The Megyn Kelly Show - Fraud Week： Fiancé Doctor Pulls Off Personal and Medical Fraud, with Journalist Benita Alexander

00:00:00.520 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM channel 111 every weekday at noon east.

00:00:11.800 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. It's fraud week on the show

00:00:17.220 this week and we are bringing you incredible and disturbing true crime stories, all featuring some

00:00:23.740 element of fraud. That's all I'm going to say because I don't want to give any of the stories

00:00:28.920 away. Lots of them take different and unexpected twists and turns. We begin the week with the

00:00:36.100 story of an NBC News producer who fell in love with a super surgeon, a pioneer, a miracle worker.

00:00:43.740 That surgeon was Dr. Paolo Macchiarini. The handsome George Clooney lookalike doctor was once the darling

00:00:50.500 of the medical world. He promised incredible developments in regenerative medicine. He was

00:00:56.180 the first person to transplant synthetic windpipes into patients. While covering Paolo for an NBC

00:01:02.560 special, producer Benita Alexander fell for the doctor. But romantic getaways soon turned into

00:01:10.320 a bed of lies. Benita Alexander is here to tell her story.

00:01:17.460 Benita, it's great to meet you. Thank you so much for being here.

00:01:21.080 Thanks for having me, Megan. It's great to be here.

00:01:23.840 Okay. I've been watching all of it. I did. I watched the Dr. Death thing that originally did

00:01:29.780 this. And then the Netflix special, of course, you did a special on investigative. I mean, like I'm

00:01:35.500 obsessed with your story. It's just nuts. There's so much about it that I find incredibly

00:01:42.300 telling and complex and it raises so many issues. Not to mention the fact that you were a star

00:01:48.960 news producer and I love star news producers. You remind me in so many ways of my own star news

00:01:55.280 producers who I love on my team. And it's one of those things where like, if this could happen to

00:02:00.580 you, it could happen to anybody. Not only are you smart and savvy, but you are literally in the

00:02:07.720 business of detecting bullshit. And yet, right? So that's, those are some things that make it so

00:02:16.440 compelling. So let's start at the beginning for people who are not aware of the story. And even

00:02:20.160 people who are aware are going to be interested to hear you tell it as I have been so many times.

00:02:24.640 You're an NBC news producer and you get asked by Meredith producer or Meredith Vieira, who is

00:02:30.700 an NBC to work on a special based on a doctor that she had read about, I guess, in a magazine,

00:02:37.940 because this guy, Paolo Macchiarini was getting some press at the time for this very innovative thing he

00:02:44.900 was doing in medicine. So take us there. Yeah, we were actually looking at doing a

00:02:50.120 documentary about regenerative medicine, which is this very promising, exciting field where to boil

00:02:56.280 it down to its most simple terms, we're looking at a future where you make new body parts and organs

00:03:00.860 in the lab. And this has so much potential, right? To eradicate the need for donor organs and all the

00:03:08.560 problems that come with it, and just basically go to the go to lab and order a new body part. And so

00:03:14.800 there's a lot of excitement attached to this field. And when we started looking into it, Dr. Paolo

00:03:19.900 Macchiarini's name kept coming up, he was considered the pioneer in this field, the at the forefront of

00:03:26.240 this groundbreaking revolutionary field. And his nickname was a super surgeon. And he worked at the

00:03:33.020 place in Sweden that awards the Nobel Prize in medicine. And so there were tons of accolades,

00:03:39.860 tons of press. I mean, he kind of had this reputation, like he walked on water and people

00:03:44.520 were clamoring to work with him. And there was just a lot of excitement surrounding this man.

00:03:51.020 So you decide to do a profile on him along, he gets, he's going to get the long form NBC treatment.

00:03:56.920 And this is in advance of him performing one of these surgeries on a little two-year-old girl,

00:04:03.180 right? And where was she located? So he was about to do one of his transplants on this Korean toddler,

00:04:10.780 beautiful little girl named Hannah, who had tragically been born with no windpipe at all.

00:04:15.820 So she had spent her entire little life in the hospital. She had never left the hospital. And she was

00:04:20.680 going to be the first toddler that had received one of these transplants and also the youngest person

00:04:27.900 in the world and the first one ever operated on in the US. And so that made that case appealing to us.

00:04:34.380 And then I talked to her family who were just the most beautiful people, her parents, and they had

00:04:39.920 been through so much, you know, trying to save this little girl's life. And they were besides themselves.

00:04:45.320 And they thought that Dr. Paolo Macchiarini was the answer to their prayers, basically the savior.

00:04:52.660 He was going to step in and save the day when nobody else could. And that was the reputation

00:04:56.460 that this man had. And so we decided to focus our story around Hannah and her family and follow her

00:05:02.340 surgery. So you and he have to spend a lot of time together as much as the anchor spend some time

00:05:10.160 with the star guest on a piece like that. The producers spend way more time with him. The

00:05:17.140 producers all do, but especially the lead, which you were. And what happened? Like he was, is a good

00:05:24.160 looking man. He does look a little like George Clooney. Um, he's, is he, I can't remember what he's

00:05:30.080 Italian. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. He's got that going for him too. Exactly. He's very charming. He's one of

00:05:37.620 those people that has that quality that when he walks into a room, you know, he turns head people,

00:05:43.500 people pay attention to him. He's got that commanding presence. You know, he's very arrogant,

00:05:48.900 very confident, very self-assured. He speaks five or six different languages. You know, he's Italian.

00:05:55.840 He dressed very well. He's, um, he's, you know, he's kind of flirtatious with everybody,

00:06:01.840 men and women. And he's got that confident air. And also on top of that, here, he is doing something

00:06:08.400 that literally nobody else in the world was doing. He's rumored to be in contention for a Nobel prize

00:06:14.160 himself. And he seemed to be very devoted to giving hope to patients who had no other hope. So there

00:06:22.960 was something very intriguing about him and something very admirable. And so just start with all that,

00:06:30.340 you know, and we, we had a joke in the office that, Oh, you know, he's a storage Clooney lookalike.

00:06:34.480 He definitely had that appeal. But then when I met him, he seemed to be incredibly caring. We were

00:06:42.100 friends first. We just started talking a lot over, you know, a coffee after a shoot, a dinner after a

00:06:47.760 shoot on long plane rides. We flew Hannah all the way from Korea to Illinois. I at the time was at a

00:06:55.200 very vulnerable place in my life. I would not realize how vulnerable until much later and how

00:07:00.160 susceptible that made me, but my ex-husband of our then nine-year-old daughter was tragically dying

00:07:06.640 of brain cancer. And I was sort of holding it together at work, but inside, I think I was

00:07:11.860 crumbling. I was facing the enormity of what this meant for the rest of her life, for our lives.

00:07:19.220 How was I going to cope with this? How was she going to cope with this? You know, all of it. And I

00:07:24.500 started pouring my heart out to him and he just seemed like such an attentive, caring listener.

00:07:30.980 And that's what kind of blew me away. It was none of the other stuff. It was the fact that this man

00:07:35.960 seemed to genuinely care about this little girl, my daughter, that he'd never met. And that's what got

00:07:42.020 me. He, in, in some of these documentaries, they show clips of him with Hannah, the two-year-old

00:07:50.360 girl and with other patients and his bedside manner seems impeccable. It's beautiful.

00:07:57.040 Exactly. Exactly. And that's so I see how you were fooled. Yeah. Well, that's, I look at those

00:08:02.740 videos now and I think, you know, damn it. That's exactly the way he was with me. I mean, he appears

00:08:07.660 to be exactly the opposite of what he actually is and what he actually turned out to be, but he,

00:08:12.860 he just seemed so caring, so genuinely caring and, um, attentive and really a really good listener.

00:08:21.240 You know, now, of course I realized he was gathering information to use against me, but at the time I

00:08:26.800 just thought he was an incredible human being. Oh, that's very interesting. I want to return to

00:08:31.680 that. I haven't heard you cover that in your earlier pieces, but there's a lot I want to ask

00:08:35.760 you that I, you know, just watching all of this, I have a lot of questions for you outside of the

00:08:39.740 story that I'm like, I got to know this and I got to, okay. Gathering information. We got to come

00:08:43.700 back to that. Um, so it moves quickly and we can spend a minute on the ethical piece. You're not

00:08:51.060 really supposed to date your, the subject of your piece. You knew that sometimes it happens. It's not

00:08:57.400 great, but you know, you deal with it when it happened in this case, it is interesting that it

00:09:03.460 happened because, you know, in retrospect, do you believe he made it happen so that you would

00:09:09.700 be so distracted by him and your blossoming love affair that you would not be paying attention

00:09:14.300 to the medical problems surrounding his supposedly, you know, groundbreaking work?

00:09:21.620 I now believe that I was targeted from day one. You know, he had a plan from day one and it was not

00:09:30.060 what I thought it was. You know, I thought we were genuinely falling in love and this man was sweeping

00:09:35.160 me off my feet. I now believe when I met him in 2013, the world still thought he was the super

00:09:41.660 surgeon. He was a superstar. You know, he was doing this groundbreaking pioneering procedure,

00:09:47.140 you know, getting all sorts of press, all sorts of accolades behind the scenes. The whistleblowers

00:09:53.120 were starting to figure out that something was wrong. Patients were dying. However, at the time,

00:10:00.180 he was still sticking by what he said and has continued to say all along that whenever you do

00:10:06.060 an experimental procedure, patients do die, which is actually true. You know, you look at heart

00:10:10.880 transplants, lung transplants, anything new, radical and experimental patients do die at the beginning.

00:10:17.200 However, you know, what he wasn't telling the world and what nobody knew yet was that he had not done

00:10:23.400 one single one of the preliminary steps that you're supposed to do before doing an experimental

00:10:30.900 procedure on humans. He had literally skipped everything and he's standing at press conferences

00:10:36.440 and interviews saying that his patients are doing beautifully well when in fact they were suffering

00:10:41.160 and they were dying slow, horrible deaths. He's lying about the success in papers. So all this is

00:10:48.360 happening. The world does not know this yet. Unfortunately, I wish we had, but he had to

00:10:53.640 know, right, that it was going to implode. It was a matter of time. It was a, it was just a ticking time

00:10:58.340 bomb. So I think he met me and he thought, okay, here's this successful, smart journalist. Um, I'm going

00:11:06.540 to make her fall in love with me. And when the shit hits the fan, I'm going to have her in my back

00:11:11.200 pocket. So she's going to protect me. I think that's exactly what he was doing. I think he was using me.

00:11:15.700 Yeah. Because you're a top producer, all sorts of awards, Edward R Murrow and so on. And you're

00:11:24.940 working for one of the top anchors at NBC as well, uh, on this piece, Meredith Vieira. And, um, you're

00:11:32.780 super smart. So if he can get you to vouch for him in this piece on an ongoing basis, it's huge.

00:11:39.180 That's gold. So I can see, yeah, that was my suspicion in watching it. Cause that's one of my big

00:11:44.040 questions all along is why, why, why, why, why, why did he do this to her? And especially because

00:11:49.220 you were so vulnerable and you were going through this personal family tragedy and your poor daughter.

00:11:54.320 So, okay. So that's our suspicion right now is that it was an intentional latching on.

00:11:59.940 You're supposed to be investigating him. I mean, a producer investigates, but it's not like you're

00:12:04.440 treated like a private detective where you really expected to unearth any crime attached to the guy.

00:12:10.460 You have to do a reasonable level of research on him when you were doing that and also falling in

00:12:15.800 love. Were there red flags? You know, did you see that patients had been dying on this? You know,

00:12:20.900 he had this fake trachea that he would put this to do this synthetic trachea that he would coat in

00:12:26.020 the patient's own stem cells and put it in their necks as a new trachea to replace one stricken by

00:12:31.040 cancer. Or in the case of the little girl, Hannah, that was never there that she'd been born without

00:12:36.580 one. So had you seen any of those red flags or deaths? You know, there were, there was an

00:12:43.480 investigation in Italy, which had nothing to do with the plastic tracheas. And he was put on house

00:12:49.200 arrest and accused of extortion. And that raised some red flags for a minute. We actually considered

00:12:54.600 putting the story on hold. And in fact, there was a hold in bringing Hannah to Illinois during that

00:12:59.620 time while the FDA investigated. But then the lawyers in Illinois came back, the FDA came back and

00:13:05.040 everybody said, no, it's fine. He's clear. The charges were dropped. It's, you know, all a

00:13:08.880 misunderstanding. And so that seemed fine. And if the FDA, FDA is endorsing him and, you know, a hospital

00:13:14.700 still bringing him all the way to Illinois to do this very radical transplant, that seemed okay.

