Christopher Duntsch – A Texas Neurosurgeon Commits Gross Malpractice in Under Two Years
Between 2011-2013, a little over three dozen patients arrived at hospitals located in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex for their scheduled surgeries. During those two years, 31 out of 38 patients woke up from their surgery. However, things weren’t better for them.
Some patients quickly realized they were in excruciating pain. More pain than what one could expect after having surgery. Most of them indicated the pain was worse than they were experiencing before having the procedure performed.
Other patients woke up and reported they were feeling an unusual numbness in their limbs. When they were examined further, there was no discernable explanation for the numbness they were experiencing. However, they never reported feeling this sensation prior to their surgical procedure.
A few of the patients were in the recovery room when they discovered they had been paralyzed by the procedure that was meant to alleviate their pain and suffering. However, even worse than that, two of the 38 patients didn’t wake up at all. Since we are featuring this case, I’m sure you can guess that these injuries and deaths were the results of one man’s actions. One man by the name of Christopher Daniel Duntsch, a.k.a. “Doctor Death,” committed gross malpractice numerous times. However, it would take nearly two years before the Texas Medical Board made the decision to yank his license. During that time, did he actually have a license to kill?
A Brief Glimpse at the Early Life of Dr. Death
Christopher Daniel Duntsch was born on April 3, 1971, in Montana. Donald, his father, was a Christian missionary as well as a physical therapist. Susan, his mother, was a teacher for the school district. Therefore, it’s probably safe to say that he was raised in a middle-class or upper-middle-class family.
Not long after Duntsch was born, his family moved to Memphis, Tennessee, and settled in the Cordova suburb. Donald and Susan wanted the best for their son which included making sure he received a quality education. He attended and graduated from Evangelical Christian School. The entire time he was in high school, he was considered a football star.
After graduating from high school, Duntsch enrolled at Millsaps College with the sole purpose of playing Division III college football. He would later transfer to Colorado State University so that he could play for a Division I team. Most of his former football teammates later recalled that he was known to train hard. Despite that, he still lacked any real talent for the competitive sport.
Duntsch eventually moved back to Memphis and enrolled at Memphis State University, which is now called the University of Memphis. Some of the reports I read indicated that he chose to return home because he was homesick.
I, on the other hand, think there might have been a different reason. Seriously, I know exactly why he went back to Memphis. Hear me out before you judge. Think about this: He was considered a star football player while he was in high school. Then when he plays college football his teammates say he lacked the talent necessary to play. Therefore, I believe he returned to Memphis, the last place people looked at him as a hero of sorts.
Showing Promise in Medical School
Since his future in football was bleak, Duntsch made the decision to pursue a medical career. In 1995, he managed to obtain an undergraduate degree. After that, he entered the highly ambitious MD-PhD program. It took him approximately 15 years, but in 2010, he was on a career trajectory.
During that time, Duntsch had completed the MD-PhD program and then he went to the University of Tennessee Health Science Center to complete his residency in neurosurgery. After that, he went to the Semmes-Murphey Clinic located in Memphis so that he could complete his spine fellowship.
Under normal circumstances, doctors who are in the neurosurgery residency program must participate in more than 1000 surgeries before they complete the program. However, Duntsch managed to complete the residency program only participating in less than 100 surgeries altogether.
Sometime during Duntsch’s fourth year in the program, his superiors suspected that he had operated on a patient while he was high on cocaine. Rather than kicking him out of the program completely, he was required to enter a program that caters to “impaired physicians.” He stayed in that program for several months, and when he came out, they allowed him to return to the residency program. Many of Duntsch’s friends reported that he would go out partying and doing drugs all night and then go to work the very next morning. They recall how he was obviously still high and he was a surgeon. Even his friends said they would never want him to operate on them.
Entering Into a Long-Term Relationship
After Duntsch completed his spine fellowship, he met Wendy Renee Young, and the two soon started a long-term relationship. It didn’t take Wendy long to feel as if she had truly met her “Prince Charming.” After all, the neurosurgeon who was highly sought-after promised her he would be successful.
With his success, he told her they would have an extravagant life together. However, in the end, Wendy’s fairytale wouldn’t have the happy ending she pictured.
In the beginning, Duntsch and Wendy talked about getting married. When it comes to her relationship with the doctor, she said, “I loved him and believed in him, and then, you know, he just kind of fell apart.”
Duntsch and Wendy were known to have very volatile arguments. For instance, they had only been a couple for a few months when she discovered she was pregnant. When she told her Prince Charming he was going to be a father, the man was less-than-thrilled.
The two got into a heated argument and before he stormed out of the house he screamed at her saying, “If I am being honest, the best thing you could probably do is abort that fucking baby because you are not the type of person who can raise it.” But, I’m getting ahead of myself a little bit.
A Doctor Walks into a Bar & Meets a Stripper
In 2011, Duntsch went to the Beauty Shop, a bar located in Memphis where he saw Wendy for the first time. He decided he wanted to get to know the woman, so he bought her an appletini and the two struck up a conversation and clicked right away.
