Deep Dive
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This is exactly right. Experience the glamour and danger of the roaring 20s from the palm of your hand in
In June's Journey, you have the chance to solve a captivating murder mystery and reveal deep-seated family secrets. Use your keen eye and detective skills to guide June Parker through this thrilling hidden object mystery game. June's Journey is a mobile game that follows June Parker, a New York socialite living in London. Play as June Parker and investigate beautifully detailed scenes of the 1920s
while uncovering the mystery of her sister's murder. There are twists, turns, and catchy tunes, all leading you deeper into the thrilling storyline. This is your chance to test your detective skills. And if you play well enough, you could make it to the detective club. There, you'll chat with other players and compete with or against them. June needs your help, but watch out.
You never know which character might be a villain. Shocking family secrets will be revealed, but will you crack this case? Find out as you escape this world and dive into June's world of mystery, murder, and romance. Can you crack the case? Download June's Journey for free today on iOS and Android.
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Lady to Lady here to tell you we are celebrating our 600th episode. We commemorate every 100th show with the iconic actor and our dear friend, French Stewart. French, French, French, French, French, French, French, French. I'm French Stewart. And this time we took him to Las Vegas, baby. Tune in to hear about all the antics and make sure to check out more episodes. We've got literally 600 to choose from.
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I'm Kate Winkler-Dawson. I'm a journalist who's spent the last 25 years writing about true crime. And I'm Paul Holes, a retired cold case investigator who's worked some of America's most complicated cases and solved them. Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most compelling true crimes. And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring new insights to old mysteries.
Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime cases through a 21st century lens. Some are solved and some are cold. Very cold. This is Buried Bones. ♪♪
Hey, Paul. Hi, Kate. How are you? I'm doing well. You look rugged. Is that the right word? I don't know if rugged is the right word. I've never seen you with facial hair before. What's going on? Is there some sort of did you lose a bet or did you win a bet? I don't know.
No, you know, it's actually this time of year. I really didn't have to do any appearances or film anything. And it was like, you know what? I'm just going to change my look just for the hell of it. And the last time I was able to do this was during the pandemic where obviously wasn't doing anything.
And so, yeah, so I just decided to let it all go. And then it got a little unruly, so I shaped it up a bit. But it's probably a very temporary look is my guess. Does it not get itchy? It gets itchy down in the neck. And so, you know, when you see, you know, so you see some of these guys that really grow those huge beards and it's all the way down onto their neck. I don't know how they can stand that. But once the hair gets long, it becomes soft.
So it's not really itchy. I just don't know how those guys can really stand having that neck beard aspect.
And then like for me, my beard is not super thick through like the cheeks and the jawline. And so that's why generally the goatee is more suitable for me because I grow thicker in the chin mustache area than on the sides of the face. I didn't know that there would be variation in where a man grows hair on his face, but I guess that makes sense. So you don't want the
patchy beard plus a really thick goatee, and that's why you go for this. I get it. All right. I understand. Yeah. You know, I got to grow what I can grow and chop off what I can't. But in California versus Colorado, do you feel like your looks changed at all? I mean, do you have to conform to...
the rugged mountain man look versus in California might be a little different. I'm serious. Have you become more rugged since you've been in Colorado? Well, you know, most certainly being retired and living in Colorado, I've taken advantage of the outdoor life much more than I could, you know, but a lot of that just had to do with when I was in California, I was working full time.
So I didn't have the opportunity to potentially do some of the activities that I can do now. But also for 24 years of my career, I wasn't allowed to grow facial hair with the exception of a mustache, and I wasn't going to just have a mustache. So it wasn't until I got to the DA's office where I was allowed to at least do some facial hair. I have been in work environments before. I'm not going to name which ones, but...
Seth, no piercings, no tattoos, cover it all up. I did not realize you would have to do that working for a DA's office. Really? No, for the sheriff's office, I couldn't grow a beard. Oh, the sheriff's office. Wow. Okay. And when I did go to the DA's office, I did do the goatee look for a period of time. But, you know, it's all gray. It makes me look old. So I just...
Again, this is going to be a temporary look. It'll go away. Okay, well, this will be an interesting story for us to transition into a very conservative environment. We have not really done a lot of hospital-centered stories before in history. You know, usually I feel like we're in a potter's field where
♪♪
And we're talking about the 60s, which is, woohoo, you know, very recent. And we are also talking about New Jersey and kind of an environment where there's a lot happening. So there's a lot of science-y stuff in here that I hope you can drag me through because though I went to a science-centric high school, I am relatively clueless about a lot of science. I have to do a lot of looking up and stuff. But that's why you're here. That's why I rely on you. Yeah.
Oh, boy. I have a feeling this is going to be a stump the dummy type episode. No, I don't think so. Well, maybe. We'll see. Okay, let's set the scene.
So all of the action happens at a place called Riverdale Hospital, which is in Orodell, New Jersey. I've been to Jersey, but not this particular place. Have you? No, not really. You know, I've flown into the airport there. What's that, Newark? But have never explored New Jersey at all. Well, this is New Jersey in the 1960s. It doesn't mean much, except I think this is going to be a story of
What they did then, is there anything we could have changed today, coming to different conclusions? To me, it's a little bit also of a mystery. So hopefully you can help me out with this. But like I said, science-y, medically, we'll see how it goes. And I'm going to try to pronounce everything correctly, but just feel free to correct me if I botch something here. Okay, I'll do my best. Okay. This is a string of deaths that happened at one hospital.
