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GCN Home > June 18, 2001 issue

App leads IG to murderer

BY DIPKA BHAMBHANI | GCN STAFF

Special agent Bruce Sackman felt almost certain that evidence strong enough to convict a serial-killer doctor was sitting on his desk in a pile of more than 1,000 medical records from around the world.

Instead of digging into the paper pile, Sackman, the special agent in charge of the inspector general’s Northeast field office for the Veterans Affairs Department, turned to a PC program called Analyst’s Notebook.


Dr. Michael Swango was convicted of serial killings at VA hospitals.
It helped him document the case against Michael Swango, a physician who was convicted last year of killing hospitalized patients around the world by injecting large doses of epinephrine, a heart stimulant, and succinylcholine, an anesthetic.

Sackman said he believes Swango might still be killing patients if it weren’t for the program. “You’d be talking about almost an impossible task because of all the data that’s involved,” he said. “We probably would have never attempted it.”

Analyst’s Notebook, from i2 Inc. of Springfield, Va., runs under most versions of Microsoft Windows and costs $3,388 for up to 99 licensed users. It sorts evidence into color graphics by links, time lines and networks of people. Similar investigative software is available from Anteon-CITI LLC, an Anteon Corp. subsidiary in Fairfax, Va., and WinShapes Inc. of Seattle.

Sackman and an assistant entered large amounts of data, such as patients’ names, conditions and doctor visits. The software sorted through it all and charted several graphs, which were used as evidence to convict Swango.

Sackman learned from Analyst’s Notebook which patients Swango was seeing at particular times. “It helped us determine who he victimized,” he said.

Also, some of the doctor’s records showed him visiting different patients simultaneously, which didn’t become obvious to Sackman until he automated the sorting. The discovery might have saved lives, he said.

Swango was sentenced to three consecutive life terms without parole.

Veterans Affairs is now using the software to prosecute a woman suspected in an 18-year-old murder. “There were many players involved in this case, many family members,” Sackman said. “We linked them together as to their involvement in the case.”

The woman’s husband was seeking a divorce. Instead of risking the loss of his benefits, the woman allegedly hired a hit man to kill him, Sackman said. Eighteen years later, the hit man allegedly revealed the murder while jailed for another crime.

“This guy starts bragging, and we were able to get the evidence,” Sackman said. “With the telephone records, we linked who was calling who among all the players.”

More news on related topics: IT in Action



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