The first season of Dr. Death, which launched in 2018 and ran for seven episodes, examined the life and horrific crimes of Christopher Duntsch. I was working on a show called Happy [for SyFy] and I was sent the first three episodes of the podcast that hadn't come out yet. And that was just one case from Baylor-Plano. She was transferred to another hospital and died. Chief among them is the mystery of whether Duntsch was homicidal or simply criminally inept. He stayed in New York while everyone else went home. Duntsch had his surgical rights temporarily suspended after his botched surgery on Summers and his first patient back was 55-year-old Kellie Martin. I did talk to as many of his high school friends as I could. And never when i not standing there. So, I always try its like how do you tell their story, and what happened to them, and what theyve lived through, but without really exploiting them? In 2018, he filed for an appeal which was rejected by the court. Duntsch was offered a $600,000 advance and a temporary suite in a luxury hotel to come to Dallas while the couple searched for a new home in Plano, according to a 2018 "Dr. Death" podcast, which inspired the Peacock series. Was there anything that was particularly hard not to include? The former doctor will not be eligible for parole until 2045 when he will be 74 years old. He is serving his sentence at the O.B. It was a conscious choice from the very beginning to not show the surgeries until the finale. Yeah, and I listened to it twice, happily. One improved, and I think there were four, maybe that werent hurt, but they werent helped either. I wanted to talk to his father, and his father indicated that he did want to, but his appellate attorney wouldnt allow that for reasons that I dont understand. But neurosurgeons are big money makers. D MagazineChristopher Duntsch a.k.a. You can't ask for a story that is so ready-made. The first one is the most graphic. surgeries in Dallas and Plano in 2012 and 2013, killing or maiming up to 15 patients. A CT scan would later reveal that Efurds nerve root had been amputated, there were several screw holes nowhere near where they were supposed to be, and one screw had been lodged in another nerve root. All three of them are fantastic each in their own right. I was gifted the opportunity to tell it. His father was a missionary and physical therapist and his mother was a school teacher. Each very different. The good news is, is we had thousands of pages of research, thousands of pages of court documents, tons of hours of interviews. And so, there were times that I would say, Do we really need to have ? And they were open to it all. I mean you cant really boil it down. And its all because of one surgeon named Christopher Duntsch a.k.a. Prior to serving as Senior TV Editor at Collider, her work had been published by Vulture, Variety, The AV Club, The Hollywood Reporter, IGN, The Verge, and Thought Catalog. The four-part docuseries features old footage and new interviews to tell more of the story about the neurosurgeon who was sentenced to prison after maiming or killing more than 30 patients. RELATED: 'When They See Us': Joshua Jackson, Blair Underwood & Christopher Jackson on the Netflix Limited Series. It was the status, because his friend Rand Page, said that he actually never intended to be a neurosurgeon, that he was gonna work at this [stem cell treatment] company and make his fortune there. Follow her on Twitter at @lizlet. Cookies collect information about your preferences and your device and are used to make the site work as you expect it to, to understand how you interact with the site, and to show advertisements that are targeted to your interests. Following his blunders, Duntsch resigned from Baylor Plano in April 2012 before they could fire him. And that disconnect from reality, I found really compelling. Write to Mahita Gajanan at mahita.gajanan@time.com. And then on top of that, you have the systemic side of the medical system that ultimately failed in stopping him. PATRICK MACMANUS I didn't hear the podcast first. But more importantly, he explained how he got inside the head of a man who it would be all-too-easy to write off as pure evil. In February 2012, he went under the knife for an elective spinal fusion surgery. Dr. My wife laughs at me all the time about it. I have to say, it was nice to do something different. Were there podcasts that you looked to as an example, or that sort of influenced you when you knew you were going to be doing a podcast story like this? White men also have stories to tell. When he woke up, he was a quadriplegic with incomplete paralysis. His resume included a combined MD/PhD program and neurosurgical residency at The University of Tennessee at Memphis College of Medicine and was bolstered by a prestigious spine surgery fellowship in the city, a research patent under his name and published academic papers. We've told lots and lots and lots of our stories. So for those of us at just the human level who are interacting with them, we have to realize that we don't just need the systems that have been created to operate better. I don't believe that anybody in any of the administrations were actively trying to encourage this man to do what he did. So yes, there are definitely heroes in the story. When Josh and I had our first conversation, he said to me from the beginning, 'I've got to figure out how to approach this character without any judgment. I do believe he was born as a narcissistic sociopath. The show was Dr. Death, from Wondery, the same podcast production company that brought us Dirty John, last years thoroughly addictive series about a stalker/con artist who inserted himself into one Orange County family and nearly tore them apart. Beil is a journalist who has specialized in science and medical writing for 20 years, and lives in the Dallas area where much of Christopher Duntschs story takes place. You have these compelling heroes in Henderson and Kirby that are unlike, in my opinion, unlike other quote-unquote "heroes" in the true crime space, because these are two who are taking down one of their own. Death' Gets Life in Prison for Botched Surgery, How Other Doctors Tried and Failed to Stop Texas' 'Dr. . 