00:13:22.720 With the patients dying, he was still at the time able to stick by this argument that these patients

00:13:28.840 are pioneers. And whenever you do something experimental, you're learning and people do die.

00:13:34.360 And all of that is valid if you've done everything you're supposed to do. But again,

00:13:39.420 what nobody knew is that he hadn't done everything he was supposed to do. And he was literally using

00:13:45.020 people as human guinea pigs. I mean, it's, it's atrocious. It's all beyond awful. But at the time,

00:13:51.580 you, the patients, even the patients that died, their families were still supporting him.

00:13:56.900 The hospital in Illinois still supported him after Hannah died. And the FDA was backing him.

00:14:04.320 Karolinska, for goodness sakes, the place that awards the Nobel Prize in medicine, they're still

00:14:07.960 employing him. They're still endorsing him. They're still backing him. So there was no reason,

00:14:13.960 you know, really to doubt him. And anytime you're doing something radically new, and you're a pioneer,

00:14:20.200 you're going to have critics, of course, right? And he did have critics. But most of the criticism

00:14:24.120 was about the fact that he was running all over the world. And he didn't stick around long after

00:14:29.860 doing the transplants to take care of the patients. And he seemed more like an arrogant surgeon than

00:14:37.200 anything else. There just wasn't, there wasn't enough there yet. You know, unfortunately, I,

00:14:42.660 in hindsight, God, I wish we had known, but nobody did.

00:14:45.640 Sure. If you had approached and it was like, well, nine out of nine patients have died.

00:14:49.760 He would have done a very different, a hard turn away from this guy. I, I, exactly fully,

00:14:55.180 but I understand medicine and these new procedures do go through, you know, highs and lows when they're

00:15:00.980 first being unleashed. And he was pretty open about that. He was talking about that in a way that sounded

00:15:05.820 credible. Like, Hey, you know, these are experimental procedures. I'm not trying to hide that.

00:15:10.400 And I only am really kind of doing it on people who have no hope, who are willing to take this huge

00:15:17.620 risk. And yet what he knew, what they didn't know is, you know, they, they hasn't, this hasn't been

00:15:23.240 tested. He didn't do the animal trials. He's done nothing. You are a human Guinea pig. You're the

00:15:28.020 first line of experimentation. And there's been no success with it so far. Here he is. Um, this is from

00:15:33.680 bad surgeon, uh, on Netflix, uh, um, and it's footage from an old interview of Paolo talking

00:15:39.560 about this very issue. The more complex surgery is to more higher, the chances of risk you take

00:15:46.460 the first liver transplant, the first kidney transplant, the first heart transplant, did they

00:15:52.020 go all well? No, we don't have the magic crystal to show in the, to look in the future. I think that

00:16:00.900 this is the future. Okay. And we'll get to the specifics unfolding after this. So you're working

00:16:07.720 with him in early 2013 on this NBC news piece and things are starting to unfold. You're spending lots

00:16:15.560 of time together over in Europe. It's romantic and you know, it's not exactly professional, but it's

00:16:20.740 hard. And I'm sure you're feeling sad over your ex-husband dying and all the things. And then it was

00:16:28.500 what, uh, June of 2013, you flew to Venice, had an incredibly romantic weekend. By the way,

00:16:34.680 he was very generous. This was not a financial con. He paid for everything. Everything. I mean,

00:16:39.760 that's one of the things that distinguishes him. And it's also so perplexing because most

00:16:43.740 con artists, you look at somebody like the Tinder swindler or all these other ones that we've heard

00:16:48.060 of their motive is money, right? They're, they're trying to get money. Money was a non-issue. He was

00:16:53.300 exceedingly generous, you know, over the top generous, not just with me and my daughter,

00:16:58.420 my friends, my family, you know, lavish vacations, everything over the top. He would take 20 people

00:17:05.240 out to dinner and pay for everything, you know, buy the most expensive champagne. I mean, he was just

00:17:11.380 extraordinarily extravagant and generous. Um, you know, I, even, even things like I had a friend that

00:17:18.700 was going through breast cancer and he insisted that we send her some money for her treatment

00:17:23.040 because she was struggling at the time. He, yeah, money was a non-issue.

00:17:27.840 Mm-hmm. So Christmas 2013, he proposed things move very quickly. Had the piece aired yet?

00:17:39.440 No, but it was, we were done shooting it. We had been done shooting it for a while and it's,

00:17:43.360 it's sat for a long time as, as you know, stories sometimes do before they actually hit the air.

00:17:48.540 And this one sat for a long time. It was, I think June of 2014, when it finally aired,

00:17:54.680 it might've been April, May. Um, but it was, it sat for a long time, which was frustrating. I mean,

00:18:00.580 we were in a difficult position. I mean, as you said, I had crossed this invisible, but very

00:18:06.220 important ethical line that you're not supposed to cross in journalism for a very good reason,

00:18:10.620 right? You don't get involved with the source of your story because then your objectivity could go

00:18:14.180 out the window. And it wasn't like, I didn't struggle with that. I did. And I had actually

00:18:19.380 pushed him away for a few months and said, we have to wait. We have to wait until the story airs. We

00:18:23.360 can't, we can't be together, but it was just so difficult, especially in the wake of my ex-husband

00:18:27.840 actually passing away. And then I had my own health scare on top of it the same year. And even all my

00:18:35.940 friends and family were just like, are you crazy? This man's nuts about you. You know,

00:18:39.480 he's madly in love with you. What are you waiting for? Um, but this proposal was a surprise and,

00:18:47.260 and that's another, in hindsight, another red flag. It is things moved very, very quickly,

00:18:52.680 you know, and in the normal trajectory, trajectory of a relationship, you know, things take time,

00:18:58.340 right? It takes time to fall in love, but as that's one similar similarity, he does have to other

00:19:04.020 con artists. Everything was on the fast track. Everything was moving at rapid fire speed. You know,

00:19:09.180 he said, I love you very quickly. He was talking about marrying me very quickly, moving in very

00:19:13.660 quickly because he was in a rush. I didn't realize that. Right. I just thought it was all very romantic,

00:19:18.360 but, um, so yeah. And the, the beauty of the proposal, because this man was so over the top

00:19:24.800 with everything, you know, I'd walk into a hotel room and there'd be every time the rose petals all

00:19:30.080 over the floor, you know, bouquets everywhere, champagne everywhere. And the proposal was just simple.

00:19:35.820 It was just me and my daughter and Paolo at home at Christmas. And he just handed me a little box

00:19:42.060 without saying anything. And I had no idea it was coming, but yeah, we, we actually have a bit of

00:19:48.400 you talking about this, uh, in the, in the special bad surgeon. Again, that's the Netflix version of

00:19:53.840 Benita story. Here it is. Fast forward Christmas, 2013. Paolo came to stay in New York with me.

00:20:01.040 It was very casual. He cooked a big elaborate meal. He handed me this little box and I opened the box

00:20:12.220 and it's this beautiful diamond ring. Oh my God. I just, I, I kind of froze.

00:20:22.820 And then I'd said to him, is this what I think it is? And he just smiled and he nodded as wow. You

00:20:35.900 know, I was completely floored. Hmm. So he was love bombing you. Yeah. I mean, it was a long,

00:20:47.200 slow form of love bombing because we were together almost two years and it never stopped in the two

00:20:52.020 years. It wasn't this sort of only love bombing you at the beginning, but the love, love bombing

00:20:57.380 is very calculated. Also, everything about this, I think was calculated. The love bombing is designed,

00:21:03.960 you know, you're, you feel like you're in the clouds, you're floating sort of on a cloud of bliss.

00:21:09.080 And it's in very intentional because then you don't look at anything else. You don't question

00:21:14.320 anything. You don't, it's designed to sort of put you in a haze and distract you from what's really

00:21:18.880 going on. I wonder, you know, as I watched that, I think maybe it was just a personal preference.

00:21:24.840 I'm not sure. I feel like if somebody did that to me, like constantly, cause I saw every voicemail

00:21:29.520 was like, my love, my love. I think I'd be like, eh, and it's a no, but would you have said that too

00:21:35.260 prior to meeting him? Yeah. A hundred percent. That's not my style at all. And actually we did have,

00:21:41.820 you know, it's interesting because not only was it always these consistent, lavish,

00:21:46.260 over the top gestures, but also he was videotaping everything all the time. Like the video camera

00:21:51.680 was never not on. And so we had arguments about that. I said, you know, number one, I don't need

00:21:57.840 all this. You don't need to do something every time we go on vacation. It's too much, you know,

00:22:02.160 it's kind of embarrassing, you know, everything was a show. And also why do you have to videotap

00:22:08.780 everything? We don't have to, you know, document every moment, which now is bizarre. It was sort of like

00:22:14.780 he was documenting his own demise. Cause he left me with so much video. It's wonderful.

00:22:19.180 Yeah. Um, but it's cool. Can I ask you why, why do you think he was doing that? Because you think

00:22:25.240 somebody who's, and we'll get into the details of what exactly, you know, we know now about him

00:22:29.560 while he was doing all this, but you think anybody who's doing something somewhat nefarious

00:22:33.240 would not want it all on tape. Which is interesting because now when I talk to women who've been conned by

00:22:39.260 men, a lot of them talk about the fact that the man would never pose for a photograph with her.

00:22:44.160 Right. But this was exactly the opposite. I think it just goes hand in hand with the

00:22:50.220 narcissistic arrogance. I think this man thought he would never get caught. And I think he got a

00:22:57.060 sick thrill out of lying to people and conning people. And I just think it was part of the game.

00:23:02.300 Gosh, it's disturbing, but I think you're right. That's how it feels. So he, um, there comes a day

00:23:11.840 in which he gets, he reveals to you that he's got, in addition to this amazing ability to create these,

00:23:18.400 you know, regenerative tracheas that he implants and the people who are suffering, he's got this secret

00:23:25.880 client list and he's got this secret life as VIP surgeon to the most well-known people on earth.

00:23:35.480 And I have to say, I defend you on this piece of the story. I believe coming into it with this amount

00:23:42.920 of press and this amount of like medical professionals touting this guy, this would be believable. This

00:23:48.780 is who Barack Obama might quietly see on the side. Right. So give us a feel for the number of, you know,

00:23:55.880 celebs he said he was secretly catering to. So it first came up actually right after he proposed

00:24:02.120 because it was Christmas and he said he couldn't stick around for new year's and I was not happy

00:24:06.160 about it. And I kept peppering him with questions. Well, you know, where do you have to go? And he

00:24:10.220 kept saying, it's an important surgery. It's an important surgery. I'm like, come on. And finally,

00:24:14.140 that's when he said, look, I have to tell you something. And of course it was all built up with,

00:24:18.260 I've never told this to anyone before. Even my ex-wife doesn't know about this and blah, blah.

00:24:22.980 Um, and he said, I'm part of a clan, very clandestine secret network of doctors from around

00:24:30.540 the world with all different specialties. And we cater to the world's most important people,

00:24:35.860 famous people, dignitaries, because these people don't want their private medical life,

00:24:41.000 you know, no known in public. And he told me that new year said he was going to take care of Hillary

00:24:47.860 Clinton and that he had been taking care of the Clintons for some time and that he was friends with Bill

00:24:52.500 Clinton. I thought it was ridiculous. And I, I said, that's, I've never heard of anything like

00:24:58.100 this. That's, this is absurd. However, I did call, I called a friend in LA who's very connected,

00:25:03.440 um, to a lot of celebrities. And I just said, look, you know, is this feasible? You know? And

00:25:07.940 you know, she said, Benita, come on. She said, you don't think these people have private personal

00:25:12.340 doctors? Of course they do. They all do. You know, they all have doctors that fly to them privately and,

00:25:17.420 you know, they're private jets. They don't want everything made public. So on the one hand,

00:25:22.240 it seemed, yeah. So on the one hand, it seemed absurd and on the other, it didn't. And I understand

00:25:28.400 why people who have never sort of been in these circles or don't understand this type of lifestyle

00:25:34.040 would go, come on, that's not true. But I don't think it's so far from the truth, you know, and

00:25:38.640 not far from the truth. I don't have such a doctor in my life, though. I would love,

00:25:41.900 but I know doctors as friends who get, they get offered $250,000 to fly to Saudi Arabia and help

00:25:49.880 somebody. If you have enough money, this is how you live. And this is how you expect to be taken

00:25:54.400 care of. Right. Right. So he, the, the name sort of dribbled out over time because it was all,

00:26:01.480 you know, so secretive and he wasn't supposed to be telling me, but it ended up being, um, I mean,

00:26:08.380 all kinds of people, the emperor of Japan of all people was in there people in Russia because he

00:26:13.520 had a very, very lucrative multi million, if not billion dollar grant, um, in Russia to do clinical

00:26:20.440 trials in Russia. So he said, he did have that. Yeah, that was real. Yeah, that was real. And then

00:26:26.640 all kinds of celebrities, you know, the Obamas, the Clintons, the Sarkozy's from France. I'm trying

00:26:33.240 to remember who they all were. It was a long list and, and people at the Vatican, which will become

00:26:39.660 very instrumental. So you're going to get married, but he can't spend New Year's with you because he's

00:26:47.320 got to go take care of some very important clients. And these are his secret patients. And then

00:26:52.500 I do not understand this piece of the story. I, I don't understand. I'll help you. Why,

00:26:59.100 why did he say, let's get married by the Pope? So at the Pope's summer residence, the apostolic

00:27:09.260 palace of, uh, castle Gandolfo. Why? Yeah. Why take it there? Well, yeah, this, this gets

00:27:18.060 unfortunately very simplified. And I understand from an outsider's perspective, why people say,

00:27:22.700 Oh, give me a break. You know, she really thought that sorry, fucking Pope was going to marry her.

