actress Molly Griggs takes on the role of Wendy Young, who was Duntsch's girlfriend and is the mother of his kids. He was the eldest of four. "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 . In April 2012, just over four months removed from that initial surgery, Passmore returned to work. (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.) 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. Or at least a morally upright one. I knocked on my door. To add to this, his so-called Ph.D. at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center may also be dubious. Before he cheated, before he lied. Dr. Duntsch eventually began a long-term romantic relationship with Wendy Renee Young while in Memphis. Duntsch had a comfortable upbringing. But Morguloffs suit describes him being in excruciating pain and telling nurses that his pain was a 10 on a scale of 1 to 10. The world at large may have never heard of Dr. Death but for Laura Beil. It wasnt his invention, Kukekov says. Again, he never revealed what went wrong to the other staff. She arrived brain-dead. The 31 people who survived Dr. Duntsch's scalpel face a struggle for the rest of their lives. Seven more doctors voiced complaints before TMB finally canceled Dr. Death's license. And professional marketing videos got him ready and willing patients. She was a National . The fault also lies with the Texas law. During Brown's surgery, Duntsch pierced her vertebral artery. How old was Millie Bobby Brown in Stranger Things season 1? Duntsch had only been in the Dallas area for a few months. 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. In her deposition, Morgan said Baylor Plano President Jerri Garison called both of them to her office and told them what Summers had said. 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. No such thing. (And if you want to dive even deeper into the story, you can also watch the scripted drama "Dr. Death" on Peacock, starring Joshua Jackson, Alec Baldwin, and Christian Slater.). After youve spent a night using cocaine, most people become paranoid and want to stay in the house. Also present, according to Kane, was Jerry Summers, the childhood friend who would later wake up a quadriplegic after a Duntsch operation. When Duntsch tried to reposition it, he stripped a screw; the cage wasnt going anywhere. 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. I dont know what it is, she said. Beil's somber reporting on the Wondery podcast titled Dr. Death will send chills down your spine. The 78-year-old Denton County man was then Dr. Christopher Duntsch's first patient when the surgeon started performing spinal fusions in 2011. Dawsons Creek heartthrob Jackson stars as the titular character of Dr Death, which ended up becoming Duntschs nickname after the accusations came out. I thought it was pretty amazing that he was even able to go to work the next day, she said in the deposition. Like Dr Henderson, Dr Kirby is still a practicing doctor in real life. There was Kellie Martin, who died from massive blood loss after a surgery at Baylor Plano. They eventually went back to his home, dancing to music under a disco ball he had in his office. Baldwin, 63, plays a more mature character to his onscreen partner Christian Slaters zany one, with the two pairing up in quest to end Dr Deaths medical career and bring him to justice. Henderson was brought in to operate two days later. Let's delve into what made him tick, and how the medical community failed the victims of Dr. Christopher Daniel Duntsch. In March 2012, Duntsch performed alaminectomy on Kellie Martin to reduce her back pain after afallat home. She was a stay-at-home mom to their two children, Preston and Aiden; her income was tied to Duntschs. Dr. Will it help patients protect their rights? . He kept her on after splitting from Rimlawi and Won. Get all your true crime news from Oxygen. 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. She was deposed over Skype since, at the time, she was stationed with the Air Force in the Middle East. I dont want to be on Channel 8, I dont want to be on Inside Edition. An "In Memoriam" tribute for him is shown at the end of the final episode of the Peacock series. But Passmore is one of the lucky ones. Armed with Baylors declaration that it never amended his privileges, Duntsch found work in four months. Santa Clarita Diet's Dominic Burgess plays Jerry Summers, a former patient and best friend of Dr Death's. On average, a neurosurgeon generates more revenue for a hospital than all other specialties but invasive cardiology and orthopedic surgery. However, in the Peacock series, the couple is parents to only one child. All Duntsch got was a slap on the wrist while his blood-soaked foray into the OR continued. 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. Ellis Unit outside of Huntsville, Texas. Passmore later learned that a ligament in his leg had been severed. He was gone until Monday. Sort of. Saul Elbein writes in the Texas Observer that Dr. Hendersonsent him a recording of his complaint to the Texas Medical Board. While the school refused to verify or deny his claims, he wasn't in any of the yearbooks of that time. Kukekov and Ignatova say Duntsch took more credit than he deserved for the discoveries. All we can say ishes fine.. Duntschcrammed a surgical sponge into the wound, then sewed it up. In July 2015, he was indicted by a Dallas County grand jury on six counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon (his hands and surgical tools). 