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1 It took a while for the film

that I was making about Paolo to finally air.

Which was a bit frustrating for me and Paolo

because we were waiting for it to be released before we could, sort of, do a,

you know, a... before we were free to be totally public.

All of my friends and family knew at that point

that we were a couple and that we were quietly engaged,

but I certainly had not announced it professionally yet.

In hindsight, the fact that I was a journalist

ended up being very convenient for Paolo.

The special finally aired in the summer of 2014.

There was a lot of anticipation, and I actually had a viewing party.

We all sat there in movie seats and watched the documentary.

I just need to help my patients.

Clearly, if I can save many among my patients,

then even better.

This is the beauty of my mission.

I don't need to make money or to be famous or nothing else.

People were crying, you know? People were so moved.

We had a big spread afterwards.

I gave a little speech, and then Paolo gave a speech.

It was a very moving speech, actually, about how much he was in love with me,

and how much I meant to him, and how he couldn't wait to marry me.

And a lot of people were really touched by what he said.

And a few of my girlfriends, in particular, um,

were just, "Wow," you know? "This man's incredible."

He's got this magnetism to him.

Once you got drawn in, it was very hard to pull back.

It's almost like he just kinda sat back like a spider in the middle of the web.

He knows how to draw you into the web.

No question about it.

I was scouring the net for journalistic stories,

documentaries about Paolo Macchiarini.

It was clear that deaths had been portrayed as successes

in international media.

That inexplicable conundrum is what kept me going.

{n8}This is the final brainstorming before the transplantation.

{n8}We need to go through every single step.

Probably everybody of you have seen the patient.

She's a wonderful girl.

The film that showed Paolo's surgery on Julia Tuulik

says that it was a big success.

But Julia was dead,

and something quite untoward seems to have happened.

I always work with a healthy dose of skepticism.

And in this particular case with Macchiarini,

it was clear that somebody was not telling the truth.

But I didn't know who.

We fly to St. Petersburg,

and we meet with the mother of Julia.

She says that Julia's dying wish

was, uh, for her story to be told

so that nobody else would have to go through this torture.

Julia's mother,

she had been fearful for a long time before the procedure

because she hadn't trusted Macchiarini.

You look beautiful.

Thank you.

And she had seen how he had charmed and seduced her daughter.

The mother made it very clear to us how Paolo always had been available

to her daughter, uh, before the operation.

After the procedure, he went silent.

And that, of course, was very painful and unsettling

because Julia started to experience grave problems

already after about two or three weeks after surgery.

And, eventually, she died.

If you have a patient who dies because of the new technology,

then you always ask you,

"Did I do something wrong?"

"Do I have the right to continue?"

"Should I continue?"

But still, you learn only by doing.

I am saying that we are still improving and we need to improve time over time.

And only by doing, we improve.

We knew that there were new patients actually queuing

to get the same kind of plastic implant.

Macchiarini had the approval of the Russian government.

It was one of Putin's pet projects,

so it was a very high profile undertaking in Russia.

My initial reason for pursuing this story was that

something was obviously wrong.

Paolo and I flew out to California,

which is where my younger brother lives with his wife.

Matt and Sarah are a lot of fun.

And he got along with them right away and they...

You know, I remember that weekend being very, um...

a lot of laughs.

I remember picking them up at the airport.

{n8}And to be quite honest, I was very intimidated

{n8}from the information that I'd been given.

{n8}You know, "This is a world-renowned surgeon..."

He also has a very strong... commanding presence.

Yeah.

I honestly didn't know what I was gonna say to him,

but he was very endearing.

It was just really easy to kinda talk to him.

He was charming.

Charming,

but intimidating at the same time.

Um...

Very sweet with my children.

Uh, very sweet with Benita.

They'd be dancing around our kitchen and he would always call her "my love."

There was no doubt in, really, anyone's mind that was close to her,

how strongly he felt.

He made a beautiful dinner for us one night.

Stories just started flooding out of his mouth.

But yeah, the Lady Diana story was... the main one that stands out.