And the big mystery right now is going to be, of course, who's the one doing it? Because at an active hospital, even though this is private, there are still a lot of people with access to a lot of medical items, a lot of medicine, drugs. So it's not as easy as you would think to figure out what's happening with this.
So again, medical stuff. Let me know what you think here. Our first person is a 73-year-old man named Carl Robeck. And this happens in December of 1965. So Carl comes to Riverdale Hospital. He is going for an operation to repair a hernia.
And just for context, Riverdale is described as a small private osteopathic facility in Bergen County, New Jersey. So he is supposed to have an operation to repair his hernia. So the chief of surgery takes a good look at this guy and says that he doesn't think Carl is going to be a good candidate for an operation because he has a heart condition.
So this is in the 60s. I have no idea where we stand with whether or not you should have surgery or not. But this chief of surgery has a great reputation. And he looks at him and says, I don't know, I'm concerned about this guy's heart condition. So instead of performing the surgery, the chief of surgery says, you know, I think we should take another look at his health and put him on an intravenous drip.
So we don't really know why, and we don't know if the chief of surgery was in charge of this. This is what he thinks, though, should happen. So no surgery for Carl. And I wonder, is that a valid risk, the heart condition? Would that be a risk today? Do you think that would be taken into consideration? Or are there things that can mitigate having heart problems during a surgery? My understanding, you know, of course, there's been dramatic improvements in administration of anesthesia and monitoring the patient during surgery.
And probably today, they're much better at minimizing the risk to somebody like Carl's condition with this heart. Back in the 60s, it probably was more risky. So they're going, oh, if we put him under, and whether it's the anesthesia or the stress on the body from the surgery itself, that may increase the likelihood that he could have a fatal cardiovascular event. Yeah.
Well, Carl and his family say, okay, they put him on a drip. All the doctors confirmed that this is a fine way of going about it, including the chief of surgery. Nurse puts him on a drip. The New York Times says five minutes Carl dies from having this needle inserted. Five minutes. That seems very fast. And again, we're trying to figure out what's intentional and what's not. But five minutes is alarming to at least a reporter with the New York Times who was looking into this.
So he's got this IV line that's being put into him. And I imagine, you know, initially what the IV drip has is just saline solution, right? It's just all they're doing is they're trying to, you know, hydrate him. And it's a mechanism to be able to administer drugs. And so within five minutes, there must have been something that was already within that source for the IV line.
that killed Carl? And what is, you know, was it something that affected his heart? Was it something like an opioid? You know, a fatal overdose of an opioid? Was it intentional? Is this accidental? Or was this just, Carl just decided to code out and it just was coincidental with the IV being put into him? That's what the medical examiner thinks.
He opens up Carl after he's died, and he looks and he says, man, this guy has a bad heart, damaged heart. He had a heart attack. That's clear. So this is the explanation. It becomes weird. But again, the whole point of the story is trying to kind of suss out what is intentional, what's not intentional, if anything is intentional at all. We just know that Carl came in with a bad heart, needed a surgery. They put him on IV.
And then he dies pretty quickly afterwards. So the medical examiner, I don't know if he thinks it's a coincidence. Maybe he thinks that it's just sort of the trauma around him that's happening. But he says he had a heart attack is what he believes. So I guess we're just going to wait and see. Right. Yeah. You know, and my question is, is, well, what kind of heart attack did he have? Did he have a blockage? You know, did he have this massive blockage?
And that is what killed him. Or did he have an electrical issue? Did he go into...
You know, where now the heart is not, its electrical aspects aren't functioning right and it's not effective at pumping the blood. And you can have these ventricular fibrillations where now the heart is just kind of sitting there almost in spasms and there's no blood flowing and that can be fatal as well. If it's a blockage, then I would say,
That sounds like it was coincidental. He was just, it was his time to go. Had nothing to do with the insertion of the IV or the saline or whatever is in the saline solution.
But if it was this electrical disruption, well, that could be caused by a drug that was put into Carl. I don't have a note from the medical examiner about that. He just says, you know, one plus one is two, damaged heart, this is what it looks like. So things move on. That happened, if you remember, in December of 1965. So now we are three months later, four months later, March of 1966.
And we are at the opposite end of the spectrum with age. So Carl was 73 and in bad health. Now we have a four-year-old girl named Nancy Savino.
And she is having surgery for suspected appendicitis at Riverdale. Now, I did not know. I mean, would a kid really have appendicitis? That seems young, but I don't know anything about that. Well, you know, appendicitis, I mean, it's inflammation of the appendix. And this is a common thing that does happen where now you get an infection and if it bursts, it becomes a very serious
serious. If the appendix itself bursts and now you have this bacteria that gets out into the body cavity, the abdominal cavity, that is a very, very serious condition. That's why when somebody comes in and has this appendicitis, oftentimes they act quickly because they don't want
it to get to a point to where now the bacteria is able to get to other parts of the body. Well, she winds up with a young surgeon whose name is Dr. Stanley Harris, and he's important later on. So Stanley looks at Nancy Savino and says, yep, time to have an operation.
He puts her under, takes her in. Dr. Harris removes several intestinal cysts from Nancy's body the night she's admitted. Oh, God. Is that appendicitis? Is that what that is? The cyst sounds like that was secondary. Did she actually have appendicitis? Or when he goes in and he's dealing with taking the appendix out or looking at it, he's also finding cysts and deciding that I need to remove those. That's my understanding. Right. He's there and he's like, I'm going to take these out while I'm here. Take notes, Paul. There's a lot.
