A former SIU medical student is at large and appeared on Unsolved Mysteries Friday for allegedly killing a patient and poisoning several co-workers.

Michael Swango, 42, graduated from the SIU School of Medicine in 1983 and interned in Columbus, Ohio, where he began his alleged fascination with poison, according to the television program.

Unsolved Mysteries reported Swango did well academically, but his enthusiasm as an intern declined and caused the hospital he was working at to remove him from consideration for residency. The show said shortly after this, patients began to suffer from unexplained respiratory arrest, and Swango was considered as a suspect.

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Unsolved Mysteries reported before Swango’s internship ended in June1984, he offered extra-spicy chicken to staff at the hospital. Staff members became extremely ill, and Swango disappeared before charges were brought against him.

Swango was reported to have then worked as a paramedic in another state and is alleged to have given co-workers doughnuts that made the workers sick. Because the doughnuts were gone, they attributed the sickness to food poisoning. Later Swango gave a soda to a co-worker at a high school football game, according to the show. The program reported that the man became violently ill, and once again suspicion turned to Swango. During this time as a paramedic, Swango is said to have shown a great interest in gruesome death and bloody accidents.

Unsolved Mysteries reported that the paramedics sent Swango out on a fake accident call and searched his locker. They allegedly found two bottles of poison one empty and one full. The police later searched Swango’s home and found a variety of poisons, recipes for poisons, books on poisons and syringes.

The police then arrested Swango, and he was convicted for aggravated battery. Swango was sentenced to six years in prison, but after three years he was released for good behavior.

After release, Swango reportedly went to Newport News, VA, where he lied about his background and began working in another hospital. There three more colleagues fell ill.

According to the program, Swango later went to Long Island, NY to work at a veteran’s hospital. Shortly after, the program reported that a man went to the hospital with a mild case of pneumonia, and Swango was at the man’s bedside when the man slipped into a coma and died.

Police were sent to Swango’s house, but he had already disappeared and has yet to be found. As of now, Swango has not been charged for any deaths but is wanted for falsifying information on a federal job application.

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Authorities from the Behavioral Science Unit, a group that profiles and searches for serial killers, believe Swango is probably working in the medical field.

Peter Smerick, retired Federal Bureau of Investigations criminal profiler, said if Swango is in fact a serial killer, he is now most likely employed in a nursing home.

If I were on the team looking for Swango, I would check nursing homes instead of hospitals because there is very little security and terminally ill patients, Smerick said. All you have is a Board of Inquiry at a nursing home to see if a patient’s death is unexpected or not.

Smerick said Swango is a different form of alleged serial killer because he is in the medical profession. He said there are two types of medical serial killers hero and mercy killers.

The first type the hero killer you have a person who would put a patient under great risk, Smerick said. If they can save the patient, then you become a hero. If the patient dies, then the killer will say so what?’ The second type the mercy killer says oh my God, I’m so concerned about the suffering of this patient,’ so they decide to put the patients out of their misery.

He said the mercy killers count on patients being terminally ill because there will usually not be an autopsy performed when a terminally ill patient dies.

This individual usually develops a God-complex, Smerick said. They get a vicarious thrill out of ending the suffering and determining when a person dies.

Smerick said the investigators should be looking at Swango’s life to see what pre-crime stress factors would contribute to his desire to allegedly poison people.

It is the formative life that proves most interesting when finding out what led a person to want to be God, Smerick said. Bundy believed he was a bastard child. When you look at a serial killer’s life, there are three components bed wetting after the normal childhood age, fire setting and torturing animals. It would be curious to see if any or all of these components are a part of Swango’s life.

Smerick said these three components represent a control issue that is prevalent in most serial killers and represents a wont to be anti-social.

When we look at serial killers like Ted Bundy, Edmund Kemper and Kenneth Bianchi, there is always a sexual motive behind the killing, Smerick said. When looking at the Swango case, the sexual motive lies in the need for control of the lives of other people. This usually gets the killer off.

Robert Ressler, former FBI agent who helped begin the Behavioral Science Unit and coined the term serial killer, said he compared this to the case of Donald Harvey from 1987, who confessed to poisoning a dozen patients during a ten-month job as a nurse.

Poisoners in a hospital are not an uncommon setting, Ressler said. About 10 years ago, you had Harvey killing people in his hospital, and now you see what Swango is accused of doing.

Ressler said serial killers hide behind their murders because of their feelings of inadequacy.

Swango is described as 5 feet 11 inches, 170 pounds with blond hair and hazel eyes.