Docu series about serial con artist and quack surgeon Paolo Macchiarini. Just goes to show that for all the medical journals and ethics panels etc there can still be a good deal of hoodwinking and snake oil proffering.
Also covers his various romances including with a quite ditsy NBC journalist who believed him when he said the Pope would be marrying them and that Obama and Bill Clinton would be at the wedding. Until of course the penny finally after a very long and slow fall..dropped that he was full of shit. He had a secret life with another woman...the mother of a patient he had killed with his bullshit 'innovative' surgical technique. A technique he had never done a clinical trial on in lab rats and which ended up slowly and painfully killing six people.
Worth a watch for the NBC lady's naïveté alone.
Offsite Link| by Anonymous | reply 35 | December 12, 2023 6:17 PM |
Oh there's another show about this, on Hulu maybe? It's a great story, that chick is such a bitch, she seems to only care about herself. She thought the fucking pope was going to be marrying them...come on!
| by Anonymous | reply 1 | December 7, 2023 2:11 AM |
Agree she was completely ridiculous.
So sad about the patients. Horrific torture. Completely heartbreaking. That guy is a sadistic monster.
Loved the 3 Swedish surgeons (one seemed American?) and loved the little Swedish documentarian.
| by Anonymous | reply 2 | December 7, 2023 3:42 AM |
Dude, the girl's fucking throat rotted inside her...it was insane how awful his bullshit thing was. And dyed black hair chick only cared that they canceled their wedding.
| by Anonymous | reply 3 | December 7, 2023 3:55 AM |
Yes the way it went back and forth from the poor patients who were dying in the most horrific way possible to the idiot hair-extensioned frau who was enraged that she had been “totally lied to!!!” was truly absurd.
| by Anonymous | reply 4 | December 7, 2023 3:59 AM |
That poor little girl, Hannah I want to say, was so cute and I think her parents weren't even that angry because it did buy her a little bit of time.
| by Anonymous | reply 5 | December 7, 2023 4:03 AM |
Thank you, OP. I never watch Netflix but I am now. I still can't believe what an idiot Benita is. The pope is marrying them and the Obamas are guests...
| by Anonymous | reply 6 | December 7, 2023 4:24 AM |
His head is quite oversized.
I don’t know how I feel about that.
Offsite Link| by Anonymous | reply 7 | December 7, 2023 5:23 AM |
I don't find him that attractive. And now I wonder if he was just romancing these women so they didn't sue/blow the whistle on him. I found this on reddit and it about sums it up:
I have no doubts that what drove her angry wasn't the fact it was all a lie, but finding out by her friends and the humiliation of being perceived like a fool by other people. See, a normal person would immediately doubt that she was going to be married by the Pope in Castel Gandolfo (the Pope's Summer palace), with world leaders (like Obama and Putin) in the the attendance list and megastars (like Elton John or Andrea Bocelli) performing during and after the wedding. However, someone so self-centered and obsessed by luxury, like Benita, really thought "Why not? I am a star and deserve nothing less than that for my wedding".
| by Anonymous | reply 8 | December 7, 2023 5:32 AM |
Wow, this girl only got a surgery to address sweaty palms... and then died slowly and painfully. I'm not a big believer in elective surgery to begin with, this is a reason why.
Offsite Link| by Anonymous | reply 9 | December 7, 2023 5:14 PM |
Anyone know what Benita is doing now?
| by Anonymous | reply 10 | December 8, 2023 1:55 AM |
R10 HItting the lecture circuit and milking her "bad break-up".
| by Anonymous | reply 11 | December 8, 2023 12:59 PM |
I loved when she was talking about integrity as a journalist and all that bullshit. She's a totally ignorant dipshit and a disgrace to the profession. Plus, how many people were REALLY going to go to that wedding? Secret Service and the Vatican would be vetting everyone on the guest list months in advance. That means you'd be getting phone calls. I would have called bullshit on the whole thing as soon as I opened my invitation.
| by Anonymous | reply 12 | December 8, 2023 2:19 PM |
Also when she was like “he picked me BECAUSE I’M A JOURNALIST!!”