He said that he was called in when Lady Diana got in a car accident.

Stop!

He didn't get there in time, but had he, he could have saved her life.

We're like the starstruck, you know, little kids.

I mean, given that, you know, he was on television, right,

for cutting edge, um, you know, medical advancement,

we thought if anybody was gonna be treating these folks,

it just seemed like it made sense.

Paolo, he put a lot of trust into me,

but it was not a real friendship with Paolo.

I don't know if anyone could get really close to him.

There was always a distance.

We did go out for dinner together with other team members.

Actually, it wasn't related to the surgery...

And he was always on the phone during the dinner,

so it was hard to get, you know,

a broader picture about who Paolo was.

To be this surgeon that flies around and really doesn't have a home...

I honestly have really not heard about this before. Or later.

It is very strange, this, but at the Karolinska,

everybody saw that Paolo was never there.

And then when Paolo came,

it was almost like the owner of the dog comes home

after a long trip, you know, with a bone.

Everything in that lab group was about pleasing Paolo.

We started talking about when we wanted to get married

and we picked July 11th, 2015.

Paolo said to me, "I want you to let me take over the planning of the wedding,

and I don't want you to ask any questions."

{n8}"Some things you'll know about, but most of it, leave it to me."

"Just trust me."

- My initial reaction was... - "What? No."

But everybody said to me, "You know he has incredible taste."

"All of his surprises are perfection, elaborate, romantic."

"He's not gonna get this wrong."

And so I said, "Okay."

"Why not?"

As soon as Paolo proposed,

he told me that he wanted to have a big, Catholic wedding in Italy.

Hi, my love.

I just saw your beautiful pictures

and thank you so much. Wow.

They are really beautiful and do so much good.

Um...

I, um...

I found it the most sensitive to me,

um... is the one where you and I are in the church with the priest.

That's a picture.

And, um...

I just dreamed.

My first question was, "How's that gonna work?"

"I'm not Catholic."

I don't know a lot about the Catholic religion,

but I do know it's not easy to get married in the Catholic Church

if you're not Catholic.

And also, we're both divorcees.

Paolo said, "Don't worry about it. I'm going to go to Rome,

and talk to my contacts there."

"Okay. Who's that?"

And he told me he was going to the Vatican.

I was... "Okay."

He told me he had connections.

As the leading cardiothoracic surgeon in Italy,

he had been called to the Vatican several times for consultations.

I said, "What are you gonna do?"

He said, "I'm gonna ask them if they can help us, you know,

find a priest that would marry us."

I get a phone call and he said, "Well, I have great news."

"I actually met with Pope Francis himself."

I'm kind of like, "Wait, what?"

I really thought he was pulling my leg.

But he says to me, "You know that secret network

of doctors that I told you about?"

"The pope is one of my patients."

"And he really likes me."

I said, "Come on, Paolo, the pope doesn't marry people. Don't be silly."

And he's like, "No, my love, the pope wants to marry us himself."

And the first thing I did was google, "Does the pope marry people?"

And what immediately pops up,

the pope had just married 20 couples at the Vatican one month earlier.

And these were couples that were "living in sin,"

that had children out of wedlock.

So, it turns out the pope can marry people if he wants to.

It sounded so wild and so, like, crazy.

That's about as, you know, far-fetched as it gets, obviously.

But Paolo explained what his relationship basically was with the Vatican.

Uh, and being, you know, the level of doctor that he was,

his Italian background...

- I mean, it seemed to make sense, right? - Made sense.

- It just... - Yeah, we were like...

Our soon-to-be brother-in-law is the pope's doctor.

People do trust their surgeon.

And trust, in our business especially,

you know, when it comes to the patient, it's everything.

Being part in the team around Paolo Macchiarini,

I wanted to still believe in the concept of the plastic airways

combined with the stem cells.

Not only me, but a lot of other persons as well.

We put all the trust in Paolo Macchiarini.

But by the spring of 2013,

it was not actually going that well.

