Case of Dr. John Schneeberger
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A prominent Canadian doctor is accused by one of his patients of being drugged and raped even though the patient can't remember what happened. The doctor voluntarily provided his DNA sample three separate times, each time proving that his DNA doesn't match the rape kit. But the victim insists that she was sexually assaulted even though the forensic evidence is stacked against her.

With the DNA not matching, there was nothing left to do but close the case. Years would go by without an update, until one day, a shocking admission forced police to reopen the case. Was it possible that the DNA forensic evidence was wrong? This week on Forensic Tales, we cover the story of Dr. John Schneeberger. ♪

Welcome to Forensic Tales. As always, I am your host, Courtney. Each Monday, we release a new episode that discusses real, bone-chilling true crime stories and how forensic science has been used in the case.

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Hi Forensic Tales listeners. I hope you guys are all staying safe and healthy right now. I know that we've all been staying indoors quite a bit lately for the past couple weeks now. I know my schedule and routine has been super out of whack. I literally don't even know what day it is sometimes. But hey, at least we all get to listen to a little bit more podcasts nowadays.

So our story this week takes us to October 1992 in a tiny town in the southeastern part of Canada known as Kipling. And to give you an idea of exactly how small the town of Kipling really is, the place literally has twice as many animals than people, okay? It's a farming town with less than 1,200 residents.

So the term everyone knows everyone is totally true when it comes to this place. So on Halloween night, October 31st, 1992, a young woman by the name of Candace was working at a local gas station. Now living in a town with only 1,200 people, I can't even imagine how slow that gas station must be on a day-in-day basis.

So Candace's boyfriend decided to come to the gas station to hang out with Candace while she's working and, well, because it was Halloween night. But things don't exactly go well between Candace and her boyfriend that night. And they actually get into a really bad fight with each other. They're arguing and they're fighting and her boyfriend just decides, hey, you know what? I think I'm out of here.

So a few hours later, Candace gets off work from the gas station. She's still super upset about the fight with her boyfriend. So she decides to go to the local hospital, Kipling Medical Center, where her best friend works. Now, I know that after a fight with any guy, the only person that I want to see is my best friend.

But when Candace shows up at the hospital to see her girlfriend, she finds out that she isn't working that night. Now, by this point, she's pretty hysterical because of the fight she had with her boyfriend. And now she's at the hospital and her best friend isn't even there.

So a nurse working the night shift approaches Candace and she's like, hey, are you okay? You look pretty upset. Like what's going on? And because Candace is so hysterical, the nurse gets her to sit down and basically gets her to agree to see one of the doctors who was on call that night.

So Candace gets put in one of the hospital rooms and she actually starts to calm down when she sees the doctor walk into the room. And that's because the doctor on call that night is someone that she knows, right?

It's actually the same doctor who delivered her very own baby, Dr. John Schneeberger. Now, I would say here that it's a small world, but going back to the fact that this town is only 1,200 people, I guess it's not too surprising that it's the same exact doctor.

So Candace meets with Dr. Schneeberger and she tells him all about the fight with her boyfriend and he offers to give her something to calm her down a little bit. He knows that she's super worked up and he assures her that this will make her feel so much better. Now, because Candace knows this doctor, it's not like this is some stranger to her. She agrees and the doctor administers the medication through a needle in her arm.

As soon as the medication hits her bloodstream, Candace loses all control over her body. She can't speak. She can barely keep her own eyes open. It's like she instantly becomes numb.

When she finally comes to, out of the fog, she finds herself completely alone in the hospital exam room. And as she comes to, she gets this intense feeling that she may have been raped. Candace isn't entirely sure what exactly happened. All she can remember is her body going numb, not being able to see straight or even talk, but something in her body just doesn't feel right.

Fearing that she's been raped, she takes off her underwear and places it inside of a bag that she finds in one of the hospital room drawers. Now, let's just stop here for a second. Just the fact that she had the presence of mind to do something like that, even after thinking that she may have been just raped, is pretty remarkable, right?

