Two years after he was charged with 25 counts of murder in connection with the deaths of patients at Mount Carmel Health hospitals, Dr. William Husel remains months away from his long-anticipated trial.
The Franklin County judge in the case has set Valentines Day 2022 for the start of the trial, which is likely to last at least a month.
Each of the 25 counts of murder represents a separate intensive-care patient whom investigators allege died of an overdose of pain medication while underHusel's carefrom February 2015 through November 2018. His attorneys insist that he was providing comfort care for critically ill patients, not trying to hasten their deaths.
No other person, least of all a doctor, has ever faced as many murder charges in Franklin County.
But Columbus history is replete with other high-profile criminal cases filed against physicians.
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Here are five of the most infamous from the past 40-plus years, two of which had an intriguing connection.
Dr. David A. Ucker acquitted of hiring hitman in 1977 murder
On Sept. 5, 1979, a Franklin County Common Pleas jury acquitted Ucker of arrangingthe murder of fellow physician Water A. Bond, in what has been called one of the county's most sensational trials.
Coverage of the case, which featured a love triangle, dominated the city's then two daily newspapers. A pool camera for local TV stations captured every day of testimony.
Ucker, an obstetrician and gynecologist, was accused of hiring a hitman to kill Bond, his romantic rival for a nurse, on Halloween night 1977. A gunman killed Bond, an internist, on the steps of his office on the 3400 block of East Livingston Avenue.
The trial featured dramatictestimony byRalph DeLeo, a Boston-area career criminal, andthe nurse, who had been both Ucker's and Bond's lover.
DeLeo admitted to being the gunman in a plea deal that required him to testify against Ucker.
DeLeo testified that Ucker paid him $1,000, provided a handgunand wanted him to castrate Bond, even driving him to Bond's office to commit the crime. DeLeo said he killed Bond during a struggle when the doctor refused to go with him at gunpoint.
In the end, the jurors didn't find the gunman'stestimony about Ucker's involvement to be credible.
After his acquittal, Ucker resumed his duties as chairman of obstetrics and gynecology at Grant Medical Center.
Two yearlater, he found himself involved in our next case.
Dr. Donald L. Plotnick convicted of arson, extortion in 1981 attack
Plotnick, a Blacklickpodiatrist, was one of three men convicted in the burning of a bakery deliveryman who was doused with rubbing alcohol and set on fire at an East Side intersection on Sept. 8, 1981.
In a crazy twist, Plotnick and Ucker were close friends, and both had a connection to DeLeo, who went on to become a mob boss in Boston.
DeLeo testified during Ucker's trial that after escaping from a Massachusetts prison in1977, he hid out in a trailer onPlotnick's Blacklick farm. DeLeo said that's wherehe met Ucker, who asked him to do harm to Dr. Bond.
Plotnick became acquainted withDeLeo in 1971 in federal prison, where Plotnick served one year after being convicted ofdealing in firearms without a license. Federal agents testified Plotnick offered to sell them more than 350,000 rounds of ammunition, flame throwers and various explosives.
Yet he managed to retain his license to practice podiatry after his release from prison.
When Plotnick was arrested a decade later for setting a man on fire, Ucker —a lawyer as well as a practicing physician —represented Plotnick at his initial court appearance.
It was the least he could do for his old friend. Plotnick had been right at his side after Ucker's acquittal in the Bond murder. A front-page photo in The Dispatch showed them celebrating the verdict, embracing with drinks in hand, on Sept. 6, 1979.
Plotnick's effort to do a favor for another friend is what landed him on trial in 1982 on charges ofa*ggravated arson and extortion.
According to testimony, Plothickwas helping a friendcollect a $208,000 drug debt from the deliveryman who was set afire.
The victim, Larry King,was hospitalized for six weeks with burns on the front of his body from his shoulders to his knees.
He testified at trial that three men picked him up from his homein a black limousine. King said that when the limo stopped at the intersection of Nelson Road and McAllister Avenue, one of the men doused him with alcohol, threw a lighted match on him and pushed him from the vehicle.
