The new podcast from Wondery – the network behind smash success Dirty John – Dr. Death has come to its perfect conclusion in a new ep released today: the man at the centre of the true crime series, Christopher Duntsch, had his conviction reaffirmed in court.
The decision handed down on Tuesday means, as Refinery29 writes, that Duntsch has now exhausted all appeals and will spend the rest of his life in jail.
The host of the series, journo Laura Beil, dropped the ep featuring two women from the Dallas County District Attorneys Office, Jaclyn Lambert and Michelle Shughart. They explained what happened at Duntsch’s appeal, saying “The court is upholding the jury’s verdict“.
The podcast’s original six-episode run kicked off in September.
Christopher Duntsch was a Dallas neurosurgeon, accused of crippling four patients in surgery, and was even allegedly responsible – because of his botched operations – for the deaths of two people between July 2012 and June 2013. He is believed to have harmed at least 33 patients in total.
The trial however looked specifically at Duntsch’s treatment of Mary Erfund, a then-71-year-old woman who received surgery from the disgraced doctor for her back pain. The botched surgery has left Erfund in a wheelchair.
In February last year he was sentenced to life in prison for “knowingly or intentionally” injuring an elderly person.
At appeal, his defence contested the use of other patients’ stories as unfairly influencing the jury. They also argued an email admitted in the trial should not have been admitted, because it was an unfair reflection of his mental state. The email from Duntsch to a nurse practitioner he was dating said that he was ready “to become a cold-blooded killer“.
The Dr. Death podcast traces Duntsch’s history as an incompetent doctor, who potentially deliberately attempted to maim his patients. The podcast also looked at the way the medical industry protected Duntsch, rather than the people seriously injured by him.
Dr. Death, like Dirty John starring Eric Bana and Connie Britton before it, is being made into a television series, according to Deadline.
If you’re into true crime podcasts like Dr. Death, you might be into PEDESTRIAN.TV‘s All Aussie Mystery Hour podcast, where we discuss some of Australia‘s most-enduring mysteries. Subscribe on iTunes HERE, or on Spotify HERE. Or, you can just listen / download below.