Because she knows that if she was in fact raped, that she's going to need to preserve some form of evidence to prove it, especially since she can't even remember it happening. So she puts her underwear in a bag and heads out into the lobby of the hospital. She passes by several nurses and other hospital staff, but she doesn't say a single word to anyone about the possible rape. She just goes straight home that night.

So the next day, Candace wakes up and she just has a feeling inside of her gut that she was raped. She didn't dream it. She didn't make it up. She knew she'd been raped. But Candace doesn't go to the police. She doesn't go to her parents or her friends. She goes directly to Dr. John Schneeberger.

Candace goes back to Kipling Medical Center and she confronts Dr. Schneeberger. Not only does she confront him about the drug he gave her, she also confronts him about being raped. But Dr. Schneeberger completely dismisses her. He tells her nothing happened, that he gave her a sedative to basically calm her down and that was it. But Candace is like, no, you're wrong. Finally, the doctor tells her, look,

I gave you a pretty strong sedative last night, and one of the side effects to that drug is severe hallucinations. Candice, you hallucinated last night, and that's it.

So she's got nothing left to do here but to basically just head back home. And once she gets home, she just breaks down crying. She can't understand why she thinks she's been raped because she can't remember a single thing. She just knows in her heart of hearts something happened. So she decides that the only way to prove that the rape happened is to go get a rape kit done.

So she drives to a town about two hours away from her house to get the rape test done. And the test results come back. And well, the test result found evidence of semen and her blood test revealed the presence of the drug Versed. Just like what Dr. Schneeberger said, Versed is a sedative and one of the drug's main side effects is hallucinations and also has a very strong amnesic effect.

all of which exactly explains what the doctor told her about what happened. She took the sedative, experienced a hallucination, and can't remember what happened after that. But even with all of this in mind, Candace still believes that she was raped by the doctor. Just that gut feeling was telling her something just isn't right here.

So she basically very publicly accuses Dr. Schneeberger of drugging her with a super powerful sedative and raping her right there at the hospital. But the problem is that

Well, Candace is a single mother, while Dr. Schneeberger is a really well-respected doctor in town. He has a really good reputation at the hospital with his patients and was just a well-respected guy in the community. Definitely not someone who you would suspect of being some sort of rapist. So it comes down to the single mother accusing a well-respected doctor of rape.

No one throughout the town of Kipling believed Candace's story about being drugged and raped that night. Besides the fact that she was a single mother and that she had in her system a highly hallucinogenic drug, Candace never told anyone at the hospital that night that she was raped. Remember, she just went straight home the night of the alleged attack. So people wondered, like, why didn't she say anything when she had the chance?

On the night of the alleged rape, there were two nurses on call that night, and Candace didn't tell either one of them about the assault. Plus, neither nurse reported seeing or hearing anything unusual coming from the hospital room where Candace and Dr. Schneeberger were.

Now personally, I think it really sucks that people assume or they think that just because she didn't say anything right away that it automatically means that she's lying or she's making it up. I don't think it's right or that it's fair that we tend to judge women in this way, but unfortunately it's just the way that a lot of people are going to think.

And then people were talking about how Candace just wanted to get money from the doctor, that she for some reason was trying to ruin his marriage with his wife, and they were saying a bunch of things about her once she publicly started to accuse the doctor. So even though most people really didn't believe Candace in her story,

John still had his reputation as a doctor to protect. And plus, the guy was married. He really needed this rape allegation just to completely go away so he could get on with the rest of his life. So he actually voluntarily offered to give a blood sample to have it compared to the DNA found during Candace's rape kit to finally prove that he was completely innocent here.

And within a few days, the DNA test results came back. And John's DNA did not match the rape kit. His DNA was not a match to the DNA obtained from Candace's kit, which you can say officially clears Dr. John Schneeberger of the sexual assault.

