Original subtitles

The first tenet of practising medicine

is do no harm, right?

The patients were treated like cannon fodder.

This isn't just medical negligence.

This is criminal.

[Tanya] Surely he knows what he's doing.

Like almost like he enjoyed it, hurting people.

[chilling music]

[narrator] Texas 2017,

in a packed courtroom, ú patients take the stand.

United by the same doctor they once trusted.

My left leg had an incredible amount of pain.

I was waking up from a nightmare,

or I woke up in a nightmare.

[narrator] Expert witnesses give their verdict.

This has the appearance that the patients

were treated like cannon fodder.

This has not happened in the United States of America

where you can do such a procedure

and have such complications.

[narrator] Four years earlier,

at University Hospital in Dallas, Texas, in 2013,

Jeff Glidewell is suffering from a pinched nerve in his neck.

[Tanya] Jeff Glidewell needed neck surgery.

He had a motorcycleú accident, and he goes in,

and he has neck surgeryú at University General.

He was in excruciating pain,

and he's just looking forú any way to address this.

He sees that Dr. Duntsch is highly recommended.

So he goes in to receive a surgery.

[narrator] The operation, to be performed,

by a renowned neurosurgeon

involves fusing several neck bones.

It's a routine procedure.

Dr. Duntsch was so disoriented during that surgery

that he mistookú the patient's oesophagus

for the spinal disc

that he was trying to operate on.

And instead of reaming out the disc,

he was reaming a giant hole in his oesophagus.

His solution was to put a surgical sponge over it,

and close the patient up,

which, as you could predict,

the sponge became severely infected.

My approach to patient care

is sort of a mixture of my training,

and in my experienceú with different clinics.

[narrator]ú Dr. Christopher Duntsch

is recognized as an ambitious young neurosurgeon,

specializing in the treatment of spinal injury.

He's worked in Dallas, Texas for three years,

following 15 years of medical training in Tennessee.

When he first came to Dallas,

he began bragging that he alone

was going to improve spinal surgeries in Dallas,

because, you know, he's this young guy fresh out of training,

and he's gonna teach all these old guys a new trick.

He had a website, he had this slickly produced video

that made him seem like God's gift to neurosurgery.

So why would you think there's a problem?

I treat all patients non-surgically at first,

if at all possible.

[narrator] Dr. Duntsch's promotional videos

feature patients singing his praises.

[patient] Now it's three and a half months

after the surgery,

and I'm doing everything I did before, plus more,

and I'm doing it without pain.

One of the things I think that impressed people

who came to visit, Dr. Duntsch,

is his confidence.

You've got to remove that entire first fracture,

and you've got to replace it with

what's called a spinal cage.

It's made out of titanium.

[Joni] Imagine, you're somebody

who's dealing with a chronic pain.

You go to see somebody who is 100% confident.

"I can fix you."

[news] Dr. Christopher Duntsch, of Plano,

seen in thisú online promotional video

was billing himself

as one of the best spineú surgeons in North Texas.

But before Jeff Glidewell's surgery,

there are concerns about Dr. Duntsch"s performance.

Patient after patient that comes to see Dr. Duntsch

is left almost uniformly worse than when they came in.

He is making absolute, unthinkable errors.

[narrator] Jeff Glidewell doesn't know it yet,

but his surgeon is about to earn a chilling nickname.

I'm Tanya Eiserere,

I'm an investigative reporter here at WFA TV in Dallas.

"Dr. Death", as many have called him,

was a huge story.

I mean, this was a massive case.

[narrator] Before any concerns arise

about his performance,

Dr. Duntsch has trained long and hard

to become a spinal surgeon.

Christopher Duntsch wasú born in 1971 in Montana.

[Joni] He was oldest of four children.

He had two brothers in a younger sister.

His family was very religious.

His dad was a missionary, asúwell as a physical therapist.

His mom had been a teacher,

but was also a stay-at-home mom.

He and his family moved to Memphis, Tennessee.

At this point, Christopher Duntsch

changes gears and goes from

wanting to be a football star to wanting to be a doctor.

