Terrifying True Story Of Christopher Duntsch – Killer Surgeon Known As ‘Dr. Death’

Wendy was pregnant and gave birth shortly after they made their move. However, Duntsch, in what can hardly be a surprise coming from him, was having an affair with a girl named Kimberly Morgan. She was his assistant at the hospital, and she was told by Duntsch that Wendy was just a friend. Of course, he told Wendy that Kimberly was just a friend as well. Duntsch’s web of deception just kept growing bigger.

A Look Into Duntsch’s Mind 

During Duntsch’s relationship with Kimberly, he gave her a disturbing look into his mind. He would go on and on with his warped views of the world and himself. He compared himself to both Einstein and the antichrist, and he was made references to being an empire builder. These deranged emails revealed Duntsch’s egomania, seeing himself as a man with a brilliant vision who could make an impact on the world by murdering people.

Murder would have to wait, but it didn’t take long for Duntsch to find victims to perform botched surgeries on when his good friend Jerry Summers came to him hoping to be relieved from his neck pain.

Duntsch’s First Victim

Jerry Summers had neck pain ever since he got into a car accident. Duntsch cut Jerry’s vertebral artery, and he bled so much that Duntsch had to use a large amount of blood clotting gel to stop the bleeding, compressing Jerry’s spine in the process. Worst of all, Jerry’s head was no longer secured to his torso after the surgery as Duntsch had taken out so much of the bone. This meant that he could no longer move his body.

He went into surgery with chronic neck pain, and he left it as a quadriplegic. Not only could Jerry not move, but he was in such extreme pain that he wished to die. You would think that Duntsch would apologize to his friend for the botched surgery, but Jerry never heard from him. Jerry died in 2021 due to an infection that ultimately stemmed from him being quadriplegic.

Duntsch’s Second Victim

You would think after mutilating Summers that there would be consequences for Duntsch. There were, in fact, but they were not severe enough. He could no longer do major surgeries, but after a psychological evaluation, he was able to do minor ones. He found another victim in the person of Kellie Martin, who needed surgery after falling and getting a herniated disk. It was a simple procedure, but Duntsch complicated it by cutting one of her major arteries.

She was losing blood, but Duntsch carried on as usual, finished the surgery, and got her stitched up. She was in extreme pain after waking up, so doctors had to put her under anesthesia again. In the end, she did not make it, dying from an excessive loss of blood. Duntsch should have been seriously punished at this point, but all that happened was that he was no longer allowed to perform surgeries at Baylor-Plano.

Starting Fresh

Duntsch ended up resigning from the hospital, and in return he had the hospital say that he had not done anything wrong. All this did was give Duntsch a chance to find more victims somewhere else. They could have fired him and have him reported. Instead, he simply started working at Dallas Medical Center with no red flags on his record.

Duntsch was only at the Dallas Medical Center for barely a week, but he got to work quickly. A patient named Florella Brown went to Duntsch with back pain, and he performed a cervical fusion procedure on her. In the process, he cut her vertebral artery and misplaced a fusion screw. Florella was fine when she woke up, but the next day she passed out. It took hours to get in touch with Duntsch who ended up ignoring her concerns. Florella had a stroke and eventually died.

More Hospitals, More Victims

Mary Efurd is another patient who Duntsch performed a botched surgery on during his short time at the Dallas Medical Center, though that would not be known until later on. Nevertheless, the Florella Brown incident was so bad that Duntsch was forced to find a new job. However, because he only had “temporary privileges” when he was there, there was no requirement to report him when they let him go. He continued to work with temporary privileges at hospitals in Dallas.

One of his victims during this time was Jeff Cheney, who ended up not feeling the right side of his body after Duntsch was done with him. Another was Philip Mayfield, who was left paralyzed by Duntsch. Then there was Jeff Glidewell, who had to have another surgeon come in to fix him up after Duntsch’s butchering. These were the glory days for Duntsch, but he was building up a bad reputation.