Once the DNA officially cleared Dr. Schneeberger of the rape, everyone just kind of went back to their normal lives. You know, he went back to his practice at the hospital. He continued being a husband and a father. Things just went back to normal for him. Except for Candace.

Even though the DNA test proved that it wasn't the doctor's DNA, Candace still believed something happened that night. And regardless of the test results, she believed she could still prove it. A year later, in August 1993, Dr. Schneeberger agreed to a second DNA test. This time, though, the test would be monitored by the police.

So the police arranged for the doctor to come down to the station where they could personally watch the needle go into his arm and they could watch his blood be drawn into the vial. So there wouldn't be any question about the validity of the DNA test. Nothing. Just like the first time, the sample was sent off to the lab for testing. And once again, the doctor's DNA was not a match to the DNA found in the rape kit.

So by this point, the police had absolutely no choice but to officially close the rape case against the doctor. He had already taken two blood tests, both officially ruling his DNA out. And even though Candace's rape kit came back positive for the presence of semen, she argued that she hadn't had intercourse with anyone for weeks prior to the night at the hospital.

But again, with the two DNA tests proving his innocence, the case against the doctor had to be closed. If the police weren't going to do anything about it, Candace decided that it was time to handle things on her own. So she decides to hire a private investigator by the name of Larry O'Brien because she wants to see what she can find that can finally prove that she's telling the truth.

Private Investigator O'Brien goes to Dr. Schneeberger's house one night and actually breaks into the doctor's car. And inside of the car, the PI was able to get several pieces of hair from the car's headrest. And inside the center console, the PI found a chapstick tube. Really, he was looking for anything that would have the doctor's DNA on it.

So he collects the strands of hair and the chapstick and goes back to Candace and is like, here's what I got. What do you want me to do with it? And without question, she's like, okay, I will pay to have the hair and tube of chapstick to be tested for DNA at a private lab. So it's sent off to the private lab and all there is to do now is wait for the test results.

The first thing that comes back from the lab are the results of the strands of hair from the headrest. But unfortunately, the strands of hair didn't have any roots attached to them, which is the part of the hair that actually contains our DNA. So they weren't able to extract anything from the hair. But the chapstick from the center console, well, that was a completely different story.

The test results from the private lab determined that the DNA on the chapstick was a perfect match to the DNA from Candace's rape kit. Even though the DNA on the chapstick matched the rape kit, there were two really big problems here. One, the break into Dr. Schneeberger's car was completely illegal. They didn't have a warrant to do that or anything.

And second, how do we even know the chapstick belonged to the doctor? There's no way to really prove it. So Candace decides that if she can't go after the doctor criminally, then the next best thing to do is to go after him civilly. Candace and Dr. Schneeberger are face-to-face again at the first civil hearing.

But this time, the doctor's wife, Lisa, is right there by her husband's side. It must have just felt like the entire world was against Candace by this point. But she was determined to do whatever necessary to prove her side of the story. And at the civil hearing, Dr. Schneeberger agrees yet again. Now, this time is the third time in case you've lost track.

for him to give a blood sample. This time around, the police put into place even more precautions to ensure an accurate sample. They take the blood sample at the police department's forensic lab where the whole thing was videotaped. And the technician taking the blood sample works for the forensics lab. They did everything they possibly could to ensure an accurate blood sample was being taken from the doctor.

So the technician asks for Dr. Schneeberger's finger in order to draw the blood sample. And the doctor's like, oh no, I'd really prefer if you took the sample from my arm. And the technician's like, well, I don't really need to do that. I just need a tiny blood sample, which your finger will do just fine here.

But Dr. Schneeberger is like, but I really can't have you draw the blood from my finger because I have this blood condition that causes me to bruise. So I'd really prefer the arm. A little suspicious, the technician goes ahead and sticks the needle in the doctor's left arm to get the sample. But nothing comes out. So she adjusts the needle a little bit. And again, nothing comes out.