But he is very smart, very talented,

and gets admitted into a fantastic medical program

where he actually pursues a joint MD PhD in neurosurgery.

[narrator] Over the next few years,

Duntsch trains as a resident doctor,

but focusing more on medical research

rather than patient care.

He actually partners with a couple of Russian scientists

to do some research in the area of stem cells and cancer.

[narrator] But his new business colleagues

find certain aspects of his lifestyle concerning.

[Joni] He has some trouble

and it mainly revolves around substance use.

The people who are working with him in this company

start noticing that they will see him in the morning

mixing a vodka and orange juice

and they've become increasingly concerned about that.

So he eventually gets kicked out of this company.

Seems like this was really what steered him into patient care,

and becoming a neurosurgeon.

The fact that this door was closed.

[narrator] There's evidence Dr. Duntsch

has struggled with addiction

since around 2007 or 2008

during the fourth year of his residency program.

At this point, there are so many concerns

about Dr. Duntsch's behaviour

and the fact that he seemed to be high,

routinely at work,

that he was referred to the impaired physicians program,

which is actually quite stunning that this exists,

but this is meant to help physicians

that are addicted or alcoholics

to regain their sobriety

and essentially get back on the right track.

[narrator] In 2011,

towards the end of a prestigious fellowship in spine surgery,

he falls in love.

[Joni] He meets a young woman.

He meets her at a bar and they really hit it off.

He buys her an Appletini.

They spend hours together, they go to his office,

they dance under a disco ball in his office,

and the sparks are flying.

And so very, very quickly, they are a couple.

[narrator] When his girlfriend becomes pregnant,

Duntsch decides to move with her to Dallas,

where he sets up his new practise,

and he starts advertisingú for his first patients.

[Tanya]úHe was a flamboyant character.

He had arrived here in Dallas.

He had framed himself as this amazing surgeon.

[narrator] The first hospital

that offers him an opportunity to operate

is the Baylor Regional Medical Center

in nearby Plano.

Baylor Hospital is a big system in our area, right?

They've got lots of hospitals.

There'd be nothing about Baylor Hospital

that would give you pause to go there.

They are well known in the area.

If you looked at his resume, right,

he looked like, wow.

I mean, obviously, these hospitals, they wanted him

because on paper, he looked really good.

He got a glowing review from the people that trained him.

Neurosurgery is a money maker, right?

These surgeons are in high demand.

So he would be somebody who would make them

a lot of money, right?

And so, yeah, this is a hot field.

[Joni] He's gonna be this big neurosurgeon.

And, you know, for a little while,

things just seem to be... like fairyland.

Until he starts to actually operate.

[narrator] On January 11, 2012,

at Baylor Hospital,

one of Dr. Duntsch's first patients is Barry Morgulof

He's injured his back, carrying heavy equipment

for his father's import business.

Barry Morguloff goes to see Dr. Duntsch at Baylor.

He has some concerns about his back,

and he's ultimately advised to get a spinal fusion surgery

where two of the vertebrae are fused together.

It's on his spine and it could be very dangerous.

However, Dr. Duntsch reassures him

and tells him that he does this all the time.

[narrator] Barry Morguloff puts his trust

in Christopher Duntsch.

As the operation begins, Duntsch picks up his scalpel

to perform what should be a routine spinal fusion.

But he operates incorrectly

around Barry's disc space and vertebrae.

[Bryanna] This is something that just does not happen.

A trained surgeon would know how to control his hands.

When Barry Morguloff awakes from the surgery

that Dr. Duntsch had completed on him,

he is in excruciating pain.

He's actually screaming

that he feels like he got hit by a truck.

And it's only later that they find

there are pieces of bone,

fragments, that Dr. Duntsch should have removed

that are actually left in his spine,

and that's what's causing this incredible pain.

[Tanya] His surgery was botched

and he had to wear a special boot to be able to walk.

He had a small child.

So he was left with a child

that he couldn't go out and play with,

like he would have done before.

[narrator] Instead of pausing

to reflect on the disastrous surgery,

within three weeks, Dr. Duntsch back in surgery.