There's a lot of medical stuff. Well, and generally, you know, my understanding is that cysts are typically very benign. The only time that they really are of major health concern is if they're pressing against something they shouldn't be pressing against as they grow or...
if they are causing the patient pain. I'm not sure if there's anything from something that they designate as a cyst that would require like, oh, this is an immediate health concern. Okay, so these are probably not painful. They're not causing her pain, certainly not pain separate from the appendicitis. I think it all just depends on where the cysts are. The cyst sound, at least right now, is secondary to the appendicitis.
Well, Dr. Harris says the operation went off really well. Everything was fine. The four-year-old stays in the hospital right after the surgery, and she's recovering. But within 24 hours, she takes a real hard left turn, and her condition really worsens, and she passes away 24 hours after this operation. So the medical examiner is back at it.
He does an autopsy, and this is, according to the Daily News newspaper, an autopsy revealed no medical explanation. So her death was ascribed to an, quote, undetermined physiological reaction. What is that? It means they just don't know. You know, that's fundamentally what it is. She was alive yesterday. She had the surgery yesterday.
She died. They are not seeing any physical aspects when they do the autopsy that they can attribute her death to, you know, and this is where, well, what does the tox say? What kind of drugs are in her system? You know, what's the medical history leading up to the surgery and then post-operative in terms of what is she being exposed to? So I'm imagining, you know, this medical examiner is taking all of this medical history into a
count, but still is not able to determine a cause of death. Yeah. And it doesn't sound like Rand any toxicology stuff. I don't know. That's the impression I get. I have a quick question. So this is, again, described Riverdale is described as a small private osteopathic facility. Did I say that right? Osteopathic? You said that right. You know, osteo is a bone and
But let me just look that term up. Yeah, the second thought I had regarding the term osteopathic is correct. This is more of this holistic, whole body type of medicine. So it's kind of different than going in and, okay, you're seeing a specialized surgeon. It appears that they really address things on a whole body, holistic scale, but
And I'm really not familiar with how that type of medicine differs from traditional medicine. Okay. Well, I'm showing you the hospital. Not a huge hospital. Obviously, it looks like one level to me. But they did say small and private. Oh, that is small. So, yeah. So, you're showing me a photo of the front of this Riverdale Hospital. And it is, I mean, that's like the size of maybe...
three convenience stores stuck together. Oh my gosh. That is tiny. I mean, it must just have just a handful of rooms and surgery areas. I would be concerned about going into a facility that looks like this and having some sort of major surgery being done.
Well, and in the 60s, I just wonder how many of these small private facilities were around. This is not, you know, a major city or anything where it is. So on the flip side of this, this is a small facility, but they're doing surgeries. It sounds like daily, probably.
So they have to be accustomed to death. It doesn't seem like they are alarmed at all by the 73-year-old Carl and by four-year-old Nancy dying because that just happens in surgery sometimes, I'm assuming, right? There's got to be stats on how many people they've lost. Right.
Yeah, and they track that. I know the hospitals track that very carefully. And when they start having spikes and deaths, then they really have to key in as to, well, what is going on? Because do we have – and this is where there's that very critical interplay between the medical aspect and the coroners or the medical examiners.
Even though you possibly have patients that are dying under a doctor's care within a hospital, you need to have this independent entity, the coroner medical examiner, to really double check and see, well, what exactly is the true cause of death here? And so there is a checks and balance, if you will, if it's done appropriately. But of course, things that happen within hospitals are
can be covered up, you know? And so that's part of that checks and balances where now the death investigators are going in and collecting the body. Now, hospitals often have their own pathologists, and oftentimes these pathologists will conduct autopsies on the patients who have died within that hospital setting.
Well, we have another death coming up pretty quickly. So we had Carl in December of a heart condition. Then in March, we had Nancy, cause of death unknown. The next month after Nancy, which is April of 1966, right in the middle between the two of them, 26-year-old woman...
named Margaret Henderson visits the hospital after she's experiencing severe abdominal pains. Dr. Harris once again operates on her with another surgeon this time, a different Riverdale surgeon named Robert Livingston. The chief of surgery says, this is a bad idea. I don't think you all should do this, but
He says, I want more x-rays before you do surgery. They insist, these two doctors, and Margaret has a surgery, and it seems like it went well. It's said that Margaret's recovery was, quote, uneventful. She stays in the hospital through the night, and then 6.30 the next morning. She is described by hospital staffers, Margaret, the patient, as tense and apprehensive. She
She said that she talked to a nurse and she was complaining that she was having trouble swallowing and she had pain in her legs and her chest. This was not where she had surgery. She had abdominal surgery. What is happening? Do we have any idea at this point? Let's just say we don't know anything. She doesn't have had a drip or anything unusual so far. You know, I really...
don't know in terms of, you know, this kind of this anxiety, the pain in the legs, etc. I'm not sure what's going on with Margaret. Yeah, I mean, obviously tense and apprehensive must just mean something's happening to her body and she doesn't understand it. There's an IV drip, but it's a mixture of glucose and water is what the nurse says.