{n8}Here at the Karolinska, Paolo Macchiarini operated on

{n8}three patients with the plastic windpipes.

The first person ever to get this plastic windpipe

was a man called Andemariam Beyene from Iceland.

Shortly after that it was Chris Lyles... from United States.

He had already died early on after the operation.

And the third patient was Yesim Cetir.

She came to the Karolinska from Türkiye.

All of them got severe complications related to the plastic airways.

Yesim Cetir, she actually was suffocating.

And the problems became extremely severe

directly after this operation.

The first time that I met Yesim

was when she had a catastrophe in the ICU.

And I was called in there on an emergency alarm.

Her heart had stopped, and she wasn't breathing.

And Kalle and I put her on a heart-lung machine.

Honest people don't suspect dishonesty.

And that's why we get tricked.

Paolo met Yesim in Türkiye,

and recruited her to come to Karolinska

for a treatment to replace her airway with his plastic windpipe.

She had this damaged airway.

She had problems with coughing, and she had some mucus secretions,

and that was socially disturbing for her.

But it was nothing, actually, that could... would limit her

living a pretty normal life.

She flew there on a normal airplane,

and went to Burger King, had a burger,

got on the bus, and took the bus to Karolinska.

And that's when her horror story started.

Paolo was really not interested in being a part of her care

after the initial procedures were performed.

He was absent, more or less.

Paolo didn't want to see these complications.

He couldn't see that there was any problem with this plastic airway.

So, for him, it worked perfectly well.

Paolo left Yesim Cetir for her... destiny.

And watching Yesim suffering from these plastic airways

and the consequences of the plastic airways,

this was very tough for me.

On a personal level.

{n8}Meanwhile, the first patient, Andemariam, was not really doing well either.

{n8}But he was in Iceland, so no one of us knew about this.

And Paolo didn't say anything.

It was reported from Paolo and other people around him in the lab

that he was doing very well and this was working

and he went back to the university and, you know...

Like a really fairy-tale story.

But then, Andemariam was referred back to Karolinska.

And when we got his case presented to us,

we realized that he was facing the same problems as Yesim Cetir.

He had several surgeries to keep the airway open.

He died after struggling for many months

with all the complications that was related to the plastic airway.

Yesim Cetir was kept alive for more than four and a half years in intensive care.

In total, she had 191 surgical procedures performed in our department.

She had to have her airway cleaned every fourth hour for years.

It's a terribly torturous procedure.

When I heard, actually, that Yesim Cetir has died,

at that time I felt relief.

Finally, she can go to rest.

Paolo had very specifically instructed me to keep this under wraps,

about the wedding and the pope.

He said this will not be announced by the Vatican

until maybe the day we're getting married, the morning of the wedding.

Because this cannot get leaked.

If it's leaked that the pope is going to marry two divorcees

in a very grandiose public ceremony,

then it's dangerous for the pope. This is too controversial.

And he was very insistent about that.

You can tell the people closest to you, but they cannot tell anybody.

Once I agreed that the pope could marry us,

I said, "Where is this gonna happen?

Paolo said there's this place called Castel Gandolfo that's outside of Rome.

It's the pope's summer residence,

and it's absolutely beautiful, it's charming,

and it's just breathtaking.

And he said the pope said he can marry us there.

And then Paolo tells me

he's renting a castle for all of our guests to stay in,

and that was something I was allowed to tell

our closest family and friends.

Yeah, it was just like another big "drop the bomb."

This is just getting crazier and crazier.

It was definitely on the scale of what felt like a royal wedding.

And then all kinds of world leaders get added to the list.

The Clintons are coming, which made sense

because Paolo was friends with Bill Clinton.

The Obamas.

Sarkozy from France.

The one we argued about was Putin from Russia.

And I said, "I don't want Putin at my wedding."

Also, "You really think Putin's gonna be at the same wedding

as the Clintons and the Obamas? Come on."

And he dismissed that by saying, "Yeah, he won't come."