Discovering Duntch’s Disasters

Other doctors started to pick up on how bad a surgeon Duntsch was. Dr. Kirby did surgeries with Duntsch, beginning with a patient named Barry Morguloff. Barry came in for spinal fusion surgery, and Dr. Kirby saw that Duntsch was not using the surgical instruments correctly. Afterward, Barry had back pain, and when he came in for x-rays, it could be seen that parts of his vertebrae were pushing into his back nerves.

Dr. Henderson also became aware of Duntsch’s botched jobs when he did surgery on Mary Efurd, the other patient Duntsch performed surgery on at the Dallas Medical Center. She needed another surgery because Duntsch had failed to do his job properly. Henderson saw in Mary’s scans that Duntsch had done nothing to the disc that he was supposed to have taken out. Now that it was obvious how incompetent Duntsch was, his co-workers tried to revoke his license.

Investigating Duntsch

Dr. Henderson thought that legal action should be taken against Duntsch, who clearly should have not been practicing. When he went to fix up Mary after Duntsch’s failed procedure, he decided to record it as evidence of how bad of a job Duntsch had actually done. In Henderson’s corrective surgery, he saw a screw in a nerve, screws and rods improperly placed, screw holes around the spine, a nerve root that was not attached properly, as well as other abnormal elements.

Henderson was utterly shocked at what he saw. Duntsch did such a bad job that Henderson thought he was a fraud, so he got in touch with the program that had trained Duntsch, assuming that Duntsch’s credentials were fake. He found out that Duntsch was not actually a fraud, which in a way was even worse. Duntsch must have been making these horrible mistakes on purpose. What kind of sick person would do that?

Action Must Be Taken Against Duntsch ASAP

Dr. Henderson had to act as soon as possible before Duntsch chose another victim. He made it his goal to take away Duntsch’s hospital privileges. Dr. Kirby also ended up having to fix up one of Duntsch’s patients. We earlier mentioned Jeff Glidewell, who went to Duntsch for a pinched nerve but walked away from the surgery missing a vocal cord and unable to move a part of his body. When he went to Kirby, Kirby was astonished at what he saw.

Duntsch had really done great on Glidewell, slicing into his vocal cords and esophagus in addition to his classic trick of cutting an artery. Glidewell was bleeding so much inside during the surgery that Duntsch put in a surgical sponge, and he never bothered taking it back out. When Dr. Kirby got to it, it had started to fester. Now two doctors knew how bad Duntsch was.

Making a Move on Duntsch

After Dr. Kirby performed his surgery on Glidewell, he decided to contact the Texas Medical Board to report on Duntsch. At this point, he merely called Duntsch incompetent and compared him to a first-year med student, and he was oblivious to Duntsch’s dark side. Dr. Henderson also made complaints, and it was only after the doctors put their minds together that they made progress.

In 2013, the Texas Medical Board finally heard the complaints about Duntsch. However, in the meantime, Duntsch had performed on many more victims. This was especially the case because of Texas’ laws that do little to protect their patients from malpractice in the face of someone like Duntsch. There were many issues with his surgeries, but they were classified as accidents. The two doctors making the case against Duntsch said that these were accidents that any surgeon should ever be allowed to make.

An 89% Failure Rate

In Texas, Duntsch had a total of 37 surgeries, and 33 of them were botched. With an 89% failure rate, how could Duntsch have been able to go on for so long, especially when two of his patients ended up dead? Whenever his former patients (or, more accurately, his victims) found out about his pattern of botched surgeries, they couldn’t believe he was allowed to operate as long as he did.

The medical board looked at the evidence and suspended his license, ruling that he didn’t give adequate preparation for his procedures and also did not properly handle the complications that came up during the surgeries. This was only a temporary suspension and it was only in Texas, so Kirby and Henderson had to work to make sure Duntsch could never practice medicine again in any other place. They stuck to their guns and kept making their point to the board.

It didn’t take long for the doctors to admit that they left a 13-inch metal retractor in Church’s abdomen. They removed the tool and Church did not suffer any side effects from the surgeon’s mistake. The two parties also reached a settlement of $97,000. And it wasn’t the first time something like this happened at Washington Medical Center! Four other incidences of doctors leaving tools in their patients happened at the medical facility between 1997 and 2000.

