But from the people that I talked to, it wasnt so much the money, it was more that neurosurgeons are really prestigious, and theyre like one of the top people Like, if you go back and listen to what [Duntschs college friend and football teammate] Chris Dozois says, and how [Duntsch] was not great at being a linebacker, but he wanted to be the best one. Dr Christopher Duntsch - YouTube I can't think of a more enormous responsibility than trying to find an actor to play that role. 'Grey's Anatomy' Cast: Where Are They Now? They couldve just said, Youre the print person, leave this to us. But I would err on the side of less is more. No, for me, I love that stuff. Determined to play football for a Division I college team, Duntsch dedicated himself to training while in high school. Follow her on Twitter at @lizlet. And by not stopping a narcissistic sociopath, you're encouraging a narcissistic sociopath. A new four-part docuseries from Peacock premiering July 29, called Dr. Death: The Undoctored Story, peers inside the torturous crimes of Duntsch, featuring chilling stories from victims and coworkers who saw the killer surgeon in action and were forever harmed as a result. What do you think are some of the contributing factors? 5 years after 'Dr. Death,' doctors still come to Texas to leave pasts Despite her qualifications as a reporter, Beil was also a podcast newbie. He shared: We were like 19 years old, I remember we were driving down the road, and he was like, You wanna take a hit of acid., And I was like, Yeah, Ill take a hit of acid with you. And we popped, hit acid., Jerry revealed: I had never taken a hit of acid before. And you know, the hope and dream is that the generation that comes up behind me, it seems inconsequential whether it's all women, all men or a blend of something in the both. So it really came down to the reporting and the telling of the story itself. It sort of just blew that flame into a full-fledged conflagration -- not because the hospitals were necessarily to blame, but his education. Yeah, hopefully even just asking that question today almost feels a little bit dated. In the doc, Jerry, who died in February from an infection connected to the botched surgery Christopher performed on him in 2011, gave an interview about their friendship and the operation that eventually led to his death. "License to Kill" and "Botched" host advises on how - YouTube I believe that it was an outgrowth of the fact that by the time these administrations caught up with what he was doing, they had already moved him on. His very first operation at the hospital would once again turn deadly. I know you talked to a lot of his college friends, how far back into Duntschs childhood did you want to go? Duntsch received his undergraduate degree from the University of Memphis and stayed in town to receive an M.D. 12 Unnerving Facts About Dr. Death Christopher Duntsch - Ranker and a Ph.D. from a top-tier medical school, a decade of experience, and a central role in a pioneering stem-cell treatment. Hed had a whole string of bad surgeries before it even came to the attention of the medical board. That was the thing that people around me were really reacting to. Duntsch moved on fairly quickly, to the Dallas Medical Center, where officials allowed him to begin operating while they conducted his reference checkswhich ended in disaster. Death.. Duntsch was fired after he performed a surgery and immediately left for Las Vegas, leaving no one to look after his patient. He chose Dallas after learning that Young had family near the city and she offered to go with him. Dr. Death: Where Is Christopher Duntsch Today? - Grunge I listened to this with some friends at one point, and there was a lot of cringing at the medical butchery descriptions. How did this happen? 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. "This defendant single-handedly. The systems were telling us where their actual values lay. While he did make it on to a couple of college teamsone in Mississippi and one in Coloradoformer teammates said he had trouble keeping up in practice but would plead with coaches to let him keep trying. Before working with him, Dr. Hoyle said that he didnt know how to feel about his fellow surgeon. But from a script, youre asking people to remember everything you just told them. This thrilling drama is based on a hit podcast of the same. Per the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Duntsch will be eligible for parole on July 20, 2045, when he is 74 years old. According to Summers, he first met Duntsch in junior high school in Tennessee when they both played football together and remembered him being a "real smart" and "hard-working guy." As an undergraduate in college, Duntsch even lived with Summers and Summers' grandmother. Theyre not just props in your story, they are real people whove lived this, and you need to just be respectful of that, and not fall into tropes, and