"But because I'm doing this big clinical trial in Russia,

you're talking about a multimillion-dollar grant."

He said, "I have to invite him." And Paolo kept adding people.

He had arranged for Andrea Bocelli to perform

as I was coming down the aisle, which was incredible.

He told me that Elton John would perform that night for us.

It was a mind-boggling guest list, you know.

Now it's becoming this giant event.

People were jokingly calling me Princess Diana.

I did feel a little bit like a princess.

We invited, um, not only our friends and family

and these dignitaries and celebrities,

but the families of some of Paolo's patients who died

were invited to the wedding because Paolo had become quite close to them.

A couple of years after Chris's passing,

one day I went to my mailbox and opened it up

and there was this white box

that, um, had my name written in gold on it.

It was just beautiful.

It was to be the wedding of the century.

So we had to buy gowns,

and it was more than one day.

You know, hobnobbing with... with, uh, celebrities,

presidents, and... dignitaries.

It was like, "Okay, we're going to get married in Italy."

And then I thought, "I'm going to Italy."

"I'm going to get my gown and I'm going to..." And we did.

I bought my gown, and I was ready to go.

I was just excited for them.

I was awestruck.

You know, I mean, who was I to be getting an invitation like...

Like this? You're in the clouds.

To the point where, how can you really think straight?

As we were planning the wedding, obviously, one of the questions is,

where are we going to live?

This had been a long-distance romance.

Then Paolo said, "Maybe you should come and live in Barcelona."

Initially I wasn't sure about that because it meant pulling my daughter,

you know, out of her school, out of her world,

and it also meant me leaving my job,

which was a huge decision for me.

But, you know, we talked about it quite a bit, and he didn't push.

Hi, my love.

I had no chance to, um...

write you, um, or send you a video before

because I was a little bit busy,

but this doesn't mean that I didn't thought at you.

He sent me so many videos from Barcelona.

He has a beautiful house there that sits up on top of a hill

in this seaside community

with gorgeous, expansive views.

I wish you a beautiful and sweet good morning and

just to make you understand that this is

the place where you belong, my love.

And this is the place where you and I will live for the rest of our life.

I love you.

I finally, one day, just said to him, "You know what?"

"I've made up my mind. We're coming to Barcelona."

And he was absolutely elated, you know? And I was excited too.

It just kind of fit the adventure of being with Paolo.

I do remember when I finally really understood

that this was complete bogus.

It was at a lecture that Paolo was giving

to a bunch of visiting scientists on his windpipe surgeries.

The natural progression is that you go from animal to human,

and you test it first in the animal for a long time,

and then you do the experiment on humans.

He was showing data and talking about his wonderful research.

If he had had data

on a plastic windpipe in an animal, he should have showed it then.

{n8}But he jumped straight to the results of his surgeries on human patients.

I realize at that point that he has skipped a major chapter.

He should be showing us a plastic windpipe,

long-term survival in an animal

before you show the human beings.

That's all gone.

There was this gigantic leap, and then I understood, oh my God.

He hasn't done this in an animal yet.

When we started to dig into the archives of medical publications,

we couldn't find anything.

Nothing.

There was not a single paper that described how

these plastic airways worked in animals.

There was basically no data at all.

We all felt like there was a chill down our spine.

Paolo had bypassed all laws, rules, regulations,

but also all, sort of, moral or ethical compasses that we can have.

{n8}We had information on the patients that had been operated here at Karolinska,

{n8}but I knew that Paolo, in parallel, had operated on patients,

we knew, in Russia.

We didn't know what happened to them.

So I arranged a meeting with Paolo.

It was just me and him

in the library.

Usually, I'm not a nervous guy.

But there, I was extremely nervous.

For me, he was, you know, a person, really, to look up to.

I tried to gain some courage

to ask him the question that was nagging me,

and I basically knew the answer of the question,

but I was afraid to hear the answer.

So I asked him, "How are the patients doing in Russia?"

He said, "Which patients?"

"The patients that received the plastic airways."

It was extremely tense.