00:27:26.740 Like who believes that I get that, but it did not happen like that. It was a very, very slow,

00:27:33.140 meticulous weaving of this very clever lie. It started with, he wanted a big Catholic wedding

00:27:39.920 in Italy. And I said, well, how's that going to work? You know, we're both divorced or so I thought,

00:27:44.840 and I'm not even Catholic, you know, and I don't know much about the Catholic religion,

00:27:48.800 but I don't think Italy lets divorcees get married in the Catholic church. And he said,

00:27:53.180 don't worry about it. I'll take care of it all. Um, I was very, very busy at the time. Um, I had

00:27:59.820 a new job at NBC. Meredith had a new talk show and I was working crazy hours. And he said, look,

00:28:04.360 you're too busy. Let me take over the planning of the wedding. Let me go and find us a priest in

00:28:09.560 Italy that will marry us. And so he spent months actually, supposedly going to one church after

00:28:17.320 another in, in Italy, trying to find a priest that would marry us. And he would send me pictures

00:28:24.720 of these churches. He would send me long texts, you know, all kinds of stuff. And this went on

00:28:31.320 for months and months and months. And finally he just said, I can't find a priest that's willing

00:28:35.560 to marry two divorcees. And I said, what are we going to do? And he said, uh, you know, I, I said,

00:28:44.220 maybe we should think of something else. Maybe we should go and get married on a beach.

00:28:47.500 And he said, look, um, I'm going to go to Rome and call in a favor. And I said, what do you mean?

00:28:53.340 And he said, I'm going to go to the Vatican. Now, as ridiculous as that sounds, he had told me that

00:28:59.220 he had done consulting work at the Vatican, which again, as absurd as it sounds on the one hand also

00:29:04.760 made sense. This is one of the world's leading cardiothoracic surgeons. This is a man who's rumored

00:29:11.720 to be in contention for the Nobel prize, who is doing something that nobody else in the world is doing.

00:29:16.420 He's Italian. Why wouldn't he be called in to consult at the Vatican? And he had told me and

00:29:21.620 many other people that he had helped consult on the previous Pope's healthcare who actually had

00:29:27.100 his trachea taken out, had a tracheotomy. He did not say that he took care of him directly. He just

00:29:31.780 said that he was called to the Vatican to help. And I had heard other doctors talking about this.

00:29:36.860 I had seen paperwork talking about the work that Paolo had done at the Vatican. So this was not

00:29:43.200 so ridiculous. And that's when he told me, look, the Pope is one of my clients. He's one of my secret

00:29:50.240 celebrity clients and that I'm not allowed to tell anybody. So then he says, he's going to the Vatican

00:29:55.660 to ask him for help ostensibly finding us a priest to marry us. And that's when everything went crazy

00:30:02.760 town, because he calls me after this meeting. This was now October of 2014. And he says, look,

00:30:09.740 I have great news. They've agreed to help us. They'll find a priest that will marry us. And I

00:30:15.240 said, great. And he said, and there's something else, you know, and it's all so dramatic. He said,

00:30:19.500 sit down and all this nonsense. And he said, Pope Francis actually agreed to marry us himself.

00:30:24.820 And I said, oh, bullshit. You know, I said, the Pope doesn't even marry people. You know,

00:30:28.300 I thought he was playing some kind of game with me, to be honest. And I was so pissed off.

00:30:32.120 And I actually hung the phone up on him. And I went straight to my desk. I was at work and I

00:30:37.680 literally Googled, does the Pope marry people? But what popped up was one month earlier, September

00:30:43.540 of 2014, the Pope had married 20 couples in the Vatican. And these were all couples that were

00:30:48.740 quote unquote, living in sin, you know, that were not, had children out of wedlock or whatever.

00:30:53.200 So the Pope actually can marry people if he wants to. That's the first thing people think he can't,

00:30:58.820 he can, if he wants to. So it took some convincing, you know, it took about three,

00:31:03.660 four days, maybe a week, actually, of Paolo convincing me. And this was also very clever.

00:31:09.680 His argument to me was that because he was a Pope's personal private doctor,

00:31:14.380 and because this is this very forward thinking progressive Pope, that the Pope had been looking

00:31:20.760 for a couple of divorces, that he could use a sort of poster, a poster couple to marry publicly,

00:31:27.180 to make a statement that he was willing to open the doors of the Catholic Church to divorces. And

00:31:33.180 the Pope wanted to do Paolo a favor to thank him for being his private personal doctor. And we

00:31:39.980 now needed to do the Pope a favor and do this. And so it almost became not about us anymore. It wasn't

00:31:46.580 even about our wedding. Paolo made it sound like this was an obligation that by virtue of he wanted

00:31:52.540 to do this for the Pope. And by virtue of being his fiance, I had to go along for the ride. And I

00:31:57.460 needed to do this because this was going to I might not care because I'm not Catholic. But this would

00:32:02.100 help open the doors of the Catholic Church to, you know, divorces. And in that context,

00:32:09.200 it makes sense because, yes, this is not just like Joe Schmoe, who exactly Olive Garden saying that

00:32:16.400 the Pope wants to perform the wedding. Exactly. Well, that's what I always say. It's not like I

00:32:21.080 woke up one day and he went, hey, the Pope's going to marry us. And I went, oh, great. You know,

00:32:24.780 it just it just didn't happen like that. You know, you know, he had credentials that could

00:32:29.480 potentially make that an actual thing, or at least some of them were real and some of them were fake.

00:32:34.880 But he had been laying the foundation for you to believe all of this, this level of lie

00:32:39.740 for months. Right. So it's not as outlandish as it seems. What I don't understand what I so I

00:32:47.700 understood all that. Like I saw how he how he got you. What I don't understand is now with retrospect,

00:32:52.800 can you say, why would he do that? Like, I get why he would woo you and try to reel you in. But why

00:33:02.260 take it to that far potentially catastrophic level? It was unnecessary. Why? Why do you think

00:33:10.100 he complete all of it was unnecessary? And it just kept growing and growing. I don't know. I can't

00:33:16.760 get inside the man's head. You know, I'm not I'm not an expert. I can't diagnose him. I believe

00:33:21.380 he's at a minimum a pathological liar. I think he's probably also a sociopath. And he's an extreme

00:33:29.400 narcissist. And I think people like that don't really have a plan. I think they get a sick rush

00:33:36.800 out of the lie. You know, they get a high out of it, out of getting away with it. And they

00:33:42.200 they're they keep they usually do get away with it. Right. And so and the more they get away with,

00:33:47.840 the more they want to up the ante and the bigger the high. It's like a drug. And so they don't have

00:33:53.800 a plan. They're just kind of putting one foot in front of the other. And it's like a game,

00:33:57.100 you know, and I think they just think somehow they're going to wiggle the way out of this,

00:34:00.980 because usually they do. Yes, because he did not need to propose to you in the first place.

00:34:07.660 You know, he could have rolled along. As you said, it kind of happened soon. He could have just been

00:34:10.420 rolled rolling along in a relationship if he just wanted you to be close and in his corner.

00:34:15.020 And he certainly didn't need to come up with this. We're going to get none of it, you know,

00:34:19.260 at the pope's private residence by the pope himself. Like, it was so extraordinary.

00:34:24.240 And I completely agree with every word you said about the high they get. And I do think,

00:34:31.620 yes, it's no accident he chose you as an NBC News producer and somebody with access to,

00:34:36.320 you know, power and messaging that could be beneficial to him. But I also think your smarts

00:34:41.900 were part of the calculation. He enjoyed that. He liked that.

00:34:46.720 Exactly. That's part of the rush. I think they often target smart, intelligent women because that

00:34:52.400 is part of the rush. You know, if I can, if I can pull it over on her, you know, it just, and that

00:34:57.740 also going back to an earlier thing with all the extravagant, elaborate surprises he was doing,

00:35:04.500 I always thought that was for me, right? You know, the roses, the, the lavish trips, the everything.

00:35:11.200 And I now realize it wasn't for me at all. None of it. It was all about feeding his ego. You know,

00:35:16.360 when we went to a hotel and the staff was gushing because, you know, they had helped prepare the

00:35:21.920 room with all the roses and the champagne and women at desks were pulling me aside and saying,

00:35:27.520 you know, does he have a brother? How do I meet somebody like him? And I, it was all for show.

00:35:32.360 It's all for his ego. It's all about narcissism. None of it had to do with me,

00:35:36.760 me swooning over him and me being in awe of, you know, the adulation and just adoring him was just

00:35:46.640 feeding his narcissistic ego. It's in part, it's a conquest. He said, uh, Andrea Bocelli was going to

00:35:54.100 sing during the wedding service. I mean, right in line with all these extraordinary attendees. He said,

00:36:00.800 he said that, uh, among those who would be attending the wedding would include Mr. Mrs. Obama,

00:36:06.180 Mr. Mrs. Clinton, Sarkozy, Vladimir Putin. I mean, he really, but again, he's got actual

00:36:12.040 connections to all, he is performing these, you know, swing for the fence of surgeries in Russia.

00:36:17.240 So it's not, it, it sounds crazy now. We know it is crazy now, but yeah, she's built it up

00:36:23.660 appropriately. But then here's another big moment, uh, in anticipation of your move to Europe to be his

00:36:31.280 wife. Uh, you on May 13th left your job at NBC and notified your daughter's school that she would

00:36:38.420 not be coming back. I know this maybe seems small ball in the grants, but like he let you quit your

00:36:45.240 job. He let you pull your daughter out of school. Exactly. Exactly. And it was a very difficult decision

00:36:54.960 for me to make. I mean, I loved my job. You know, I had a very, very successful career. I never,

00:36:59.620 if you had told me before I met Paulo that I would give up everything to write off into the sunset with

00:37:04.880 Mr. Charming, I would have laughed at you. You know, I mean, I'm not that kind of person. I've

00:37:08.500 never been, you know, the kind of, you're a news producer. Yeah. It's a bunch of cynical mofos in

00:37:14.460 this business. And that's the only way you can be a good news producer. Exactly. You know,

00:37:19.020 the Cinderella shit is not for me. So I just, and it was a difficult decision, but it seemed like

00:37:24.880 the right thing to do. I was very cognizant of what my daughter was going through after having

00:37:29.960 lost her dad. And I thought Paulo, he was never going to replace her dad, but he seemed to be

00:37:36.260 a good man and somebody that would be good for both of us. He promised to take care of both of us for

00:37:42.380 the rest of our lives. And I thought this would be a good new start for us. And so I made this difficult

00:37:47.880 decision to, to leave my job and, and even uprooting my daughter, you know, what children

00:37:56.020 need after something traumatic and tragic like that is, you know, consistency and normalcy. And I was

00:38:02.480 pulling her away from everything that she knew. And he allowed me to do that. He sat in front of my

00:38:08.160 daughter. This still burns me to this day, talking about the school he had enrolled her in, in

00:38:14.040 Barcelona and the life she was going to live in Barcelona and on and on and on about this in

00:38:18.520 Barcelona. And then in Barcelona, how the hell you do that to a child who just lost her dad to brain

00:38:23.700 cancer is beyond me. But yeah, he took it to such extreme lengths, you know, and the whole time.