Jerry Summers is a close friend

who had moved to Dallas at the same time as him.

He had a football injury

and he had some pain as a result of that

and then he had a car accident as an adult

and that seemed to really, really mess up his neck.

He thinks there's no better person to fix him

than his best friend, Christopher Duntsch.

And he actually works with him

and kind of helping him

get his practise up and off the ground.

[ Bryanna] During the surgery, Christopher Duntsch yet again,

nicks an artery in his spine.

And while he's attempting to operate on the spine,

removes so much of it that Jerry Summer's head

is no longer safely attached to his body.

He is permanently paralyzed from the neck down

and becomes a quadriplegic.

Doctors who were assisting Dr. Duntsch in their surgeries

were consistently horrified by what they observed.

Some of them, I think, kind of stood there in amazement.

Some of the things that the nurses and doctors

who were in the operating room describe

are things like operating on the wrong part of the spine,

not even targeting the area

where the injury occurs or where the problem is,

cutting somebody's vocal cords,

so they would only able to speak at a whisper,

pulling out nerves or cutting ligaments

that should have never have been touched.

At one point, it got so bad

that one of the doctors physically stopped

Dr. Duntsch from continuing to operate.

His ego and his view of himself

was way out of proportion

to who he really was.

[narrator] His medical colleagues

are also noticing signs of other worrying behaviour.

I'm Matt Goodman.

I'm the executive editor forú digital for "D Magazine",

which is the city magazine of Dallas, Texas.

Back in 2017,

I was a healthcare reporter for the magazine

and wrote about Christopher Duntsch.

There's no evidence

that he was under the influence of drugs,

but there is plenty of conjecture

that he was using drugs and alcohol

in a way that affected his ability to operate on patients.

[Joni] There's some people who have seen him

with alcohol in his office.

I mean, there's a lot of concern

that this is somebody who's coming to work

and performing these incredibly delicate procedures

under the influence of something.

One of the women who partied with him later said

that he would laugh about it

because he said that when he did cocaine

or when he did vodka,

it actually made him a better surgeon.

[narrator] In 2012, Baylor Medical Center

orders Duntsch to take a drug test.

After undergoing evaluation, he's allowed to return to work,

but only to perform less complex procedures.

The hospital is very, very concerned,

and they require two things.

They tell him to only do

minimally invasive procedures, minor procedures, essentially,

and they also require him

to go through a psychological evaluation,

which he passes.

[narrator]ú Despite the restrictions

placed on his practise,

Duntsch continues operating on patients.

One of them is Kelly Martin.

Kelly Martin was one of Dr. Duntsch's patients,

and she was a lovely woman, she was 54 years old.

She really had been very healthy.

Kelly Martin was a librarian.

Her husband was a retired police officer.

[Joni] She and her husband were getting ready to decorate

for the holidays.

He was handing her some Christmas decorations

and she was on a ladder and as she stepped down,

she missed the step and she fell.

And she felt a tweak in her back.

Dr. Duntsch, who had received a 4.5 out of five ratings online

and had nothing but a clean record,

despite the two major mishaps in surgeries

that have recently occurred, came strongly recommended.

Dr. Duntsch assures her family,

"Oh, she'll be out in 45 minutes or an hour,

this is no big deal."

This is something that, you know,

is a routine kind of surgery.

45 minutes pass, an hour passes,

two hours passes,

and Kelly Martin's husband

who's sitting in the waiting room

realizes nothing good is happening.

Meanwhile, in the operating room,

Christopher Duntsch accidentally, apparently,

hits one of her arteries,

and she begins bleeding profusely.

She's getting pale, her blood pressure is going down,

breathing is becoming laboured.

[Bryanna] Dr. Duntsch comes out of surgery.

He says that Kelly is OK.

She's stable, but she's in the Intensive Care Unit.

And he doesn't provide a lot of information

on what happened or what went wrong.

[narrator] Kelly isn't like Dr. Duntsch suggests, stable.

An artery gets nicked.

She bleeds out and dies.