You know, the two guys who did surgery on her, of course, are concerned. But, you know, I wonder if the chief of staff at this point is kind of saying, I told you not to do this. Look what's happening. You know, I wanted more information. I wanted more x-rays. So if he's talking about x-rays, this chief of staff,
X-rays on her abdomen. What would show up on an X-ray that would make him not want to do surgery on an abdomen? I'm unsure because, of course, you know, the X-rays, it's very difficult to see much of the soft tissue, you know. That's why X-rays...
work great when you're starting to talk about the bone, but soft tissue, you can see aspects. And potentially, if you have maybe a very dense mass that it would show up on an X-ray,
So I could see where if they're concerned that this abdominal pain that Margaret is having is maybe a cancer or some other type of growth inside of her that possibly the x-ray would be able to show its location better. It is odd that you have these doctors kind of debating what is the right course with Margaret.
And going against the chief of surgery, I guess they talked him into it and he allowed it to happen. But now both doctors who performed surgery on her, of course, are concerned. And they should be because that morning she died. 26-year-old who came in for surgery died. They do an autopsy. The medical examiner said she died from, here we go, big word for me, acute hepatic necrosis. Okay.
Okay. And I don't know if you need a definition. The NCBI defines it as a sudden severe liver hepatic cell death that is typical of toxic injury to the liver. Toxic injury? What is that? Is that poison or could that be alcohol or some kind of recreational drug?
Well, the fact that the pathologist is saying it's acute is indicating that this wasn't a chronic condition. This wasn't something like she had been abusing alcohol over a long period of time. And of course, that can have an impact on the liver. The term hepatic is referencing the liver. The term necrosis is the death of the tissue, the death, the cell death. The fact that it's acute indicates that her liver was exposed to something that
that caused this liver cell death to happen very quickly. The liver is such a critical organ to the body. It is sort of like these clots
clearinghouse of all the toxins in your body. Alcohol gets metabolized in the liver. Various toxic substances get rendered harmless by being metabolized in the liver. And it really keeps our body in this homeostasis. So everything is, all the chemistry within our body is in the right place.
And when the liver becomes bad, things get out of whack. And if it's acute like this, to cause death this quickly, I don't think the necrosis of the liver...
is what's killing Margaret so fast. It's a symptom. Whatever toxin is in her body is killing the liver cells, but that toxin is also going systemic, and that's what's causing Margaret to die. Well, the medical examiner is concerned because he does talk to the surgeons, and they say that she did not have any signs of jaundice before she died. That's the yellowing. Both my kids had jaundice, which...
he said would have been expected in this type of liver failure. She did not. This was unexpected for the medical examiner. Yeah. You know, no, John, this again, this is just showing that this wasn't a chronic liver condition. It almost sounds like overnight Margaret ends up having her liver exposed to something that is so toxic to the liver cells that you have this necrosis.
But she didn't stay alive long enough for this damage to her liver to manifest in other typical symptoms that you see with damaged livers over the course of days or weeks or, you know, if it's more chronic than that, such as jaundice. So that's where I kind of go back to, okay, something really damaged her liver. But the fact that her liver was so damaged, that's not what's killing her. It's whatever damaged the liver is what is killing her. Yeah.
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while uncovering the mystery of her sister's murder. There are twists, turns, and catchy tunes, all leading you deeper into the thrilling storyline. This is your chance to test your detective skills. And if you play well enough, you could make it to the detective club.
There, you'll chat with other players and compete with or against them. June needs your help, but watch out. You never know which character might be a villain. Shocking family secrets will be revealed, but will you crack this case? Find out as you escape this world and dive into June's world of mystery, murder, and romance. Can you crack the case? Download June's Journey for free today on iOS and Android.
Discover your inner detective when you download June's Journey for free today on iOS and Android. That's June's Journey. Download the game for free on iOS and Android. So that happened in April with this 26-year-old. Now we're moving up in age again to August of 1966. There's a 59-year-old named Frank Biggs.
He comes in for surgery on his ulcer at Riverdale. I didn't know that you had surgery on ulcers. That's just me being naive. I thought there were other ways to treat it, but maybe not in the 60s. My guess is, you know, when you have like I've I've had ulcers, you know, like in my stomach, which just by taking some over the counter medicines, I was able to clear up.
But you can have an ulcer that goes so deep into the tissue where you can actually perforate. The ulcer can actually perforate, whether it be the stomach lining or the esophagus lining. And there, that tissue is not going to heal. So I think that's probably why Frank is having surgery is that this is a severe ulcer. And there was fear that if it was left unchecked,
It was going to, you know, really become a major, major problem. Well, this is a no-brainer. Of course, his chief of surgery says this guy needs an operation. So Frank goes and has an operation, and everything is fine. He recovers well. But about an hour after the operation, the 59-year-old appears weak. He has difficulty breathing.
And they said he was bluish in color. What does that sound like to you? Well, if he's blue, then I would say that he is struggling to have oxygen delivered, you know, throughout his body. It's like an anoxia of some sort.
So the chief of surgery says give him a stimulant, and he is given a stimulant, and his heart is, I've never heard of this before, his heart is massaged externally. Have you heard that before? How do you do that? The only thing I can think of is it's almost as if it's like a CPR, you know, where you have some external chest compressions.
I've, of course, seen the shows like ER where during an emergency situation where now the surgeon is having to go in internally and is massaging the heart. But I'm not sure what an external massage of the heart would be. I think this is CPR. So he is given a stimulant, I'm assuming to kickstart his heart. He is given CPR, but he dies 20 minutes later.
And the medical examiner looks at him and says that he died from an excessively rapid heartbeat caused by a large amount of urine in the bladder. Told you there's a lot of medical stuff. You look confused. Rapid heartbeat by having too much urine in the bladder? Yeah. I mean, that almost sounds like...