00:38:31.160 But of course, you know, what we, what we know is that at the same time he was doing this,

00:38:36.900 he was killing people. So just when you get to this point of the story where you're like, how could

00:38:41.580 he, how could he let you give up your amazing career and pull your daughter who was already

00:38:46.540 having a tough time in the loss of her dad from a school she knew and a life she knew and a friendship

00:38:51.420 network she had. He was killing people. He was recklessly killing person after person,

00:38:57.940 lying about successes that had never been there. And I'm going to get to that next, but before we

00:39:03.720 leave this lane, so that was May 13th, 2014, um, that 2015 now, 2015, 2015, sorry, 2015. And the next

00:39:15.040 day, May 14th was the day it all started to come down because you got an email from a friend. Tell us.

00:39:24.520 Yeah. And before I tell that, just to back up very quickly, I think we had been arguing for a good four

00:39:31.620 months at that point. And one of the things we had been arguing about was I had never been to the

00:39:37.360 house in Barcelona. He had flown me and my daughter all over the world, all these beautiful trips, but

00:39:42.760 every single time we were supposed to go to Barcelona, the trip got canceled at the last

00:39:47.240 minute because he had an emergency surgery. This happened three, four times. I think one time I was

00:39:52.160 actually at the airport when the trip got canceled and it was a huge source of contention. I said,

00:39:57.600 you know, I'm not marrying you without seeing the house where I'm supposed to be living after

00:40:01.480 the wedding, without my daughter seeing the house where she's supposed to be living. I mean,

00:40:05.060 who, who would do that? Who would marry a man without seeing the place where they're going to

00:40:08.220 live? So we had been arguing a lot about that. And there were other little things that were starting

00:40:14.180 to nag at me, but not huge red flags. You know, it wasn't like somebody was waving a giant flag on a

00:40:21.080 football field saying alert, alert on man. But I think there were at that point, little things that

00:40:26.600 were nagging at my gut that I was pushing down because I think I didn't want to face the fact

00:40:31.940 that I was starting to realize that something was wrong. And then the day after I left NBC,

00:40:38.060 I had a group of girlfriends that took me to a spa because they knew what a difficult decision it was

00:40:42.980 for me to leave NBC. And I come out of the spa, we'd been in there laughing for hours. We had put our

00:40:48.680 phones away and I pull out my phone. I'm at the desk paying and it's an email from a colleague. And the

00:40:54.460 subject line just says the Pope. And it's a link to an article that says the Pope is going to be in

00:41:00.380 South America on the date of our wedding, which was July 11th, 2015. And that the trip had been

00:41:06.260 planned for a very long time. The second, I mean, the second I read that article, you know, all those

00:41:12.900 little red flags that had been sort of bubbling up that I guess I had been ignoring all exploded.

00:41:18.340 And I just felt sick. And I, in that second, I knew, I just thought, you know, this fucker is

00:41:26.640 lying to me about everything. This man is lying to me about everything. Everything's a lie. I knew it.

00:41:30.600 I didn't have all the evidence. I didn't know by any stretch yet the extent of it, but yeah,

00:41:36.480 it was just a moment of, I mean, I almost fell over in the spa. I just felt ill.

00:41:41.300 Wow. Wow. Were your girlfriends there? Do they remember the moment? Did you share it immediately

00:41:47.520 or were you embarrassed? No, they immediately, they just said, you know, Benita, what happened?

00:41:53.020 What's the matter? You know, and I could barely talk. And a couple of them came back to my apartment

00:41:58.680 with me. It was still early in the morning and I was just pacing back and forth and trying to figure

00:42:03.020 it out. And they were so sweet because they kept trying to say, well, maybe it's not as bad as you

00:42:07.200 think it is. And maybe there's an explanation and maybe there'll still be a wedding. And, you know,

00:42:11.720 you never really wanted the Pope to marry you in the first place, which is true.

00:42:15.820 But I kind of knew, and I called him, of course, immediately. I called him, texted him. And

00:42:21.520 of course he denied everything. You know, he immediately said, I don't know, you know,

00:42:25.660 I just found this out myself and I'm going to get to the bottom of it. And it's a misunderstanding,

00:42:29.720 you know, blah, blah. But I knew from that moment, I knew that he was lying to me.

00:42:33.460 You did. That was it. The before and after moment.

00:42:38.160 It's almost like, again, I think it was those little red flags. It's sort of been bubbling

00:42:43.620 under the surface and I had been uncomfortable for a while, but couldn't quite figure out what

00:42:48.600 it was. I mostly attributed it to leaving NBC and to my daughter, but I think it was much deeper than

00:42:55.860 that. I think at some level I knew, you know, long before I actually knew.

00:43:00.000 So at this point, you've already sent out the invitations for the wedding and you've said,

00:43:03.980 it's going to be at the Pope's. Like we're going to, like you've, we are eight weeks out.

00:43:09.060 We are eight weeks out from the wedding to the day almost. Cause it was, yeah, May 14th,

00:43:13.300 July 15th. People had bought plane tickets. We had almost 300 people coming from all over the world.

00:43:20.240 My family's from Australia. We had people coming from Australia, from Europe, all over the place.

00:43:24.560 They had spent thousands of dollars on fancy red carpet attire and booked hotels and, and

00:43:32.280 everything, you know, this thing was, he had taken it that far, you know, this, this, it's ridiculous.

00:43:38.580 It's insane.

00:43:39.380 Don't you wonder, I'm sure you wonder. So it just happened that a friend, uh, you know,

00:43:44.120 who's paying attention to news events, like, uh, like the Pope's schedule saw this and realized it

00:43:50.260 was BS, but what do you think he had? Yeah. Well, what do you've done? What do you've seen

00:43:56.880 it through and just come up with an excuse at the last minute for why it's not the Pope and we're

00:44:01.320 not at the Pope's private residence and done it like a fake marriage. You know, the only thing I

00:44:06.460 can think of is because I've asked myself this question so many times, it's one of the big money

00:44:10.720 questions. You know, what, what was his end game? You know, this had to implode. He was literally lying

00:44:15.780 about everything. He created an entire fake fantasy wedding. It turned out he had told me he

00:44:21.600 was divorced. He wasn't even divorced. So he couldn't have legally married me in the first

00:44:25.360 place. So this never could have happened if he had allowed everybody, you know, I mean, 300 people

00:44:31.940 descend in Italy, in Italy thinking they're going to this, you know, lavish wedding. The only thing I

00:44:37.320 can think of is that he would have said there's some kind of security threat, right? You know,

00:44:41.840 there's been a death threat on the Pope's life or one of the dignitaries or celebrities that

00:44:46.300 were supposed to be coming. We can't, it's too dangerous. It's too controversial. We can't have

00:44:50.220 this wedding. But even if he had done that, what was he going to do with me? What was he going to do

00:44:55.760 with my daughter? You know, I'm there with my bags packed in my wedding dress and I think I'm moving

00:44:59.600 to Barcelona. I have no idea how the hell he thought he was getting out of this. It's like, part of me

00:45:05.440 wishes it had played out like that just so we could see, just so we could know. Yeah, because

00:45:11.520 it's true. It's true. You know, there was, there was never a wedding scheduled. The Pope had nothing

00:45:16.280 to do with it and he couldn't marry you because he was already married, which again, in retrospect,

00:45:22.140 now the proposal, sending out invitations, the recklessness of it, Benita. Oh yeah, I know.

00:45:30.200 Recklessness. Wow. And of course it would get much worse. I mean, I, and ultimately I'd find out

00:45:35.120 he was juggling four families at the same time. Wait, what? I didn't see that. I did not see that in the

00:45:40.920 earlier pieces. I know about the one wife because eventually you and your girlfriends and I love

00:45:45.820 your girlfriends. They're the best friends. That's a wonderful story, but they take you like

00:45:52.360 the best girlfriends would to Barcelona on what would have been your wedding day. And you've got

00:45:56.980 a fake wig on and the girls go up to his front door, ring the doorbell and he comes down and it

00:46:03.880 turns out, Oh, we have this actually, we have this clip. Let's, let's play it so we can watch a bit of it.

00:46:08.760 Okay. Nancy and Lee just knocked on his door and I saw him come down the steps with his

00:46:14.960 dog. Asshole. He's there. Not in fucking Russia.

00:46:21.960 Oh, no.

00:46:22.960 Hola, Paola, como está?

00:46:24.560 Hola, Paola, como está?

00:46:24.660 Sí.

00:46:25.360 Hola, Paola, como está?

00:46:25.560 ¿Qué?

00:46:26.060 ¿Qué?

00:46:26.560 ¿Qué?

00:46:27.560 ¿Qué?

00:46:28.560 Sí, señor?

00:46:29.560 ¿Estamos pasando por aquí?

00:46:30.560 ¿Estamos pasando por aquí?

00:46:31.560 ¿Estamos pasando por aquí?

00:46:32.560 ¿Estamos pasando por aquí?

00:46:33.560 No sé lo que está pasando.

00:46:35.560 I'm not sure what's going on, but...

00:46:37.560 Two little kids coming down the stairs.

00:46:41.560 Yeah, so that was the day you learned not only does he have a wife already, but two young

00:46:56.560 kids, which is what stopped you, I think, from going to the door yourself.

00:47:00.560 When I met him, he told me that he had been separated from his Italian wife for a very

00:47:08.860 long time. So I knew from the beginning, there's a lot of misunderstanding about this,

00:47:11.860 that he had a wife. He had two children who at the time were, I think, 19 and 20, who were

00:47:16.940 actually supposed to be coming to the wedding. And he said that they had been living separate

00:47:20.940 lives for many years, which was well documented. He lived in Barcelona, had been for years. She

00:47:25.640 lived in Italy. And I mean, I met the man's mother, I spoke to his sister, his sister's,

00:47:32.640 his niece was supposed to be one of our flower girls. So this was no secret. He just told

00:47:37.860 me that they had never gotten divorced because it's Italy and they're Catholic and it's complicated.

00:47:41.740 But he told me when he met me, that now he finally wanted to get divorced. And that was

00:47:46.580 why he proposed, because he said he had filed for divorce and that the divorce was going through.

00:47:50.840 So I knew there was that wife. I knew about her. I'd seen pictures of her, everything.

00:47:55.980 The woman in Barcelona, when I went to the house in Barcelona, I went there because once I figured

00:48:01.620 out he was lying, I went into hyper investigative mode. It's kind of like I woke up out of my love

00:48:07.560 haze, you know, and, you know, woke up and put my journalist hat back on. And I just went nuts. I mean,

00:48:13.080 I was investigating, I hired two private investigators, one here in the US, one in Italy. And I mean,

00:48:20.020 my bedroom looked like something out of a Law & Order episode. There were binders everywhere. I was

00:48:24.520 trying to figure everything out. And for me, the last piece of the puzzle was Barcelona. I mean,

00:48:29.480 clearly there was a good reason he had never let me go to that house. And so that's why we decided to

00:48:34.400 go there. And it was part sort of a fuck you girl, you know, fun girls trip. And which is why I got this

00:48:43.500 hideous blonde wig, which I didn't really know if I would need, but I didn't, wasn't sure what I was

00:48:47.540 going to find in that house. So I ordered this cheap blonde wig on Amazon and we went to the

00:48:53.860 house. And one funny thing about that is when I put in the address for the house, he had given me an

00:48:59.860 address for the house in Barcelona so people could send wedding gifts. It was a bogus address. So I

00:49:05.260 had to find the right address. He didn't even, he didn't even give me the right address for the house.

00:49:08.800 So he had no idea I was coming and I wanted it to be a surprise attack, so to speak, you know,

00:49:14.800 that he, and he, he claimed he was in Russia, which is why you hear me saying that in the video.

00:49:19.380 And at the time I'm still talking to him. Right. So I, when I first discovered that he was lying,

00:49:24.420 I made an almost immediate decision that, okay, this man is never going to tell me the truth about

00:49:31.100 everything. I realize now that he's a pathological liar and I wanted hard, indisputable, irrefutable

00:49:39.000 evidence before I confronted him. Because one of the things that goes along with this, of course,

00:49:43.920 is gaslighting. These con artists, including Paolo are very good. If you question them

00:49:49.380 about muddying the waters and making you think that you're the one who's crazy for asking them

00:49:54.180 questions. They're so good at it. It's rapid fire. They have an answer for everything. And so

00:49:58.620 I decided I'm not confronting him until I have all my ducks in a row. And I know every single lie

00:50:05.400 I've uncovered everything. And so I had to play kind of a game with him. I, I called off the wedding

00:50:10.680 and luckily for me, he was being investigated at the time for scientific misconduct. Uh, it was

00:50:17.580 sort of the beginning of the revelations about his medical lies. And it was very convenient timing

00:50:22.780 because his, he was having a very difficult time in Sweden. And I just said, look, you know, there's

00:50:27.140 too much going on right now. Let's just call off the wedding and postpone it. And he must have breathed

00:50:31.420 such a sigh of relief when I did that. I got him off the hook, but it was also the perfect

00:50:35.800 excuse to cancel the wedding. And that's all I told all our wedding guests as well.