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Of course, a pediatrician couldnt have done as much damage. Its a lucrative surgery. I'm going to answer it in a couple of different ways. Duntsch, better known today as "Dr. Death," moved to Dallas in 2010 with impressive qualifications. So, ask the producers. I couldve done more, like, the actual surgical details, but listening to it with other people, I could see how youd want to leave some of that out. It is good and healthy and natural and necessary for us to have other people and other perspectives, than just white men. After this look at Christopher Duntsch a.k.a. In the Canadian system, you go for care first, and then you pay a couple of times a year into the system. Dr. Death: Where Is Christopher Duntsch Today? - Grunge Its weird because he seems like a normal guy through most of his early life, and then he turns into this really entertaining sociopath, kind of like the guy from Dirty John. But the truth was far more complex. Things seemed to be moving along smoothly. We definitely amped up the sound effects. Christopher, known as Dr Death, was Jerry's friend and the surgeon who performed the botched operation on him in 2011 Credit: Dallas County Sheriff's office The four-part docuseries features old footage and new interviews to tell more of the story about the neurosurgeon who was sentenced to prison after maiming or killing more than 30 patients. After youve spent a night using cocaine, most people become paranoid and want to stay in the house, the woman said in the deposition, according to D Magazine. It's a complicated plank that he tried to walk. Well, it was a team effort. Theres a different crew at Dallas Medical Center now, but you have to think that the reason his hiring was fast-tracked was because, you know, he was a neurosurgeon and he told the administrator, Yeah, and Ive got a bunch of patients who are ready for surgery. In this case, Duntsch remained a popular hire in part because neurosurgeons bring more revenue to the hospitals they work for than nearly any other medical specialty, and officials are unlikely to second-guess a candidate with stellar credentials and recommendations. Young was soon pregnantbut Duntsch had already developed a . In July, he performed an operation on a woman who lost a tremendous amount of blood and lost consciousness upon waking up after surgery. How many of them struck you funny? You just reminded me, that was another danger that we were really grappling with. I just need to be able to do it. And he was able to explain away why he had left Baylor, and they looked at the National Practitioner data bank and there was nothing there, because Baylor hadnt reported him. 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. Duntsch was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. Many in the crowd wore the custom eye masks wed been given, to add to the audio immersion effect. In order to tell the story they hired Laura Beil as the lead reporter. There were some doctors and some plaintiffs attorneys, and later on journalists, who were all working to try to stop this guy. Paying Tribute to the Celebrities Who Have Died in 2023, The True Story Behind Netflix's 'The Good Nurse', The True Story Behind Hulu's 'Welcome to Chippendales'. And I didnt want to seem like I was exploiting them, or making it sensational by really going into the horrible details of what he did each time. He was putting stuff in the wrong place. Season 1 tells the story of Christopher Duntsch, a Texas surgeon who was convicted of gross malpractice after thirty-one of his patients were left seriously injured after he operated on them, and two patients died . I didnt want to create a two-dimensional villain, and his dad, I think, wouldve provided the most humanizing voice in the story, but the attorney just wouldnt allow it. The Texas Medical Board began receiving official reports about Duntsch following the botched procedures at Dallas Medical Center, as multiple doctors began sending in complaints. Both the scripted Dr. Death series and the Dr. Death: The Undoctored Story docuseries are now streaming on Peacock. Making a splash: A deep dive into the live-action, Alec Baldwin and Christian Slater team up to take down a dangerous surgeon in, Joshua Jackson replaces Jamie Dornan in Peacock's, Dr. Death review: Joshua Jackson is chilling. Was this familiar territory for you? Dr Death Christopher Duntsch's late patient Jerry Summers claims killer And now you have to have empathy for the people who are the victims of your central character. So the training craft is being downloaded to a new generation of people whose faces look much more diverse than just a bunch of me-s. And that's good, but we're not there yet. Duntsch, 44, is being held inthe Dallas County Jail on $600,000 bail on charges involving the death of one patient and the injuring of four others. Dr. Death season one review: a true crime podcast is even scarier - Vox Thanks to the system, though, Duntsch was able to keep working and hurting people until two of his fellow doctors, Randall Kirby and Robert Henderson (played respectively by Christian Slater and Alec Baldwin), were able to expose him and put him behind bars. In July 2015, a grand jury indicted Dr. Death on five counts of aggravated assault and one count of harming an elderly person, his patient Mary Efurd, according to Rolling Stone. It profiles a spine surgeon named Christopher Duntsch, who operated on 38 people, 33 of whom were left either dead or with some form of permanent paralysis. Copyright 2023 Meredith Corporation. Death' Before 33 Operations Went Wrong, The True Story Behind Hulu's 'Boston Strangler', The Best True Crime Documentaries to Stream Now, Get a First Look at Joshua Jackson, Christian Slater in 'Dr. You did have a crusading whistleblower character in there. "Between god, Einstein and the antichrist", Anyone close to me thinks that I likely am something between god, Einstein and the antichrist.