And he just said,

"It's basically none of your business."

And then he raised from the sofa

and just left the library.

With that answer,

I felt totally empty.

It became quite obvious to me then

that Paolo is hiding something here.

And I decided, there and then,

that now I'm going to prove

to the world

that these plastic airways,

they don't work.

After having been to Russia, it was clear that we were onto something

that actually needed looking into.

We decided to make a documentary film to expose what Macchiarini was doing.

I called the producer of the Julia Tuulik documentary.

And said, "Could we get permission to use footage from the documentary?"

He said, "Fine. It's a success story. Why not?"

And then I asked him, "Did you actually perhaps save any uncut footage?"

"Any raw material?"

"Yes, we saved all of it. Fifty hours."

We watched through all of this footage.

Very often, when you make a film,

you can have a microphone on,

and the camera is running, even though you're not filming.

And what we realize is that, behind the scenes,

there is so much that has been filmed,

perhaps by accident,

uh...

which shows an entirely different story

of what occurs with Julia.

I remember the first time I saw the footage.

We could actually see Paolo walking, real time, on the beach,

talking about his surgeries at the time when all this was happening.

It was shot in April, May 2012.

Two surgeries had already taken place in Stockholm.

One of them was Andemariam Beyene.

And, at that time,

Macchiarini was claiming that Andemariam was doing fine.

But in this particular piece of footage,

he says something quite different.

When I felt the scaffolds, they were completely welded wrong.

They were like the POSS PCU material that we implanted by Mr. Beyene.

So I think that we need to redo everything again.

Now we lost two weeks.

This proved that he actually knew

uh, how poorly his, um, surgeries had done.

Andemariam had serious problems,

so before Julia was going to have her implant,

Paolo knew that his implants didn't work.

Do you want something? A cup of tea? Coffee?

There was a lot of footage from the three days

preceding the surgery on Julia.

A couple days before the surgery, they need an emergency meeting.

- Let's go to, uh... - Just short break.

And we go to lab because we have to decide.

Do you know the problem?

No. What is your problem?

We must start with the second session.

Ah.

When they were just about to put the implant into Julia,

they had a new batch of plastic implants,

and none of the implants were... was okay.

One of the prostheses is rather short.

- Uh-huh. - The second one, rather weak.

The third is probably damaged because they find holes somewhere.

- Let's go down. - Let's go.

The problem is, it's three millimeters too short.

Where? Distally or proximally?

Distally. Proximal is fine.

I don't give a shit.

- Hmm? You don't care? - Yes.

You can stitch through the cartilage.

In front of the camera, Paolo decides that they proceed.

Knowing that the plastic implants are faulty.

And his colleagues obviously had to trust his judgment.

- And the other one? - The other one is softer.

Soft on the distal side, but has eight millimeters.

Is it very soft?

Yes, it is. It was so soft that I wouldn't use that one.

- So let's use the other one. - The three-millimeter one?

Would you like to take a look?

We don't have much choice.

This was a degree of callousness that was... almost criminal.

It's disgusting, it's incriminating, and quite awful to watch.

Start with the suction.

Scalpel.

Scalpel.

Before that point, my theory was that,

well, maybe his implants hadn't worked properly.

But that doesn't mean that he is a bad man,

or that his general idea was bad.

No. No, don't cry.

Don't cry.

I really didn't expect that Paolo would have knowingly inserted

uh, a non-functioning piece of plastic into somebody's throat.

I mean, watching Julia go through this procedure

is like almost seeing, like, a lamb being sacrificed.

- The upper part... - Uh-huh.

What is the fold?

It has folded over and become completely...

What can be done about it?

Nothing.

- It is not collapsing. - I just keep... Ah.

It's okay. It's not collapsed, it's just bended.

A little bended. But it's okay.

Is the prosthesis no good?

The prosthesis is really good.

Why does it...?

Has the prosthesis folded over badly?

It's good.

I can hardly get any air.

We realized the suffering and the pain that had been caused,

and you realize what the outcome will be,

and you can see her being led to her death.

