Christopher Duntsch, the focus of Peacock's true crime series Dr. Death, looked good on paper. Yeah, that was a concern. And so, in the end, I did have to trust them, and I do. (An exclusive trailer is shown below.). Death' Based on a Shocking True Story, Joshua Jackson Becomes a Dangerous 'Sociopath' Surgeon in 'Dr. His first drug of choice would be cocaine.. When we are alone, my love for you will let you do so because that is your nature. But neurosurgeons are big money makers. On that note, tell me a little bit about your background. Its lucrative for the hospital. 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. So, tell me about the genesis of Dr. Death, and how it grew out of Dirty John. One of the patients who suffered disastrous consequences was Jerry Summers, the boyfriend of Megan Kane and a friend of Christopher Duntsch. Duntsch was fired after he performed a surgery and immediately left for Las Vegas, leaving no one to look after his patient. And so, thats really what I zeroed in on, the whole systemic failure that allowed this to happen. So many podcast series, from Serial to S-Town to the incomparable In The Dark, set out to solve a mystery. I wanted to make it easy for myself. Death.. I was really lucky that the first people to ever call me up and say, Do you want to make a podcast? were really good at it. The charismatic neurosurgeon was actually a successful researcher before he starting killing people in the operating room. Well, it was a team effort. He toldLocal Memphisin 2014 that he woke up from the surgery paralyzed, which ultimately left him a quadriplegic. In 2011, Jerry agreed to letChristopherperform cervical fusion surgery at Baylor Medical Center in Plano, Texas on him. And that's frankly what I found so compelling about the character is that it's not easy. 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. Former Texas Neurosurgeon 'Dr. Death' Christopher Duntsch Subject Of Documentary, TV Miniseries CBSDFW 20K views 1 year ago 'Dr. Death,' The Neurosurgeon Who Left Patients Maimed Inside Edition. We went into a mode of trying to figure out how to fill those shoes. I mean Duntsch could very easily just have been the black hat bad guy. His father was a missionary and physical therapist and his mother was a school teacher. Before working with him, Dr. Hoyle said that he didnt know how to feel about his fellow surgeon. Duntsch agreed by voicemail to an interview for this story on Wednesday, but did not return subsequent calls for comment. She received The Dallas Morning News Reporter of the Year award in 2016 and 2017. What storytelling tools did you discover from working in a podcast format that you didnt have before, or maybe didnt think about before? I mean, truly a revolutionary act. So, he would have the title of neurosurgeon, but he wouldnt actually have to do surgery. Right? And because while we, as patients were told, well, the patient comes first. 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. Christopher Daniel Duntsch was born in Montana on April 3, 1971, and raised alongside his three siblings in an affluent suburb of Memphis, Tennessee. JACKSON: We were bouncing between time periods a lot. Peacock released the series to complement its scripted portrayal of the story, Dr. Death, which released a couple of weeks ago and stars Joshua Jackson as the titular character. What was totally new was that Im a print journalist. That is a wonderful question. By 2013, he had bounced around between hospitals, tarnished his reputation and had his medical license revoked. And so, I tried to include those details that would really establish how bad he was. 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. Yeah, and I listened to it twice, happily. But from a script, youre asking people to remember everything you just told them. or were you like, "No, we should push it further, we should make this really clear?". See, this was actually one of the disadvantages that I had. Some people woke up paralyzed; others emerged from anesthesia to permanent pain from nerve damage. 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. We need to actually reform them. And never when i not standing there. This attitude and outlook stuck with Duntsch as he set out to achieve something beyond football and landed on surgery. 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. Copyright 2023 Meredith Corporation. 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He is serving his sentence at the O.B. I have three lawsuits. So, theyre not as bad. And we did have full access to doctors as well as Laura Beil, who did the original Dr. Death podcast. The first operation he conducted in this capacity was to fix a womans compressed nerveduring the surgery, he cut an important vessel in the womans spinal cord and she bled to death. I know you talked to a lot of his college friends, how far back into Duntschs childhood did you want to go? In America, health is a service. The rambling, four-page email,sent Dec. 9, 2011, to an employee with whom Duntsch had a "personal relationship," has been submitted as evidence in Duntsch's criminal case. And by doing that, then you also bring in his patients. Talk about a TV writer's dream: a story about a handsome, charismatic doctor with a killer bedside manner. Here are seven chilling statements from that email: Unfortunately, you cannot understand that I really am building an empire, and I am so far outside the box that the earth is small and the sun is bright. The Peacock limited series, based on the Wondery podcast, covers the true story of Dr. Christopher Duntsch (played by Joshua Jackson ), whose surgical career ruined the lives of numerous. 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. So many of these serialized investigative podcasts, they tend to grow out of some kind of mystery. Out July 15, Dr. Death introduces viewers to Christopher Duntsch, a real-life Texas-based surgeon who in 2017 was sentenced to life in prison after maiming and even killing almost all of the. Eventually, they indicted Duntsch on five counts of aggravated assault and one count of causing harm to an elderly person. We definitely amped up the sound effects. And I had none of those things. So it really came down to the reporting and the telling of the story itself. The Peacock limited series Dr. Death is in many ways much more a horror story than a drama, but the villain at its center is all too real. Heres what to know about Duntsch, what he did and how he was eventually stopped. Going back to neurosurgeons being really lucrative for hospitals. As long as I could do the reporting and the writing, they were willing to show me the rest, and it worked out great. And its all because of one surgeon named Christopher Duntsch a.k.a. He decided hed be a neurosurgeon and was not going to let anything, including lack of skill or training, stop him in his quest. You can't justit doesn't come out wholly formed. Life After "Death": Lethal Surgeon Sentenced to PrisonWATCH NEXT: Attorney who represented Dr. Duntsch's patients discusses her cases (3 of 5) https://youtu.. The systems were telling us where their actual values lay. The intent of the writing was to leave it sort of an open question for audiences to draw from it as they saw. 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. Right? JACKSON: Well, actually, I think it's even one step scarier than that. Plenty, plenty, plenty, plenty. 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. Well, let me think for a second. The day that Brown suffered her stroke, Duntsch operated again. And even after he eventually lost that appeal, the train had already left the station. But unfortunately, despite the fact I am winning it is not happening fast enough. Once you got past Mary Efurd, I really didnt need to get into all that, because you got it. We're certainly not there yet. Liz Shannon Miller is a Los Angeles-based writer and editor, and has been talking about television on the Internet since the very beginnings of the Internet. Planes dont crash because one big thing goes 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. And so there was no world where they were going to let him speak to me. We've told lots and lots and lots of our stories. Ellis Unit in Huntsville and will be. And so, they wouldnt report him, so there wasnt a paper trail. And the medical board was the only ones that could really stop him, but they didnt know. After several more months of botched surgeries, Duntsch finally lost his surgical privileges altogether in June 2013 after two physicians complained to the Texas Medical Board.
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