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. He argues that the patients were just telling stories and that Passmore was fine after his operation. At Baylor Regional Medical Center,after botched surgeries and complaints from fellow doctors, Duntsch resigned. Morgan says they spent a lot of time in clubs. He went back to the sourcethe University of Tennessee Health Science Center. He stayed in New York while everyone. Because of a valuable patent the company owned, they let him through the gates and out into the world. Duntsch ended up slicing her vertebral artery, stopping blood and oxygen flow to her brain. Jurors convicted Duntsch Tuesday of injury to an elderly person in the botched July 2012 surgery that put Mary Efurd in a wheelchair. He says Fennells surgery went so well that he agreed to be in a commercial for Baylor Plano. Duntsch's resume shows a doctorate in microbiology from the St. Jude Children'sResearch Hospital. When he finally came to the hospital, he busied himself with another patient, also on the DA's list, Mary Efurd. She assumed Morgan was only helping with research. 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. The life in prison sentence was a deathblow to Duntsch, who, according to his father, was now a humbled man who had lost everything. By this time his wife and he had separated and he also filed for bankruptcy. He wears a gray-and-black-striped uniform, not unlike a set of scrubs. Martin was a 55-year-old woman who had lived with back pain for nearly a year after a fall in her kitchen. The damage is irreversible. And you are one of the lucky ones." The message alluded to a week where everything unraveled with their relationship. Duntsch landed in jail on a $600,000 bond and waited for the trial to begin. On July 1, 2011, Duntsch and Baylor Plano agreed to an inducement deal. The notorious neurosurgeon was forced to declare bankruptcy shortly after and moved back in with his parents in Colorado. The first of these had been college football. Summers declined an interview in Memphis and would not answer questions on the phone. At morning meetings, Page would see Duntsch mixing a vodka orange. In November 2011, Passmore was hooked on prescription opiates. Toby Shook, a Dallas defense attorney, gave a statement toDallas Magazine:"I cannot recall a physician being indicted for aggravated assault for acts committed during surgery. You'd think that a surgeon who was this bad would have some mud spattered on him on the internet. But as the ultimate betrayal, some doctors violate this code of conduct in the worst possible ways. The good-looking but eerie Jamie Dornan. If he could do 50Shades of Grey and some scandalous modeling, playing a menacing Dr. Death should be a piece of cake, right? Today, Duntsch is serving a life imprisonment term in a Texas prison, and he's now the subject of an NBC Peacock netstreaming series featuring some big-name, A . To say that this e-mail proved that Duntsch was notfit to be a doctor would be completely correct. Duntsch declined a jailhouse interview, but he has called the allegations preposterous. 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. The evidence said otherwise. In many ways, Morgan was the opposite of Young. For Duntsch, the path into medicine was unconventional and, perhaps, a reflection of his tendency to fixate on unlikely goals. "You don't know this yet, but you will never walk again. She had family in Dallas and decided shed go with him if he chose that city. According to Young, there was even a ransom note for her and her two children written in blood. Matt Goodman is the online editorial director for. They described him as the bright, precocious little boy who had taken. The autopsy had not been finished when Passmore accidentally saw the fax from Baylor Plano. But the same law also helps these very hospitals in keeping doctor credentials confidential. The eight-part series tells the harrowing true story of Dr. Christopher Duntsch who, across two years, injured 32 of his 38 patients. According to court documents, Rimlawi soon grew suspicious of Duntsch. One such recommendation came from the surgeon under whom Duntsch completed his residency, Dr. Frederick Boop. His father, Donald, was a physical therapist and Christian missionary, and his mother, Susan, was a schoolteacher. In 2005, about a third of the way through the six-year program, department chairman Dr. Jon Robertson appointed him program director of the schools tissue bank, where hed supply samples to scientists and oversee two labs. Since receiving his life sentence, Dr Death is currently housed in the O.B. This is accomplished by: Establishing quality . One of the early investors in Duntsch's company Discgenics was Dr. Rand Page. Duntsch grew up in a middle-class family. I look at my children, I felt like, How am I gonna explain this to them?. In reality, he makes everything so, so much worse. A husband and wife pair of Russian stem cell scientists, Valery Kukekov and Tatyana Ignatova entered the picture. In February 2017, Duntsch, 50, was convicted of a first-degree felony for intentionally injuring an elderly victim. Duntsch told Morgan a different story. Death: The Undoctored Story, available to stream now. 