Wendy talked about that time with Duntsch saying, “He was friendly, and we had a good conversation. It’s hard to find a good conversation with a random person. We talked about marriage pretty quickly. We moved in together within three months, and I became pregnant.”
When Duntsch met Wendy, he was 40-years old. She was only 27-years old and was working in Memphis clubs as a stripper. I’m sure when she found out he was receiving offers from medical centers in San Diego, New York, and Dallas, she was impressed with him as the facilities were in the neurosurgeon’s resume.
During their conversation, Duntsch found out that Wendy had family living in the Dallas area. When she offered to move with him wherever he went, he chose to accept a position with Dallas. The offer Duntsch received was pretty substantial. Just for signing the agreement, he was given a $600,000 advance. Since he and Wendy were having to look for a house to live in around Plano, Texas, the facility also paid for them to be housed in a luxury hotel suite temporarily.
Stepping Out with a Wandering Eye
While Duntsch was telling Wendy he wanted to marry her, it didn’t take long after their move to Texas for him to start stepping out on their relationship. As a matter of fact, when he opened his new practice, he hired a nurse practitioner by the name of Kimberly Morgan.
Kimberly had only been working for Duntsch less than one month before they started sleeping with each other. This is probably why he wasn’t thrilled a couple of months later when Wendy told him she was pregnant.
B.J. Ellison was Duntsch’s office manager and she said that almost as soon as Kimberly met the handsome doctor, she was smitten with him. Ellison said, “She said she thought he was going to make millions. He was smart. He was brilliant. He was a genius.” Apparently, when Kimberly began sleeping with her boss, she felt as if she had “found the one.”
Yes, Kimberly knew that Duntsch and Wendy were living together. However, he told her that Wendy was his married secretary who was staying with him until her husband could relocate to the area. Kimberly believed all of his lies.
When it came to Wendy, Duntsch told her that Kimberly was his platonic assistant. That he and Kimberly weren’t romantic in any way and he loved her so much. He continued to string both women along for some time.
Duntsch and Kimberly ended their relationship shortly after he left the Baylor Medical Center located in Plano. I’ll talk about that in a little bit. However, in April 2012, she wound up getting a restraining order against him.
According to Kimberly’s report to the authorities, she felt the need to get a protection order after a specific incident. Apparently, he arrived at her place at 2:00 am and when she didn’t let him in, he proceeded to bang on her windows to get her to change her mind.
Duntsch and Wendy stayed together until 2014. By the time she chose to leave him, they had two sons together.
The Career Path of a Promising Surgeon
Shortly after Duntsch completed his MD-PhD program, he chose to focus the bulk of his attention on the Ph.D. portion of his new degree. He was a contributing author on numerous medical papers. He also helped develop several patents and he invested in quite a few biotech startups.
Even though Duntsch led Wendy to believe otherwise, by the time the two of them met, he was already more than $500,000 in debt. That’s why he chose to enter the promising lucrative field of neurosurgery. I also found out some other interesting information about him around the time he met the mother of his two children.
Rather than medical facilities fighting over which position he should choose, he is the one that reached out to the facilities. As a matter of fact, on paper, Duntsch was more than qualified for his chosen practice.
After all, he had pursued his medical training including medical school, residency, and fellowship for 15 years. As it turns out, once Duntsch had typed it up, his curriculum vitae wound up being 12 pages all single-space.
I know some of you are wondering, so I looked it up for you. A curriculum vitae is the Latin phrase for “course of life.” Essentially, it’s a brief written or typed summarization of an individual’s education, job qualifications, and previous employment. In North American English only, nowhere else, we more frequently refer to it as a resume.On his resume, he stated that he had studied at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Not only that, he claims that he graduated magna cum laude with a microbiology doctorate from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. However, during the time frame that Duntsch said he attended the program, St. Jude’s didn’t even offer it to their students.
Duntsch signed on to work at Baylor Regional Medical Center located in Plano, Texas. That facility is now called Baylor Scott & White Medical Center – Plano. He was hired as one of the minimally invasive spine surgeons. He agreed to the terms of a $600,000/year salary, plus bonuses. That was on top of the $600,000 advance he received for signing the agreement.
Working at Baylor Plano
Once Duntsch arrived at Baylor Plano, it didn’t take him long to make an impression. Too bad his colleagues, or at least the other surgeons, thought poorly of him. The vascular surgeon, a guy by the name of Dr. Randall Kirby, was a veteran at the facility.
He remembers how Duntsch often expounded about how skilled he was in his career. The reason why this was so surprising to Dr. Kirby is that the neurosurgeon had only been in the area for a short time. When it came to Duntsch operating room techniques, Dr. Kirby said, “he could not wield a scalpel.” That leaves me wondering how he even made it past residency, let alone a fellowship program.