00:50:40.460 And so I'm still talking to him, you know, he's, I'm still talking to him, still saying,

00:50:44.440 I love you, which killed me and playing along as if we were going to reconvene the wedding at some

00:50:51.320 point. So he had no idea I was coming to that house and a, he wasn't in Russia. So that was the

00:50:57.960 first thing that pissed me off. He had just texted me, texted me that morning.

00:51:00.880 So when you, when we see that video of you and your friends in Barcelona,

00:51:03.660 he was still under the delusion that you were fooled and you guys were still together.

00:51:07.920 Correct. Correct. Okay. All right. Okay. Keep going.

00:51:11.340 I mean, he had some idea I had been grilling him. I had been telling him for a long time that

00:51:15.340 I thought he was lying, but I still, he, I think he still thought he had me under his thumb and he

00:51:19.540 was going to bring me back around and that the wedding was just being postponed. He had no idea

00:51:23.960 that I was onto him or that I knew that he was not really divorced, any of that, or that I knew

00:51:31.060 everything about the wedding was fake. And I kind of expected to find another woman in that house.

00:51:39.200 I wasn't sure if it would be the Italian wife or somebody else. I was prepared for that.

00:51:43.540 And my girlfriends and I had, we had been through several different scenarios, you know,

00:51:47.320 what if he's there? What if someone else is there, blah, blah. And the reason I sent them to the door

00:51:51.960 without me was I wanted them to sort of do the initial reconnaissance and see what was going on

00:51:57.400 before I came down. And if he was there, I had planned, I fully intended to confront him.

00:52:04.780 But what happened happens is he comes to the door. So first of all, he's there.

00:52:09.800 And then I see, even from, I'm sitting in the car at the top of the hill, he can't see me.

00:52:14.160 And I see a woman and two young children come out on the veranda of the house. And even from where I

00:52:20.660 am, I can hear them calling him dad. And this is a young woman. This is not his Italian wife. I know

00:52:25.840 exactly what his Italian wife looks like. So this is when I completely lose it and fall apart because

00:52:31.200 this is another family. This is a third family, you know, it's the Italian wife. He never divorced.

00:52:36.280 It's me and my daughter in New York. And now here in Barcelona, the real reason he never let us come

00:52:41.060 to Barcelona is because he's hiding another family here. And it was the children that sent me over

00:52:47.560 the edge. I mean, I, another woman, okay. At that point I was prepared for that, but the kids and

00:52:52.960 little kids, they were about five and seven years old. I was wholly unprepared for that. And

00:52:58.500 that's when I lost it. I mean, you see in the video, I just, I think I had been investigating for

00:53:05.020 a couple of months at that point. And I had not dealt with any of the heartache, the devastation,

00:53:10.740 and I just fall apart. I just, I'm screaming, I'm kicking, I'm wailing, I'm calling him every name

00:53:16.600 under the sun. It was just devastating. It was just, I, you know, he just took it so far. It just

00:53:25.140 was sort of incomprehensible to me that you had been sitting here, that you let me think I'm moving

00:53:30.560 here with my daughter and you planned this whole fake wedding. You let me quit my job. So much was

00:53:36.460 at stake. You let me pull my daughter out of her school. You let me give up my entire life. And

00:53:42.200 the whole time you're hiding another family here. And the whole time, you know, none of this is ever

00:53:47.240 going to happen. Gosh, it's just so devastating. It's crazy. It's crazy. I spoke with a friend

00:53:55.320 once whose husband had betrayed her and she did what almost every woman does, which is start to

00:54:03.860 obsess over his phone records and anything she could get her hands on. Right. Just to know she knew,

00:54:09.740 she knew it, you know, it was, she knew, but she needed the details. She needed the specifics and

00:54:16.100 she needed to know, you know, when and how long and how many times. And I said to her, you know,

00:54:21.840 it's, it's almost like in the Catholic faith, when somebody dies, they have the wake and you go to the

00:54:30.320 wake. And even though many Catholics and non-Catholics especially find it kind of very jarring,

00:54:36.260 what a jarring tradition to go and see the dead body. If it's an open casket, you know, what kind

00:54:41.160 of a tradition is this? What is, why would you do this to yourself? And I get that reaction very much,

00:54:46.860 but there is something, I don't know if the word's cathartic, if there's something necessary

00:54:53.220 for many people in seeing the dead body. It's like the beginning of coming to terms with what's really

00:55:01.540 happened and how your life has changed from what you thought it was a day earlier, a couple of days

00:55:06.040 earlier. And I almost see the behavior you're describing on your part as part of that process

00:55:10.460 for you. Like it's got, you've got to make it real for yourself. So acceptance can come a hundred

00:55:16.560 percent. And I think that's why the house in Barcelona was the last piece of the puzzle for me.

00:55:21.240 I mean, at that point, I already knew that he wasn't divorced. I already knew that, you know,

00:55:26.620 he had created this whole fake fantasy wedding. I mean, everything about it, you know, every place

00:55:32.660 he said was booked the caterer, the, this, the, that none of them had ever heard of us. Um, I knew

00:55:37.900 that he didn't know a damn one of these dignitaries or celebrities he claimed was coming to the wedding

00:55:42.600 or he claimed he was, you know, the personal, personal doctor too. He sure as hell was not the

00:55:47.540 Pope's personal private doctor. I mean, the Vatican practically laughed at me. Um, but for me,

00:55:53.560 the, the last piece of the puzzle was Barcelona. And that was the thing that just sort of, and that's

00:55:59.160 when I can finally confronted him. Hmm. Wait, can, before we get to conversation, who is the fourth

00:56:04.900 family? You see her actually in the Netflix special. So after, um, the older, after, um,

00:56:13.780 she's, she's younger. She, Anna Paula, she comes in the third episode. So after I went public,

00:56:19.560 which I, I do shortly after this, she contacted me and it turns out that she, and her story is just

00:56:26.300 horrific because her son died. Um, he was a patient of Paulo's. He did not have a plastic trachea,

00:56:32.860 but he did operate on him. Her son dies in Italy. There's an investigation into manslaughter. So

00:56:39.180 Paulo's facing manslaughter charges in Italy. So what does he do? He seduces her and basically so that

00:56:45.780 she will drop the charges, which she does. And then he gets her pregnant and she has a child

00:56:51.020 that's born with him basically right around the time that he's proposing to me. So that's four

00:56:56.600 families that I know about, you know, it's, it's the Italian wife. He never divorced. It's me and my

00:57:01.320 daughter in New York. It's the woman and the two kids in the house in Barcelona. And then this other

00:57:05.980 poor woman in Italy that he has a child with. Oh my God. It's like, in a way you got away.

00:57:12.940 Oh yeah. You know, which is interesting because he really wanted to have a child. He was desperate

00:57:19.480 to have a child and that would be such a nightmare. I'm just so glad that never happened.

00:57:24.740 I know. So can we talk about the confrontation? Because I know that after, hold on, I pulled the

00:57:30.500 email because I know that, um, after you canceled the wedding, you emailed him and, and it reads as

00:57:37.700 follows. I believed you were exactly who you presented yourself to be to me, to my friends

00:57:43.720 and family, to the world. Congratulations. You charm me and all of us into la la land.

00:57:50.000 I will never ever understand how you could have done this to me or to your daughter. Uh, who the hell

00:57:56.060 are you and what the hell is wrong with you? But this is not the confrontation to which you refer.

00:58:02.300 No, it is. So that was the first part of the confrontation. This was by text. Actually,

00:58:07.420 when we left the house in Barcelona, we went to a place that had wifi. Keep in mind, he had no idea

00:58:13.620 that I was there. He knew my friends were there. He couldn't get rid of them fast enough. Um,

00:58:18.620 and they told him, Hey, look, you know, we, the wedding got canceled so close to the wedding day.

00:58:23.940 We, as a lot of people did, we decided to come to Italy anyway on vacation. And we just dropped by to

00:58:29.300 bring you a wedding gift. That was their excuse for knocking at the doorbell,

00:58:32.640 which the whole thing was so suspicious, right? Because ostensibly he and I are still getting

00:58:37.400 married and we're still talking and he didn't invite them in. He could not get rid of them

00:58:42.480 fast enough. He just wanted them to leave. But anyway, we get to this restaurant and I write

00:58:47.020 him a text that's literally about this long. I mean, what you read is just one part of it and

00:58:51.560 called him every name under the sun, named everything that I knew he was lying about. And,

00:58:57.820 you know, just called him a despicable, disgusting human being, told him I hated him and et cetera,

00:59:04.700 et cetera. And I think it took him about 10, 15 minutes to reply. And he wrote back one word.

00:59:12.000 Wow. That's all I said. Wow. Unsatisfactory. Well, I think he was caught, right? What was,

00:59:21.040 what was there to say? Game over. There's nothing to say. He's caught. I want more.

00:59:24.260 I want me to see his face and see him, I don't know, beg for forgiveness or I want to see him

00:59:32.700 ashamed. I know that the man has no shame or empathy or remorse or any of the other things,

00:59:39.000 but yeah. We're never going to see that. Was there ever any more contact?

00:59:42.820 Um, yes. And 20. So what happens right after this is I'm devastated, of course. Um, but almost

00:59:52.680 immediately I had whatever you want to call it, an epiphany or whatever you want to call it. But I

00:59:58.500 thought, Oh my God, you know, if he's lying to me like this and creating fake relationships with the

01:00:05.320 Pope and with, you know, celebrities and dignitaries and presidents and creating a whole fake fantasy

01:00:12.020 wedding and allowing people to book tickets and spend money and allowing me to quit my job and

01:00:18.120 quit their jobs and their schools. Yeah. All of it. If he's doing all of that and we'll go that far,

01:00:23.820 there's no way, there's no way in hell. He's not also lying in his medical and professional life.

01:00:28.540 It can't be. And that thought was so horrifying to me because I, you know, he has people's lives

01:00:34.160 in his hands. You know, he's doing something revolutionary and groundbreaking and people

01:00:40.080 think the man walks on water. And I thought, shit, you know, I have to tell my story. I have to go

01:00:46.460 public. I have to expose him. I almost felt an obligation to do it. I thought, you know, maybe this

01:00:53.240 happened to me because I know how to do this. You know, if, if, if I need to go public, if I need to

01:00:58.020 tell my story, it's not going to be pretty, it's not going to be fun, but I know what to do. And

01:01:03.660 I need to do this. The world needs to know who Dr. Paolo Macchiarini is. And it wasn't vindictive.

01:01:11.280 It wasn't about revenge. It was simply about sounding the warning alarm that, you know,

01:01:16.920 this man is a fraud. This man is a con. He's not who you think he is. And so I very, very quickly

01:01:24.320 connected through a friend with a reporter at Vanity Fair who told me that he could do it,

01:01:30.100 he could do it quickly, which is what I wanted. And so this is July of 2014. And the article came out

01:01:35.960 in January of 2016, my story. And I did not know this when I went public and when I decided to do

01:01:44.700 the story, but within a week of me, my story coming out in Vanity Fair, a scathing documentary

01:01:51.100 came out in Sweden called The Experiments, which exposed all his medical lies. And it was

01:01:57.140 actually worse than I feared. I mean, watching that documentary was one of the most difficult

01:02:03.200 things I've ever had to do because it was so obvious that he blatantly used people as human

01:02:10.040 guinea pigs that he knew, I believe from the beginning that this thing he was transplanting

01:02:16.120 into them would never work. It was, it was a plastic tube that might as well have been a straw.

01:02:21.000 He knew damn well, it wasn't going to work. And he did it anyway. He, and it just, it's just so

01:02:27.320 obvious how reckless this man is and how dangerous he is. And it was the combination of the two things

01:02:33.420 that sort of blew everything up because now you have these insane, you know, over the top,

01:02:39.260 egregious lies in his personal life, coupled with this evidence that he's been lying in the medical

01:02:45.700 arena. And the two things were what finally blew everything up.

01:02:50.460 The, that lane of the story well covered in all the pieces I mentioned,

01:02:54.520 as disturbing as your piece that is, is the most.