It's only later when Kelly Martin dies

that her husband learns that she experienced massive blood loss

to do an artery being cut,

and essentially she was allowed to bleed out

and Dr. Duntsch didn't do anything to stop it.

And her husband... you know, he,

I mean, they were like,

they had been married for decades.

It was like a love story.

And then to lose her that way?

You don't think you're gonna lose your...

the love of your life

in a minor back surgery.

You just don't think that's going to happen.

After Kelly Martin dies,

Baylor Plano realizes we have to get rid of this person.

He has a danger, essentially, to patients.

[narrator] When a hospital fires a doctor

for poor performance,

it is duty bound to report the offending medic

to a national data bank.

The idea behind the national practitioner data bank

is that it's supposed to serve as a way that a hospital

can check out a doctor.

Be able to look and see, wow, this doctor had problems.

[narrator] An entry on the data bank

is a massive red flag

and can effectively end a doctor's career.

But instead of dismissing Dr. Duntsch,

Baylor Medical Center accepts his resignation.

If they had terminated him,

they would have had to report him to a database.

By allowing him to resign,

he is able to now move to another hospital

with essentially a clean slate.

It's like starting over again.

Kelly Martin dies, and they let him essentially quietly leave.

[narrator] After Baylor Medical Center

accepts Duntsch's resignation,

he hires a lawyer

who negotiates a letter of reference from them.

These hospitals are concerned about getting sued, right?

It's just a lot easier to letúthe doctor go on down the line,

rather than doing something.

Because, you know, if I get sued as the hospital

for reporting them to the data bank

or reporting them in a medical board or something like that,

then that costs me money.

And I think that's part of it, the fear on that side.

If Baylor acts differently,

he gets stopped in his tracks, right?

[Bryanna] In 2012,

Christopher Duntsch essentially

starts immediately applying for other jobs.

And he receives a job offerúat the Dallas Medical Center.

They were interviewing people at Baylor,

getting a background check done.

And in the interim, he was allowed to perform surgeries,

just considered mildly invasive or low risk in nature.

No red flags stood out for them.

And so they decided to give him basically a trial run.

Kind of temporary privileges

where he would have the opportunity

to do five surgeries.

So he has essentially tentative or temporary privileges

depending upon the outcome

of how he does in these five surgeries.

His second surgery

is with a woman named Floella Brown.

[narrator] During Floella's surgery,

Dr. Duntsch severs her vertebral artery,

causing catastrophic blood loss.

Despite the obvious bleeding, he continues operating.

[Joni] Her blood pressure plummets

and later they discover

that she had had a massive stroke.

She never regains consciousness, and then she dies.

Duntsch eventually turns up,

and he is scheduled for another surgery.

And several people discourage him.

They say, "Look, focus on what's happening with Floella Brown."

This is too much, you know, just delay the surgery.

[narrator]ú As Floella Brown lies dying,

he starts operating on another patient,

Mary Efurd.

And once again, the surgery is a complete disaster

and is so obvious to people around him in the operating room

that he is so distracted

by what is going on with Floella Brown,

that he's not concentrating

on what he's doing with Mary Efurd.

[narrator] Duntsch has severed a nerve route

leading to major nerve damage

and permanent disability.

When Mary Efurd wakes up, she is in the worst agony

she has ever been in.

I mean, over and over in this case,

what you saw is passing the trash hospital style,

allowing him to just

scurry out the door

and continue on down the road to the next hospital,

to the next unsuspecting hospital,

to the next unsuspecting patient that has no idea

what has happened before.

Kay Van Wey,

a medical malpractice attorney,

is soon approached by several of Dr. Duntsch's former patients.

I was contacted by Mary Efurd's daughter

telling me about a horrible outcome

she had had from a spine surgery.

But it became a lot different case

once I began investigating it.

She told me that her mother had undergone a spine surgery

at a local hospital

and woke up in excruciating pain

and had to go back in to have another surgery.

That part is not wholly unusual in and of itself,

but she told me that the doctor that was called in

to repair the damage was quite critical

of the original surgeon, Dr. Duntsch,

and was willing to talk to me.

[narrator] The surgeon's name is Dr. Robert Henderson.