not exaggerate what theyve been through, but also not diminish it. (A mock-up of the billboard Wondery paid to put in front of the hospital where its subject used to work). But perhaps more terrifying, the show depicts the chilling real-life story of Dallas-area neurosurgeon Christopher Duntsch, who stands accused of killing or maiming more than 30 patients in the 2010s. And they have a really compelling sympathetic through-character that you can sort of latch onto the whole time, like in S Town, or Serial. and Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee Health Center. Duntsch, sentenced to life in prison in February 2017, is believed to be the first surgeon sentenced to go to prison for a botched surgery, according to USA Today. Naysha Lopez hilariously previews 'fashion' and 'some ugly stuff' on, Kandy Muse will be 'the main character' of. So it has to be taught through generations. Sign up for PEOPLE's free True Crime newsletter for breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases. You can find out more and change our default settings with Cookies Settings. He was intelligent. Heres what to know about Duntsch, what he did and how he was eventually stopped. And that disconnect from reality, I found really compelling. That made it easy for him to hide from his past for a certain period of time. WFAA-TVChristopher Duntsch a.k.a. Im saying the system played a role in it, but it was clearly his fault. The value of the legal system, right, of tort reform in the state of Texas was placed above the safety and remuneration of the patients and victims. Well, thats what takes six episodes to tell. White men also have stories to tell. Of the 37 patients Duntsch operated on in Dallas over about two years, 33 were hurt or harmed in the process. Chief among them is the mystery of whether Duntsch was homicidal or simply criminally inept. 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? Duntsch declined a reporter's request for a jailhouse interview Tuesday. And theyre great at Wondery, and theyre really good at doing what they do. Despite this refusal, Duntsch was allowed to finish his residency. Dr. Do you mind mentioning any of those? And the other part of it, is that the reason that it kind of starts out like that is you really need to know from the outset how bad a surgeon he was. Podcasts status as a new medium, in which the rules have yet to be codified crystallized for me a few weeks back, when I sat in a dark screening room at United Talent Agency with a group composed largely of fratty, agent-y men in suits listening to a non-fiction account of an evil surgeon. They were trying to process the horror that was Christopher Duntsch as they were going along, because they couldn't answer the question that we began with: "Why does he do what he did?" 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'. Was this familiar territory for you? JOSHUA JACKSON: Well, the first key and probably the most difficult hurdle for me to get over was to not judge him. 7 chilling thoughts of jailed neurosurgeon Christopher Duntsch And it wasnt that each one wasnt a tragedy in and of itself. Its interesting, because when I heard at the premiere, people were reacting to things that I didnt anticipate them reacting to. The charismatic neurosurgeon was actually a successful researcher before he starting killing people in the operating room. And its all because of one surgeon named Christopher Duntsch a.k.a. KEEP READING: 'Dr. I have to figure out how to humanize this guy.'. This time on 53-year-old Mary Efurd. Did you find out if this guy was torturing animals as a child or anything like that? Anatomy of a Tragedy: The Story Behind 'Sociopath Surgeon' Christopher I would say that he and I both were cokeheads. So, in this case, it was just a lot that went wrong, starting with the fact of Duntsch himself. "Never ever f***ing argue with me and banter or what the f*** ever in front of anyone. That was probably the biggest adjustment for me, was just the spareness of the script. What are the potential pitfalls for you as a reporter? Some are on the tape, some are not, just for space reasons. She received The Dallas Morning News Reporter of the Year award in 2016 and 2017. I can tell you that I do believe that he was a product of nature, nurture and the system that enabled him to be able to do what he did. Dr. Death: How Many People Did Christopher Duntsch Kill - POPSUGAR this link is to an external site that may or may not meet accessibility guidelines. In July, he performed an operation on a woman who lost a tremendous amount of blood and lost consciousness upon waking up after surgery. Both the scripted Dr. Death series and the Dr. Death: The Undoctored Story docuseries are now streaming on Peacock. But there would be certain things that I would hear and like and not like. Well, thank you for your time. So, the other big mystery as you already pointed out was like, how did the