There are individuals who have died because of this vagus nerve that gets overstimulated or hit or something. I'm wondering if that's what the pathologist, if there's some...
nervous system aspect to where now Frank, his bladder is so full that it's having a nervous system impact on the regulation of the heartbeat. That's what it sounds like to me, but I've never heard of such a thing. So it's unclear if they used an IV in this situation too, if we're thinking about toxicology, but we just know Frank is dead and now we have
a 73-year-old, a 4-year-old, a 26-year-old, and this 59-year-old. And I know age doesn't matter, but it runs the gamut. So here is one of the issues that starts worrying some of the doctors, including Dr. Harris, Stanley Harris. He starts counting. And in total, between 1965 and 1966, 13 patients die at this very small hospital, smaller than a Super Walmart.
either right before or after what are widely considered safe routine surgical procedures. This is an anomaly. And Dr. Harris lost five patients. And this was alarming to him. And it turns out in this story, it sounds like Dr. Harris is a good guy because he thinks something is going bad, but he doesn't know what's happening. He teams up with another colleague named Dr. Alan Lance.
And they start looking at all the records of these people. And they start looking at who they have in common. And they notice that most of the patients passed away after being observed or treated by one specific surgeon, Riverdale's chief of surgery. And his name was Dr. Mario Haskalovic.
So all of these people have this guy in common. And now you've got two surgeons who work under him saying he's killing people and we don't know why. Yeah. So another one of these doctor deaths. And this is why I wanted to bring this case to you, because I know there's a lot of stuff that I think you probably feel like is out of your wheelhouse. But the psychology behind this story is what's the most interesting thing?
If he did it, if it can be proven that he was responsible and that these were not accidents or coincidences, what is the mindset behind a doctor death? I don't get it. Well, this is a type of serial killer. This is a predator who has access to a victim pool. And, you know, the types of cases that, of course, I have worked during my career and continue to work are...
you know, these predators that kill using violence. But the mindset is that they are killing for their own internal needs, their own self-gratification, their own fantasy. There is a pathology there, right? Now, we have seen numerous examples of medical individuals, whether they be doctors or nurses or other types of hospital staff who have access to these things
patients, and they're killing these patients. They're not utilizing violence. They're utilizing other resources that they have access to, such as drugs, or sometimes you see asphyxia being employed. But the motivation is for their own internal reasons.
And oftentimes with this type of offender, the mindset of they're playing God, they pick and choose who dies and when that person dies. And that gives them this power. It feeds a sort of a power complex is the way that I would kind of put it.
And there are offenders, these serial killers that kill utilizing violence such as strangulation. And notably somebody like a Sam Little or even the happy face killer Jesperson who describes
This God complex, I pick and choose when this person dies, and they will strangle these victims to the point of unconsciousness and then release and let the victim come back alive and then strangle them again. That's that playing God. And I would say that this pathology within this hospital setting of, I'm going to guess that...
These victims within the hospital were killed using some sort of toxin or drug. But the person that's administering that is playing God, is doing the same thing, just utilizing a different methodology. Well, let's talk about Dr. Mario, since right now he's the prime suspect of what we aren't sure of is actually a series of murders. We don't know yet.
So when these are happening, which is '65 and '66, Mario is in his late 30s. He's from Argentina. In 1955, he comes to the United States. He gets an internship at a hospital in New Jersey. In 1962, three years before this happens, he's hired by Riverdale Hospital. He sounds like a rock star of a surgeon. He is hardworking. He has a great reputation. He's easy to get along with.
He quickly becomes chief of surgery at this small private hospital. During this time period when he's there, he even invents a stapler that's used during surgical operations in this time period. So this seems like a stellar person, which is petrifying if he's really a serial killer, like you're saying. Yeah, you know, but this is where, you know, you can have...
These predators that are very, very successful by all measures that we in our society use to say this person is good at what they do. You know, they can be very capable, very skilled. But then there's something under kind of the current that's underneath what we can see that is driving them to commit these crimes.
So Dr. Harris and his other kind of cohort in this, Dr. Lance, decide they want to do their own little investigation into Dr. Mario, even though he is their boss and supervisor. So they look inside Dr. Mario's locker, which it sounds like inexplicably is not locked. And Dr. Harris finds 18 vials of brand name versions of a drug called
Some of these vials are sealed and unused. Some are opened and partially used, and they also have syringes loaded with the curare sitting right there alongside the vials in Dr. Mario's locker. So first of all, explain why we should be concerned about curare. Yeah, this is what we call a clue. Oh, is that why I should be concerned? Okay, thank you.
No, you know, here you have this doctor who's squirreled away, in essence, this poison. Curare is something that is, it was a paralytic agent, and I'm having to look online. I had heard of it, but now I'm having to just kind of read it.
But this was a compound used by indigenous tribal people for their poison darts. And what it does is it disrupts the ability of the nerves to communicate with skeletal muscle. And so in essence, it's paralytic.
And so if you get that into your system, now you struggle to move, but more importantly, something like breathing gets compromised. Your brain can't cause your diaphragm to contract.
you know, in order to be able to breathe. That's where with the last one we talked about, Frank, who was described, he went in for an ulcer, but then after surgery, he's looking blue. Well, he's not able to breathe properly. And so that makes sense.
So I imagine that, you know, these two doctors looking in a locker and seeing this very poisonous agent being squirreled away, they're going, okay, that's not normal. And my hope is, is this is where now phone calls are being made to both law enforcement and the coroners.