This time, she takes the needle completely out of his arm and starts massaging the vein to get some blood pumping. And as she's doing this, she noticed that the doctor's vein is really, really big, which usually indicates a lot of blood flow, which is strange because she can't seem to get any blood to come out to collect the sample that she needs.

So she tried inserting the needle into his arm yet again. This time, she's able to get just the amount she needs to be able to properly test the blood and then send the doctor home.

But something just didn't seem right to the technician. She really wondered why it was so hard to get the blood sample when his veins were so big. And she kept wondering why he was so insistent that the blood sample come from his arm and not his finger. And on top of everything, the blood sample just looked weird.

This technician sees human blood day in and day out, but there was something about this blood sample that just seemed off. With basically no evidence to argue with the doctor's blood sample, the technician runs the DNA test and once again compares it to the DNA from Candace's rape kit.

For the third time, the DNA test proved that the doctor's DNA did not match the rape kit. Once again proving Dr. John Schneeberger is completely innocent.

Dr. John Schneeberger's life once again goes back to normal. He continues his work at Kipling Medical Center, and by now he's a father of four children. He has two children of his own, and he's a stepfather to a son and another daughter. And that's kind of how things remained for the next several years, actually. Until April 1997, when everything took a turn that no one could have seen coming.

In April 1997, over five years since Candace first accused the doctor of the assault, the doctor's stepdaughter came forward with a shocking admission. Dr. Schneeberger's 15-year-old stepdaughter comes forward and says that for the past several months, he's been coming into her room late at night and giving her injections.

According to the stepdaughter, that's when he would then assault her. The news of Dr. Schneeberger coming into his stepdaughter's room at night, injecting her and then assaulting her came as a complete and terrible shock to the doctor's wife, Lisa.

Here Lisa was. She stood by her husband's side all those years while he was being accused of the sexual assault. And now her very own teenage daughter comes forward with this.

Lisa can't stand by him any longer. But before she goes to the police with her daughter's story, she wants to find out if she can find anything that the police might need to build a better case against her husband. Lisa knows her husband is a very dangerous man. For years, she defended him against his patient's claims.

And now, she's not even sure if she can believe him at all. So, she does the only thing she thinks she can do. She starts going through all of her husband's stuff one day while he's working at the hospital. She needs to find something. She needs to find proof of her daughter's story. And as Lisa starts searching through her husband's home office, she cannot believe what she finds.

Right there, inside her husband's office, she finds condoms, she finds drugs, and she finds needles. Lisa Schneeberger goes to the police with the allegations her daughter brought forward, and she tells them all about what she's found inside her husband's office. Dr. Schneeberger was immediately arrested by police and taken into custody.

While in custody, he adamantly denied ever drugging his stepdaughter or assaulting her. But now that the doctor was finally in police custody, they had everything they needed to collect more than just a blood sample from him. This time, they take Dr. Schneeberger's saliva, hair, and they take blood from his finger, not his arm. They take everything they possibly can.

Since the last blood sample Dr. Schneeberger provided, police were highly suspicious of him and his involvement in the assault of his patient Candace years earlier. Because he insisted on only giving blood from his arm, not his finger, and the fact his blood barely came out when the needle was finally able to draw blood.

But now, police had all kinds of his DNA. His hair, saliva, everything. And this time, they were finally able to compare his DNA to Candace's rape kit from over five years ago. Unlike the first three times of testing Dr. Schneeberger's blood to the rape kit, this time, his DNA was a perfect match. But how was this possible?

How was it possible that after testing his DNA three different times over the last five years, never being a match, and now his DNA is a perfect match? The police didn't need to know the answer to that just yet, because they had all they needed to finally charge Dr. John Schneeberger with the sexual assault of his former patient, Candace.