I made this decision to move onto this new, exciting life in Spain.

I mean, it all sounded very romantic.

My daughter and I were both very excited about this new adventure.

But I had a lot of trepidation about it.

He had flown me all over the world.

All these magical trips to all these beautiful places.

I still hadn't been to Barcelona.

As thrilled as I was about living in Europe

and moving to this beautiful house in Barcelona,

I also had a ton of questions, you know? Um...

And I wanted to see the house.

My daughter and I are going to give up everything in New York,

I am going to quit my job of 17 years,

and we're going to ride off into the sunset with him.

This is a big deal.

And I kept saying to him, "Who the hell marries a man

without seeing where they're going to live after the wedding? It makes no sense."

But every single time we had a trip planned to Barcelona,

it got cancelled at the last minute.

He always had an emergency surgery. This happened three or four times.

And I'm starting to have all this anxiety.

Because now we're getting closer to the wedding,

and there are a lot of things that have not been taken care of yet.

There are a lot of unfinished things.

We were just getting excited preparing for this wedding over in Italy.

It was going to be amazing.

I was always a very detail-oriented person.

I wanted to know exactly where we were going,

where we were staying, what was happening,

and so I actually made contact with the...

I don't even know if it was a hotel. It was like a castle.

It was some crazy castle.

And they had no idea what I was talking about.

At that point, we'd bought airfare tickets, so...

And I just said, "I need more information about

where I'm staying and what's going on."

And they said, "Well, I don't know what you're talking about."

"There is no... uh, nothing... um, that has been reserved."

And so I sent Benita a message.

Erica contacted me one day.

And I asked Paolo and he just said, "Oh, you know."

"There's been a change of staff. It's no big deal," you know.

"She just didn't reach the right person."

Okay, but there were these little things happening

that were starting to nag at me.

On the right here is Karolinska University Hospital.

And on the left, that main building right there,

which kind of looks like a boat, that's the Karolinska Institute.

And that's where the head of the university sits.

It's fucking huge.

It's like the Vatican. It's a state inside the state.

It's the most expensive hospital in the world.

I decided to contact my colleagues,

Matthias and Oscar.

And we all got together.

We need to gather information against Paolo Macchiarini's work.

Evidence that will convince the leadership of KI

to block Paolo.

It was a moment where we knew there's no turning back.

And this could not be done that openly either.

This was really, really sensitive.

We dared to question their competence

because, at the end of the day, these guys gave Paolo this job.

And if they got tricked by him, they're obviously incompetent.

We definitely risked getting fired.

The Karolinska in Sweden is so powerful and has so much influence.

So if you have them against you, it's very, very tough.

We made up fake names

and secret emails based on these fake names.

And we could never communicate using our own names anymore.

It was a little bit like a spy novel, actually.

This is my old apartment, right here. It's up there on the top floor.

That's where we would have all our meetings.

We'd sit on my couch.

That's where we did all the dirty work.

We went through all... the medical records of these patients.

We discovered that one of the biopsies

that were harvested on the first patient, Andemariam,

Paolo switched samples.

So the data looked much better than it was in reality.

This was research fraud.

We were afraid that Karolinska were gonna start destroying evidence.

Late one evening, we went to the hospital and made backups.

We succeeded to get video clips

of the examinations of the inside of the airways.

When we looked at the video clips of Andemariam,

it was quite devastating.

We could basically see this, uh... nude, plastic tube.

It was just whitish.

We couldn't see any mucus membrane at all.

The plastic windpipe was actually collapsing

and rotting inside the body of Andemariam.

One of the claims was that these plastic airways

were bathed with stem cells,

and that these stem cells would grow on the airway

and become living tissue.

There were no stem cells on it.

It wasn't living. It was just a plastic tube.

And that's what doomed these patients from day one.

Everything, basically, was faked.

What was described in the medical journals was not really the truth.

It was a lie.

We wrote a report where we mapped out

all the falsifications and crimes that had been committed

and sent it in to the vice-chancellor of Karolinska.