There were numerous surgeries that Duntsch performed that left his patients seriously injured. Here’s an example of what happened to the individuals who went to the doctor to get better:
Kenneth Fennell – Back Surgery
Kenneth Fennell was Duntsch’s very first surgical patient at Baylor Plano. He went in to have back surgery, and when he woke up in the recovery room, he was in even more pain. As a matter of fact, he suffers from chronic pain to this day because the doctor didn’t operate on the correct part.
When his pain became debilitating, he went to have a second surgery. This one was also performed by Duntsch. After this surgery, Kenneth became paralyzed in both of his legs. He went through rehabilitation for several months in order to learn how to walk again, but he has to use a cane. However, he cannot walk further than 30 feet at a time nor can he stand longer than a couple of minutes before he has to sit down to rest.
Lee Passmore – Spinal Surgery
Lee Passmore was a medical investigator for Collin County. Duntsch performed his spinal surgery, and when he woke up, he too wound up with severe chronic pain, more than before the procedure. During the surgery, the doctor ended up severing a ligament that typically isn’t even touched during the procedure he performed.
It was later discovered that Lee had ectopic (misplaced) hardware where the surgery was performed. For instance, Duntsch had to place a screw that was used to keep the plate in place. However, he placed this screw in the wrong location. To top it off, when he inserted the screw, he managed to strip the threads, so the screw cannot be removed at all.
Even though the threads of the screw were stripped, Lee still wouldn’t be able to have it removed. That’s because this screw is in an area that should another surgeon try to remove it, Lee would bleed out on the table.Dr. Mark Hoyle was the vascular surgeon assisting Duntsch that day, and he stated that during the surgery, there was a considerable amount of bleeding. However, Duntsch didn’t even act as if he noticed. At one point during the procedure, Dr. Hoyle was so upset by the way his colleague was behaving that he felt the need to physically restrain the man. He even looked Duntsch in the eye and told him that he was a danger to his patients. Dr. Hoyle soon began to wonder about the neurosurgeon’s sanity.
Barry Morguloff – Discectomy Procedure
Barry Morguloff was a local businessman who owned a pool servicing company. Duntsch performed Barry’s discectomy when he had a damaged disc. After the surgery, he found out that his spinal canal now contained bone fragments. Apparently, when Duntsch pulled the disc out, he used a grabbing tool rather than the proper instrument.
After the procedure, when Barry was in severe pain, Duntsch absolutely refused to prescribe the man pain medication. He said he wouldn’t provide them because Barry was nothing but a “drug seeker.” It got to a point when the left side of Barry’s body completely stopped functioning. When this happened, he became wheelchair-bound.
Dr. Kirby was assisting in the surgery that day and he said Duntsch had to be shown the correct part of the patient’s anatomy. Even then, he continued to make mistake after mistake during the procedure. Barry went to Duntsch for his scheduled post-surgery follow-up appointment. During the visit, he noticed that the doctor was obviously under the influence of something. When he realized his doctor was inebriated, he got up and walked out of the room.
Jerry Summers – Vertebrae Fusion
Jerry Summers had been friends with Duntsch for some time. Therefore, when he needed to have the vertebrae in his neck fused, he had his friend perform the procedure. When Jerry woke up in the recovery room, he was horrified to discover that he was now a quadriplegic.
The anesthesiologist who was present during the surgery said that during the surgery, Jerry had lost nearly 1200 ml of blood. That is at least one-fifth of a person’s total blood volume. Not to mention, that amount of blood is nearly 24 times the amount an individual typically loses when they have that procedure. In other words, when someone is getting their vertebrae fused, they typically would only lose 50 ml of blood.
Some hospital staff members and the nurses who were present during the surgery thought Jerry would have a second procedure to correct the problem. However, Duntsch flat-out refused to correct the problem.
Later, when Jerry was asked, he said that the night before he had the surgical procedure, he and Duntsch had stayed out all night using cocaine. When the hospital administration ordered Duntsch to take a blood test, it actually came back negative. Despite the negative results, hospital officials put Duntsch on administrative leave while they performed a peer review.
At some point, Duntsch was allowed to continue providing surgeries while his peer review was still in process. The officials at the facility just asked him to make sure that he only performed the minor surgeries until they had reached a decision.Sometime later, Jerry withdrew his statement about Duntsch and him using cocaine telling people he had lied about the whole thing. He claims that he made up the lie when he got upset with his friend for refusing to check in on him. Either way, he spent the rest of his life without the use of his limbs. Sometime in 2021, he developed complications related to the botched surgery and came down with an infection which was the cause of his death.
Kellie Martin – Routine Back Surgery
Kellie Martin went to the hospital so that Duntsch could perform a routine back surgery on her. During the procedure, she began suffering from a significant arterial injury. There were obvious signs that Kellie had started to lose an enormous amount of blood. Despite that, Duntsch continued to perform the operation.
