Former Doctor Linked to 1984 Death
Repo...@home.net
The following appears courtesy of yesterday's Associated Press news
wire:
Former Doctor Linked to 1984 Death
NEW YORK (AP) - A woman who died in Ohio in 1984 while recuperating from
a car
accident may have been poisoned by a former doctor who was charged this
week
with killing patients at a Long Island hospital.
The driver of the car was convicted of reckless homicide in the young
woman's
death, and his mother now hopes his record wil be cleared.
Michael Swango, 45, is implicated in an intercontinental string of
patient and
coworker poisonings following his graduation from Southern Illinois
University
Medical School in 1983.
A federal indictment this week charged Swango only in three New York
deaths,
but it also alleges that Swango gave Cynthia McGee, 19, a fatal
injection in
January 1984 when he was a resident at Ohio State University Hospital in
Columbus.
She was there recuperating from an accident two months earlier in
Champaign-Urbana, Ill., where she was attending the University of
Illinois and
was on the gymnastics team. She had wanted to return to Ohio, her home
state,
during her recovery.
After McGee died, Scott Bone, the driver of the car that struck her
bicycle,
was convicted of reckless homicide. Bone, then 17, was sentenced to 30
months'
probation and 1,000 hours of community service and lost his license for
several
years.
Attempts to reach Bone in Illinois were unsuccessful Friday morning;
there was
no answer at his home. But his mother, Judy Bone, told The Columbus
Dispatch
that she hoped her son's record would be ``wiped clean'' if Swango is
found to
have killed McGee.
Dr. Patrick Fardal, now Franklin County (Ohio) deputy coroner, performed
the
1984 autopsy on McGee that concluded she died of pneumonia. Fardal said
Friday
that the coroner's office is awaiting the indictment material from the
New York
grand jury. The case will not be reopened unless there is new evidence,
he
said.
Swango spent 30 months in jail and lost his medical license in 1985 for
the
non-fatal poisoning of six co-workers in Quincy, Ill.
He was later sentenced to prison for lying about his criminal record on
an
application for a medical residency. He was days from completing a
42-month
prison sentence in that case when Tuesday's indictment was announced. It
charges Swango with killing three patients at the Veterans Affairs
Medical
Center in Northport in 1993 by injecting them with toxins.
According to the indictment, he moved to Zimbabwe in 1994 but was
suspended
about a year later after patients there began showing signs of
poisoning.
McGee's parents, William and Janis McGee of Beverly Hills, Fla., don't
think
that there's sufficient evidence that Swango killed their daughter,
according
to lawyer Brian Miller. They are suing the author of a book on the
Swango case
for saying that they accepted a monetary settlement from Ohio State for
their
daughter's death.
AP-NY-07-14-00
---------------------------------------------
The following appears courtesy of the 7/13/00 online edition of The
Columbus
Dispatch newspaper:
Swango indictment opens old wounds
Thursday, July 13, 2000
David Lore
Dispatch Science Reporter
Cindy McGee died 16 years ago, but the case of the 19-year-old Dublin
gymnast
has yet to rest in peace in the criminal-justice system.
McGee, a student at the University of Illinois, was seriously injured by
a
speeding car while bicycling near the campus in Champaign, Ill., on Nov.
4,
1983.
Her recovery seemed assured until Jan. 15, 1984, when she suffered a
sudden
relapse and died -- two days after being transferred from Illinois to
Ohio
State University Hospitals and only hours after being visited by OSU
medical
intern Michael Swango.
The driver of the car -- Scott Bone, 17, of Champaign -- subsequently
was
convicted of reckless homicide, but prosecutors in New York this week
said that
Swango was the one who caused McGee's death.
"On or about Jan. 14, 1984, Swango murdered Cynthia McGee, a patient at
OSUH,
by administering an injection of potassium that caused cardiac arrest,''
according to the five-count indictment announced by the U.S. Attorney's
Office
on Tuesday in Garden City, Long Island.
Prosecutors charged Swango, 45, in the death of three patients at a
veterans
hospital in Garden City in 1993. He was not specifically charged in the
death
of McGee or other patients at OSU, although McGee's death was cited to
establish a pattern of homicides and assaults by Swango.
Swango was charged days before he was scheduled for release from a
federal
prison in Colorado, where he is serving a 42-month sentence for lying on
an
application for residency at the Stony Brook University Medical Center
in New
York..
Prosecutors have been under pressure to block Swango's release since the
publication of the best- selling book Blind Eye, which concludes the
doctor
probably killed 35 patients while working at various hospitals across
the
United States and in Africa.
Franklin County Assistant Prosecutor Ed Morgan, who investigated several
Swango-related deaths at OSU during the mid-1980s, said he thinks
federal
prosecutors will have a tough time making the new charges stick.
Swango, after leaving OSU in 1984, was convicted in Quincy, Ill., for
the
nonfatal poisoning of fellow paramedics. He spent prison time for that
crime
and the falsification convictions but until now never had been charged
with
homicide, despite widespread suspicions.
"The indictment reads well, but they've got a tough row to hoe,'' said
Morgan,
who wasn't able to find enough evidence to prosecute Swango here.
"But if they've got evidence of a lethal dose of potassium was
administered to
(McGee), I'd be happy to go forward with it.''
Although federal prosecutors have cited McGee as a Swango victim, Morgan
said
the investigation wouldn't be reopened here unless the Franklin County
coroner
reverses a 1984 decision that McGee died of "cardiopulmonary arrest due
to
incipient pneumonia.''