As though that’s some big reveal on the same level of these poor patients dying from rotten plastic windpipes.
Benita is deranged. And the bottom eyeliner. My god.
| by Anonymous | reply 13 | December 8, 2023 2:45 PM |
You can tell her friends thought she was an asshole, after all, someone was fucking looking up the pope's schedule just to tell her she was an idiot. The texts they sent each other were like fucking 12 year olds, full of hearts and smiley faces, "the old pope did this to me cause he's mad I didn't invite him!" JFC.
| by Anonymous | reply 14 | December 8, 2023 9:17 PM |
Oh and the American surgeon was inexplicably sexy. I loved when he said you didn't need to be a doctor to know that plastic can't grow into an organ.
| by Anonymous | reply 15 | December 8, 2023 9:30 PM |
"HItting the lecture circuit and milking her "bad break-up".
It pays the bills..
| by Anonymous | reply 16 | December 8, 2023 9:36 PM |
Also - Benita’s impromptu “girls trip” to Barcelona to drop in on the guy was completely ridiculous. The blonde wig to disguise herself. Her friends laughing about the hijinks they were getting into. Her filming herself in the car freaking out like a 21 year old and SCREAMING after they saw her had another woman there.
It was all such idiotic, attention-seeking drama.
| by Anonymous | reply 17 | December 8, 2023 9:38 PM |
And a petty thing; she keeps saying divorceeees instead of divorce-ays, it's making me nuts.
| by Anonymous | reply 18 | December 8, 2023 10:10 PM |
Imagine bragging that fucking John Legend and his flat faced wife are going to your wedding.
| by Anonymous | reply 19 | December 8, 2023 10:14 PM |
The wife of 30+ years is named Emanuela Pecchia.
I wonder what her comments would be.
| by Anonymous | reply 20 | December 8, 2023 11:57 PM |
There is a podcast that features him on one or two episodes: Killer Psyche? It’s jaw-dropping.
| by Anonymous | reply 21 | December 9, 2023 2:12 AM |
I could have used more background on him instead of so much shit from Benita.
How did he get to the point where he was at the Karolinka? At one point, was he a good surgeon? I don’t understand how a complete fraud would get to the level where he is cutting people open at one of the top hospitals in the world.
| by Anonymous | reply 22 | December 9, 2023 2:47 AM |
I watched this yesterday. Benita looks like tacky trash, but she did go straight to the press to expose him and that’s to her credit. The people this man killed and how they died was heartbreaking.
| by Anonymous | reply 23 | December 9, 2023 6:48 AM |
They're making a miniseries about him with Edgar Ramirez playing him.
| by Anonymous | reply 24 | December 9, 2023 1:07 PM |
R23 Meh, she went to the press because she knew someone else would. I feel bad for the dress designer who probably didn't get paid since none of this came to be. I just can't believe a motherfucking journalist didn't have any pull to vet someone. She sure was fucking able to later though.
| by Anonymous | reply 25 | December 9, 2023 1:19 PM |
Her trip to Barcelona with her girlfriends and how she behaved when she realised she was a total idiot was fucking hilarious.
| by Anonymous | reply 26 | December 9, 2023 1:35 PM |
With that fucking blonde wig R26. Yeah she was just having fun, playing dress up. The whole "I had to find the answer, and I knew it had to be in that house in Barcelona" like it was the fucking Maltese Falcon. Yes, it is in that house, it's called the chick he is actually dating. I'd be so pissed if I was one of those guests, but I'd never go to a destination wedding in the first place. The Elton John thing was obnoxious too. If Elton is indeed a friend of his, wouldn't he also want to just be a guest? The whole playing a private concert thing for the guests would be rude. Why the fuck do I need to entertain your guests for your party? Let's all just put on a show in the barn.
| by Anonymous | reply 27 | December 9, 2023 1:41 PM |
The Baltimore family made me very sad. And poor Julia from Russia.