When the anesthesiologist as well as the trauma surgeon in the room pointed out the extensive blood loss, Duntsch ignored their warnings. By his refusal to realize that something was going wrong, it prevented the ICU team at the hospital from providing her with life-saving measures.
After the procedure, Kellie was transferred to the ICU. When she awoke from the anesthesia, she started to scream as she clawed at her legs. She was in such a fit of hysterics that the ICU staff had to re-anesthetize her to calm her down. The entire time she was going through her ordeal, Duntsch remained in the ICU waiting room. He was out there writing up his notes on the procedure. He didn’t even bother to go into the unit to check on his patient. When Kellie suffered from a hemorrhagic cardiac arrest, he still didn’t bother to go check on her. In the end, Kellie died as a result of the surgery by bleeding out.
Baylor Plano Hospital Administration Reacts
By the time the hospital officials completed Duntsch’s peer review, they determined that he had “failed to meet their standards of care.” As a result, his surgical privileges at the facility were permanently revoked. At that time, they decided to conduct another peer review on the doctor, but he resigned before it was complete. He didn’t want a termination on his employment record.
Since the hospital didn’t want to spend the money to fight a wrongful termination lawsuit that they might not even win, they compromised with Duntsch and his attorneys. This agreement stipulated that he could resign from his position at the hospital. In return, Baylor Plano would provide him with a letter that stated they had no issues with him.
The sad part is, had the hospital fired Duntsch, they would have been required by law to report him and his actions to the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB). This database is designed for the sole purpose of identifying and flagging physicians that pose a problem to patients.
Working at Dallas Medical Center
After Duntsch left Baylor Plano, he was hired to work at Dallas Medical Center located in Farmers Branch, Texas. Upon being hired, he was given temporary surgical privileges until the hospital administration could get his employment records from Baylor Plano.
Not long after he began working at the medical center, the nurses started to have doubts about the new doctor’s abilities. Especially when they were pretty sure he was high while he was on duty to perform surgeries. For example, there was a three-day period when he arrived at work wearing the same pair of worn-out scrubs.
Duntsch worked at Dallas Medical Center for only a few days, less than one whole week to be exact. That’s how long it took the medical center’s officials to strip him of his surgery privileges. During that time, he was only able to perform two surgical procedures. However, let’s be honest, they really didn’t have a choice in the matter, and here’s why:
Floella Brown – Vertebrae Surgery
The first patient Duntsch operated on when he arrived at Dallas Medical Center was Floella Brown. During her surgery, he wound up severing her vertebral artery which resulted in extensive blood loss. Despite that, he flat-out refused to abort the procedure. Instead, he packed the area with a substance designed to get the bleeding to stop. However, he used too much of it, and as a result, Floella had a stroke.
The hospital attempted to message Duntsch after that and he refused to respond to the messages for several hours. The following day, he went into the medical center and scheduled himself to perform an elective surgery instead of checking on and caring for Floella.
The hospital administration told Duntsch to delay the elective surgery, and again, he flat-out refused to comply. They became so frustrated with him and his attitude that they made multiple attempts to get him to either take care of Floella or transfer her care to another surgeon.
At that point, Duntsch said he could take Floella into surgery and drill a hole in her scalp in order to alleviate some of the pressure. The hospital refused to give him permission to perform the procedure. He wasn’t even qualified for brain surgery, nor did he have privileges at the hospital to do so. Not only that, the facility didn’t have the equipment or staff needed for that type of operation.
As a result, Floella remained in a coma for several hours before Duntsch acknowledged that the hospital wasn’t going to allow him to perform the brain surgery he wanted to do. He eventually agreed to transfer her care to another surgeon. However, by the time another doctor took over, Floella was already pronounced brain dead.
Mary Efurd – Spinal Fusion
Mary Efurd was the patient Duntsch scheduled for elective surgery which was a routine spinal fusion procedure. During the surgery, he managed to do several things that a qualified surgeon wouldn’t have done including:
- Sever a nerve root
- Operate on the wrong side of the back
- Twisted one of the screws into another one of Mary’s nerves
- On the other side of Mary’s spine, he left the screw holes
- Didn’t even remove the disc that was supposed to come out
- Left loose surgical hardware in muscle tissue – every time it was touched, it moved
While Duntsch was performing the surgery, the assisting surgeons kept telling him that he wasn’t performing the surgery properly. They even warned him that he was screwing the surgical hardware into Mary’s muscle instead of in her bone like he was supposed to. Despite the numerous warnings, Duntsch ignored them and kept proceeding with the surgery.
When Mary woke up after the surgery, she discovered that she was paralyzed. She said later that when she woke up, all she could remember was being in “excruciating pain.” When the hospital staff asked her to rate her pain on a scale of 1-10, she replied, “10+.” The nurses and doctors who were in the operating room with Duntsch stated later that they thought the doctor was very intoxicated. Especially since his pupils were extremely dilated.