01:02:57.800 Oh, it's horrific. It's way worse than what happened to me. I mean, there's just,

01:03:01.640 what happened to me is nothing.

01:03:02.880 But it's a similar pattern. It's a similar pattern if you look at it, right? In well-meaning,

01:03:07.280 earnest, kind people in some turmoil, trusting him, trusting him. Yeah. Trusting him to do right by

01:03:18.460 them, to take care of them, to see them through, you know, the most difficult times of their life,

01:03:24.660 wooed by his bedside manner, which we discussed and his credentials and all of these institutions

01:03:29.880 around him, vouching for him. Exactly. Only in their cases, it was a deadly mistake. And amazingly,

01:03:37.800 there are still some families still believing in him, even after their loved ones died in his care.

01:03:46.640 And I can only think they have to do that just as a self-protection mechanism. Like they just have to

01:03:52.560 say, we didn't put our loved one in the hands of a madman. You know, we did something smart and we took

01:03:59.460 a calculated risk. And I just, when I, as I see the people in like the Netflix documentary wrestling

01:04:04.420 with it, well, no, it's okay. You know, we're still grateful to him. All I can think is that's,

01:04:09.040 that's something other than acceptance. That's, I believe that too. I think

01:04:14.400 Paolo was very good at convincing the families when patients died, that the patients were pioneers,

01:04:21.160 you know, and they would sort of live in history as pioneers who helped him help pave the way for a

01:04:28.700 better, better medical future. And that's a much nicer thing to think than you put your loved one in

01:04:34.860 the hands of a madman who is reckless and dangerous and a murderer, quite frankly, probably a serial

01:04:42.380 killer. And I think for some of these patients, families, you know, who had been so desperate and

01:04:52.000 especially Hannah's family, you know, they, they thought Paolo was the answer to their prayers.

01:04:59.160 They thought he was their last hope. They believed in him. They, they put so much into that and they

01:05:04.300 sought him out. And I think that's the other thing. A lot of these people found Dr. MacIarini on the

01:05:09.140 internet, you know, they did a Google search and that's how they found him. So, you know, the, to deal

01:05:14.880 with the death of your loved one, especially a child. And then on top of that, you sought out the

01:05:20.360 person, you know, that probably killed her. I don't, I think that's just too much to wrap your head

01:05:25.360 around. Yep. It would be for me. There's Chris Liles, whose story is heartbreaking, a 30 year old

01:05:33.260 man, electrical engineer from Maryland. And he was diagnosed with cancer, but heard of Paolo MacIarini.

01:05:43.060 And he did the procedure on Chris and Chris, like all the others who kept that fake trachea

01:05:52.960 in died. Here's a bit on him from the piece. Saw three.

01:06:00.060 We didn't see Paolo that much. He was flying this place. He was flying that place. He had, um, one of his

01:06:08.800 assistants look after Chris. If you're okay, Chris. Yeah. Don't try to hold it.

01:06:16.800 Very soon after surgery, Chris Liles gained an infection in the airway. So he started to cough

01:06:22.160 enormously hard. This, you know, really, really deep cough. He got mucus clots in the airways.

01:06:30.540 They did. What also happened was he got an infection in this wound. So he had a quite

01:06:39.300 dramatic post-operative, early post-operative period. But it was a little bit unusual that

01:06:44.340 you get the infection. So early on after surgery.

01:06:48.480 And he had a young daughter.

01:06:51.440 Horrible.

01:06:51.640 And the family died. And the family continues to stand by Paolo.

01:06:56.120 No, actually, no, not anymore. They did initially. Yeah, they did. They, they finally came around

01:07:02.560 and realized, you know, initially they still stood by him, but now, no, now they know.

01:07:09.580 Yeah.

01:07:10.040 They were in the Netflix piece sounding like, well, you know, Chris, he was terminal. And so

01:07:15.420 it was a risk we decided to take. But that's interesting. Was it after they saw the compilation

01:07:19.780 of stories, you know, that they realized how Chris fit into the story? Or what, what do you think

01:07:25.720 did it for them?

01:07:28.100 You know, I think it just takes time. And I think it's the same for any of the people that

01:07:33.780 Dr. Macchiarini fooled. I mean, we're talking some of the, the world's most prestigious, esteemed

01:07:40.200 institutions, doctors, scientists. I mean, he pulled the wool over so many people's eyes. It's not just

01:07:46.080 me and the other women in his life. It's not just the patients and their families. I mean,

01:07:51.380 so many people. And I think it's a very, very difficult thing, A, to admit that you got fooled,

01:07:58.280 but B, to wrap your head around the fact that this man who you thought was either the answer to your,

01:08:07.020 your, your patient, you know, your loved one dying, or was, you know, in the case of Carolyn's

01:08:13.300 Get Sweeting, bringing you all kinds of accolades and money and esteem. It's just very difficult to

01:08:19.060 wrap your head around the fact that Dr. Paolo Macchiarini is not who you thought he was and that

01:08:24.580 he's exactly the opposite of who you thought he was. And I, I think it just takes time.

01:08:30.600 And that you may have entrusted your loved one to a madman, to somebody with empathy,

01:08:34.760 who may be a sociopath. The, um, the case out of Russia, also disturbing. We've mentioned his

01:08:42.740 contacts there on this young ballerina, ballerina, uh, whose name was Yulia. Yeah. He performed her

01:08:50.200 surgery in 2012. And there's a bit of Paolo talking about her in the piece, young, beautiful. She was

01:08:56.460 not, she was not terminal. Um, no, she did not need the surgery. And she begged him actually,

01:09:02.500 they actually had a lottery in Russia because he was looking for quote unquote, healthy patients to

01:09:07.380 try this procedure on. She had been in a car accident. So she had a hole in her throat. She

01:09:11.940 had a tracheotomy, but she could have lived the rest of her life like that. And she begged,

01:09:15.860 she made a video begging Paolo to pick her and he picked her tragically. Here's a, here's a bit of

01:09:21.860 Paolo talking about her from the Netflix show, Badge Surgeon.

01:09:29.580 This is Yulia. When I met Yulia, she was not able to play with her child. It was a very emotional,

01:09:39.400 uh, moment for me. And I immediately said, this is the right patient. And I still do not believe that

01:09:47.080 a few days ago, she couldn't breathe and talk normally. So, um, she's a little bit, uh, afraid

01:09:55.040 of you. So please be very sweet.

01:09:58.480 You know, her case when I eat it out and around like us, like she was one of his success stories.

01:10:17.840 And as they point out in the piece, it was a lie. And indeed she died.

01:10:23.020 Yeah. And not only died, but they died horrible deaths. I mean, this plastic tube that was coated

01:10:29.140 in the patient's own stem cells was literally rotting inside their throats. So Yulia's mother

01:10:34.840 talks about the fact that she smelled horrifically because this thing was rotting. She smelled like

01:10:39.600 rotting fish because this thing was rotting inside her throat. And then they suffocated to death

01:10:44.380 because this thing disintegrated and rotted in their throats. It's not only did they die,

01:10:49.380 but it's, it's like a torturous death. It's, it's awful. And he kept doing it. He kept doing

01:10:57.360 exactly. Can you speak about the Institute doing good. Is it Carolina? What's it called in Sweden?

01:11:04.720 Karolinska. Karolinska. Okay. That was principally backing him for a while. He also had the Russian

01:11:10.080 Institute as well, but it seems like those doctors there were like, there are a couple of them who

01:11:16.640 are featured who turned out to be good guys who recognize what he was doing was very wrong

01:11:21.380 and started to blow the whistle on him. Yeah. I think, um, and what they did was very brave.

01:11:28.880 And as is typical with many whistleblowers, unfortunately they went through hell, you know,

01:11:33.440 it took them a long time to pull together all the evidence against him and they put their own careers

01:11:39.360 on the line. They were questioned. I mean, some of them were called into the police station. Some of them

01:11:43.960 were threatened with losing their jobs. Some of them have left Karolinska now and they went through

01:11:49.240 hell, but they started realizing slowly that this thing was not working, that the patients were

01:11:55.620 suffering and dying and that Paolo was lying in medical papers and very, very prestigious ones,

01:12:03.100 the new England journal of medicine among them about the results of the transplant. So he's standing

01:12:07.580 at press conference talk, press conferences, talking about how the patients are doing so beautifully

01:12:11.760 well. When in fact, behind the scenes, they're suffering and they're dying exactly the opposite

01:12:17.880 of what he was saying. And also he's publishing in these prestigious medical journals saying that,

01:12:23.060 you know, this thing is working beautifully and he's leaving data out. He's faking data. He's lying

01:12:27.840 about stuff. So they start piecing it all together and they spent some insane number of hours piecing all

01:12:33.860 the parts of the puzzle together. And at first, when they first went to Karolinska,

01:12:37.800 they were shunned. They were shooed away. Karolinska didn't want to hear it. And I think

01:12:42.720 it just speaks to what happens with somebody who's so cunning and so charming and so manipulative like

01:12:50.140 Dr. Paolo Macchiarini. It was, he was bringing in so much money to Karolinska and there was so much

01:12:58.080 promise and hope attached to this man. They were talking about building a whole institution around

01:13:02.860 him. He's getting grants. He's getting published in these prestigious journals. He's operating all

01:13:08.040 around the world. He's bringing them notoriety. So when somebody first comes to them and says,

01:13:13.620 you know what? This guy's not who you think he is. It was a very, very inconvenient truth.

01:13:19.560 Nobody wanted to hear it. And it's a massive crisis. You go from having a golden boy who's going to make

01:13:25.140 you a fortune and bring you nothing but accolades to having a potential criminal serial killer working

01:13:32.200 for you. Who's only going to bring you shame and condemnation. Exactly. Which is why I think

01:13:40.460 initially people tried to sweep it under the rug because it just, nobody wanted to deal with it.

01:13:45.760 But there were a couple of doctors there who just didn't allow that.

01:13:49.000 Oh, they were tenacious. Yeah. They were tenacious. Those, those whistleblowers refused to give up.

01:13:54.660 And I've now met them and I, they're, they're lovely guys. And we, um, I really admire what they did and

01:14:01.760 what they went through. Um, but they just refuse to give up. They, and they still do, you know,

01:14:07.600 like me, they still keep talking about him and none of us will stop until there's full justice,

01:14:12.760 which we still don't have. Well, that's the question because I think most people hearing the

01:14:18.220 story at this point are asking, please tell me he's in jail. Is he in jail? There have been some

01:14:24.340 criminal charges, but they haven't gone nothing nearly to the level of what we would want or what

01:14:31.500 we think he deserves. Can you talk about what's happened to him in the criminal lane?

01:14:35.660 Yes. He finally was in Sweden. They had tried going after him a few years ago and it is a difficult

01:14:42.940 case to prove because they're experimental procedures. So to prove that he knew that the

01:14:48.540 patients were going to die to prove that he did this intentionally is, is not so easy. So the first

01:14:52.800 time they tried to do it, they gave up, they sort of dropped the charges. Sweden was furious. This is,

01:14:58.660 this whole thing is a giant scandal in Sweden. And it's so embarrassing. I mean, people got fired,

01:15:04.220 people on the Nobel prize committee stepped down in shame. And so luckily another prosecutor came back

01:15:09.160 and said, no, I'm going to try again. And so he was on trial in 2022 and he got convicted of one count

01:15:17.260 of bodily harm. They could only go after him in Sweden for the three patients that were operated on

01:15:23.480 in Sweden, including Christopher Lyles, the U S patient. And then he appealed that. And so last year

01:15:30.800 there was an appeals trial and I think he was thinking he was going to get off. Well, instead the appeals

01:15:37.220 court came back hard and convicted him of three counts of aggravated assault on for all of the

01:15:43.760 patients that were operated on Sweden and sentenced him to 30 months behind bars. Of course he appeals

01:15:49.840 again, all the way to the Swedish Supreme court. But in October, the Supreme court came back and said,

01:15:55.120 no, we're not taking the case. The conviction stands. That was October. Here we are six months

01:16:02.040 later. The man's still not behind bars. It's crazy. He managed, this just came out last week to

01:16:08.720 negotiate with Swedish authorities that he wants to spend his time behind bars in Spain where he lives,

01:16:15.480 not in Sweden on house arrest. So he basically wants to sit at his damn house by the pool,

01:16:22.380 sipping cocktails. And that's how he thinks he's going to serve his 30 months, which is

01:16:26.160 just, I don't even know what word to use. It's so horrific and so unfair to those patients.