The Wrong Leg

Willie King was 52-years-old in 1995 when he was admitted to University Community Hospital in Tampa, Florida, for a leg amputation. Unfortunately, during the surgery, the doctors amputated the wrong leg!

By the time they realized they had made a mistake, it was too late and they could not reverse the procedure. They had to finish the amputation of the wrong leg. The hospital said that there had been a chain of errors that led to the mistake. The surgeon who messed up the amputation had his medical license revoked for six months and was fined $10,000. King was paid $900,000 by the hospital and $250,000 by the surgeon.

The Wrong Kidney

At the Park Nicollet Methodist Hospital in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, surgeons were tasked with removing one kidney in a patient due to a potentially cancerous tumor. Unfortunately, they ended up removing the wrong one.

The mistake was not discovered until a pathologist examined the removed kidney and found no evidence of cancer. Good news for the patient: the kidney that the doctors were supposed to remove remained functioning with no signs of cancer. The family asked that no more details relating to the incident be released to the public.

The Wrong Testicle

47-year-old retired Air Force veteran, Benjamin Houghton, had sought the help of his doctors after experiencing pain and shrinkage in his left testicle. Since there was a risk of cancer, he was soon taken to the West Los Angeles VA Medical Center to have it removed.

Unfortunately, the doctors doing the procedure removed his healthy right testicle instead. The hospital later stated that a chain of errors had occurred, started with an error on the patient consent form and ending with the failure of the medical staff to properly mark the correct surgical site. Houghton and his wife filed a $200,000 lawsuit against the surgeons and the hospital for their mistake.

The Wrong Care

A 36-year-old man from Arizona received a traumatic brain injury and was on life support. His wife was so dedicated to her husband that she kept him alive even when the doctors told her that it was hopeless. Eventually, the man actually woke up and was able to speak again. On her days off, his wife would bring him home with her to care for him. However, on a day that she was supposed to bring him home, she got a call from his assisted living facility that he was throwing up.

She rushed to his side and held him as he died. His autopsy showed that there were foreign objects in his stomach and bowels including paper towels, plastic bags, and unopened ketchup packets. It was determined that these items led to his death and his wife won a lawsuit against the assisted living facility for $11 million.

The Wrong Route

A Delaware man named Joseph Swain had a crappy time with his doctors, to say the least. Swain developed diverticulitis, which is when a hole forms in the side of the colon, and he needed a colostomy. The colostomy diverted his colon and required him to poop into a bag for a short time. When his colon was healed, they went to reverse the colostomy and reattach his colon to his anus. Except, instead, they accidentally stapled Swain’s colon to his bladder.

That’s right. That meant the Swain was now farting and pooping out of his private part. Not only was this probably tortuous for Swain, but it also put him at risk for developing a bad infection. He had to live like this for two weeks before doctors could correct it. When his bowel movements were back to normal, Swain filed a lawsuit against the doctors who performed the procedure.

The Wrong Protocol

Dick Schroeder was 74-year-old when he underwent surgery for prostate cancer in Germany. After his surgery, he began to heal like normal. But soon, his pain level began to increase instead of decrease. When he went back to the hospital, a nurse noticed that a piece of gauze was seeping out of one of his surgery wounds. They immediately took him back in for surgery and found that the surgeons had left 16 different items in his body.

The items included a compress, an entire roll of bandages, a needle, more gauze pads, and even part of a surgical mask. It took two whole surgeries to remove everything from his body. But afterward, the doctors refused to apologize and even suggested that Schroeder was responsible. Schroeder died of his cancer a few years later and his family sued the hospital for $127,000.

The Wrong Nose Doctor

Vishal Thakkar was 35-years-old when he decided to get a nose job. He was a newly divorced man from Tulsa, Oklahoma, who wanted to change his appearance before officially getting back into the dating scene. He went to Dr. Angelo Cuzalina, who was the President of the American Board of Plastic Surgery and one of the best plastic surgeons around, to fix his “slightly misaligned nostrils.” The simple surgery turned out to be not-so-simple when Thakkar had trouble breathing after the first procedure.