Although other witnesses placed Plotnick in the limousine, King testified that Plotnickwas not one of the three men involved in torching him.
But the co-owner of the limousine company testified that Plotnick made death threats against him and King to discourage them from cooperatingwith investigators or testifyingagainst him.
Plotnick was sentenced in 1982 to seven to 25 years in prison for aggravated arson and extortion. He was paroled from London Correctional Institution in July 1989 and moved to Florida.
In 1991, he diedof an apparent heart attack at age 56 while driving nearhis home in Treasure Island, Florida.
Ucker spoke to The Dispatchthe day after Plotnick's death.
"He was not an evil guy," Ucker said of his friend. "If he had a problem, it was in going overboard helping somebody he scarcely knew."
Uckerdied in Columbus in December 2002 at the age of 76.
As for DeLeo, he was granted clemency in 1991 by then-Ohio Gov. Richard F. Celeste, and wassent to a Massachusetts prison to complete sentences for other crimes. He was released from prison in1997, andeventually became a Boston street boss for the Columbo crime family of New York, according to the FBI.
In 2012, he was sentenced to 19 years in prison after pleadingguilty to federal charges of racketeering, conspiracy and being a felon in possession of firearms and ammunition. He is78years old and incarcerated at a federal prisonmedical center in Lexington, Kentucky.
Dr. Edward F.Jackson Jr., convicted as serial rapist active1975-1982
Perhaps central Ohio's most notorious serial rapist, Jacksonwas a respected Berwick internistwhen he was arrested by Columbus police on Sept.5, 1982, during a break-inat a Clintonville apartment.
Jackson was carrying burglary tools and a ski mask, but themost incriminating evidence was found in the pocket of a jacket in his car —a neatly-kept listof his victims.
Those who knew him were shocked that a physician seen as a family man,with a wife and two daughters, who had privileges at two Columbus hospitals, was facing serial-rape allegations.
Referred to inaccurately as the Grandview Rapist, since someof his early attacks occurred near Grandview Heights, he eventually was indicted on 98 counts of aggravatedrape, burglary and other sexual offenses that took place from 1975 to 1982.
The list of Dr. Jackson's victims included two women that a man namedWilliam B. Jacksonhad been convicted of raping.
William Jackson, a unrelated look-alike, had served five years in prison before he was exonerated and released. Hegot $717,500 from the Ohio Court of Claims for his wrongful convictions.
As a result of pretrial publicity in Columbus, one of Dr. Jackson's trials took place in Akron and the other in Cincinnati. Victims testified about being awakened in their beds by the ski-masked attacker, who typically bound, gagged and raped the women, sometimes choking or smothering them to unconsciousness.
His attorneys conceded that he committed the crimes, but argued that he should be found not guilty by reason of insanity.
Both juries rejected the defense, and hewas convicted in 1983 and 1984 of a combined 32 counts ofrapeand 54 related felonies. He was sentenced to a combined 282 to 985 years in prison, but with the chance of parole.
Photo Gallery: The trials of Dr. Edward F. Jackson Jr.
Now 77, he remains incarcerated at the London Correctional Institution in Madison County. The Adult Parole Authority denied his most recent request for parole in 2019. He can't apply again until 2029.
Dr. Michael Swango's 1993 killing of patient the tip of the iceberg?
In 2000, Swango admitted to killing a 19-year-old female patient with a "toxic injection" while serving in a residency programat Ohio State University Medical Center in 1984, as well as three patients in a New York Veterans Affairs hospital in 1993.
But investigators say he was responsible fordozens of other suspicious deaths over many years of working at various medical facilities in the United States and overseas, earning him the nickname "Dr. Death."
No one knows how many patient deaths Swango caused during his brief time at OSU Medical Center, where he was hired in July 1983 as an intern but dismissed as a neurosurgeon resident in June 1984 amid concerns about an alarming number of patients who went into cardiac arrest whilehe was on duty.