Nothing happened.

It was completely silent.

I felt like a fool that believed in Paolo and in this method.

As a clinician, I also felt very, very lonely

being one of the optimistic persons that thought,

basically, that we should be able to generate new organs.

At that time, I really understand that Paolo is

a ruthless con man.

Then, somehow, this story got leaked to the New York Times.

It was really, really bad for the Karolinska, that article.

That was one of the defining moments.

We believed that, finally,

Paolo will be convicted for research misconduct.

I wake up and there's a headline about Paolo in the New York Times

that he's being accused of scientific misconduct.

It was like one of those,

"Am I seeing this right? Let me rub my eyes."

And I read the article, and it didn't really sound good.

He had been alluding to some issues that he was having at work in Sweden,

and he was very vague.

He just said that he had enemies,

and that there were people that wanted to take him down.

He would always talk about the fact that when you are a pioneer in anything,

and particularly in science,

that there's a lot of professional jealousy

and that it can get quite ugly.

But this was the first I'd heard about

any allegations of scientific misconduct, and I'm thinking,

"What the hell does this mean? What does this mean for his career?"

"What does this mean for us?"

"For our wedding?"

Paolo was coming to California to spend Thanksgiving with my family.

Once something like this is in the New York Times, it's everywhere.

So he's getting inundated with emails and phone calls and press requests.

And I had never seen Paolo like this before.

His whole demeanor changed.

He was depressed. He was dejected.

He was extremely worried about the ramifications of this.

He kept talking about,

"This is going to ruin my reputation. This is gonna ruin my career."

I basically jumped in the trenches to help him.

I believed that he was being unfairly maligned,

and I needed to do whatever I could to help him.

He's on one computer, I'm on another computer,

and I'm answering these requests for him.

I'm guiding him through what to say, what to not say, how to answer,

and he's... he's a mess.

He breaks down in tears a few times,

and he seems absolutely devastated by this.

And I felt horribly for him.

I love the man, and I'm concerned.

I think he was quite desperate that weekend.

I think he felt like the world was starting to cave in around him,

and he was scared.

And I was kind of there holding his hand and saying, "We got this. We can do this."

It's difficult.

It's difficult to be attacked, be on the front pages and, uh...

Um, at least if we would have done something wrong

then I would understand it, but, uh...

I believe we didn't.

When the New York Times article came out, I thought it was over for Paolo.

I thought that would be it.

And it didn't turn out as we had thought.

After that, the Karolinska declared war on us.

It turned into a living nightmare.

They really tried to get us fired.

We started to understand that

the Karolinska were gonna defend Paolo

no matter the cost sort of, and no matter the truth.

Paolo had full support from the leadership of Karolinska.

They continued with the cover-up.

So they spent the whole summer of 2015

making up a story

that Paolo has not performed any kind of research misconduct.

And that was presented to the media.

The Karolinska said that they were gonna take in security guards

to keep us away from that press conference.

My guess was that... Karolinska is gonna free Paolo.

And they did.

In view of the results of the investigation,

we now have a much clearer picture of what has been going on.

Based on the material gathered,

the Karolinska Institute has established

that he is not guilty of research misconduct.

They said that all this stuff is based on, actually,

a vendetta between me, myself, and Paolo Macchiarini.

So, "Don't take any notice of this."

They lied and they knew it.

I think it's important to point out that Paolo Macchiarini

has not been found guilty of misconduct in his research.

And this means he has the trust of the Karolinska Institute.

We were just so angry.

And we said, "To hell with Karolinska."

It was a really tough time for us.

They had already filed a police complaint against us for criminal charges.

They said that we have leaked confidential patient data.

I was called into the police station.

I was brought into this interrogation room and sat down.

I mean, I was expecting to get fired.

But I wasn't expected to end up at the police station

in a locked room being interrogated.

It was feeling like one of the worst times in my life.

It felt very hopeless.

I felt, uh, very lonely at that time.

So I was really, uh, feeling that this is the end of everything.

