New Murder Charge Against Swango

C O L U M B U S, Ohio, Sept. 21, 2000 -- A former doctor who has admitted killingthree patients in New York and is suspected of poisoning dozens ofothers was charged today with killing a woman at an Ohiohospital 16 years ago.

Michael J. Swango has agreed to plead guilty to the charge ofaggravated murder, prosecutor Ron O’Brien said.

He is accused of injecting Cynthia Ann McGee, 19, with a fataldose of potassium in 1984, when he was an intern at Ohio StateUniversity Hospital and she was recovering after being struck by acar.

Two weeks ago, Swango pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court inNew York to killing three patients at a veterans’ hospital there in1993. A plea deal means he will spend the rest of his life inprison.

International SuspectSwango, 45, also is suspected of poisoning patients in Zimbabweand served time in prison for the nonfatal poisoning of co-workersin Illinois. A book about him, Blind Eye: The Story of a Doctorwho Got Away with Murder, suggests he might have killed as manyas 35 patients as he moved from hospital to hospital, lying abouthis background.

Ohio prosecutor Ed Morgan has investigated Swango for 15 yearsin the suspicious deaths of at least six patients at Ohio StateHospitals between 1983 and 1984.

“I’ve always felt that he’s been involved in a lot more deathsat Ohio State, but I didn’t have — and still don’t have — theevidence to prove it,” he said.

After McGee died, Scott Bone, the driver of the car that struckher bicycle two months earlier, was convicted of reckless homicide.Bone, then 17, was sentenced to 30 months’ probation and 1,000hours of community service and lost his license for several years.

His mother, Judy Bone, has said she hoped her son’s record wouldbe cleared if Swango was found to have killed McGee.