-ProPublica How did Dr. Christopher Duntsch graduate medical school? A Dr. Death fact-check reveals that the real Christopher Duntsch received his undergraduate degree in 1995 from Memphis State University. He then attended the University of Tennessee at Memphis College of Medicine.
Dr. Christopher Duntsch’s patients ended up maimed and dead, but the real tragedy is that the Texas Medical Board couldn’t stop him. A version of this story ran in the September 2013 issue. In late 2010, Dr. Christopher Duntsch came to Dallas to start a neurosurgery practice.
Duntsch did his surgical residency at The University of Tennessee. In 2005, partway through the six-year program, he became the director of the tissue bank. Dallas Magazine states that Duntsch became key in supplying samples to scientists for research. He wrote grants and secured more than $3 million in funding.
To say that this e-mail proved that Duntsch was not fit to be a doctor would be completely correct. While some called his eventual downfall greed-related, who knows what evil the human mind is capable of. Saul Elbein writes in the Texas Observer that Dr. Henderson sent him a recording of his complaint to the Texas Medical Board.
How long was Duntsch in prison?
After 13 days of trial, the jury needed only four hours to convict him for the maiming of Efurd. On February 20, 2017, he was sentenced to life in prison. On December 11, 2018, the Texas Court of Appeals affirmed Duntsch’s conviction by a 2–1 split decision.
Christopher Duntsch was born in Montana and spent most of his youth in Memphis, Tennessee. He is a graduate of Evangelical Christian School in the Cordova suburb of Memphis. Duntsch initially had ambitions of playing college football, but was unable to do so at either Division III Millsaps College or Division I Colorado State University. By the time he returned home to attend Memphis State University (now the University of Memphis ), he had exhausted his eligibility. He then set his sights on becoming a neurosurgeon.
Shughart argued that Duntsch should have known he was likely to hurt others unless he changed his approach, and that his failure to learn from his past mistakes demonstrated that his maiming of Efurd was intentional. Prosecutors also faulted Duntsch’s employers for not reporting him. They argued that Duntsch was motivated to continue operating because the lucrative salary of a neurosurgeon would solve his mounting financial problems.
Over objections from Duntsch’s lawyers, prosecutors called many of Duntsch’s other patients to the stand in order to prove that his actions were intentional. According to his lawyers, Duntsch had not realized how poorly he had performed as a surgeon until he heard the prosecution experts tell the jury about his many blunders on the operating table. Duntsch’s defense blamed their client’s actions on poor training and lack of oversight by the hospitals. Shughart countered that the 2011 email, sent after his first surgeries went wrong, proved that Duntsch knew his actions were intentional.
Duntsch, Texas Department of Criminal Justice #02139003, is housed at the O. B. Ellis Unit outside Huntsville. He will not be eligible for parole until 2045, when he will be 74 years old.
It stars Joshua Jackson as Duntsch, Alec Baldwin as Robert Henderson, and Christian Slater as Randall Kirby. In 2019, Duntsch was the focus of the premiere episode of License to Kill, Oxygen ‘s series on criminal medical professionals. In 2021, he was profiled on CNBC ‘s American Greed.
Duntsch did not respond to messages from the hospital for a few hours, then the next day postponed caring for Brown to perform an elective surgery on Efurd. Hospital officials were exasperated while Duntsch was in Efurd’s surgery, and asked him multiple times to care for Brown or transfer her out of his care.
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