A Doctor’s Competence is Called into Question
Dr. Robert Henderson had been a spinal surgeon for quite a long time and he was the one who was tasked with performing Mary’s salvage surgery. After he received the imaging that showed what Duntsch had done during surgery, he was confident that there would be some sort of legal ramification. For that reason, when he performed Mary’s surgery, he recorded the process.
When Dr. Henderson opened Mary up to perform the surgery, he was taken aback. He later compared Duntsch’s surgical performance to that of “a child playing with Tinkertoys or an Erector Set.” He said that the other doctor’s surgery was “an assault.” Had he not performed Mary’s salvage surgery, the woman would have wound up bedridden for the rest of her life.
After Dr. Henderson saw the result of Duntsch’s botched surgery on Mary, he questioned whether or not the man was truly a doctor or an imposter. He said that there was no way in hell a real surgeon would have botched that type of surgery so severely. In fact, even if a person had just a rudimentary understanding of basic human anatomy, they would have known they were not operating on the correct area of Mary’s back. Therefore, he felt it was his duty to find out the truth.
Dr. Henderson decided to send a picture of Duntsch over to the University of Tennessee. He wanted to know if his colleague had truly attended and received a degree from the educational institution. As it turns out, Duntsch did attend and graduate from the university as he had claimed.
Dr. Henderson then decided he would contact Duntsch’s residency and fellowship supervisors to get their input on the doctor. That’s when he found out about Duntsch being placed into the “impaired physician program” which caused even more concern.
Considering Duntsch only performed two surgeries at Dallas Medical Center and both of them had catastrophic results, one might think that would be the last time anybody heard from Dr. Christopher Duntsch. Well, if you know anything about our show, it’s never that easy. The officials at the hospital didn’t even bother to report his actions to the NPDB.
However, let me play devil’s advocate for a split second: By law, if a surgeon only has temporary privileges at a hospital, the hospital is not under any legal obligation to file a report if there is any negligence on the doctor’s part. That being said, I feel even if Dallas Medical Center’s administration wasn’t legally obligated to report Duntsch to the NPDB, they should have at least had a moral obligation to do so.
Employment at Other Medical Facilities
When Duntsch left Dallas Medical Center, he went to South Hampton Community Hospital located in Dallas, Texas, and received surgical privileges there. At the same time, he took on a position at Legacy Surgery Center’s outpatient clinic. Legacy is now called Frisco Ambulatory Surgery Center, located in Frisco, Texas.
While Duntsch was working at South Hampton, he managed to botch even more surgeries. For instance, during Jeff Cheney’s surgery, Duntsch managed to damage the patient’s spinal cord which resulted in the loss of feeling on the right side.
Philip Mayfield – Spinal Surgery
Then there was Philip Mayfield, a 48-year-old truck driver from Dallas. During this surgery, Duntsch somehow damaged his patient’s spinal cord when he drilled into it. As a result, Philip wound up partially paralyzed from his neck down. After extensive physical therapy, Philip learned to walk with the assistance of a cane.
Even so, Philip continued to have right-side paralysis as well as paralysis in the left arm. Not only that, he said that he suffered from chronic, sharp, shooting pains throughout his entire body. In February 2021, as a result of complications that arose from the botched surgery, Philip’s immune system was vulnerable. Therefore, when he contracted COVID-19, his body was unable to fight off the virus. Sadly, he lost his life as a direct result of Duntsch’s gross negligence.
Marshall “Tex” Muse – Routine Discectomy
Marshall “Tex” Muse required surgery in order to remove some discs that had started to degenerate. After completing the surgery, before he closed up, Duntsch managed to leave some of the surgical hardware in Marshall’s body. The hardware was left to float around the patient’s muscle tissue and spine.
When Marshall woke up in the recovery room, he told Duntsch that he was in extreme pain. The doctor told him there was nothing to worry about because the pain he was feeling was typical of that procedure. Then he wrote Marshall a prescription for some Percocet. He prescribed so much of the opioid that the pharmacy flat-out refused to fill the order.
Duntsch must have written Marshall an appropriate prescription because Marshall wound up addicted to opioids. His addiction was so bad that the man lost both his job and his wife.
Marshall later said that just the day before his surgery, he had read something about Kellie Martin’s death. When he called and asked Duntsch about the incident, the doctor yelled and cursed at him for being bothersome.
Jacqueline Troy – Routine Surgery
Jacqueline Troy had to have a routine surgery which Duntsch performed. During the procedure, somehow he severed one of Jacqueline’s vocal cords as well as an artery. If that wasn’t bad enough, he also managed to damage the patient’s trachea. As a result, Jacqueline hasn’t been able to speak louder than a whisper.
Immediately after the surgery, Jacqueline was required to be under sedation for several weeks. When she was brought out of sedation, every time she tried to eat something, the food would get into her lungs. As a result, in order to receive nutrients, she had to be tube-fed.