Uh, I became sort of the...

the black sheep, uh...

at Karolinska.

It felt like there was no way out.

I was thinking of...

perhaps I should end everything.

It was pretty dark.

My last day at work was May 13th, 2015.

And it was emotional.

The next day, I had arranged with a group of girlfriends to go to a spa

and kind of have a girls' day.

We all put our phones away.

I had a great massage. I was very relaxed.

And I come out of the spa, and I'm at the desk paying,

and I pull my phone casually out of my purse,

I'm scrolling through my phone,

and there's one in a subject line that just says, "the pope."

It's from a colleague at work and it just said,

"The pope is going to be in South America on July 11."

"He's not going to be in Italy."

And this trip has been planned for a very long time.

When I read that, instantly, I felt sick.

I felt like somebody punched me in the stomach.

Paolo is due to arrive in New York, and I'm a nervous wreck.

I have so many questions.

Like it or not, love is a little bit blind,

and... I think it takes a while for the head and the heart

to catch up with each other.

And I think I had known in my head for a while that something wasn't right,

but I didn't want to believe it.

And somehow, in that instant,

I just knew my whole world was about to cave in.

I'm calling him,

and, you know, it takes him a few minutes to get back to me.

And he finally calls me, and I said, "What the hell is happening?"

And he said, "Calm down, my love."

"I just found this out as well. I don't have any idea what's going on."

"I'm as upset as you are. I'm going to get to the bottom of this."

"I don't know. I'm so sorry. Just calm down and hold on."

He texts me that he's getting out of the taxi downstairs.

I'm literally standing in my kitchen, closing my eyes, taking deep breaths,

and trying to brace myself, 'cause I don't know what's gonna happen.

The doorbell rings, and I open the door.

And Paolo is standing there in one of his beautiful suit jackets,

and he says, "Hi, my love."

And I said, "Hi, my love?" I'm like, what the hell?

And I start screaming. Just wailing. Screaming. Relentless.

"Why are you lying to me? Who are you?"

"What's wrong with you? Why would you do this to me?"

I... He kept trying to get closer to me, you know?

Putting his arm out to touch my hand, and I had been screaming at him.

Literally screaming at him, "Get the fuck away from me."

"Do not touch me."

And now I back up against the fridge, um...

And he sort of gingerly steps, you know, one foot closer to me, and then two,

and he's about two feet in front of me.

The thing that struck me the most about him was how stoic he was.

Totally unflappable. Just calm.

Like, waiting for the storm to stop. You know? Nothing rocks this man.

"Why would I lie to you?"

"What possible reason would I have to lie to you?"

"I've told you things I've never told anybody else."

"And I was never going to tell you this,

and I shouldn't be telling you this,

but I feel like now I have to tell you the whole story."

He says, "You remember that secret network of doctors that I told you about?"

And I said, "Yes."

"Well, I left out a very important part of the story."

"This secret network of doctors

is actually operated by the CIA."

And then he says, "There's something else."

"I really don't know how to tell you this."

"The doctor thing is a cover."

"My real job for the CIA

is I am a sniper."

I mean, it was crazy tunes. It was crazy land.

And at that moment, it was clear as can be.

I just looked at him, and in my head I'm thinking,

"I have no idea who this man is."

Something is so wrong here.

I just turned my head and I said, "Why did you pick me?"

"Why me?"

"It was inevitable."

"At some point, sooner or later,

I was going to start asking you questions."

"It was bound to happen. I'm a journalist."

And all he did was,

he cocks his head,

he gives that same little flirty smile he gave me

the very first time I saw him in Boston.

And he looked at me, and he said, "I know."

"That's why I love you so much."

And immediately, a chill.

Like, it almost shook my whole body,

a chill went down my whole back of my body.

From the top of my head, down my spine, to my toes.

And I just was terrified.

You know, I thought, "What the hell?"

And then I thought, "He's enjoying this."

"This is a thrill for him."

He picked me because I'm a journalist.

And I need to find out why.