Thomas Sammarco, a 73-year-old man, died at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Northport, New York, in early October 1993 after events now described in federal charging documents as deliberate and fatal. Prosecutors allege that on or about October 2, 1993, a resident physician documented a do not resuscitate order in Sammarco’s chart after allegedly misrepresenting a do not intubate instruction to family members and then recording a false chart entry. Two days later, on or about October 4, 1993, the indictment alleges Sammarco was killed by an intravenous injection of succinylcholine, a paralytic that stops breathing.

Those allegations were presented as part of a broader pattern of patient collapses and toxic injections at Northport tied to the same resident physician. The physician was removed from patient care and later terminated from the residency program, and federal prosecutors later charged and obtained guilty pleas that included admissions to murdering three Northport VA patients by administering toxic substances. The case closed with life sentences for the admitted killer.

Did anyone who knew Thomas Sammarco or worked at the Northport VA in 1993 see or remember anything unusual on the wards that October?