To avoid being blamed for Dr. Duntsch's incompetence,

he decides to film his attempts to repair some of the damage.

[Dr Henderson] I haven't even loosened the nut yet.

So that means it wasn't evenú tight at any point in time.

So this is not providing any stability at all.

I'm concerned, in fact, there's no question about it.

When he sees the travesty of the surgery,

he really does start thinking this is an imposter.

He's got to be an imposter.

This cannot be a genuine neurosurgeon.

Dr. Henderson contacts the University of Tennessee,

the guy that directed his residency,

because he's worried that maybe this guy's an imposter.

Maybe he's not really Christopher Duntsch.

And he sends a picture.

He is absolutely stunned when the doctor calls him back

and says, "Oh, yeah, that's him."

So Dr. Henderson contacts the Texas Medical Board

and says, "This person's a danger.

"He's got to be stopped."

The Texas Medical Board,

they are the licensing entity for doctors

in the state of Texas.

So they can suspend the doctor's licence,

but they don't do that lightly.

About one in six complaints that they receive

actually go through to a very thorough investigation.

After that, it takes upwards of six months

for an investigation to be completed.

[Tanya] I think the system, unfortunately,

is not set up for a guy like Duntsch.

The system is set up for like, a person who makes

an error,

but isn't done in malice.

What do you do with a Duntsch

who's maiming and killing people left and right.

Like, how does the system deal with a surgeon like that?

[news] In December, the state medical board told us

that 540 doctors and physicianú assistants were disciplined

from 2013 to 2015.

The most common violationú was for medical workers

not meeting standards.

[narrator] With little sign of the Texas Medical Board

making a quick decision,

the media is tipped off.

In the event, some other hospital

might give Dr. Duntsch privileges.

We wanted to warn people.

So myself and some of the other physicians that were involved,

went to the media and said, please,

cry this from the mountain tops,

because this doctor is dangerous.

[narrator] Meanwhile, Dr. Duntsch

is having little trouble

finding hospitals willing toú let him operate on patients.

His fourth hospital, and final hospital,

is the University General Hospital.

It is here that he operates on Jeffrey Glidewell.

During the surgery of Jeff Glidewell,

Dr. Duntsch discovers a mass

that he thinks is a tumour, and he stops the surgery

because he wants to investigate.

However, that's not a tumour, it's just regular muscle

that any other surgeon would have seen

and instantly recognized.

Jeff Glidewell wakes up and is in excruciating pain.

He can't feel his feet,

he has difficulty moving his arm,

and there's another surgery required

to take this sponge out,

and it requires many months of treatments and therapy

for Jeff Glidewell to even leave the hospital.

[narrator] Another surgeon, Dr. Randall Kirby,

is called on to try and repair the damage.

Dr. Kirby was calling the medical board

and screaming at them and saying,

"I told you, if you didn't take his licence away,

these things were gonna continue happening.

Let me tell you what happened today."

And luckily after Jeffrey Glidewell was butchered,

on June 26th of 2013, the Texas Medical Board

finally has an emergency meeting where they suspend his licence.

But for the medical board finally acting,

I think he would still be operating today.

[narrator] In December 2013, the Texas Medical Board

permanently revokes Duntsch's medical licence.

After Christopher Duntsch's licence was revoked,

he has a bit of a spiralling meltdown.

He is forced to move back in with his parents,

which has got to be humiliating for him.

And he just becomes incredibly self-destructive.

He is pulled over for driving under the influence.

He gets arrested for that.

He goes to a Walmart

and essentially tries to steal merchandise.

At another point, a former girlfriend discovers him

in her apartment.

He's got a gun in one hand and knife in the other,

and he's claiming that he's been assaulted

by these kind of unknown people.

And there's some private investigator

who's somehow out to get him.

His life has really, really unravelled.

[narrator] As Dr. Duntsch's life falls apart,

his victims are mobilizing.

I represented around a dozenú of Dr. Duntsch patients

in medical malpractice cases

filed in the civil courtsú here in Dallas, Texas.

These people's lives were so devastated.

