Dr. Death, read about how reckless surgeon Robert Liston killed his patient and two bystanders. We went into a mode of trying to figure out how to fill those shoes. And it wasnt that each one wasnt a tragedy in and of itself. And so, they wouldnt report him, so there wasnt a paper trail. And its all because of one surgeon named Christopher Duntsch a.k.a. Were you in the car listening to the podcast on the way to the grocery store and you said, 'Oh my God, I've got to make a limited series out of this?'. Dr. Death executive producer explains how Christopher Duntsch could In late 2010, Dr. Christopher Duntsch came to Dallas to start a neurosurgery practice. He was putting stuff in the wrong place. Per the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Duntsch will be eligible for parole on July 20, 2045, when he is 74 years old. or were you like, "No, we should push it further, we should make this really clear?". That was probably the biggest adjustment for me, was just the spareness of the script. Christopher Duntsch was just a regular guy who became Dr. Death after he decided to be a neurosurgeon. Magazines, Digital Dr. Death is a podcast produced by Wondery that focuses on egregious cases of medical malpractice.The podcast is hosted and reported by Laura Beil and premiered September 4, 2018. What was totally new was that Im a print journalist. That was a big focus of Collider's one-on-one interview with Joshua Jackson, who spoke openly about the differences between the American and Canadian health care systems and why it's an important step for shows like Dr. Death to include an all-female directing team (Maggie Kiley, Jennifer Morrison, and So Yong Kim directed the eight episodes). We're moving in the right direction. Copyright 2023 Meredith Corporation. Christopher Duntschs late friend and victim, Jerry Summers, claimed Dr. Death gave him his first hit of acid.. Of course, a pediatrician couldnt have done as much damage. Such significant injuries should have been never eventssomething that should never occur in an operating room, a surgeon told D Magazine, which covers the Dallas-Fort Worth area, in a 2016 piece that inspired the eventual Dr. Death podcast. [3] I realized what he really had to offer. I mean Duntsch could very easily just have been the black hat bad guy. And so, he was an attractive hire. Other patients who went to Duntsch had similar experiences: entering the operating room with the expectation of relieving a great burden and waking up to an even worse reality. Then check out the horrifying story of Simon Bramhall, a surgeon who admitted to burning his initials into patients livers. Dr. Death in surgery. 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. Yeah, I do, and theres another one that comes in later. As those watching the show know, Christopher was dubbed "Dr. Death" in D Magazine for his botched surgeries that caused the death of several patients and left others with disabling injuries. If convicted, he faces up to life in prison. Follow her on Twitter at @lizlet. Our intent was to present the story as best we could, and then allow audiences to take away from it whatever they would like to, because I just don't believe that we can answer why someone like Christopher Duntsch is or why he did what he did. 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. He stayed in New York while everyone else went home. Of course, podcast producers are subject to the same profit motive that helped facilitate a guy like Duntsch, but to their credit, Wonderys producers seem to have realized that a story like Dr. Deaths needed to be built on a foundation of solid reporting. Texas Neurosurgeon 'Dr. These are doctors who didn't sign up to become heroes, right? So, in this case, it was just a lot that went wrong, starting with the fact of Duntsch himself. Entertainment Weekly is a registered trademark of Meredith Corporation All Rights Reserved. And so, thats really what I zeroed in on, the whole systemic failure that allowed this to happen. Randall Kirby, Robert Henderson On Dr. Death Christopher Duntsch | True Because Im on there clearly, but when you can tell it through the tape, its so much better. Do you mind mentioning any of those? There, other surgeons quickly realized their new colleague was not just arrogant about his abilities but an actual danger to his patients as the casualties began adding up. So, yeah, I think the fact that he was in a profession that brings in a lot of money for hospitals was certainly a factor. Dr. Death was fired before the end of his first week for the damage hed inflicted on Brown and Efurd. She was a National . Dr. Mark Hoyle, a surgeon who worked with Duntsch during one of his botched procedures, told D Magazine that he would make extremely arrogant announcements such as: Everybody is doing it wrong. From the very start, before there were any writers and before I'd even written the pilot episode, I had said to the studio that if you are asking me to answer the question of why Christopher Duntsch is the way that he is, I will never give you that answer. Well, let me think for a second. You have reached your limit of free articles. It was also perhaps the definitive portrait of Orange County, California. I think Ava is the first person to have a completely female directed show on Queen Sugar. Duntsch was fired after he performed a surgery and immediately