"That doesn't imply a homicide in any respect, and that's a problem,''
Morgan
said.
Dr. Patrick Fardal, the assistant coroner who performed an autopsy on
McGee,
said yesterday that potassium was not noted in his report. Fardal said
no
decision on the cause of death will be made until new evidence can be
reviewed.
Pneumonia wouldn't normally kill a healthy young athlete such as McGee,
but in
his testimony at Bone's trial in 1985, Fardal noted that McGee was in a
weakened state at the onset of the disease.
Michael Cornyn of Champaign was one of Bone's defense attorneys.
"When this story broke later about Swango, we were just amazed,'' he
recalled.
"We had all these medical records on Cindy McGee and the doctors (in
Illinois)
had done a wonderful job. She started to recover, although she was still
seriously injured, but said she wanted to go back home to Ohio.
"She was shipped back to Ohio with glowing recommendations, but she was
only
there a couple of days and she was dead.''
McGee's parents, William and Janis McGee of Beverly Hills, Fla., don't
think
that there's sufficient evidence that Swango killed their daughter,
according
to Columbus lawyer Brian Miller.
The McGees are suing James Stewart, author of Blind Eye, and his
publisher in
federal and state courts for saying in the book that the McGees "quietly
accepted monetary settlements from Ohio State'' for their daughter's
death.
That's false, the lawsuit says.
OSU spokesman David Ferguson also said the university made no settlement
payment to the McGees. Stewart declined to comment, saying he had not
been
contacted about the McGee lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Columbus.
In Champaign, Bone has served his sentence and moved on with his life,
according to Judy Bone, his mother.
Scott Bone was a high-school student at the time of the accident. As a
first
offender with a good school record, he was spared jail time but served
30
months' probation, completed 1,000 hours of community service and had
his
driver's license suspended "for three or four years,'' Mrs. Bone said.
Today, he's a college graduate with a good job, a wife and a baby, Mrs.
Bone
said. If Swango killed McGee, she said, she hopes her son's record will
be
"wiped clean.''
If Swango had been convicted of murdering McGee in 1984, she said,
"They'd have
probably given (Bone) a ticket, and that's it.''
Instead, as a felon, her son had problems for 10 years getting jobs
because of
the reckless-homicide conviction.
McGee was buried in Dublin Cemetery. She was a member of Dublin High
School's
state championship gymnastics teams in 1981 and 1982. The annual McGee
Invitational gymnastics tournament there was named in her honor.
McGee worked year-round during high school, taking private lessons and
even
visiting the gym to work out during study halls, her high-school coach,
Bobbi
Montanari, said during a 1986 interview in The Dispatch.
"I almost had to hold her back so she wouldn't get hurt,'' Montanari
said. "I
respect her because she was so determined and disciplined. I don't think
there
is a week that goes by that I don't think of her.''
---------------------------------------
The following appears courtesy of the 7/14/00 online edition of The
Akron
Beacon-Journal newspaper:
Friday, July 14, 2000
OHIO NEWS
Former physician linked to death of teen gymnast
NEW YORK (AP) -- A University of Illinois gymnast, who died suddenly in
1984
several months after being hit by a car, may have been a victim of
Michael
Swango, according to a federal indictment.
The indictment charges Swango, a former doctor, with killing three
patients at
a Long Island veterans hospital.
Swango allegedly injected Cynthia McGee, 19, with a fatal dose of
potassium in
January 1984 while she was at Ohio State University Hospitals in
Columbus,
according to the indictment handed up Tuesday.
Swango, who was a resident at the hospital, was not specifically charged
with
McGee's death.
An Ohio prosecutor said the investigation of McGee's death would not be
reopened there unless the Franklin County coroner reverses a decision
that she
died of ``cardiopulmonary arrest due to incipient pneumonia.''
Swango is charged with killing three patients at the Veterans Affairs
Medical
Center in Northport, on Long Island, by injecting them with toxins. The
patients died between July and October 1993.
McGee was moved to the Ohio hospital, near her parents' home, after
making a
strong recovery from serious injuries suffered after she was hit by a
car in
November 1983 in Urbana, Ill.
In 1984, Scott Bone, then 17, was convicted of reckless homicide in
McGee's
death, and given 30 months of probation, 1,000 hours of community
services and
lost his license for several years.
Bone's mother, Judy Bone, told The Columbus Dispatch that she hoped her
son's
record would be ``wiped clean'' if Swango is found to have killed McGee.
Swango, 45, is suspected of going on a cross-country, then
intercontinental
spree of poisoning patients and co-workers for more than a decade,
beginning
soon after his graduation from Southern Illinois University Medical
School in
1983.
He was days from completing a 42-month prison sentence for lying on an
application for a residency at Stony Brook University Medical Center
when
Tuesday's indictment was announced. He admitted failing to disclose that
he had
spent 30 months in jail and lost his medical license in 1985 for
poisoning six
co-workers in Quincy, Ill.
None of the people died in that case.
Swango was fired by Stony Brook University in 1993.
He then headed for Zimbabwe, where he was hired by the Zimbabwe
Association of
Church Hospitals in 1994, according to the 17-page indictment. About a
year
later, patients at hospitals there began showing signs of poisoning.
Swango was suspended from practice at the Mnene Mission Hospital in
Zimbabwe in
July 1995. Prosecutors there are still investigating and cooperated with
U.S.
prosecutors in preparing the Long Island indictment, prosecutors said.
In 1997, Swango was arrested at Chicago's O'Hare Airport, en route to a
new job
in Saudi Arabia.