Well, let me tell you something about curare that you might not know. In the '40s, this was actually used during surgery, very commonly used, as a paralytic and a muscle relaxant. I mean, they were very aware that if you didn't know everything possible about dosing, that it would be exactly what you said, it would be catastrophic for the patient. It has been phased out over the past decade or two.
But it was not particularly shocking to see this. This would not have been something they would have used, but it was in hospitals and it could have been some smaller places with some real old school doctors might have still used it. It was at one point used during surgery.
Right. And that was my understanding is that that was part of the anesthesia process, you know, back in the day. And then they've since replaced it. Right. But still, it's like today, if somebody were to go into, let's say, an anesthesiologist's locker, right?
and open it up and see a whole bunch of vials of fentanyl. Well, fentanyl is commonly used by anesthesiologists today, but why would they have it squirreled away, you know, in a location that they shouldn't have it? It should be more tightly controlled. Yeah. Well, Dr. Mario is a little shocked when he's confronted about what's in his locker, and he says, everybody's overreacting. I am not using this on patients.
I'm using it on dogs because he's running experiments related to canine liver biopsies off-site as his own project. And later on, they test stuff that's in the locker, and it's determined that his locker is indeed contaminated with dog hair and dog blood. So, of course, we don't know the timeline. We don't know if this all...
how old the dog blood is and how he actually used it. But, you know, there are people who are very skeptical of Dr. Mario and think that he put the dog hair and the blood in the locker after he was confronted with the hospital administrators to support his cover story. So when he found out that people were looking in his locker, he went back before being confronted and put this stuff in and said, you missed it. Look, here are bits of dog hair and here are bits of blood and I'm doing these experiments. What do you think about that?
Well, this is just typical. You know, when you are dealing with a suspect, you know, they're going to lie. At least my understanding on how this is progressing is now you have hospital staff who are not trained investigators who
They're conducting an investigation, and if they are now allowing, in essence, the crime scene and the physical evidence to be altered after they have discovered this incriminating evidence in his locker—
That's where I'm like, get law enforcement out there, talk to coroners, you know, let's now we've got a situation and you're not allowing Dr. Mario to have access back to the crime scene, to the physical evidence. But of course, he's going to lie and he's a doctor. He can come up with.
with an excuse as to why he has this poison. But you interview him, you lock his statements in, you conduct a proper investigation. Coroners needs to be conducting more thorough death investigations, possibly even exhuming some of these patients and seeing is there, in the 1960s, a methodology to detect this curare within the body?
None of these patients probably should have had Karari being administered to them in a formal capacity, in a medical capacity. So if there's Karari in the patients, Dr. Mario has Karari in his locker, Dr. Mario had access to the patients. Now you are stacking up the various aspects, the evidence and circumstances to show that, yes, Dr. Mario is killing patients using this Karari.
Well, this is such an interesting story because the hospital administrators and the medical examiner did none of that. Of course. The investigation went nowhere. Two weeks, they looked into it. They couldn't sort out if he did anything on purpose. And that was it.
He left Riverdale in 1966. We don't know if he was fired or if he resigned, but he left. He continued to perform surgery at other facilities in New Jersey for 10 years, Paul, this guy. Oh, geez. For 10 years. It is not often in our stories that I get to, you know, trumpet the incredible work of journalists, but...
Thank goodness, 10 years later, in 1976, there's a journalist with the New York Times named Byron Farber. He is looking into these deaths, and he does not name the doctor who is the suspect here, Dr. Mario. He calls him Dr. X, which is a great book title, by the way, Dr. X.
It's like Dr. Evil, Dr. X. Yes. And there is a huge wave of publicity in the case because he does a series. In New Jersey, the DA says, okay, let's start looking into this. They eventually convene a grand jury and they recommend murder charges. And they start to have the bodies exhumed and tested for the curare, the stuff that they found in the locker. Right.
And, you know, according to source material, there are a lot of different methods that they used. I had no idea what's available in 1976, but listen to this.
radioimmunoassay, thin layer chromatography, high pressure liquid chromatography, ultraviolet absorption spectroscopy, and mass spectrometry. Are these current tests that you know of? Have you heard of these tests before? Oh, yes. Okay. I've done all of them, except really radioimmunoassays. I mean, I've done immunoassays.
but thin layer chromatography. Actually, I haven't done, personally done HPLC, you know, the high pressure liquid chromatography, but mass spectrometry, that is a, this is a fairly advanced testing regimen. You're saying this is in the 1970s? This is 76, yeah. Okay. So, you know, this, for things like the mass spectrometry or the HPLC,
This is probably the earlier implementations of that type of instrumentation, but it is far more sensitive than something like the thin layer chromatography that goes back eons in terms of use. Thin layer chromatography is...
It's sort of like if you've done the really fundamental chemistry experiment to where you have pen ink in a test tube and you drop a piece of paper in there and the pen ink kind of wicks up the paper and it separates out into the various colors that are within that pen ink. That's a form of chromatography. Thin layer chromatography is just an advanced version of that.
And then when you get into high-pressure liquid chromatography or even this mass spectrometry, which typically is a detector that occurs after gas chromatography, this is even several evolutions past the thin-layer chromatography in terms of now you're using very sensitive instrumentation in order to separate out the components.
And so if you have a biological tissue that you extract out, you know, the various chemicals within that tissue, you can separate those chemicals out based on their physical and chemical characteristics using a chromatography method.
and then use various detectors to see what these chemicals are or what their physical properties are. So this is actually a fairly, for the 1970s, I'm kind of impressed that they are using this technology.
