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Five people are reported murdered in their beds at 3 a.m. and the scene makes no sense. No broken windows. No forced entry. No masked intruder. Just a nursing home hallway, a butcher knife, and a night-shift supervisor with a wound that looks more staged than survived. We walk through the North Horizon Healthcare Center case and the 1984 timeline that still feels unreal: twelve deaths in thirteen days in a 50-bed facility, many tied to insulin overdose and at least one to manual strangulation.

If you care about patient safety, true crime, nursing home oversight, and how systems can fail quietly until they don’t, press play. Subscribe, share with a friend, and leave a review, then tell us: what safeguard do you think would have stopped this sooner?

Resources:

https://www.oxygen.com/license-to-kill/crime-news/bobbie-sue-dudley-convicted-in-4-nursing-home-murders

https://www.tampabay.com/archive/1990/08/25/deaths-investigated-in-nurse-s-prior-jobs/

https://www.upi.com/Archives/1986/03/30/Nurse-linked-to-deaths-had-lost-license/9239512542800/

https://www.oxygen.com/true-crime-buzz/fargo-real-life-killer-nurses-like-the-angel-of-death

http://unknownmisandry.blogspot.com/2019/10/bobbie-sue-terrell-dudley-serial-killer.html

https://vocal.media/criminal/twelve-deaths-in-13-days

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1402747/

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-48600478

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A hospital can have world-class branding and still be dangerously broken where it counts. We’re heading to Rhode Island Hospital, a major teaching hospital tied to Brown University, to follow a decade-plus trail of “never events” like wrong-site surgery, wrong-patient procedures, and failures so basic they sound unreal until you see the record.

If you care about patient safety, hospital accountability, and how healthcare systems fail, this one will stick with you. Subscribe, share with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find the show and join the conversation.

Resources:

https://www.golocalprov.com/news/a-decade-of-surgery-problems-plague-rhode-island-hospital

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/third-wrong-sided-brain-surgery-r-i-hospital-flna1c9463696

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ri-hospital-made-3-brain-surgery-errors/

https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/ri-hospital-fined-150000-in-wrong-site-surgery/

https://meridian.allenpress.com/jmr/article/94/4/6/437143/A-History-of-Wrong-Site-Surgery-in-Rhode-Island

https://www.rhodeislandpersonalinjuryattorneyblog.com/wrong-site-surgeries-at-rhode-island-hospital-medical-malpractice-attorney/

https://thepublicsradio.org/article/25m-awarded-ri-couple-malpractice-rhode-island-hospital/

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Stay safe, and stay suspicious...trust, after all, is a delicate thing!

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An ice pick through the eye socket. Ten minutes of “surgery.” A taxi ride home. That’s not an urban legend, it’s a documented moment in the history of lobotomy, and it captures the sick casualness that let psychosurgery become mainstream.

If you care about medical ethics, informed consent, disability rights, or how mental health treatment gets shaped by social pressure, this conversation will stick with you. Subscribe, share this with a friend who loves medical history, and leave a review with your take: where do you see “manageability over care” showing up today?

Sources for today’s episode:
National Library of Medicine — All in Their Heads: When Faces Made the Case for Lobotomy
https://infocus.nlm.nih.gov/2020/01/30/all-in-their-heads-when-faces-made-the-case-for-lobotomy/

Nobel Prize — Controversial Psychosurgery Resulted in a Nobel Prize
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1949/moniz/article/

Nobel Prize — The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1949
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1949/summary/

Encyclopaedia Britannica — Lobotomy
https://www.britannica.com/science/lobotomy

Encyclopaedia Britannica — Transorbital Lobotomy
https://www.britannica.com/science/transorbital-lobotomy

Encyclopaedia Britannica — Walter Jackson Freeman II
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Walter-Jackson-Freeman-II

Encyclopaedia Britannica — How Many People Actually Got Lobotomized?
https://www.britannica.com/story/how-many-people-actually-got-lobotomized

StoryCorps — My Lobotomy
https://storycorps.org/stories/my-lobotomy/

StoryCorps — StoryCorps 455: My Lobotomy
https://storycorps.org/podcast/storycorps-455-my-lobotomy/

PBS American Experience — The Lobotomist
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/lobotomist/

PBS American Experience — Howard Dully
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/lobotomist-howard-dully/

John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum — Rosemary Kennedy
https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/the-kennedy-family/rosemary-kennedy

U.S. National Park Service — Rosemary Kennedy, The Eldest Kennedy Daughter
https://www.nps.gov/

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Stay safe, and stay suspicious...trust, after all, is a delicate thing!