We're talking about either a loved one was killed,

or loved one was catastrophically injured

and they needed help with medical bills.

What were they going to do

if they were never able to work again?

How are they going to support their families?

[narrator] But there is one person

who's very keen to speak to Kay about the case...

Dr. Duntsch.

I had several interactions with Dr. Duntsch

that ranged from the bizarre to the extremely bizarre.

In his deranged state of mind,

he wanted me to pay him to testify against the hospitals

and that we would somehow become allies.

But this was after he told me

how stupid I was and how incompetent,

but if you'll pay me money,

then I'll, you know, team up with you,

or... it was just nuts.

He had in fact told people who knew him

that he planned to set upú practices in another state

and was actually gathering documents.

And I think when some of the family members

found this out, and they did.

Some of them actually started crying.

The prosecutor's office,

when they discovered all the things he had done,

decided to file criminal charges against him.

And at that point, he was arrested.

We do start tonight withú the North Texas doctor,

charged for what happened in his operating room

during surgery.

Dr. Christopher Duntsch is a neurosurgeon

and now faces charges of aggravated assault

with a deadly weapon, his scalpel.

[Matt] It is incredibly rare for a district attorney

to get involved in cases like this.

From my research, you know, ú this was the first time

anyone had been convictedú for aggravated assault

related to their surgical outcomes,

which speaks to how egregious these cases were.

The doctor doing surgeriesú and then being tried for it.

Wow, that's extraordinary.

[narrator] Dr. Duntsch is charged with five counts

of aggravated assault causing serious bodily injury

and one count of injuring an elderly person.

In June 2015, prosecutors from Dallas

interviewed Duntsch about surgeries,

including Jeffrey Glidewell's.

[detective] Are you willing to talk to me?

[Duntsch] Yes. [detective] Jeffrey Glidewell.

What do you remember about that?

Jeffrey Glidewell,

was a gentleman who presented,

with severe neck pain.

During his case, there was difficulty with a tissue

that had... was growing along top of the bone.

[detective] Okay. - Seemed to be cancerous.

So instead of finishing the surgery,

I aborted the surgery,

took a biopsy for the pathologist and closed.

There's a lot of bleeding associated with it,

but besides that, we got it closed and, and off the table.

He basically painted a completely opposite picture

of what happened in those operating rooms.

[detective] Do you know if he suffered any complications

as a result of that?

To my knowledge, he did not have any complications.

He's justifying, right?

He doesn't think he's done anything wrong

because he's just explaining, well, I did this.

And, you know, he did it. I... he... his mind,

he did everything right.

[detective] Have you ever used alcohol and drugs during...

- During surgeries? - Never, no. Not one time.

[Tanya] How many people do you have to maim

or have to die before you realize

well, I didn't know what I was doing?

Like, he should have. Like there's a certain

pathological nature to this guy.

[detective] The other one was Miss Efurd, do you remember?

Miss Efurd, absolutely.

And a rush to get her case closed,

to get to another patient who was dying.

I didn't follow all the basic standards techniques

I normally follow.

And what ended up happening was

I was placing something called pedicle screw,

into part of the spine.

I feel like it was because I got overwhelmed

by the executive of the hospital coming into my operating room,

freaking out about the patient that was dying,

not following my orders about the patient.

He seemed to genuinely believe that he was not at fault,

and that the case against him was overblown.

I know exactly what's happening and none of it is criminal.

[narrator] After spending 18 months in custody,

Duntsch's case finally comes to trial.

When the trial ensues,

Christopher Duntsch pleads not guilty.

The trial was really interesting because,

essentially, the prosecutionú in order to get a conviction

had to prove thatúDuntsch knew what he was doing,

that there was an intent.

[narrator] Concerned they can't prove

murder beyond reasonable doubt,

prosecutors focus on their clearest case.

The surgery that left 74-year-old Mary Efurd

permanently paralyzed,

with other botched operations used as supporting evidence.

Chilling testimony today inú the trial of a former doctor

accused in the string of botched surgeries,

one patient says he woke up a quadriplegic.

The husband also took theú stand because his wife died.