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. But she smiles softly as she talks about those early days with Duntsch, when they were still learning about each others lives. 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. 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. He alleged that Duntsch promised to pay him in stocks and out of his own salary but failed to follow through. Duntsch was also picked up wandering near a Chase Bank in North Dallas and taken to Green Oaks psychiatric hospital for an evaluation. Despite receiving complaints dating back to 2012, the Texas Medical Board didnt revoke Duntschs privileges until June 2013. By November, he had surgical privileges to operate on patients. Two of his patients, Floella Brown and Kellie Martin, died.. Duntschs legal woes were only just beginning. Martin, it turned out, had bled to death in the intensive care unit while undergoing a relatively common procedure known as a laminectomy, which involves removing spongy tissue between the discs to relieve pressure. At Baylor Regional Medical Center, during a simple laminectomy, Duntsch slashed one of Martin's major arteries butrefused to admit his mistake. Christopher Duntsch didn't. She didnt think much of it at first. Moving made sense for both of them. A veteran investigative reporter in the medical field, her voice enthralls. Boop also said that Duntsch spent his final year operating as an attending physician, and was not allowed to operate independently. Create your free profile and get access to exclusive content. Soon though, red flags began to pop up. She describes investigators with binoculars camped out on their street in a white van, trying to see into their home. Every patient mentioned in this story who has sued, except for Passmore, has settled. 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. If he wasnt doing research, he was out with Jerry Summers, partying, Morgan said in the deposition. Duntsch maintains that the practice didnt meet the promises it agreed to, and that it still owes him money. Christopher Duntsch, aka Dr Death / Joshua Jackson 6 There are 31 people left alive today, irreparably damaged by Dr. Death's grievous malpractices. Young and Duntsch have two sons. Famously known by the Family name Christopher Daniel Duntsch, is a great neurosurgeon and convicted criminal for malpractice.He was born on April 3, 1971, in Montana. Young puts Morgan there, too, although Morgan denied it in her deposition. According to Dallas Magazine, Dr. Christopher Duntsch talked a big game. Meanwhile, Brown went brain dead and passed away. In September, according to police reports . Unequivocally, testified an expert witness, a neurosurgeon should stop practicing after incurring multiple patient deaths and severe outcomes. When he stepped off the bed for the first time after surgery, the feeling on the bottom of his feet had vanished. Finally, it was the Texas Medical Board (TMB) that acted too late, too little. You, my child, are the only one between me and the other side, he wrote. "Dr. Death: The Undoctored Story" and the scripted series "Dr. Death," starring Joshua Jackson, Alec Baldwin and Christian Slaterare both available to stream on Peacock now. They went on to have two children. Also Read: Made For Love: Who Are Caleb Foote Parents? From the top of his class to life in prison: things did not go as he planned. He also needed his legs. Duntsch suspected that this had something to do with his vodka bottle and neurostimulants. It said he was $1 million in debt. News Group Newspapers Limited in England No. He wanted to find who Duntsch trained under, who his supervisors were. 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.. 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 . Then it just started to all unravel.. 33 of his surgeries went horribly wrong. The real question is:Why couldn't anyone stop him in time? Or, they should be: the scientists names are misspelled. Out of his 38 surgeries, only three had no complications. Attorney James Girards was representing Lee Passmore, one of Duntsch's victims and reached out to her. Hes jailed on a $600,000 bond, and his trial is set for January 31, 2017. At this point, Ive had enough and so I called the police.. 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. 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. In July 2015, indictments came through. He decided to turn to clinical work. Around that same time, Duntschs behavior was becoming erratic. Investigations took patients and attorneys back to where Duntsch had had such a promising beginningin Memphis, at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, where he earned both an M.D. Eddie Redmayne dans le rle de Charlie Cullen et Jessica Chastain dans le rle d'Amy The evidence collected by the DA's office by subpoenaing every hospital on his CVshows Duntsch completes a fraction of these. I'd call him a sociopath." By the time the Dallas County district attorney's office got involved and brought criminal charges against. In fact, he went on to work at two more hospitals. We are committed to achieving this mission by delivering high-quality products that meet or exceed customer requirements. There were two names on the top page: Kellie Martin and Christopher Duntsch. Morgan didnt follow Duntsch after Baylor Plano.
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