medical system allow this to happen? And then in this case, it seems like if there is a mystery its just, what is this guys deal? Those were way more telling than the emails, I thought, because if you just read through those you get kind of a look into his mind. Because whether it be a hospital network, whether it be a medical board, whether it be the legal system, it doesn't actually place the little guy first. Christopher Duntsch may be the most famous neurosurgeon in Texas. And what happened after shows how Duntsch was able to continue working as a surgeon in Texas, despite the trail of broken trust, chronic pain and death he left behind. What Was 'Dr. Death' Christopher Duntsch's Background? | True Crime Buzz Christopher Duntsch, the focus of Peacock's true crime series Dr. Death, looked good on paper. Its lucrative for the hospital. Well, it was familiar content-wise because Im a medical reporter, so Ive never covered anything else. Duntsch's criminal defense attorney claims her client made honest mistakes while performing risky surgeries. And then the rest were injuries. And so, there were times that I would say, Do we really need to have ? And they were open to it all. [We wanted to profile] enough patients where it was established what he did and the pain he caused, but there was also a danger the only way I know to describe it is a sort of victim fatigue. And thats really true for any medical story, I think. I limited myself to those emails that were produced as evidence in the trial, because the D.A. And so, thats really what I zeroed in on, the whole systemic failure that allowed this to happen. And by doing that, then you also bring in his patients. 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 Duntsch's story takes place. And so, one of the overriding things is that when he was at a hospital and it would become apparent how incompetent he was, the hospital would let him go, but they wouldnt do it in such a way that would warn everybody else. It was a conscious choice from the very beginning to not show the surgeries until the finale. Had he explored his research and stayed in that lane and never gone to operate, we'd be talking about him in an entirely different fashion today. Death, The New Terrifying Podcast About A Criminally Inept Spine Surgeon, The Best Coachella 2023 Performances Were Reflections Of Pure Joy, My (Non-Anonymous) Ballot For The 2023 Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame, HBOs White House Plumbers Delivers An Absurd Historical Snapshot And A Knockout Performance From Justin Theroux, The Rundown: Ted Lasso Has Created A Delightful Little I Think You Should Leave Conundrum, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. Death', How We Can Learn to Live with COVID-19 After Vaccinations. So we were bouncing around quite a lot. So many of these serialized investigative podcasts, they tend to grow out of some kind of mystery. Like, let the story speak for itself. I have 1M in debt, 10M invested, and 22 years of pain in misery already on the table", 2. You listen in horror to what feel like slow-motion car wrecks, captured in Wonderys signature immersive soundscape, as Duntsch drills screws meant to anchor bone into soft tissue and inexplicably snips nerve bundles that control important motor functions, causing irreparable harm. Victim of Real-Life 'Dr. Death' Believes There Are Others Like Him Out He was charming. The legal system will protect themselves. So, he would have the title of neurosurgeon, but he wouldnt actually have to do surgery. We went into a mode of trying to figure out how to fill those shoes. I mean, truly a revolutionary act. . The value of the doctors, right? Texas Neurosurgeon 'Dr. Dr Death Christopher Duntsch's late patient Jerry Summers claims killer He was even part of a group that founded the biopharmaceutical company Discgenicswhich focuses on developing regenerative cell-based therapies to help with painand brought on two of his mentors in surgery as investors. I felt sick for most of the last three years in the best possible way. Christopher Duntsch was allowed to keep on moving because he himself represented value in the specialty that he was in, in frankly, the face that he presented, he was valuable to these institutions. Duntsch, hes an outlier for sure, but he exposed a lot of larger truths about the healthcare system. When we are alone, my love for you will let you do so because that is your nature. Yeah, I do, and theres another one that comes in later. In 2013, things came to a tragic head. Were there some that you were trying to avoid sounding like. Right? He was putting stuff in the wrong place. All Rights Reserved. Do you want to add anything? The patient Duntsch operated on continues to walk with a cane and lives with chronic pain. Does that make sense? Magazines, Or create a free account to access more articles. His surgeries actually get even worse. It was a gold mine. She is also a produced playwright, a host of podcasts, and a repository of "X-Files" trivia. So, to be able to have someone who a true believer in the system in Henderson play up against somebody who is, for lack of a better or more tropy word, a maverick within the system, in Dr. Kirby, and to have a character like Kirby who infuses humor into everything that he does, the real life character, I think, we underplayed his humor quite frankly, was a blessing or a gift as you say to us as writers. What can I find out about this guy? 