Since we have been doing this show for more than six months, one would think nothing would shock me. I, for one, thought I had seen it all. However, I was sadly mistaken, and here’s why. Even though Duntsch had botched all of the surgeries above while working at South Hampton, he was never let go. In fact, when the facility was bought out and it changed its name to University General Hospital, the new owners retained the doctor’s surgical privileges.
Jeff Glidewell – Routine Cervical Fusion
At some point, Duntsch went to Methodist Hospital located in Dallas, Texas, and applied for surgical privileges there. Before receiving them, the hospital performed a query of the new applicant on the NPDB. When it didn’t turn up any incident reports, he was approved for privileges.
Not long after that, Jeff Glidewell went in to receive a routine cervical fusion procedure. During the operation, Jeff wound up severely injured when Duntsch thought a portion of the patient’s neck muscle was actually a tumor. As a result, he did the following:
- Severed a vocal cord
- Cut a hole in the esophagus
- Sliced an artery
When Jeff began to have extensive bleeding, Duntsch thought he would stem the blood flow by packing the patient’s throat with a surgical sponge. Then he decided to just close up Jeff’s incision, leaving the sponge where he had placed it. When the nurses and assisting surgeons tried to tell him the sponge was still inside the patient, Duntsch didn’t even bother to acknowledge that they were speaking.
The sponge wound up causing an acute blood-borne infection which led to septicemia. When another doctor ordered Jeff to have some imaging, they saw the sponge still in the patient’s body. When they asked Duntsch to assist in removing it, he refused their request.
Several days later, Dr. Kirby was finally brought in to perform the surgery to repair all the damage that Duntsch had caused. Dr. Kirby later stated that when he opened Jeff up and discovered what Duntsch had done, it appeared as if the procedure was done by a “crazed maniac.” When Jeff woke up after that procedure, Dr. Kirby even told him that it was obvious Duntsch had set out to kill him.
In the end, Jeff wound up having only one functional vocal cord, his esophagus was permanently damaged, and the left side of his body was partially paralyzed. Dr. Kirby later said that to him it appeared as if Duntsch had intended to decapitate the patient. Not only that, he claimed that a surgery as botched as that one “has not happened in the United States of America” ever before.
To this day, Jeff still suffers from complications from the surgery that Duntsch performed. Over the years he has been required to have over 50 additional procedures in an effort to correct all the damage caused. There was one point during all of this that he could only eat little bites of food rather than a whole meal.
If there was anything good that came out of Jeff’s ordeal, it’s this. His surgery would be the last procedure Duntsch would ever perform. That’s because he was pushed out of University General Hospital a short time later.
Texas Medical Board Revokes His License
After Dr. Kirby performed the surgery to repair the damage Duntsch had caused Jeff, he decided to write a long detailed letter of complaint which he sent to the Texas Medical Board. In the letter he referred to Duntsch as “a sociopath” and he was “a clear and present danger to the citizens of Texas.”
With a significant amount of pressure from both Dr. Kirby and Dr. Henderson, Dunstsch’s medical license was suspended on June 26, 2013 by the Texas Medical Board. The Board’s lead investigator overseeing Duntsch’s case later stated that she really wanted to pull the doctor’s license as soon as the board began their review.
Her request was shot down by the Medical Board attorneys. They said that if the investigation didn’t turn up any proof of negligence, suspending Duntsch license ahead of time could result in legal ramifications against them.
The investigation took approximately 10 months. It took that long for the board to determine that there was in fact a “pattern of patient injury” which was required for the state to justify yanking Duntsch’s license.
Irwin Zeitzler, the Texas Medical Board chairman stated later that “complications in neurosurgery were more common than most laymen believe.” As it is, most members of the board were finding Duntsch’s case hard to comprehend. After all, it’s almost unfathomable to believe that a surgeon trained in a major university in America could be even remotely as incompetent as Duntsch seemed to be.
During the investigation, the board consulted with seasoned neurosurgeon Martin Lazar. After going over the case, Dr. Lazar was brutal in his criticism of the work Duntsch performed. For example, he berated the man for not noticing any of the signs that indicated Kellie Martin was in fact bleeding out. He said, “You can’t not know that and be a neurosurgeon.”
With all the evidence collected, the Texas Medical Board officially revoked Duntsch’s medical license on December 6, 2013.
Headfirst into a Downward Spiral
When his medical license was revoked, Duntsch decided he would try and get a fresh start by relocating to Denver, Colorado. However, once he was there, he went headfirst into a downward spiral. The decision passed down by the Texas Medical Board was just the tip of the iceberg. He wound up declaring bankruptcy because he was well over $1 million in debt.
That wasn’t the end of Duntsch’s plight. While he was in Denver, he was pulled over and the officer ended up arresting him for being intoxicated. Once, when he returned to Dallas to visit his sons, he was taken in for a psychiatric evaluation. Then another time while he was in Dallas, he was picked up and arrested for shoplifting.