So what ends up happening is they were charging Dr. Mario with more deaths, but of the bodies that they exhumed, there were only three that they were able to find the presence of Karare in. And it was Nancy, the four-year-old, Carl, the 73-year-old, and Frank, the 59-year-old.
So he's now charged with three murders. And in February of 1978, this is over a decade after the deaths of these three people, his trial begins, Dr. Mario's trial begins, all because of this journalist picking up the case more than a decade later. So let's talk about motive, because I know this is going to be your favorite thing. This is what prosecutors think. They think he was motivated to murder these people to
undermine the credibility of his colleagues to make everybody else look bad and make him look good. What do you think about that? That's their theory because they know juries want a theory.
You know, I think this is where I would need to know more about his relationship with his colleagues. Is that truly a motive? Sometimes I've seen prosecutors, they want to have something that they could present to a jury that makes sense. But some of these, you know, what I talked about earlier in terms of the inner gratification that Dr. Mario, I believe, is likely getting from doing, committing these types of crimes,
is such a nebulous concept that prosecutors generally will not try to present that aspect. Maybe somebody is talking about he's talked about the jealousy that he's feeling about, you know, maybe Dr. Harris, you know, and Dr. Harris is getting some sort of award that Dr. Mario was aced out of, you know, and there's that aspect, almost a vindictive aspect
motive, but I'm not convinced that that's what's going on here. You know, if he's switching hospitals and is continuing to do this type of crime, it sounds like it's something that it's not geared towards select individuals that he's trying to undermine. He is doing it because he wants to do it.
Well, I don't think they are alleging that he did anything after leaving Riverdale. So I wonder if that goes back to...
the idea of he really didn't like these specific colleagues who were underneath him. I don't know, but I think you're right. I think that that seems like kind of a tall tale of a motive to do all of this if we really think 13. What do you think? I just don't buy it, you know, and I kind of go, you know, they charged him with the three, Carl, Nancy, and Frank, because they found the Karari in their tissues after exhumation.
They don't charge him with Margaret. And the interesting thing with Margaret is she's the one that is showing the one thing the medical examiner at the time noted, that acute hepatic necrosis.
That sounds like if Dr. Mario was responsible for her death, he used a different toxin. And they just didn't find what that toxin was. Well, this will be interesting. The defense is, of course, countering all of this with a lot of different things. So they say he didn't have a problem with colleagues. Colleagues had a problem with him. You know, they were desperate to cover up their own medical incompetence.
There is a newspaper man who is determined to get a lot of fame and fortune over digging up murder cases that weren't really murder cases. And the prosecutors are trying to hop on board. It's a big conspiracy. Everybody wants to see Dr. Mario go down because he's a successful doctor. And by the way, we don't think anything has happened since he left Riverdale. This was bad doctors who worked underneath him. It was not Dr. Mario. So...
Let's talk about the evidence because they really try to break down the evidence. So they spend a lot of time trying to discredit the prosecution's Karare overdose claims and the testing. So they are directly contradicting the prosecution witnesses, number one, who say that at least one of the victims was blue. There are other witnesses at the hospital who testify not blue. They looked pale or white.
And I know with blue, we were talking about, you know, breathing issues, heart issues. And the defense is saying we have witnesses who never saw blue on anybody. So, you know, we are not talking about a paralytic here. Yeah, but the testing of Frank, who was seen as blue. Blue, I mean, that's subjective, right? That's a color and it's based on perception. It can be something, you know, this blue hue that is seen in anoxia.
depends on the lighting conditions. Even though there's that interesting observation at the time that Frank died, the most significant evidence at trial is he had Karari in his system. So whether he was blue or pale to me is trivial relative, well, hold on, the scientific testing, the toxin came back and he had a poison in his system.
Well, the defense says you're wrong. Of course they do. Using the testimony of 21 expert witnesses, the defense goes on the attack.
They established that 10 whole years have passed since the patient's death and that things like the passage of time, the chemical processes in the body, or even the embalming could affect the integrity of Karari testing. There is a renowned toxicologist named Dr. Frederick Readers who affirms per his own testing that Karari was present in Nancy Savino's remains, but
But instead of suggesting it implies lethal poisoning, he says he's surprised that the substance showed up at all. According to his understanding of Kirari and how it interacts with embalming into composing fluids, this toxicologist didn't think it would be present after 10 years whatsoever. Yet somehow Kirari, he found via his own testing, was surprisingly pure. He said...
that he only found curare in Nancy's liver, but if it's injected with an IV, he thinks it would have been all over the place. It wouldn't have been just in the liver.
So, he is saying, this toxicologist is saying, this doesn't make sense. If we were accusing this guy of putting Karari in an IV, that's not, if it's in there, that's not the way it ended up in there. He's contradicting everything the prosecutor's saying. So, now you have an expert who's, okay, admitting, yes, Karari was detected in the liver, but
He would expect that it would be detected elsewhere and that it's possibly going to be compromised as a result of the embalming and the environmental aspects of the body being buried. But what studies is he referring to in terms of, okay, how many situations has he run across in which buried bodies after 10 years have been studied to see how Karari persists within the various tissues?