One of those incidents resulted in the death of Cynthia McGee of Dublin on Jan. 15, 1984.
McGee had been struck by a car two months earlier while riding a bicycle near the University of Illinois, where she was a student.Three days after becoming stable enough to betransferred to OSU Medical, nearer to her home,she was dead.
Prosecutors said medical records showed that she had an abnormally high level of potassium in her system when she died. Medical experts were prepared to testify that an injection of potassium was the probable cause of death.
Swango was seen going into her hospital room with needles and blood-drawing equipment shortly before her death.
Prosecutors think he caused five other deaths at the hospital in January and February of 1984, but they didn't have enough evidence to indict him.
A year later, he was convicted in the nonfatal poisonings of six fellow paramedics in Quincy, Ill. He was released from prisonin 1987 and managed to continue getting jobs as medical facilities around the country and overseas, often using false names and histories and leaving suspicious deaths in his wake.
Photo Gallery: The infamousDr. Michael Swango
In the 1999 book, "Blind Eye: The Terrifying Story Of A Doctor Who Got Away With Murder," journalist James B. Stewart concluded that circ*mstantial evidence linkedSwango to at least 35 deaths.
The only reason he agreed to plead guilty in McGee's death and three inNew York was to avoid extradition to Zimbabwe, where he had practiced medicine without a license and was suspected in several deaths at a mission hospital there.
In Zimbabwe, he faced the death penalty.Prosecutors in the United States agreed not to seek the death penalty as part of his plea agreement.
Swango, 66, is serving three consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole in a federal prison near Florence, Colorado.
Dr. IraN.Chaiffetz convicted of trying to hire hitman in 1997
Chaiffetz was living in Columbus' Clintonville neighborhood and working as a staff physician at Marion'sNorth Central Correctional Institution when he was arrested in May 1997 and accused of recruitingan inmate at the prison to put out a hit on Chaiffetz'sex-wife.
The couple had divorced in 1987 after a five-year marriage, but remained in an ugly and protracted custody dispute. Chaiffetz was unhappy that their son and daughter were living with their mother, BronwenBello, in Florida.
Chaiffetz, then 42, was in his first year of working atNorth Central Correctional in 1996 when he and Victor Gatto, an inmate he hadbefriendedwhile treating him for heart disease, began talking about finding a hitman to kill Bello.
Gatto, then 57, ultimately went to the authorities, revealing the plot in a letter to the Ohio Attorney General's Office on Feb. 10, 1997.
He later agreed to wear a wireand tapedthree conversations withChaiffetzin which the two discussed details of the plan, includinghowChaiffetz would provide$4,000 as a down payment on a $12,000 contract for a hit on Bello.
Based on those conversation, State Highway Patrol investigators arrested Chaiffetz as he arrived for work at the stateprison on May 14, 1997. He was indicted by a Marion County grand jury of conspiracy to commit murder.
During his trial in MarionCounty Common Pleas Court in February 1998, Chaiffetz testified that Gatto approached him with the idea and was trying to extort money from him with talk ofkillingBello.
"It was always his deal," Chaiffetz said. "I didn't want her killed."
The jury convicted him after deliberated for 13 hours over parts of three days.
Chaiffetz's attorney, James Owen, spoke with jurors after the verdict was announced. He said theyexpressed sympathy for his client.
"They felt he was clearly set up by Gatto," Owen said. "They told me they based their decision on the fact that Ira didn't report this to the authorities."
Judge Robert S. Davidson sentencedChaiffetzto nine years in prison and ordered the physician to pay a $20,000 fine.
Gatto, who was serving five to 25 years for drug trafficking and theft, was granted parole on the day Chaiffetz was sentenced in exchange for his testimony.
Chaiffetz, now 67, was released from prison in 2007. With his debt to society paid and his medical license revoked, he spent recent years playing the banjo at various central-Ohio farmers markets and festivals under the name Ira "Twangs" Chaiffetz.
Dispatch researcher Julie Fulton contributed to this story.
jfutty@dispatch.com
@johnfutty