Several Lawsuits Filed in Federal Court
Three months after the board’s decision, in March 2014, three lawsuits were filed in federal court. Three of Duntsch’s severely injured patients, Mary Efurd, Kenneth Fennel, and Lee Passmore, each filed a lawsuit against Baylor Plano. In the lawsuits, the patients alleged that the hospital willingly allowed Duntsch to continue performing operations even though they knew he was a dangerous doctor.
The Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, joined the fray when he filed a motion with the court to negotiate the lawsuits and defend Baylor Plano Hospital. In the motion, Abbott chose to cite a 2003 Texas statute that capped out a medical malpractice suit at $250,000. This statute also took the phrase “gross negligence” from the state’s definition of “legal malice.”
The three lawsuits that were filed claimed that Baylor Plano allegedly earned an average of $65,000 in net profit every time Duntsch walked into the operating room and performed spinal surgery on a patient.
Determining if Criminal Charges Can Be Filed
Even though they were instrumental in making sure Duntsch’s medical license was revoked, Dr. Henderson and Dr. Kirby were afraid that wasn’t enough. They had a tremendous fear that he would just relocate to another state and acquire a license to practice medicine there.
That thought alone was not something the two respected doctors could just brush off. They believed with every fiber of their being that Duntsch was “a clear and present danger to the public.” With the shared sentiment, they contacted the Dallas County District Attorney and urged them to file criminal charges against the inept surgeon.
After Dr. Henderson and Dr. Kirby went to the DA, they didn’t hear anything more about the case for over one year. In 2015, right before the statute of limitations ran out on any possible charges, the DA finished their inquiry.
One of the major issues they were having was finding enough evidence that would prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Duntsch had willfully violated the law as defined by Texas statutes. The DA’s office painstakingly set about interviewing Duntsch’s former patients, the family members, and the survivors of those who had died.
In the end, the District Attorney agreed with Dr. Kirby and Dr. Henderson. What Duntsch did to his patients by operating on them was nothing short of criminal. Not only that, they knew that the only thing that would stop the man from trying to practice medicine again would be to lock him in a penitentiary.
Evidence is Obtained & Grand Jury is Convened
During the DA’s investigation, they managed to find an email from 2011 written by Duntsch. In the email, he bragged about how he was “ready to leave the love and kindness and goodness and patience that I mix with everything else that I am and become a cold-blooded killer.”
The lead prosecutor on the case was ADA Michelle Shughart. She later stated that Dr. Henderson, Dr. Kirby, and Dr. Lazar came to her and demanded that she call on them to testify against Duntsch in court. According to her, typically, a doctor wouldn’t even consider testifying against a colleague in court.
Later, The Texas Prosecutor wrote an article about the case. When Shughart and the prosecutors on the case were interviewed by the journal, they talked about the reactions they received. For instance, when the prosecutors approached their higher-ups and presented them with the evidence, they were met with skepticism.
However, after the office superiors reviewed the case they were presented, they were soon in “overwhelming disbelief” about how a licensed surgeon could do the things Duntsch had allegedly done. Shughart and her team were able to determine there was a “scary pattern” when it came to Duntsch’s actions. The information they gave to the DA convinced him to allow them to convene a grand jury.
Charges are Filed & Trial is Held
Almost 1.5 years after the board revoked Duntsch’s medical license, in July 2015, he was arrested and formally charged in criminal court. At that time, he was facing six counts of felony aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, five counts of aggravated assault causing serious bodily injury, and one count of injury to an elderly person. The charges were filed a mere four months before the statute of limitations had expired.
The injury to an elderly person was in regards to the outcome of Mary Efurd’s surgery. The prosecution team placed the majority of their focus on proving that charge in particular. The reason for this decision was because it was the one charge that had the widest range when it came to sentencing. If Duntsch was found guilty on that charge, he would face a life sentence.
The prosecution team also figured that single charge would also be the easiest one to prove. Especially since Duntscgh was told numerous times during the surgery that he was placing the surgical hardware in the wrong position. The fluoroscopy images taken from Mary’s surgery made this claim obvious.
A fluoroscopy is an x-ray technique that allows a doctor to capture real-time moving imaging of the internal functions and structure of the human body. For instance, this procedure is performed when the doctor needs to watch how their patient’s heart pumps or if they need to observe the motions of their patient swallowing.
The prosecutors on the case were seeking a sentence that would guarantee Duntsch wouldn’t be able to perform surgeries or practice medicine ever again. For that reason, they severed his charges and tried him for the Mary Efurd case first. While he was waiting for his trial to start, Duntsch was housed in the Dallas County Jail.
As it turns out, it would be nearly two years before Duntsch’s trial began in 2017. By then, he didn’t have a penny to his name. Since he could no longer afford to pay for an attorney, he was assigned a public defender.
Arguments for Both Sides of the Case
During the trial, Shughart told the court that Duntsch should have been aware that if he didn’t change his approach when it came to surgery, it was highly likely he would end up harming his patients. Since he was making the same mistakes repeatedly, the injuries Mary Efurd suffered from the procedure were thereby intentional by nature.