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They thought they were holding their loved one one last time, then they learned the urn held concrete. We’re walking through the Return to Nature Funeral Home scandal in Colorado, where investigators say nearly 190 bodies were left to decompose in a Penrose building while grieving families were told cremations and burials were complete. It’s one of those true crime stories that doesn’t just horrify you, it makes you re-check what you assume is regulated, inspected, and safe in the funeral industry.
Resources:

https://www.livenowfox.com/news/former-funeral-home-owner-sentenced-18-years-prison-giving-families-fake-ashe​​

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/colorado-ex-funeral-home-owner-sentenced-to-18-years-in-prison-after-pleading-guilty-to-fraud

https://people.com/funeral-home-owner-sentenced-after-defrauding-grieving-families-with-fake-ashes-11927805

https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/national/2026/03/16/ex-funeral-home-owner-faces-20-in-prison-after-giving-families-fake-ashes/

https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/16/us/colorado-funeral-home-owner-sentenced

https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2026-03-16/ex-funeral-home-owner-faces-20-in-prison-after-giving-families-fake-ashes

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ex

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Stay safe, and stay suspicious...trust, after all, is a delicate thing!

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The scariest part of modern medicine isn’t always the unknown, it’s the moment you realize the system can build momentum before certainty feels complete. We’re talking about organ donation disasters and near misses that force one brutal question: how do we know someone is truly dead when organ procurement is on the clock? Using the reported case of TJ Hoover in Kentucky, we trace how a single story can crack public trust, especially when families say they saw signs of life and later reporting suggests professionals inside the process had concerns too.

If this raises questions for you, we want to hear them. Subscribe, share the episode with a friend, and leave a review so more listeners can find Doctoring the Truth.

Resources:

LEX 18, “KY man wakes during organ harvesting procedure, prompting federal investigation.”

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “HHS Finds Systemic Disregard for Sanctity of Life in Organ Transplant System; Announces Major Initiative for Reform.”

UNOS, “Understanding Donation after Circulatory Death (DCD).”

UNOS, “U.S. surpassed 48,000 organ transplants in 2024.”

House Energy and Commerce Committee, “Ensuring Patient Safety: Oversight of the U.S. Organ Procurement and Transplant System.”

ABC News, “Patient ‘Wakes Up’ as Doctors Prepare to Remove Organs.”
Oklahoma Gazette, “Oklahoma man who lived through being pronounced dead appears on Today.”

Support the show

Don't miss a (heart) beat! Check out our Instagram @doctoringthetruthpodcast and email us your Medical Mishaps at doctoringthetruth@gmail.com. Join us on Facebook at Doctoring the Truth, and TikTok @doctoring the truth. Don't forget to download, rate, and review so we can keep bringing you more exciting content each week!

Stay safe, and stay suspicious...trust, after all, is a delicate thing!

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A cheerful bedside smile is supposed to mean safety. That’s why the case of Jane Toppin, nicknamed “Jolly Jane,” still hits like a gut punch more than a century later. We walk through how a Boston woman born Honora Kelly could become one of America’s earliest notorious female serial killers while working as a nurse, using charm as cover and exploiting the gaps of late-1800s medical oversight.

We trace her early life through poverty, loss, institutionalization, and being indentured as a child in the Toppin home where she’s even given a new name. Then we follow her into nursing, a profession that gave her something she craved: access, authority, and trust. From there, the story turns dark fast, with discussions of morphine and atropine poisoning, her reported fascination with convulsions, and how patients who were elderly or isolated could become targets with few questions asked. We also talk through her arrest, her unnerving candor, and the trial that ends with an insanity verdict that sparks strong reactions.

Subscribe, share with a friend, and leave a review, then tell us: what systems would you want in place to catch the unthinkable sooner?

RESOURCES:

Advanced Science News

ETH zurich

Schecter, Harold. “Fatal: The Poisonous Life of a Female Serial Killer.” HarperCollins, 1992.

McBrayer, Mary Kay. “America’s First Female Serial Killer: Jane Toppan and the Making of a Monster.” Rowman & Littlefield, 2014.

Morbid Podcast, “Jolly Jane” two-part series. https://morbidpodcast.com/

Boston Daily Globe archives, 19th century reporting on Jane Toppan.

Taunton Insane Hospital records, Massachusetts Archives.