left for Las Vegas, leaving no one to look after his patient. and a Ph.D. from a top-tier medical school, a decade of experience, and a central role in a pioneering stem-cell treatment. So, tell me about the genesis of Dr. Death, and how it grew out of Dirty John. The question of how Duntsch was able to operate with impunity for so longwhen surrounded by many people who tried to raise the alarm and faileddrives Dr. Death, which jumps across time in each episode to show what the doctor was like as a young man, friend and medical student, and then later as a surgeon, a partner and a father. Christopher Daniel Duntsch (born April 3, 1971) [1] is a former American neurosurgeon who has been nicknamed Dr. D. and Dr. Death [2] for gross malpractice resulting in the maiming of several patients' spines and two deaths while working at hospitals in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. Like a lot of these podcasts, they do start out as a mystery, or they have a big plot twist in the middle. Kyler Alvord leads PEOPLE's politics coverage as a news editor for the brand. 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. I know you talked to a lot of his college friends, how far back into Duntschs childhood did you want to go? Vince Mancini is on Twitter. Duntsch, 44, is being held in the Dallas County Jail on $600,000 bail on charges involving the death of one patient. The patient Duntsch operated on continues to walk with a cane and lives with chronic pain. Creator/Executive Producer Patrick Macmanus (Homecoming, Happy) knew he had a ready-made hit in Dr. Death when he first learned the story of Christopher Duntsch, the Texas neurosurgeon who permanently maimed and killed patients during routine procedures. In Canada, health is a right. And frankly, if it hadnt been for a couple doctors who were watching him, who knows? Duntschs career started off bright. Yeah, I think the fact that he was a neurosurgeon was also a contributor. How does a doctor get away with something like this? Was that something that he knew? Yeah, that was a concern. RELATED: Joshua Jackson on Playing 'Dr. He wanted to be the one that was front and center and really out there. More reviews here. It was a conscious choice from the very beginning to not show the surgeries until the finale. From a creative standpoint, what is so unfortunate about the fact that you need to ask that question, and it's a totally valid question is, one would have hoped that we would have always understood that the more diverse and the better quality voices that we have in telling stories, the better the industry is as a whole. When he arrived in Dallas in late 2010, Duntsch's resume spoke of a skilled neurosurgeon: An M.D. 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. He's a psychopath. Speaking only for myself, I could have listened to seven hours of the incredibly graphic stuff. 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. 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. ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY What is Dr. Death's origin story? When people said, You werent going to be good enough, he outworked that and he made it happen.. 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. His first drug of choice would be cocaine.. Before going to medical school, Duntsch wanted to be a pro-football player. Right? Collider: And I wanted to start off just by kind of asking, there's so much of the character that you're playing, especially given that it's based on a real person, and I was wondering, what was key for you in terms of unlocking how to approach it? Dr Christopher Duntsch - YouTube It was for sure, a team effort, and it was a good team. Christopher Duntsch, the focus of Peacock's true crime series Dr. Death, looked good on paper. Planes dont crash because one big thing goes wrong. Right? So what do you think, is he just crazy? Was there anything that was particularly hard not to include? 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. had hundreds, but I figured the most important ones were the ones that play a role in the trial. There isn't a question that there is a larger theme at work in the show, which was ultimately something that drew me to the show, which is that Christopher Duntsch doesn't just wear a black hat. Determined to play football for a Division I college team, Duntsch dedicated himself to training while in high school. The trial of Dr. Christopher Duntsch in Texas was one of those most surprising revelations in the past few years. Eventually, they indicted Duntsch on five counts of aggravated assault and one count of causing harm to an elderly person. So the outcomes are totally evil, and it is unconscionable that this man was allowed to continue to create this much chaos and pain in people's lives. Jennifer Morrison, I've actually known for a very long time. The first season of Dr. Death, which launched in 2018 and ran for seven episodes, examined the life and horrific crimes of Christopher Duntsch. 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? 