She then went on to say that the hospitals Duntsch had privileges at were also at fault since they did not file any reports against him. Their failure to report the negligence of the doctor encouraged him to keep performing surgeries. Especially since the salary he was earning as a neurosurgeon would help to solve all of his growing financial issues.
Despite the defense team’s objections, the prosecutors called several of Duntsch’s other patients in to testify against the man. They wanted to establish a pattern that would help prove that by continuing to operate, he was intentionally putting patients in harm’s way.
When it came time for the defense to argue their case, Duntsch’s lawyers stood before the jury and said something that shocked me so much, my jaw dropped. They claimed their clients were not aware of how poor his performance as a surgeon was until he was sitting in court and the experts called by the prosecution testified in regards to the numerous errors he made while he was in the operating room.
They went on to say it wasn’t their client’s fault that the patients were seriously injured or dead as a result of the operations he performed. In fact, if anything was to blame, it would be the lack of proper training he was given in school and the hospitals’ complete lack of oversight in regards to his actions.
It seems as if Shughart was prepared for this argument, because she had a counter waiting to be pulled out of her back pocket. She told the jury that the email Duntsch wrote in 2011, which was sent shortly after his first surgeries were botched, was the proof needed to determine that he was well aware of his actions and therefore the injuries sustained by Mary were done intentionally.
The entire trial may have lasted nearly two weeks, however, it would only take the jury four hours to find Duntsch guilty of injury to an elderly person. He received his sentence on February 20, 2017 when the judge ordered him to spend the rest of his life in prison.
Just shy of two years later, on December 10, 2018, Duntsch’s conviction was affirmed by the Texas Court of Appeals with a 2-1 split decision. After that, he filed a petition requesting a discretionary review or consideration for appeal. He received their refusal decision on May 8, 2019.
As far as the four hospitals that had granted Duntsch surgical privileges – each one of them is still in litigation over ongoing civil cases that were filed against them.
Reactions to the Court’s Decision
When a jury of his peers convicted Duntsch in a court of law, it was a ground-breaking, precedent-setting moment in American history. It was probably the first time in American Medicine and American Justice where a licensed physician faced criminal charges for performing their job.
Make no mistake, Duntsch wasn’t on trial because his patients were having complications as a result of the surgeries he performed. He was brought up on felony charges because he willfully ignored warnings and blatantly refused to repair damage he had caused. Not to mention, he was visibly intoxicated several times while he held a scalpel in his hands. He was a neurosurgeon, people, not a dentist!
The District Attorney for Dallas County stated this was “a historic case with respect to prosecuting a doctor who had done wrong during surgery.”
When Carlos Bagley, Director of Neurosurgery, UT Southwestern was called to the stand to testify on behalf of Duntsch, he said, “the only way this happens is that the entire system fails the patients.”
Another expert in the field of neurosurgery testifying on behalf of Duntsch also stated, “The conditions which created Dr. Duntsch still exist, thereby making it possible for another to come along.” If that’s not enough incentive to seek natural medicine, I don’t know what is!
Dr. Death in Popular Culture
Since Duntsch’s case concluded, the case of Dr. Death has been featured several times in popular culture. For instance, the first season of Wondery Media’s podcast featured 10 episodes about this case, appropriately titled Dr. Death.
Oxygen debuted their series, License to Kill with an episode titled Deadly God Complex. This series focuses on medical professionals who engage in criminal behavior. Their premier episode was focused on this case.
On July 12, 2021, author Azhar A.M. published the anthology 12 Stories of Criminals and Murders. Christopher Duntsch’s case is the first one featured in this book.
On July 15, 2021, Peacock TV started streaming their eight episode mini-series, Dr. Death. Several big name celebrities played the major roles:
- Joshua Jackson: Christopher Duntsch
- Alec Baldwin: Dr. Robert Henderson
- Christian Slater: Dr. Randall Kirby
- Anna Sophia Robb: Michelle Shughart
Then, on July 29, 2021, the same network released a follow-up docuseries titled Dr. Death: The Untold Story. This docuseries featured interviews with Dr. Henderson, Dr. Kirby, Michelle Shughart, and some of Duntsch’s former co-workers and patients.
On August 2, 2021, Sasha Yeager published the short story Dr. Death: The Shocking Story of Christopher Duntsch, a Madman with a Scalpel.
Also in 2021, the Season 14, Episode 3 of the series American Greed aired an episode titled “The Real Doctor Death” based on the Christopher Duntsch case.
Additional References
Brutal Nation. Episode 141: Medical Monday – Christopher Daniel Duntsch. Twisted Blue LLC, 31 Jan. 2022, https://open.spotify.com/episode/6BxhCzZbagCKZ6Lg3dkWRX?si=EABn20BZQMiebqnypnMpxA.