01:16:32.840 You know, it's just, that is not justice. So what are the likely, what are the odds that that's going

01:16:38.640 to happen? Pretty high. I think, I think now the Spanish, the Spanish authorities have to,

01:16:44.840 Sweden has basically washed their hands of him and said, no, serve your time in Spain. Spain has to agree

01:16:49.920 to it. So that's a more delay without him being behind bars. And if they agree to it,

01:16:55.660 I, you know, I think he will, I think he'll have an ankle bracelet and be sitting by his,

01:16:59.420 by his pool. The most important thing is that he's not allowed to do this to anybody else.

01:17:05.120 Has he lost his medical license? And even if he hasn't have, don't you, don't you think that the

01:17:10.320 Netflix show that your documentary, all the work you've been doing along with these doctors from

01:17:15.200 Karolinska have made his reemergence as a physician impossible? Yes. It's a, it's, I get

01:17:22.420 asked this all the time. It's a tricky question because there isn't one medical license to yank.

01:17:26.700 It's not like the U S in Europe. It's country by country. So if a country still allows him to operate

01:17:34.020 in, in Europe, he could in theory. But as you said, his reputation is clearly severely tarnished and,

01:17:42.180 you know, tanked and his, he's had a drastic, you know, crash from, from fame and notoriety.

01:17:49.420 So I doubt anybody would want him operating on them, but technically he still can.

01:17:56.800 He's making a documentary with his side. I can't wait. I'm actually really looking forward to that.

01:18:05.240 I hope you'll come back on after that hits. What on earth do you think that is going to look like?

01:18:12.180 He, because he's not behind bars, he has been doing interviews in Italy in the past months and

01:18:18.100 he did one, I think it was right before Christmas and I was on the show and his, he was not on,

01:18:22.980 but his attorney was not on and he's desperate. And the only thing that he can do at the moment is try

01:18:30.980 to muddy the waters and try to distract attention from his patients. And so he's going after me and

01:18:35.840 Anna Paula, the woman who also went public in the Netflix documentary, and he's just trying to victim

01:18:42.000 shame us, slut shame us, whatever he can, you know, he's just trying to throw dirt, you know,

01:18:46.900 and make up lies about us and, and muddy the waters and distract attention from the real issue,

01:18:53.640 which is that he killed people. And none of the things he's saying are true, but even if they were,

01:19:00.240 it wouldn't matter. You know, that's, it doesn't matter. You know, what matters is you use people

01:19:06.120 as human Guinea pigs. You broke all kinds of legal and ethical laws and recklessly destroyed people's

01:19:17.560 lives and you're killed people and patients lives without caring. So nothing else matters. So he's,

01:19:23.900 have there been massive civil suits against him? Somebody should own his bar, his Barcelona home other

01:19:28.320 than Paula. I know the Turkish family, um, that Turkish girl that you see on the Netflix documentary,

01:19:34.640 the one that had something like 200 surgeries. I mean, her, her case is so horrific. They've sued

01:19:39.860 him. I don't know the outcome of that yet. We need an American family to sue, but we're,

01:19:45.480 we're very good at suing. As you know, that's our forte here in America. Um, one of the American

01:19:50.880 families needs to sue for wrongful death and then they will own the home in Barcelona and whatever else he

01:19:56.240 has. That's, that's the true way of punishing somebody like him. He said to La Nazione, uh,

01:20:04.020 an Italian publication that wrote, wrote up his plan to do a new documentary. He said,

01:20:09.160 the deaths are glorified, meaning those he caused, but there is no mention of the lives saved. I was

01:20:16.840 crucified in an inhumane way. The history of transplants must be read. The initial phases are

01:20:22.840 always associated with high mortality, but despite this, they continued until they, until they become

01:20:30.980 almost routine operations. As for you, he said, she's the one who always lied. Okay. So we'll, we'll

01:20:40.600 look forward to him filling that out in his quote documentary. Um, I do want to talk to you about a

01:20:47.120 couple of things. The, the thing you lost your, your train of thought on that we were getting to was

01:20:52.040 contact you've had with him since, wow, since that text. So was it after all these pieces hit that you

01:21:00.100 and he? So in, in 2018, I made a film for discovery called he lied about everything. Um, after the

01:21:07.380 vanity fair article, which was just, I was, I was in such a state of post-traumatic stress when it, when

01:21:12.780 that article came out and I felt like it didn't fully encompass the whole story or my story. And

01:21:18.120 I wanted to tell it in my own words, which is why I did the documentary. And during the course of

01:21:23.420 making that documentary, I tried to find him. I traveled actually to Russia, to Italy, to several

01:21:28.920 places. I met with some of the families, um, including Yulia's husband, which was heartbreaking. Um,

01:21:36.000 and I couldn't find him. So finally I got him on the phone and it was such an interesting phone call

01:21:43.320 because I called from a phone that wasn't mine. So he didn't know it was me. And I had to tell him

01:21:48.740 that I was recording him obviously for legal reasons. But as soon as I said, I said, I said,

01:21:54.540 hi, Apollo, it's Benita. And immediately his voice, you know, that soft voice. Oh, hi, how are you?

01:22:02.120 And I thought this asshole, he, he thinks either he thinks I'm calling to reconcile or he thinks he

01:22:07.960 can get me again. He thinks he can, you know, pull me in again. It was just so disgusting. And

01:22:13.860 then I started, I, I, you know, I started finding questions at him. Why did you lie to me? Why did

01:22:18.420 you lie about this? And there was silence and you could, I, it was maybe a minute and you could almost

01:22:24.320 hear the cogs in his brain turning, thinking, okay, I'm being recorded. I think I'm supposed to say,

01:22:29.340 I'm sorry. And so after I shut up, he, he just says, I'm sorry. It was the lamest,

01:22:36.320 most insincere apology you've ever heard in your life. He sounded like a robot, you know,

01:22:40.260 he didn't mean it. And then I asked him some other question and then he hung up on me.

01:22:45.280 No. Yeah, that's it. That's the moment. It's up. It's over. You got me. Yeah. I have no need to

01:22:55.060 sing or dance anymore. Yeah. But of course now, now that he's, I think even then, I think all of

01:23:04.860 this time, he still thought he was going to get away with it. You know, he still thought somehow

01:23:09.440 he was going to crawl his way out of this and restore his reputation. And so I think this

01:23:15.140 prison sentence and the Supreme court refusing to take his case was a, was a hard awakening and

01:23:22.040 that's why he's desperate. And that's why he's doing all this stuff now and calling me a liar or

01:23:26.700 calling Anna a liar or what else can he do? You know, there's nothing else he can do.

01:23:31.040 I'm Megan Kelly, host of the Megan Kelly show on Sirius XM. It's your home for open,

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01:24:29.140 So let's talk about what we can figure out in his psychology and really warning signs for other

01:24:41.060 women, because you said at the top, which I wanted to follow up with you on, um, the thing about,

01:24:46.740 I believe he was gathering information to use against me from the start. So interesting. What do

01:24:54.780 you mean? So one of the things, and I think this is true of most of these guys, most of these con

01:25:01.200 artists, I thought Paula was a very good listener at the beginning, right? Who, who doesn't love a

01:25:06.360 good listener, especially when you're in a vulnerable place, but what they're doing, if you go back and

01:25:12.080 look at it very carefully, they give you very little information about themselves. And what they're doing

01:25:16.780 is literally gathering information and stockpiling it to use against you. They study you. They, they

01:25:23.900 try to figure out everything they can about you so that they can use it against you. And they target

01:25:29.400 you when you're vulnerable. And so this is one of the things I tell women all the time. Now,

01:25:33.780 if you are vulnerable for any reason, whatever, there's been a death in your family, you lost a job,

01:25:40.360 you just went through a divorce, a breakup, anything, anything that makes you more vulnerable than usual,

01:25:45.000 you have to be hyper vigilant about protecting yourself because this is when these people

01:25:49.820 target you because it's, and it's, it's so basic, but when you're vulnerable,

01:25:55.140 when you're going through something difficult, what do you want? Do you want somebody to tell

01:25:59.140 you everything's going to be okay? You want somebody to wrap their arms around you and give

01:26:02.340 you a big hug and reassure you. And that's what Paula was doing. He, I'm pouring my heart out about

01:26:09.280 my ex-husband is going to die and I don't know how to do this. And I don't know how to tell my

01:26:13.040 daughter and he's listening to me. He's reassuring me. And at the same time, he's figuring out what my

01:26:20.040 weaknesses are or what my vulnerabilities are. And they turn it around on you. They use it against

01:26:25.980 you. This is a weird reference, but it's almost like a dog in heat. How, you know, the humans walking

01:26:34.640 around the dog have no idea, but every male dog in the neighborhood is at your door. Like

01:26:38.320 sociopaths have that sense when a woman is in trouble. And when she's a hundred percent,

01:26:46.120 they have, I don't know how they develop it. They do. It's a very strong, effective radar.

01:26:50.680 They can find them in a crowded field. They can, they know in like death in the family. It doesn't

01:26:56.320 have to be like your basket case. It can be like, I just had something really sad happen to me and I'm

01:27:01.100 feeling kind of low. They have like a homing beacon. Exactly. I call it the vulnerability radar.

01:27:09.000 Yeah. And so that applies by the way, that applies by the way to anybody I would, I noticed,

01:27:15.640 and I thought about this in hindsight at a party, for instance, you know, there were certain people

01:27:21.060 Paolo wouldn't spend a lot of time talking to and later, and it was subtle. People didn't know,

01:27:26.660 but later I had to find out that those people didn't like him or that there was something about him

01:27:30.740 that didn't necessarily make them suspicious, but they were turned off by him. And he, he kind of

01:27:36.420 knows it, you know, he knew who he could play with and who he couldn't. So I, yeah, they're highly

01:27:41.840 skilled manipulators and highly skilled at knowing who they can target. I mean, it's yeah. Not unlike

01:27:48.100 any other criminal. They, they target their prey and that for, for mere mortals to respond to

01:27:54.660 appropriately, to see through, to identify, you know, I've, I've said this to my audience many times,

01:28:00.160 but my husband and I are very different in this lane because he would be somebody Paolo would spend

01:28:05.500 no time with because Doug is very good at like sociopath dark, you know, he just knows immediately

01:28:13.560 when he's met a bad person. And I'm ironically as the news person and you'd think it'd be the

01:28:18.360 opposite, but I'm like, no, you're being too hard on him. He's a nice guy. And Doug's always right.

01:28:25.940 At 16 years of marriage, I finally got to the point where I'm like, if Doug says he's bad,

01:28:30.560 he's bad. He's bad. I should not trust my own instincts on this, but for mere mortals out there

01:28:36.300 dealing with these skilled sociopaths, it's a very uneven playing field. So you, as a mere mortal,

01:28:43.680 if you don't have Doug's sociopath dar, you have to follow the clues that Benita is giving you. Like

01:28:49.800 you are most vulnerable when something has happened to you, whether you're strong normally or not,

01:28:57.200 you, you're putting out the scent that, you know, victim here. You also, I know you talked about it

01:29:04.280 a little bit. You didn't use the term, but I know you've talked about the fog that these guys can

01:29:08.440 create around you. And I think that'll be familiar to a lot of people. You feel it. You, you don't know

01:29:13.220 what it is. You feel the fog. So talk about how they create that and what that is.

01:29:16.660 Well, it's a form of gaslighting, right? So they're, they're master manipulators and they

01:29:23.140 come into the relationship or the friendship, whatever it is, could be even be a business

01:29:27.820 arrangement, quite frankly, with some sort of nefarious intention. They want something from

01:29:32.560 you, whether it's money, whether it's whatever it is. And so they're plotting the whole time.

01:29:37.620 And so they are very prepared. So if you start becoming suspicious, they're very prepared for that.

01:29:43.320 And they come back at you rapid fire. You know, they have an answer for everything and they shoot

01:29:48.260 you down so fast and they get angry and they question you, why would you ask me that? And

01:29:53.100 well, you know, and they have evidence, you know, they have all the evidence. And so

01:29:56.460 it's gaslighting. So you start thinking, oh, okay, maybe it's me, you know, maybe,

01:30:02.160 maybe I'm wrong. And it feels like a fog. You know, you just feel, you can't quite figure it out,

01:30:08.300 but you know that you, something doesn't feel right, but they're so convincing and so rapid fire

01:30:13.660 and, and so determined to shoot you down that you just start thinking, okay, it must be me.

01:30:19.160 And that's why I call it the fog. And it's very intentional. It's very manipulative because again,

01:30:25.060 it's designed to distract you and sort of muddy the waters and, you know, get you off the scent of

01:30:32.120 something's wrong or whatever it is that you've clued, clued into. And they're very, very good at it.