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. By signing up you agree to ourTerms of ServiceandPrivacy Policy. He was affable. So, while I wish that the administrations acted sooner, at the end of the day, and this is something that I've said for quite a bit now, Christopher Duntsch deserves to be in jail for the rest of his life, because how he acted was completely inhuman and any human that had that ability to feel would have stopped after the first or second surgeries. He chose Dallas after learning that Young had family near the city and she offered to go with him. Death' First Trailer, The Best TV Shows on Amazon Prime Video to Stream Now. (An exclusive trailer is shown below.). 2023 TIME USA, LLC. In a one-on-one interview with Collider, showrunner Patrick Macmanus explained how he approached telling the story of Duntsch's rise and fall while being fully aware that explaining his motivations would never be truly possible, how important it was to examine both Duntsch the man as well as the reasons why he was able to keep working as long as he did, and how having figures like Kirby and Henderson eased the way in adapting the podcast. My instinct was that the only way, that this man has to be evil, because there has to be a reason why all of this spectacularly bad stuff happened and the simplest and easiest answers he's evil. Duntsch, better known today as "Dr. Death," moved to Dallas in 2010 with impressive qualifications. 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. How much of his crazy emails and phone messages did you have to throw out in order to focus on the main story? After this, life for Duntsch fell apart. 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. The former doctor will not be eligible for parole until 2045 when he will be 74 years old. Over the course of two years, Christopher Duntsch operated on 38 patients in the Dallas area. So many podcast series, from Serial to S-Town to the incomparable In The Dark, set out to solve a mystery. How much did you worry about putting too much of that in there and it being too gory, or too graphic? You have to be very careful with that. Martin would become Duntschs first casualty when she bled out in intensive care unit after her relatively common procedure. Well, it was a team effort. In 2013, things came to a tragic head. Dr. Death season one review: a true crime podcast is even scarier - Vox I mean, truly a revolutionary act. He was intelligent. Well, thats what takes six episodes to tell. I started this back in December, and I started listening to a bunch of podcasts really carefully after this. And so, in the end, I did have to trust them, and I do. Who Is Wendy Young, The Mother Of Christopher Duntsch's Children, And It would be easy to say he is a psychopath who was doing all of this on purpose, because that's easy for us to wrap our brains around, right? Dr. Death in surgery. While Baylor-Plano conducted an investigation of Duntsch and his cases, and found that he would need to be let go, Duntsch was not technically fired from the hospital. 'Grey's Anatomy' Cast: Where Are They Now? "Between god, Einstein and the antichrist", Anyone close to me thinks that I likely am something between god, Einstein and the antichrist. He was then sent to a program for impaired physicians and still allowed to complete his surgical trainingthough how thorough the training was is unclear. Duntsch agreed by voicemail to an interview for this story on Wednesday, but did not return subsequent calls for comment. But the path to that point was a long one made difficult by the systems put in place to protect doctors and the institutions they work for, not the patients. Only years later would the Dallas district attorneys office discover through a search of hospital records that although a typical neurosurgery resident completes about 1,000 operations during their training, Duntsch had actually done fewer than 100. 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. Death' Gets Life in Prison for Botched Surgery, How Other Doctors Tried and Failed to Stop Texas' 'Dr. Inside The Death Of Chris Benoit, The Professional Wrestler Who Killed His Family And Then Himself, Archaeologists Just Uncovered A Massive Roman Phallic Carving In Spain And It Might Be The Biggest Ever Found, What Stephen Hawking Thinks Threatens Humankind The Most, 27 Raw Images Of When Punk Ruled New York, Join The All That's Interesting Weekly Dispatch. 'Dr. Death' Surgeon Killed or Maimed 33 of His Patients - People I wanted to make it easy for myself. Thats why planes dont crash that often. Fact Check: Was Dr. Oz Responsible for Cruelly Experimenting on Dogs? One conversation in Peacocks first episode of Dr. Death sums up the confusion many felt at watching Duntsch work: It was like he knew what he was supposed to do and he did the exact opposite.. Death', How We Can Learn to Live with COVID-19 After Vaccinations. KEEP READING: 'Dr. The one where EW follows up with the cast. Right? Dirty John ended up being wildly successful and is currently being adapted for a television show on Bravo. Now, a podcast called Dr. Death is breaking down the deranged surgeons criminal acts and shows how drug abuse and blinding overconfidence led to big trouble for the patients who found themselvesunderneath the spiraling doctors knife. Two patients died, one from significant blood loss after the operation and the other from a stroke caused by a cut vertebral artery. Of the 37 patients Duntsch operated on in Dallas over about two years, 33 were hurt or harmed in the process. According to D Magazine, a doctor at the hospital where Duntsch worked said that Duntsch had been sent to an impaired physician program after he refused to take a drug test. To establish that Duntschs disastrous work had been a part of a longtime pattern, prosecutors brought several of his former patients on the stand to testify about their experiences. Thats why we have these hours and hours of tape, but that said, there are a few fundamentals that were wrong. I could only go as far back as his Memphis days, so I did go back to Memphis, and I did talk to quite a few people who knew him in high school. Talk about a TV writer's dream: a story about a handsome, charismatic doctor with a killer bedside manner. His father was a missionary and physical therapist and his mother was a school teacher. 