He's probably speculating to a point. Fundamentally, Karari was detected in the liver. Everything else that he's talking about, and it's not to necessarily say he's not an expert,
But it's can he reliably point to objective data to support those statements? And this is where you get into the battle of the experts on science because prosecution could probably march another toxicologist in to say, no, this is exactly what I would expect. It would only persist in the liver because it's going to be concentrated in the liver. Right.
you know, after it has been put into the body. I wonder if Frederick Readers thinks that maybe he was given a tainted sample. Because if you think about what he's saying, he's saying it shouldn't be here, it's pure, and it's only in the liver. So it sounds to me like he's thinking his sample's contaminated,
probably on purpose. Does that make sense to you? Well, the way he's phrasing that, that sounds like the allegation. You know, the prosecution, you know, ended up, whether it be at the investigative stage or, you know, once charges were filed, you know, that they dosed
the liver sample so the testing would show that it's carotid. And that, of course, would be a complete, that's a criminal act that would be setting up Dr. Mario. And my hope is that that's not what happened. But we know that that type of thing over history has happened. So I need to know more. Is there...
Why just that sample? Right. Why not dose the other samples? It'll make sure that, you know, if you really want to convict Dr. Mario, well, let's get him on all three bodies across all the various tissue samples that have been collected because they had access to all of it.
Well, and it doesn't sound like he was given the other two samples for the other two bodies because he is just talking about Nancy and that's it. Okay. So, unfortunately, we are coming to the end of our information. It is battle of the witnesses and experts as we talked about. The jury, I'm sure, isn't sure what to do here, but...
You know, 10 years later, there are witnesses who are gone. There are tissue samples and tape recordings that could have shed light on some of this. So, like, you know, interviews with Dr. Mario that have been lost or destroyed by the time this guy was indicted. This is reconstructing a case from 12 years ago. And the jury deliberates, and it takes them less than three hours to find him not guilty. Okay. Yeah.
I mean, wow, what a case because, you know, there wasn't enough information. It came late. I don't know if in 66...
when Dr. Harris sounded the alarm on this case to begin with, if they had any of these tests that you're talking about. But then the Karari would have showed up positively, I'm assuming, if they had tested them on the spot in 66. But the hospital administration, it sounds like, just totally dropped the ball on this. They stopped the investigation. They didn't turn it over to the police. And they passed him off to another hospital is what it sounds like.
Yeah. In essence, you have multiple homicides that they just overlooked. Yeah. And if they had conducted, if they had called law enforcement, worked with the coroner's office back in 66, we probably would have seen a much more thorough investigation. The evidence would be much more conclusive and possibly Dr. Mario would have been removed from being in a position where he potentially could have killed others down the road. Yeah.
Well, he is acquitted. He walks out. He eventually loses his medical license because of unrelated malpractice infractions. We don't know anything about those. It doesn't sound like if he killed somebody.
You know, the authorities never found out about it. He leaves the United States and goes back to Argentina. Probably a good idea. And, you know, he eventually dies at the age of 57 in 1984. But this hospital, Riverdale, who you have a couple of doctors who are putting things together and certainly saved people's lives by sounding the alarm. And then they are completely undermined by the hospital administration. Riverdale just never recovers. Eventually it's shuttered.
a couple of years after the trial. Their reputation is in tatters. So what is the lesson learned, Paul, from this? Is it the hospital administration needed to be held accountable for making such an awful decision? Well, imagine you have a loved one who goes into the hospital for a relatively routine procedure and dies the next day. And then you find out that one of the doctors who your loved one was under the care of
had previously been investigated for four, five, or 13 similar homicides, and it was overlooked. The lesson from my perspective is somewhat, I'm somewhat echoing what I've already said before, is that when you are dealing with people's lives
In a medical setting, you need to be familiar with when something appears to be looking like there's a criminal aspect. At that point, you need to pull law enforcement in because law enforcement is the expert in conducting that kind of investigation. They may need to work side by side with the medical experts, but that often comes from the medical examiners.
They're the ones that understand this is what happens during these types of surgeries. These are the types of agents that are administered during the surgeries. These are the risks. These are why patients die from these surgeries. And when they see patients manifesting symptoms that do not correlate with what the pathologist is knowing should be the reason why the person dies, there's something that needs to be investigated immediately.
right then and there. And that, I think, is really the message is once it looks like there's a criminal aspect, get the criminal investigators in. Well, lesson learned here. What a story. We don't visit hospitals very often, but this was a compelling one. And, you know, I'll think about probably the motive for this for a long time. Our motives are usually a lot more clear cut, but this one was not. Thank you for letting me bring this case to you, Paul. This is another sort of
not even a whodunit, it's a did he do it sort of thing. But it shows us how far we've come, you know, with medical tools and forensic tools. And so it's another good reminder of, boy, to be lucky about where we are right now in forensics and how it just keeps growing. Thank goodness. Very interesting and different type of case than what we normally talk about. So thank you for bringing it to my attention. I'm sure next week we'll have a traditional murder case for you, but I like to throw in these every once in a while. But I hope
See you next week. Thanks, Paul. All right. Sounds good, Kate. This has been an Exactly Right production. For our sources and show notes, go to exactlyrightmedia.com slash buriedbones sources. Our senior producer is Alexis Amorosi. Research by Maren McClashan, Allie Elkin, and Kate Winkler-Dawson.
Our mixing engineer is Ben Talladay. Our theme song is by Tom Breifogel. Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac. Executive produced by Karen Kilgariff, Georgia Hardstark, and Daniel Kramer. You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at BuriedBonesPod.
Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a Gilded Age story of murder and the race to decode the criminal mind, is available now. And Paul's best-selling memoir, Unmasked, My Life Solving America's Cold Cases, is also available now.