Swango Pleads Guilty To Ohio Slaying

C O L U M B U S, Ohio, Oct. 18, 2000 -- A former doctor who prosecutors sayenjoyed killing people, today admitted to fatally poisoning awoman at Ohio State University’s hospital in 1984 while she wasrecovering from an auto accident.

Investigators believe the death of Cynthia Ann McGee, 19, begana string of poisonings in the United States and Zimbabwe by MichaelSwango, who pleaded guilty in Franklin County Common Pleas Court toaggravated murder. He admitted injecting McGee with a deadly doseof potassium when he was an intern at Ohio State.

Judge Lisa Sadler gave Swango the maximum penalty — life inprison with a chance of parole after 20 years. That was the mostsevere penalty for the crime in 1984, when McGee died.

Old Wounds ReopenedSwango, 45, made no statement and stood looking at the judgewith his chin slightly raised when she imposed sentence.

Earlier, Swango sat with his hands folded in his lap,occasionally fidgeting and licking his lips as prosecutorsdescribed how he killed McGee.

Her parents, William and Janis, did not attend the hearing.

“While we are happy to see justice having been pursued andachieved in criminal courts, we are saddened by the reopening againof old wounds,” they said in a statement read by their attorney,Brian Miller of Columbus.

“We think of all the events which Cynthia has missed and thetime which we could have shared with her, but which was taken fromus. ‘Time heals all wounds’ is just a slogan.”

Killed For Pleasure?Swango pleaded guilty last month in U.S. District Court tokilling three patients at a veterans hospital in New York in 1993and was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Prosecutorsthere read from Swango’s handwritten journal, citing it as evidencethat he killed for pleasure.

In one journal entry, Swango mused about “the sweet, husky,close smell of indoor homicide.” Another suggested that murder was“the only way I have of reminding myself that I’m still alive.”

A book about him, Blind Eye: The Story of a Doctor who GotAway with Murder, suggests Swango might have killed as manyas 35 patients as he moved from hospital to hospital, lying abouthis background.

Carol Scott of Dublin, a friend of the McGee family, said Swangoappears to have no remorse.

“I think he’s a very sick man. He’s a sociopath. He has noconscience,” she said after the hearing.

Scott said she’s glad Swango won’t be able to hurt anyone else,but regrets that he wasn’t stopped sooner.

“I wish that something could have been done when she died thatcould have protected the people that followed Cynthia’s death,”Scott said.

Family’s Lingering QuestionsThe mother of the nurse Swango was engaged to in 1992 traveled400 miles from Yorktown, Va., for the sentencing.

“When he walked into the room, I felt like I wanted to shrinkin my seat,” said Sharon Cooper, whose daughter, Kristin Kinney,committed suicide in 1993.

She said arsenic was found in her daughter’s body at the time ofher death. Before her death, Kinney showed signs of arsenicpoisoning, such as vomiting, migraine headaches, nausea anddisorientation, Cooper said.

“We know that he poisoned Kristin Kinney,” said Al Cooper,Kinney’s stepfather.

Mrs. Cooper said she liked Swango when her daughter began datinghim, but feared for her daughter’s life when she left for SouthDakota with him.

“We often wondered why this happened. Why did he do the thingsthat he did?” she said.

“I’m glad to see at least a small closure to it, but we stillhave so many questions.”

Cooper said there was no way to prove Swango poisoned her witharsenic.

End of a Long TrailProsecutors said that because they had only circumstantialevidence, they needed Swango’s admission to McGee’s death so hecould be charged in Ohio. Swango admitted to McGee’s poisoning whenhe pleaded guilty in the New York killings so he could avoid thedeath penalty.

McGee, of suburban Dublin, was recuperating from an accidentthat occurred two months earlier in Champaign, Ill., where she wasattending the University of Illinois and was on the gymnasticsteam.

After her death, Scott Bone, the 17-year-old driver of the carthat struck her bicycle, was convicted of reckless homicide andsentenced to 30 months’ probation and 1,000 hours of communityservice.

Authorities considered suspicious the deaths of at least sixpatients, including McGee’s, while Swango was at Ohio State duringthe 1983-1984 school year.

Federal prosecutors charged Swango with the New York killingsdays before he was to be released from prison after completing a42-month prison sentence for lying on an application at a New Yorkhospital. He failed to disclose that he had spent 30 months in jailand lost his medical license in 1985 for poisoning six co-workersin Quincy, Ill.