01:30:38.300 It's cunning. It's the way you feel when you have low blood sugar.

01:30:43.000 Oh, that's so interesting. It's so true. Yeah. That's exactly what it feels like.

01:30:47.400 Yeah. Your brain's just a little muddled. You're not a hundred percent yourself.

01:30:52.460 You're slightly confused. You're not processing things as quickly as you normally do.

01:30:56.720 Exactly.

01:30:57.000 Just like there's some separation between the real you and the current you,

01:31:00.460 and they're so good at creating it. They can create it just a million facts that they throw at you.

01:31:04.820 And they're smart. The people who get away with this are very, very smart. So it's not,

01:31:09.280 it's not illogical, their responses and their manipulations. And that brings me to another

01:31:13.840 thing you said, um, about how you said, Oh, um, he probably would have canceled the wedding

01:31:21.920 claiming, Oh, there's some massive security threat. Or you talked about how he said, um,

01:31:27.420 some trip was canceled because of an emergency that the big excuse for the cancellation or the letdown

01:31:34.960 is also a characteristic of these people. Yeah. I call it the walking catastrophe. So if you're,

01:31:41.940 if you're dating somebody, or again, it could be a business relationship. It could be a friendship.

01:31:46.120 And there's one dramatic excuse after the other. It's always dramatic, right? It's somebody's in the

01:31:52.640 hospital or I'm in the hospital or somebody's dead or something so dramatic that if you, if you

01:31:59.380 question them, let's say you're supposed to go on a date with somebody in there. Oh, you know,

01:32:03.000 my kid got hit by a car. If you then question them and well, I thought we were going away for the

01:32:08.860 weekend. I thought we were going on a date. You look like the idiot and the asshole because you're,

01:32:13.640 who wouldn't be empathetic and sympathetic in that situation. And it's very calculative. It's designed

01:32:18.600 again to make, you know, to take the focus of what they're not doing or why they're not showing up

01:32:24.820 and make you feel bad. And, but it's a huge red flag. I mean, if it happens once, okay, that's life,

01:32:30.140 you know, things happen. But if it happens over and over again, these dramatic wild, you know,

01:32:36.280 excuses and catastrophes, that's a giant red flag.

01:32:40.520 Right. So looking back on your relationship with Paolo before poke gate, was there a moment,

01:32:49.340 you know, now in retrospect, was there a moment or two that you, that you can point to where you're

01:32:53.040 like, I want to talk to that girl and say, sweetheart, this is a big deal. Here's your red flag, like run.

01:32:59.900 It's so hard because it's such a slow weaving of the web of lies. You know, it's so meticulous. And

01:33:12.500 again, that fog. So it's, it's happening, happening very gradually. And by the time you realize that

01:33:19.700 you're ensnared in this web, the spider's web, you know, it's too late. It's been going on. I mean,

01:33:25.680 keep in mind, we were dating for almost two years. So it's hard for me to pinpoint a moment

01:33:30.520 like that. Um, clearly not having been to the house in Barcelona was a huge red flag,

01:33:36.640 but we were arguing about that. It wasn't, it wasn't as if I didn't question him about that.

01:33:40.520 And there were things about the wedding that I questioned him about. So again, there wasn't one

01:33:45.320 big giant thing that said, you know, wake up because he had the credentials, everything as nuts

01:33:53.660 as it sound also seemed equally plausible. You know, he, he had a, he's very adept at explaining

01:34:00.900 things into sense, into them making sense. So with you, we speculated, maybe this was about

01:34:09.120 getting a friend in the media, getting a, getting a beautiful NBC piece and perhaps more or, you know,

01:34:16.740 who knows? Cause he did include encourage you ultimately to quit NBC. So at that point,

01:34:20.140 but you're still a journalist, you still have connections. And at this point he may just be

01:34:23.760 seeing it through, but in general, do you think it's just the high that we talked about? Like

01:34:30.680 of lying, of fooling someone smart, like, uh, you know, like a guy who gambles and goes for the high

01:34:37.500 of winning. Is it, is it like that normally? Cause I think this happens to people who don't have

01:34:41.940 the kind of power and job that you had. Yeah. I, I think it goes back to the narcissism. Um,

01:34:49.720 I've asked experts about this and I mean, one of the things is people like him don't go into therapy,

01:34:55.180 obviously. So they don't know a lot about these types of people, but one person explained it to

01:35:00.300 me that all the, okay, let's say you, you were standing on the edge of a cliff and somebody is

01:35:04.840 about to push you off. Think of all the things you'd be feeling, you know, the, the fear, the anxiety,

01:35:09.780 the trepidation, this person said that it's almost like a part of their brain is missing,

01:35:16.240 right? So all those things that we feel, you know, fear, anxiety, remorse, guilt, you know,

01:35:22.860 all the normal things people feel when they're dealing with other human beings or they make a

01:35:26.980 mistake. It's like that part of their brain is blank. They feel nothing. They have no empathy.

01:35:32.000 They have no remorse. They have no guilt. And so therefore they're always seeking a high,

01:35:38.280 something that sort of jolts their brain into feeling something because it's almost blank.

01:35:43.980 And so the rush and the high of getting away with lying for is just fueling them. It's just

01:35:50.520 fueling their ego. It's almost like they need it. Like they, they can't exist without it.

01:35:58.200 So now what is every time I've heard your story, I think, how is she ever going to trust somebody

01:36:04.220 again? How is she going to fall in love again? You're still a young woman. You're beautiful.

01:36:08.880 You're smart. You have to have love in your life at some point. How's that been? And are you up

01:36:14.640 against some major trust issues at this point? So I, first of all, I don't think you can go

01:36:21.600 through something like this and not have trust issues. I mean, it, it would be impossible. I mean,

01:36:26.100 something would be wrong with me if I, if I didn't, and it's taken a while. I mean, this has been,

01:36:31.120 you know, I was 2015. We were supposed to get married. So we're nine years this summer.

01:36:37.380 And I think I didn't realize it at first, but what, when I first started dating people that were

01:36:42.900 more than casual, um, I was choosing people that I knew I wouldn't fall in love with. And I think that

01:36:50.080 was a way of protecting myself because if I, if I wasn't really in love with somebody, then somebody

01:36:55.120 couldn't hurt me. Right. Um, so it has taken me a long time, but I am now in a, in fact, I'm sitting

01:37:02.320 in his house right now. I'm in a, a very serious, very happy, lovely relationship. We've been together

01:37:07.760 for a little over a year now. So, um, that's awesome. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. I imagine he's

01:37:15.040 got his challenges. I mean, I, I feel like if I were dating you and I was your boyfriend, I'd be like,

01:37:21.200 I'm going to work and you can call me there and you can speak to my boss and you can come by any

01:37:25.620 time. And here's my everything number, right? Like, I feel like I would feel the need to bend

01:37:30.260 over backward to prove to you. Everything I'm telling you is true. Yeah. And yeah, I'm lucky

01:37:36.320 because he's very patient and very, very understanding, um, and really, really gets what

01:37:41.880 I've been through. And I have my moments, believe me, I put him through the ringer, but he's,

01:37:45.960 he's really good and he's very good at, at immediately sort of quelling any anxiety I have.

01:37:52.140 And yeah, he's just a good guy. And finally, well, cause you know, Benita, I hadn't thought

01:37:56.780 about this word, but I think it's apt. You've been abused. This was an abusive relationship.

01:38:03.760 Yep. Yeah. And there's PTSD that goes along with that. It's trauma. It's, it's, you know,

01:38:09.360 and trauma doesn't go away overnight. So, and it's something you have to be very cognizant of,

01:38:15.100 um, and there are times when that's really frustrating. You know, sometimes I've even

01:38:18.920 said that to him, I'm behave, I behave a certain way. I'm like, you know, this sucks. You know,

01:38:22.900 I hate that I'm doing this. I hate that I'm acting this way. I'm hate that I feel this way. You know,

01:38:27.420 I don't want to give Paulo that power. Um, and I try very hard not to.

01:38:33.520 It's not like what happens to, you know, women who have been sexually abused where you take something

01:38:37.920 that's supposed to be absolutely lovely and enjoyable and a source of connection and turn it into

01:38:43.280 something that's really fraught and complicated for a woman. It's the ongoing victimization of a woman

01:38:49.180 in this position. And that, that's how I see what's happening to you too, as a result of him.

01:38:53.940 Um, I'm, I'm delighted that you have a partner. What, what do you, what do you do with your

01:38:59.660 daughter? Like she must be 21 now. Is she right? She's 20. Yeah. She'll be 21 in the fall. Yeah.

01:39:05.540 Um, so how do you talk to her about, I mean, she, she clearly she's seen it all, but like,

01:39:10.740 what, what are the takeaways? Like what kind of lessons do you impart to your daughter over

01:39:14.580 something like this? Please not repeat mom's mistakes for one thing. Um, and to learn from

01:39:20.380 my mistakes. And I'm, I'm very transparent. I've been very, very transparent with her about

01:39:24.420 everything. And we've always had a very close relationship, maybe closer than we might've just

01:39:30.960 because her dad died and she's been the two of us. So, and she's a strong cookie. She's a smart

01:39:35.600 cookie. You know, that kid is, is super wise and no nonsense. I'm not worried about her at all.

01:39:41.320 You know, I think, I think thankfully she, I think she's proud of me and she's, you know,

01:39:46.460 she sees what I've done with this and she's proud of me for speaking up against him and fighting back,

01:39:51.860 but she won't make my mistakes. You know, she's, she has definitely read about this in her college

01:39:57.320 application essay. I certainly hope she used it for some way for good.

01:40:03.040 I know she does. She prefers not to deal with it. And I appreciate that. You know, she,

01:40:07.680 she deserves to have her own life and her privacy and, um, very adamant about shielding her from

01:40:13.320 this now because, you know, she's, this shouldn't be hanging over her for the rest of her life either.

01:40:18.320 She's 53 years old. I have to, I'm a big fan of compartmentalization now. I really believe in it.

01:40:22.600 I don't believe what we're told. We have to talk about everything. The more you can shove it down

01:40:25.740 and ignore it like a good Presbyterian, the better. Um, that's my husband. I'm Catholic,

01:40:30.300 but anyway, the last thing, how about professionally? Cause like you didn't go back to NBC,

01:40:36.380 right? What are you doing now? Um, I'm, I freelance, but I'm very busy. I'm a show runner.

01:40:41.200 I'm sure running two different true crime shows at the moment. Um, and so, yeah, no, I'm busy back to

01:40:46.880 work. Um, I also narrate stuff. So, um, and I, yeah, I actually like, I didn't think I would,

01:40:52.780 but I liked the freelance life and not being, you know, tied to one job always all the time. So

01:40:57.380 it's good. Everything's good. Yeah. And I'm sure, well, if you're investigating murders over on

01:41:03.140 investigative discovery, you're not, you're not falling in love with your subject matter. So

01:41:06.080 that's good. I know that's a door's been closed. Oh, all the best to you. Thank you for telling

01:41:12.140 this story. Hope that the whole process has been cathartic to you. And, um, you know, at some point,

01:41:18.140 I know you'll probably feel the need to respond to his documentary, but I do hope you can close this

01:41:21.820 door and move on from it. You've got so much to do and so much to live. Yeah. Yeah. It's,

01:41:27.480 it's nice knowing that I'm able to help other women by sharing my story and that always keeps

01:41:32.700 me going, but it does, you know, it's reaching the point where, okay, enough time to stop talking

01:41:39.240 about this, you know, and move on with my life. I just want to, I just want to be happy and move on

01:41:44.040 with my life. I know I, and so many others are grateful that you did, that you did tell the

01:41:48.880 story and you found the guts, even though it's parts of it, I'm sure it felt humiliating and you

01:41:52.640 didn't want to do it, but good on you. You're the only reason he was doctors. He's been held

01:41:56.800 accountable and hopefully more to come all the best. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Yeah.

01:42:02.680 Thank you too. Wow. So happy to have Benita telling her story and helping others.

01:42:08.380 We are back tomorrow with a former prosecutor. You would know if you are a true crime fan like

01:42:16.140 yours truly from Dateline in 2020 with an incredible case he helped solve.

01:42:26.000 Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

01:42:38.380 Okay, thank you.

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01:43:04.560 Thank you.

The Megyn Kelly Show - June 10, 2024

Fraud Week： Fiancé Doctor Pulls Off Personal and Medical Fraud, with Journalist Benita Alexander ｜ Ep. 814

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