Dr. John Schneeberger was charged with rape, administering a noxious substance, and obstruction of justice. He pled not guilty to all charges and his trial began in 1999. The biggest question everyone had at trial was how was he able to beat the DNA test three separate times before it finally came back as a match. Well, at trial, it all came out.

The doctor revealed that in order to fool the DNA test, he implanted a 15-centimeter Penrose drain filled with another man's blood into his arm. A Penrose drain is used as a surgical drain to basically prevent fluid backup during surgery. He had implanted one right there into his very own arm.

He also used blood thinners in order to circulate the other man's blood inside of his arm. He did all of this in order to cheat the DNA test of his patient's rape kit and get away with it. He was able to trick the technician into taking the blood sample from the same arm that he implanted the tube inside.

And when it's done properly, his blood would never be a match. Because it wasn't his blood. It was someone else's entirely. Dr. Schneeberger was found guilty of all three charges. Rape, obstruction of justice, and administering the drug into Candace's body. Now, ready for this?

He was only sentenced to six years in prison, which is just so sad to think someone can get away with everything that he did and only get six years behind bars.

Now, granted, this was back in the 1990s when our punishment for rape was pretty much next to zero. And this is in Canada, which I'm certainly not up on their history of rape cases. I know that in the United States, we're still pretty crummy at sentencing convicted rapists, if you ask me. But at least we've gotten a lot better over the years, right?

But regardless, this sick and twisted monster basically got a slap on the wrist of six years in prison. But for his victim, Candace, this was just the justice that she was waiting years for. She knew deep down in her gut that she was right. And even after being told time and time again she was wrong, she stood up for herself.

Even the forensic evidence was completely stacked against her, but she never gave up. She fought for herself and her dignity, and now she finally won.

Now, I wish I could say how Dr. Schneeberger spent all six years of his sentence in prison and that it was a terrible and traumatic experience, but sadly it wasn't. He was released on parole in 2003 after serving only about four years of his original sentence.

And when he got out of prison, he was stripped of his medical license so he could no longer be a doctor. And authorities actually also stripped him of his Canadian citizenship. And that's because Dr. Schneeberger is originally from Zambia and he was only granted a Canadian citizenship in 1993.

But because immigration authorities found out that he actually lied on his citizen application when he was asked if he was a subject of a police investigation, when in fact he was because of the rape allegation, the immigration judge revoked his citizenship and in December 2003, he was deported out of Canada.

Now, while researching this case, I was curious to find out what exactly happened to him after all of these years. And you guys, I couldn't make this up even if I tried. When Schneeberger was deported back to South Africa in 2004, no joke, he applied to the South Africa Board of Doctors to once again practice medicine.

And actually, he applied to become a doctor again less than three weeks after he was deported. Now, thank God, after a few months of waiting to hear back regarding his application, Schneeberger actually decided to withdraw his application in mid-October of that year.

And I'm not sure why he decided to withdraw his application, but let's just all be a little thankful that this guy isn't going to be practicing medicine anytime soon. Even though Dr. John Schneeberger was able to trick the DNA test three separate times by using a pump that he implanted into his own arm, the police were finally able to get the sample they needed to prove his guilt.

If it wasn't for his stepdaughter's decision to come forward with her story, Dr. Schneeberger may have gotten away with the perfect crime. Forensic Tales is a Rockefeller Audio Production. The show is written and produced by me, Courtney Fretwell. To read more about this week's case, head over to our website, ForensicTales.com. Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts so you don't ever miss an episode. You can get bonus material and early access to weekly episodes for a small monthly contribution on Patreon. For more information, head over to patreon.com slash forensic tales. Forensic Tales is a podcast made possible by our Patreon producers, Tony Areola and Nicole Leasing.

If you'd like to become a Patreon producer of the show, check out our page or email me at Courtney at ForensicTales.com to find out how you can become involved. I'll see you guys next week for a brand new episode of the show. And until then, remember, not all stories have happy endings.

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