Thomas Sammarco, a 73-year-old white man, entered the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Northport, New York, expecting care and routine decisions made in his best interest. Instead, in early October 1993, the choices recorded in his chart would become part of the suspicion that something darker was happening on the wards—a pattern of sudden collapses that trailed one resident physician.
According to the federal case narrative, Dr. Michael J. Swango was working at the Northport VA as part of a residency program run through Stony Brook. On or about October 2, 1993, investigators later alleged, Swango sought protection from rescue efforts by trying to secure a “do not resuscitate” order connected to Sammarco—misrepresenting to family members that they were agreeing to a “do not intubate” instruction, then documenting the DNR in the official medical record as if the family had approved it.
The record-keeping itself became part of the criminal picture: prosecutors said the chart entry was false, created to make it harder for staff to reverse what was coming next.
Two days later, on or about October 4, 1993, the indictment alleged that Swango killed Sammarco by administering an intravenous injection of succinylcholine, a drug capable of causing paralysis that shuts down breathing. The same charging documents tied Swango to other patient attacks at the facility that year—an alleged assault with a needle containing succinylcholine on another Northport patient days earlier, and other deaths attributed to toxic injections—painting Sammarco’s final hours as part of a broader, deliberate use of medicine as a weapon.
The story did not end with the death. Swango’s presence at Northport unraveled within weeks: he was suspended from patient care after the true nature of his prior conviction came to light and was then terminated from the residency program later that month. After leaving the United States and finding work abroad, he was eventually arrested in 1997 at a Chicago airport on charges tied to false statements and controlled substances connected to his Northport employment—an arrest that, according to the VA Office of Inspector General’s account, gave investigators time to build a homicide case around deaths that had occurred inside a federal facility.
Years later came the courtroom answers that Sammarco’s family had been denied at the bedside. Federal prosecutors brought a case that included murder counts for the Northport VA deaths and additional counts focused on deception—schemes to defraud hospitals and false statements in records and applications. Swango ultimately pleaded guilty to murdering three Northport VA patients and to additional fraud-related counts, admitting in court that he intentionally killed by administering toxic substances he knew were likely to cause death. The sentence, imposed under a plea agreement, was life in prison without parole—described by the VA OIG as three consecutive life terms—cementing Swango as the identified killer in Sammarco’s death and closing the case not with a mystery, but with a confession and a permanent prison term.