Benita conveniently left out the part about how she was fucking around with Paolo while she was in a relationship with a cute younger black guy. Fully cheated on that guy and then enraged when Paolo had other women. Trash.
Who pulls their daughter out of school to move to a place in Spain they’ve never even visited.
| by Anonymous | reply 28 | December 9, 2023 3:11 PM |
I agree it was absolutely nuts about the moving to Spain with her daughter thing. But I’m thinking 1) he was an excellent con and 2) any good con can suss out a good mark when they see one. Add to the scenario that he showed her a really good time with all the 1st class travel and high end living, it would be easy to believe Spain would be more of the same. A more grounded less egotistical person would probably have started doubting him long before that point, but that’s the kind of person he knows to avoid.
Con artists are so scary fascinating. Oftentimes they are very smart and have the capacity to live successful lives without the con. But they are so fixed in that criminal mindset they can’t help themselves. They always have to push the envelope harder and harder as well.
| by Anonymous | reply 29 | December 9, 2023 3:50 PM |
Lipstick on a pig is the only way to describe Benita. Such trash.
| by Anonymous | reply 30 | December 9, 2023 4:30 PM |
When she finally realized he was full of shit, she was able to utilize her Clinton contacts to find out he didn't know them, so why didn't she do that in the first place? Also, I don't even think she broke up with him then, she's real hazy about when they broke up and why. She would have continued to date him, I'm sure he dumped her.
| by Anonymous | reply 31 | December 9, 2023 10:30 PM |
It seems like she had married her second husband only months before she met the doctor. That was left out.
And I don’t believe she could have thought that ring was worth $100k. That was weird. It’s not like it was a four carat CZ she thought was real. Even if it was a very beautifully made ring with very high quality diamonds, a bunch of small diamonds don’t add up to $100k. Not even retail. And it’s just not plausible to me that she could not have known that or at least googled it. I think she was lying.
I almost wonder if she wasn’t the bigger con artist. She somehow found about about this doc who was potentially a fraud and decided to try and make the story bigger or more personal.
By the time i was a few episodes in I was starting to wonder if he’d had good intentions and simply gotten in over his head. It was hard to accept him as the bad guy and her as a the victim . She’s that awful.
| by Anonymous | reply 32 | December 10, 2023 7:34 PM |
Yeah R32, and she's a tacky bitch, most people don't go flossing their jewelry around facebook and talking about the price of it, so if you do that, you should feel stupid. Also, that ring was ugly. Also, for someone so concerned about her young kid, she did a lot of traipsing about the world in blonde wigs and took many drunken, embarassing videos. She's pissed he won't talk to her, period. Her going to his court appearance in disguise was eye rolling, like he gave a shit if she was there.
| by Anonymous | reply 33 | December 10, 2023 9:29 PM |
[quote] She's pissed he won't talk to her, period.
Exactly.
| by Anonymous | reply 34 | December 11, 2023 2:03 AM |
I listened to the Dr. Death podcast on this, it's free on amazon music. Holy shit, the stupid narrator chick's voice coupled with saying dumb shit like, "Benita came out, clad in jeans and high heel's to hop on Paolo's motorbike, blah blah blah" almost takes over the story. This motherfucker really killed that Yesim chick from the second he met her. While doing a routine surgery even before he put the plastic in her throat, he somehow fucked up her lung and it had to be removed. He then refused to work on her anymore. American surgeon said that given the choice between the plastic trach, and a bullet in the head, he'd take the bullet. The girl also became blind, lost all her teeth and basically never left the hospital again until she was flown to Temple Univ. Hospital for a lung transplant that she then died from. But let's hear about Benita's salsa dance lessons and tacky ring.
| by Anonymous | reply 35 | December 12, 2023 6:17 PM |