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 . Tackling some of the same stories that in years past might have gotten one sensational episode on Dateline NBC, the more expansive, more bingeable podcast format seems to allow them to become both more memorable and more consequential. The day that Brown suffered her stroke, Duntsch operated again. Where Is Dr. Death Now? - Here's Where Christopher Duntsch Is Today in 2021 Its just that I figured the listeners would sort of get it, that he was really bad, and he ruined a lot of peoples lives. When people said, You werent going to be good enough, he outworked that and he made it happen.. The episodes will include interviews from Duntsch's ex-girlfriend, who mothered his two children; his best friend, who he paralyzed during an operation; several of Duntsch's former colleagues, including a surgeon who physically tried to stop him during a surgery gone awry; and other victims and lawyers close to the case. Here, Macmanus talks about how he first discovered the ghastly true story behind Dr. Death which stars Joshua Jackson and drops today on Peacock -- and whether he thinks Duntsch is truly crazy. The screen, almost vestigial now, displayed a still graphic. But not in front of my lawyers and accountants and partners and employees and friends. "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.". After a fall in her kitchen, Martin experienced chronic back pain and sought out surgery to alleviate it. Christophers late childhood best friend added: Chris was very intrigued with a lot of the stuff going on in my life. But even inside it, there was some times where sequences would line up as chronological, but the timeline was a lot to keep your head around. It was also perhaps the definitive portrait of Orange County, California. So we shot the episodes in three different bricks. His very first operation at the hospital would once again turn deadly. But the truth was far more complex. The intent of the writing was to leave it sort of an open question for audiences to draw from it as they saw. The good news is, is we had thousands of pages of research, thousands of pages of court documents, tons of hours of interviews. You just reminded me, that was another danger that we were really grappling with. We're moving in the right direction. Many in the crowd wore the custom eye masks wed been given, to add to the audio immersion effect. Death' Review: Joshua Jackson Is Terrific in Terrifying Peacock Series That's as Sharp as a Scalpel. To become a neurosurgeon, one typically has to complete over 1000 surgeries in residency, but somehow, reporter Laura Beil discovered that Duntsch only completed 100. Left: WFAA-TV, Right: D MagazineLeft: Christopher Duntsch in surgery, Right: Christopher Duntschs mugshot. Dr. Christopher Duntsch had the hallmarks of an impressive neurosurgeon, at least in theory. I think that it would do a disservice to the story to try to find the pretty pink bow to tie on the story, to let people know how this creature could possibly be. 'Dr Death' Stars Share Why They Think Christopher Duntsch - TheWrap But depositions from Duntschs peers who knew him around that time period, between 2006 and 2008, point to cracks in the facade. 3 Might Make You An Emotional Wreck, How Bail Bag Helps The Formerly Incarcerated Get Back On Their Feet, Advice From A Finance Pro For How To Survive (And Thrive) In This Economy, Why We Shouldnt Forget About The Game Stop Short Squeeze, Five Cities Where Latinx Street Art Is Alive And Well, Travel Budgeting Pro Gabby Beckford Shares Her Best Financial Advice For 2023 Adventures, We Blind Tested Our Favorite Fast Food Double Cheeseburgers & Crowned A New Champ, How To Actually, Truly Buy Pappy Van Winkle Bourbon For Real, Were Picking The Very Best Air Jordan IIIs Of All Time, In Control: Quentin Grimes Is Writing His Own Story With The Knicks, Amanda Renner On Getting To Dig Deeper With Player Interviews At The Masters, Charlotte Flair Continues To Carve Out My Own Path Ahead Of WrestleMania 39, Maxo Decries The Face Of Stone Portrayed By A Fake Friend For UPROXX Sessions, Talib Kweli & Cormega On The Realness II, Nas, The Firm, Large Pro, Queens, Luh Tyler Goes Behind The Video For His Law & Order Visual, Sandra Mejia Is Bringing The Healing Power Of Plants To The Green Desert Of South Central Los Angeles.
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