1. Michael Joseph Swango was born on James Michael Swango, October 21,1954 and 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 in the United States and Zimbabwe, although he admitted to causing only four deaths.
Michael Swango 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.
Michael Swango was valedictorian of his 1972 Quincy Catholic Boys High School class.
Michael Swango served in the Marine Corps, graduating from recruit training at Marine Corps Recruit Depot, San Diego.
Michael Swango saw no action overseas during his service, but his training in the Marines left him with a commitment to physical exercise.
Barely noticed at the time, many of Michael Swango's assigned patients ended up "coding", or suffering life-threatening emergencies, with at least five of them dying.
Michael Swango was nearly expelled, but was allowed to remain when one member of the committee voted to give him a second chance.
Later, it emerged that OSU officials feared that Michael 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, Michael 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.
Colleagues reported on his bizarre behavior and morbid obsessions, with one colleague reporting that Michael Swango "sometimes [feels he has] an evil purpose in life,".
Soon, many of the paramedics on staff began noticing that whenever Michael Swango prepared the coffee or brought any food in, several of them usually became violently ill, with no apparent cause.
Michael Swango worked as a counselor at the state career development center in Newport News, Virginia.
Michael Swango then worked as a laboratory technician in Newport News for ATICoal.
Around this time, Michael Swango met Kristin Lynn Kinney, a nurse at Riverside Hospital.
Michael Swango was employed until 1991, when he resigned his position to seek out a new position as a doctor.
In 1991, Swango legally changed his name to Daniel J Adams and tried to apply for a residency program at Ohio Valley Medical Center in Wheeling, West Virginia.
In both cases, Michael Swango forged several legal documents that he used to reestablish himself as a physician and respected member of society.
Michael Swango forged a fact sheet from the Illinois Department of Corrections that falsified his criminal record, stating that he had been convicted of a misdemeanor for getting into a fistfight with a co-worker and received six months in prison, rather than the five years for felony poisoning that he served.
The AMA temporarily lost track of Michael Swango, who managed to find a place in the psychiatric residency program at the Stony Brook University School of Medicine in New York.
Michael Swango contacted a friend of Kinney who was a nurse at Sanford, who in turn alerted Sanford's dean, Robert Talley, to Swango's whereabouts.
Under intense questioning from the head of Stony Brook's psychiatry department, Alan Miller, Michael Swango admitted he had lied about his poisoning conviction in Illinois.
Since the latest Michael Swango incident took place at a Veterans Affairs facility, federal authorities got involved.
Michael Swango dropped out of sight until mid-1994, when the Federal Bureau of Investigation found out he was living in Atlanta and working as a chemist at a computer equipment company's wastewater facility.
The FBI obtained a warrant charging Michael Swango with using fraudulent credentials to gain entry to a Veterans Affairs hospital.
Michael Swango appealed to the authorities at Mpilo Hospital, Bulawayo, to allow him in the interim to continue working voluntarily there; however, this was opposed by Abdollah Mesbah, a surgical resident, who had often found him snooping around mysteriously in the wards and in the intensive care unit even when not on call.
Michael Swango had suspected that sudden deaths of some patients were due to Swango, but had no proof at that stage.
Michael Swango crossed the border to Zambia and subsequently to Namibia, where he found temporary medical work.
Michael Swango called Richard Thomesen, who was stationed in the DEA's Manhattan field office to discuss the case.
Thomesen's conversation focused on Michael Swango lying on his government application to work at the VA, where he prescribed narcotic medications.
The sentencing judge ordered that Michael Swango not be allowed to prepare or deliver food, or have any involvement in preparing or distributing drugs.
Federal inmates must serve at least 85 percent of their sentences before being eligible for time off with good behavior, meaning that they likely had only three years to prove that Michael Swango was indeed a murderer.
Additionally, prosecutors found evidence that Michael Swango lied about the death of Cynthia Ann McGee, a patient he treated during his internship at OSU.
Michael Swango claimed she suffered heart failure; he had killed her by giving her a potassium injection that stopped her heart.
Michael Swango was indicted on July 17,2000, and pleaded not guilty.
At his sentencing hearing, Michael Swango admitted to causing three murders, lying about his role in causing a fourth death, and lying about his 1985 conviction.
Prosecutors read lurid passages from Michael Swango's notebook, describing the joy he felt during his crimes.
Michael Swango was sent to ADX at his own request; he had been stabbed by another inmate while serving time for lying to the VA, and feared he would be attacked again if he were placed in general population.