Escalating Threats and Final Reflections

Audible subscribers convente all episodes of Dor. Death, the Cowboy early and ad free Join Audible today by downloading the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple podcasts Please note This episode contains references to suicide. If you or someone you know needs support, there are links in the show notes to resources It was nighttime at West Park Hospital in Cody, Wyoming Julie Moss Becker sat at the nursing station, updating a patient's vitals She pulled an ECG strip from the printer and got up to grab some paper And out of the corner my eye, I watched My chair kind of msy off Any other nurse might have shrugged their shoulders and grabbed another chair But not Julie Kind of territorial on some of my equipment. I'll be quite honest. I'll chase the doctor down to get my pen back The suspect wasn't exactly hiding A doctor sat nearby one she hadn't met before. Flipping through patient notes. He was dressed to the nine like he was going out somewhere He was wearing a swanky leather jacket, a dress shirt, jeans. and on his feet High end cowboy boots booots that you knew were not just off of the shelf at the boot barn You know, they were either handmade or something Julie stared right at him If Dr. Schneider noticed, he didn't show it Being the ICU nurse that I am, I said, Ecuse me. Why did you take my chair He said, Well I needed it. You were using it I said, yes, I was. I just stood up to get a piece of paper And I need it now so I can finish putting my strips on This is now you can use it when I get doneg. Of course that made my blood boil Dr. Schneidder kept flicking through his notes Why don't you use this chair and I brought him a different chair. It was much lower to the ground And he said, No, this one's comfortable After a while, Schneidder got up and headed down the hall, seemingly oblivious to Julie, or what she was saying to herself Who the hell did he think he was? And what planet did E land from Those are the cleaned up versions, by the way P Schneidder left a lasting impression on Julie The same can't be said of her Via his lawyer, Dr. Schneidder told us he does not recall this nurse But Julie says she remembers because to her, that first meeting was a glimpse of what was to come Working with Schneider was going to be anything but simple In fact, the more she saw him around the hospital, the more she became convinced that his personality wasn't just difficult You know, and I've worked with a multitude of neurosurgeons through my career They're all a little quirky But he was not only arrogant but Godli He wanted his ego stroke John Snyder had always been self assured. It was a quality that had once marked him out as a rising star who'd even made the pages of readers' digest But now some of his patients were waking up from surgery and reporting immense pain They'd filed lawsuits. One of them, Tom Daling died Still, doror Snneyder was adamant that he'd done nothing wrong But once Dr. Schneidder left Montana and set up permanently in Wyoming, Those allegations followed him like a dust cloud over the border And as patients and doctors tried to challenge or defy Dr. Schneyder They noticed that strange things began to occur After all, what happens when you try to convince someone who has supreme confidence in his abilities that he's made a mistake Lon Nfk What happens when only fans becomes more than just a side hustle Only fantasy is an in depth look at the world's newest professionals how the rules of human intimacy are being rewritten onine Listen wherever you get your podcasts, or binge all episodes of Only Fantasy, add free, only on Audible I'm Raza Jeoffrey, and in the new season of The Spy Who, we go back in time to meet Benedict Arnold, the spy who betrayed the American Revolution As America fights for freedom from Britain Arnold emerges as one of the rebel's greatest generals But when his loyalty is pushed to the limit, he turns spy vises a plot to shatter the rebellion and make George Washington a prisoner Follow the Sy who now, wherever you listen to podcasts You can also listen to the full season of the spy who betrayed the American Revolution early and ad free on Audible From Audible Originals, I'm Laura Bele and this is the fifth season of Dor. Death. The cowboy. This is episode three. sccrewed over When Christie McCackeron and her mom, Mary Wilkinson, first met Dr. Schneyder in Billings, Montana They really took a shine to him My mom loved him She liked to talk a lot And then she would go into a doctor's appointment, she would just talk and talk. and you could tell some people are like, I are too busy for this He made the time He would sit and have very long conversations with my mom and talk to her and make her feel special, M make her feel like she was important to him At the time, Mary was sixty four years old. She raised Christie and her brother single handedly She was a nurse at a long term care home, a job she loved so much. She would also volunteer on weekends organizing hoowns for the residents. It became so popular that the news station came out. We would have hundreds of people coming from the town just to come see her Everybody loved her But in two thousand six, Mary started experiencing back pain She'd already had surgery twice before she ended up in front of Dr. Schneider Christie says he seemed confident he could help He made promises of making her feel better and this was nothing. He was going to fix her. She was going to get up to dancing again and feeling better But after two operations to fuse Mary's spine together with bolts and screws, she was still no closer to feeling better She just kept saying that the pain was getting worse And it would go down her leg My mom was tough, so