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. I think the systems were working. I needed to establish its not just that he was a little bit bad, he was horrible. 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. 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. This thrilling drama is based on a hit podcast of the same. He was then brought on board at the Dallas Medical Center where he continued his carnage. Hes cutting arteries. But I started listening to a whole lot more podcasts after. A new crime drama called "Dr. Death" is inspired by the true story of Dr. Christopher Duntsch, a Texas surgeon who was said to have intentionally maimed 32 patients during surgery, two of whom. Two patients died from his actions and many more suffered permanent injuries, including his best friend, who left Duntsch's operating room paralyzed. And there were a couple of reasons for that. Their efforts to stop him, as documented both in the podcast and show, take a long time, as Duntsch moves between hospitals and continues injuring patients. Christopher Duntsch gave me my first hit of acid.. And that's only four years ago. She is also a produced playwright, a host of podcasts, and a repository of "X-Files" trivia. There were some doctors and some plaintiffs attorneys, and later on journalists, who were all working to try to stop this guy. Death' Based on a Shocking True Story, Joshua Jackson Becomes a Dangerous 'Sociopath' Surgeon in 'Dr. It's a complicated plank that he tried to walk. The legal system will protect themselves. Dr. Death: The Undoctored Story starts streaming on Peacock Thursday, July 29. What do you think are some of the contributing factors? For you, coming at it with the job of trying to dramatize this story, what was key to approaching that? When we are alone, my love for you will let you do so because that is your nature. There are a lot of explanations proposed for why the real-life subject of Peacock's "Dr. Death" limited series, neurosurgeon Dr. Christopher Duntsch (played by Joshua Jackson), maimed and. She received The Dallas Morning News Reporter of the Year award in 2016 and 2017. I kind of wanted there to be three hours more of that, but when I was listening to it with some friends, they were putting their hands over their heads and saying No, no, no! They never turned it off though, which I think is telling, but it seemed like they were having a hard time listening. Its those two question combined the lurid, unstoppable search for an ultimate motive, and the more concrete question of how the medical system allowed this to happen and how we can fix it that make listening to Dr. Death feel like youre eating cake and taking your medicine at the same time. The pair were childhood friends and eventually became roommates. Around 2006 and 2007, Duntsch began to become unhinged. Through it all, Duntsch was able to lure patient after patient under his knife was his extreme confidence. This meant Summers could still feel pain, but was unable to move from the neck down. Many in the crowd wore the custom eye masks wed been given, to add to the audio immersion effect. Believe it or not, there was stuff I took out. According to D Magazine, Duntsch did so well in medical school that he was allowed to join the prestigiousAlpha Omega Medical Honor Society. Christophers baby mama Wendy Young described him and Jerry as the party boys, and Jerry described just how true that was. Read the crime and public safety news your neighbors are talking about. 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. 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. 'Dr Death' Stars Share Why They Think Christopher Duntsch - TheWrap She came in to have two vertebrae fused, but when she woke up she experienced severe pain and couldnt stand. But theres one lucky person who escaped, you know? However, it wouldnt be long until Duntschs seemingly perfect career began to unravel. So we shot the episodes in three different bricks. You did have a crusading whistleblower character in there. It sort of just blew that flame into a full-fledged conflagration -- not because the hospitals were necessarily to blame, but his education. Dr Death Christopher Duntsch's late patient Jerry Summers claims killer You had people that could barely move. I have 1M in debt, 10M invested, and 22 years of pain in misery already on the table", 2. Particularly for Duntsch, because it goes over such a long period of time. Death. Christopher Duntsch - AKA Dr. Death - spent 18 months as a practicing surgeon at multiple Texas hospitals until he had his license revoked in 2013. Over this period, Duntsch performed back surgeries that left his patients in a worse condition, paralyzed, or deceased.