Michael Swango

Michael Joseph Swango (born James Michael Swango, October 21, 1954) is an American serial killer and physician who is estimated to have been involved in as many as 60 fatal poisonings of patients and colleagues, although he admitted to only causing four deaths.

Swango's father was a career United States Army officer who served in the Vietnam War, was listed in Who's Who in Government 1972–1973, and became an alcoholic.

Upon his return from Vietnam, John Swango became depressed and he and his wife Muriel divorced.

Growing up, Swango saw little of his father and as a result was closer to his mother.

He was valedictorian of his 1972 Quincy Catholic Boys High School class.

During high school, he played clarinet in the band.

Swango served in the Marine Corps, graduating from recruit training at Marine Corps Recruit Depot, San Diego.

He received an honorable discharge in 1980.

He saw no action overseas during his service, but his training in the Marines left him with a commitment to physical exercise.

When not studying, he was frequently seen jogging or performing calisthenics on the Quincy University campus and he was known to perform pushups as a form of self-punishment when criticized by instructors.

Swango graduated from Quincy summa cum laude and was given the American Chemical Society Award.

Following his graduation, Swango went to medical school at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine (SIU).

Swango displayed troubling behavior during his time at SIU.

Although he was a brilliant student, he preferred to work as an ambulance attendant rather than concentrate on his studies.

A fascination with dying patients was observed during this time.

Barely noticed at the time, many of Swango's assigned patients ended up "coding", or suffering life-threatening emergencies, with at least five of them dying.

Swango's lackadaisical approach to his studies caught up with him a month before he was due to graduate, when it was discovered that he had faked checkups during his OB/GYN rotation.

Some of his fellow students had suspected he had been faking checkups as early as his second year, but this was the first time he had been caught.

He was nearly expelled, but was allowed to remain when one member of the committee voted to give him a second chance.

At the time, a unanimous vote was required for a student to be dismissed.

Even earlier, several students and faculty members had raised concerns about Swango's competence to practice medicine.

Eventually, the school allowed him to graduate one year after his entering classmates, on condition that he repeat the OB/GYN rotation and complete several assignments in other specialties.

Despite a very poor evaluation in his dean's letter from SIU, Swango gained a surgical internship at Ohio State University Medical Center in 1983, to be followed by a residency in neurosurgery.

While he worked in Rhodes Hall at OSU, nurses noticed that apparently healthy patients began dying mysteriously with alarming frequency.

Each time, Swango had been the floor intern.

One nurse caught him injecting some "medicine" into a patient who later became strangely ill.

The nurses reported their concerns to administrators but were met with accusations of paranoia.

Swango was cleared by a cursory investigation in 1984.

However, his work had been so slovenly that OSU pulled its residency offer after his internship ended in June.

Later, it emerged that OSU officials feared that Swango would sue if he was fired without cause, and resolved to quietly push him out of the hospital as soon as possible after his internship ended.

In July 1984, Swango returned to Quincy and began working as an emergency medical technician with the Adams County Ambulance Corps, even though he had been fired from an ambulance service in Springfield for making a heart patient drive to the hospital.

Soon, many of the paramedics on staff began noticing that whenever Swango prepared the coffee or brought any food in, several of them usually became violently ill, with no apparent cause.

In October of that year, Swango was arrested by the Quincy Police Department after arsenic and other poisons were found in his possession.

On August 23, 1985, Swango was convicted of aggravated battery for poisoning co-workers.

He was sentenced to five years' imprisonment.

Swango's conviction led to recriminations at OSU.

A scathing review by law school dean James Meeks concluded that the hospital should have called in the police, and also revealed several glaring shortcomings in its initial investigation of Swango.

Nonetheless, it was another decade before OSU formally conceded it should have called in outside investigators.

He was sentenced in 2000 to three consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole and is serving his sentence at ADX Florence at his own request.

Michael Swango was born in Tacoma, Washington and raised in Quincy, Illinois, the middle child of Muriel and John Virgil Swango.