Bartleby Criminal History Resources: https://www.bartleby.com/docs/crime/jane-toppan.html

Early 20th-century nursing journals, Massachusetts Historical Society archives.

Support the show

Don't miss a (heart) beat! Check out our Instagram @doctoringthetruthpodcast and email us your Medical Mishaps at doctoringthetruth@gmail.com. Join us on Facebook at Doctoring the Truth, and TikTok @doctoring the truth. Don't forget to download, rate, and review so we can keep bringing you more exciting content each week!

Stay safe, and stay suspicious...trust, after all, is a delicate thing!

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A checklist that claims to measure danger. A hospital that tried to manufacture empathy with LSD and isolation. A courtroom that treats a number like destiny. We dive into the strange power of labels by tracing the psychopathy story from Oak Ridge’s “total encounter capsule” to Robert Hare’s PCL-R and the very real ways scores still steer sentencing, parole, and civil commitment.

We unpack the seductive clarity of risk tools—and the trouble that follows when dimensional traits are forced into binary verdicts. Tony’s story from a UK high-security hospital lays bare the diagnostic double bind: calm becomes “shallow,” protest becomes “manipulative,” and every reaction confirms the label. We contrast that with emerging neuroscience that finds differences in fear and emotion processing rather than emotional emptiness, and with longitudinal evidence that context and early intervention can shift traits over time. The point isn’t to deny danger; it’s to question certainty.

Then we pivot to medicine’s own reckoning with bias and overconfidence. In our chart note, pediatric clinicians and engineers use 3D CT and finite element modeling to interpret infant skull fractures, replacing gut feel with measurable patterns. The lesson carries back to courts and clinics alike: a red flag should prompt slower thinking, not shortcut it. We close with a gripping ER story from a listener in recovery whose pain was sidelined by an old label until one doctor listened, ordered the right tests, and changed the trajectory of the night. Across psychiatry, law, and emergency care, the throughline is clear: tools help, but certainty can harm. Let numbers inform judgment, not replace it.

If this sparked thought, share it with a friend, follow Doctoring the Truth, and leave a quick review—what’s one label you think we overtrust?

REFERENCES

The Psychopath Test, by Jon Ronson: panmacmillan.com

www.hare.org

Hare, R. D. (1998). The Hare PCL-R: Some issues concerning its use and misuse. Legal and Criminological Psychology, 3(Part 1), 99–119.

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Don't miss a (heart) beat! Check out our Instagram @doctoringthetruthpodcast and email us your Medical Mishaps at doctoringthetruth@gmail.com. Join us on Facebook at Doctoring the Truth, and TikTok @doctoring the truth. Don't forget to download, rate, and review so we can keep bringing you more exciting content each week!

Stay safe, and stay suspicious...trust, after all, is a delicate thing!

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A bright green room. No clocks. No privacy. And a radical promise: strip away the mask and rebuild empathy from the inside out. We follow that promise from a cryptic book that landed in mailboxes worldwide to the Psychopathy Checklist (PCL-R) and then into Oak Ridge’s notorious Total Encounter Capsule—where encounter therapy, humiliation, and even LSD tried to force transformation. The footage looked convincing; the results, years later, were devastating. When “healing” teaches people to mimic remorse, are we improving safety or upgrading manipulation?

This story isn’t tidy, and that’s the point. Tools help, but they cannot replace judgment, transparency, and safeguards. Press play for a sharp, humane look at psychopathy, the Oak Ridge experiment, and the high stakes of getting certainty wrong. If the episode sparks you, share it with a friend, hit follow, and leave a review—your support helps us bring more evidence-driven stories to your feed.

Resources:

The Psychopath Test, by Jon Ronson

Court decision: Barker v. Barker (2020 ONSC 3746)

Primary-source paper: “The Total Encounter Capsule” (Barker & McLaughlin, 1977)

Outcome study: Rice, Harris & Cormier (1992), Law and Human Behavior
Government/period document: Canadian Penitentiary Service report on visits to the STU (Oak Ridge) (1978)

Mark Bourrie, By Reason of Insanity: The David Michael Krueger Story (1997)

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/endometriosis

https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2025/214846s012lbl.pdf?u

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Don't miss a (heart) beat! Check out our Instagram @doctoringthetruthpodcast and email us your Medical Mishaps at doctoringthetruth@gmail.com. Join us on Facebook at Doctoring the Truth, and TikTok @doctoring the truth. Don't forget to download, rate, and review so we can keep bringing you more exciting content each week!

Stay safe, and stay suspicious...trust, after all, is a delicate thing!

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