Tanya Eiserere was in the courtroom.

[Tanya] Jurors are being asked to do something rare

to find the formerúneurosurgeon criminally liable

for the botched surgery of Mary Efurd.

Prosecutors are calling patients and doctors

to try to make their case.

Dr. Randy Kirby reported Duntsch

to the Texas Medical Board.

Oh, he performed worse than any neurosurgeon

than I've ever seen in an OR.

[narrator] Intentionally causing serious bodily injury

to an elderly person canú be a first degree felony

that results in life imprisonment.

[Matt] During the trial, Duntsch did not testify.

He essentially sat and listened as physicians laid out a case

that he was a bad physician, which was the exact opposite

of what Duntsch thought about himself.

This is a disaster, ú an unmitigated disaster

[Tanya] His defence framed this as an indictment

on the medical establishment.

That the medical establishment had failed Duntsch

and had failed the patients.

That he was inexperienced,

that he didn't have the training that he needed

and he shouldn't have been allowed near an operating room.

[Joni] Yes, he made a lot of errors

but they were not intentional.

This was somebody who just did not have the skills.

Had not had the mentoring, did not have the training

to be in the position that he was in.

[narrator] In the end, it is Dr. Duntsch himself

that helps seals his fate.

The prosecutors presented as evidence

a email sent in the middle of the night

from Duntsch to his physician assistant, Kimberly Morgan.

[Tanya] This email is a hugely important email.

It had an effect on the jurors,

because it gives you a window into his mind, right?

Who writes something like that?

Who writes that you are aú cross between God, Einstein,

and the Antichrist,

and describes themselves as a stone cold killer?

That's not normal.

That's a very unusual thing to write.

And when you look at it in the context

of these botched surgeries and what happened to the patients,

that email is, maybe almost like a road map.

[narrator] After 13 days of trial

and just four hours of deliberation,

the jury delivers its verdict.

[news] Breaking at four, within the last 40 minutes,

a jury found former Dallas doctor

Christopher Duntsch guilty

of injury to an elderly person,

which is a first degree felony.

[narrator]ú Dr. Duntsch is sentenced

to a lifetime behind bars.

This is unprecedented,

no doctor in Dallas Countyú has ever been convicted

for a surgery gone wrong.

This is what I wanted.

This is what I've waitedú four and a half years for.

[Tanya] I think the families felt like this was some

measure of justice.

You've lost your loved one or you've been left paralyzed,

and it was a sense of relief, a sense of joy,

that someone is going to pay for what happened here.

And so I think that was the sense in that courtroom,

people were overjoyed.

And there were tears, a lot of tears.

And these families had been through so much.

And they still go through so much.

That doesn't change, I don't think.

The message, the jury, and the prosecution

wanted to send, not justú to Christopher Duntsch,

but to all physicians or the few physicians

who might be willing toú engage in similar practices,

is you are not immune toú being held accountable.

What will be remembered most about Duntsch

is how the system failed patients

that nearly every check and balance

that should be in place

to get a guy like Chris Duntsch

out of these operating roomsúfailed and failed repeatedly.

[Tanya] Truly what we saw with Duntsch

was a prescription for disaster.

And that prescription I think very much still exists today.

When you meet the victims, right?

I mean, all these victims, they are just

salt of the earth people, school teachers.

I mean, just nice people.

And you could see yourself in these people, right?

Any of us could need back surgery or neck surgery,

and you could see, well, this could be me.

You want to trust the person that's cutting on you,

but as we saw in this case, often,

oftentimes, there are things you just do not know.

If you are incapable of doing the job

for which you've been hired,

your luck's going to run out eventually,

especially when people's lives are at stake.

Patients died,

people were left paralyzed.

People, you know, their lives were changed forever.

I have wondered about this so many times

if he, day after day sitting in prison,

if there ever came a lightbulb moment for him,

where he said, "Wow, I was really off my rocker."

And I cannot believe I hurt so many people,

And I'm so sorry and so remorseful.

You know, I hope and pray that that will happen,

but I don't think anybody's holding their breath for that.