I knew something wasn't right So in the summer of two thousand eight Chrissy took her mom back for another consultation As soon as Dr. Schneider walked into the room, Christie felt something was off He completely changed He took the x rays and he slaating up on the wall And he said, lookook, the fusion is perfect. Everything has healed perfect. I don't know what's going on Everything looks great in here Okay so the only thing that's wrong is there's some nerve entrapment. from scar tissue that he said he had no control over And he could not operate on that He didn't scream it, but it was very intense I don't know what you want me to do Everything's fine. It's healed. it's perfect I did a great job He was very annoyed with us like we are wasting his time Then Christie says Dct. Schneidder said something that stopped her short if she ever has surgery It will paralyze her So Don't take that route Don't trust anybody. that says they're going to be able to fix her because It's not going to happen Doctor Snyder's words hit Christie hard The idea that her mom was a lost cause was hard to stomach. What do you do? You've got a neurosurgeon telling you, basically, your mom's life is gonna always be like this And there's nothing you can do In the months after, she watched as her mom began to unravel She was miserable She was in so much pain. She couldn't stand it Eventually, Dr. Schneider did suggest a new approach spinal cord stimulator. It's a device that can help with pain by sending electrical signals down the spinal cord But it didn't help. We went in to see her primary care doctor and asked him if he would send a letter to Schneider if there is any possible way that he could see her And Schneider wrote back and said, noope, There's nothing I can do for He wanted nothing more to do with her He would not see her So they struggled on Until one day, Christy's phone rang It was her mom. She called me up she told me that she wanted to drive her car off the riimbs The rims are a stretch of sheer cliffs overlooking buildillings She couldn't take the pain Christie, find me a surgeon paralyze me att least I'll be out of pain and that cacared me really bad. That really, really scared me. Um, Not just saying that she didn't want to be alive, but saying she wanted to drive her car off the rims Pl That was it for Christy Whatever Dr. Schneidder had said, she had to do something So she left a message with another neurosurgeon's practice in Billings The answer came back quickly They called me back One of the nurses and told me that he is not taking any of Dr. Schneidder's old patients There are current lawsuits from Dr. Schneider and They just can't take that risk It was the first time Christie had ever heard anyone say anything negative about Dr. Schnyder. I really had no clue what was going on Made no sense to me, to be honest Okay What has he done they wouldn't tell me. In fact, the more Christie searched, she says it seemed to her like nobody was willing to take on one of doctor Schneidder's patients I called a lot of doctors in town. I would say who she had surgery with What's going on And I couldn't even get an appointment for her They wouldn't even look at her x rays or MRIs. They wouldn't do nothing Nothing. Christie was running out of options Maybe Dr. Schneidder was right. Nobody could help Christie remembered someone she'd once worked with, and she made one last call Her nurse told me about Dr. Naratsky down in Wyoming. Christie didn't think twice I called Dr. Naratsky up. And I talked to the nurse right away And she's like, yeah, we've seen a few other patients that Dr. Schneider did surgeries on. She ended up sending me to the office to set an appointment to come down So Christie and her mom made the long drive down to Casper, Wyoming, where Dr. Norodsky was based He called in, he sat at the edge of the exam table. He was in his sixties, tall and wiry, and he began to lay it out for them I would go over the films with them and say, Here's the problem And then he told them what it meant. We're gonna to have to do surgery. We just need to fix the fusions that never healed None of them healed Christie was speechless, trying to take it all in I said the first surgery from Dr. Schneider. he said no, none of the hardware is healed, none of it And I'm picturing it in my head all these screws and bolts in my mom's back just floating around And I asked him, I said so my mom was walking around the boat back all this time. He said, yeah, none of it's healed My mom didn't say anything She was just listening in shock. dor. Narodsky was clear that there were no magic fixes The best he could do was to remove the hardware and fuse her spine for a third time My brain was just Go on it every which direction. Like do we trust this doctor? S you know what he doing And there was one question in particular that was weighing on her mind The thought that Dr. Schneider had planted in her head I asked him if this is gonna to paralyze my mom I still believed that he was Right, Dr. Schneider and anybody that touched her was gonna to paralyze her There was nothing to be done Dror Norodski told her that wouldn't happen He wasn't pushy at all He said thinkink on it get back to me Let me know what you think Christie walked out of Dr. Noratsky's office relieved fininally she found someone willing to take on one of Dr. Schneidder's patients But as she took her mom and her two toddlers back out of the building and into the parking lot Christie could feel her emotions rising kids and my mom in the truck. And I walked around the parking lot so they wouldn't hear me She pulled out her cell phone and punched in the number for the office of Dr. Schneidder I asked to speak to him He wouldn't take the call so I told the seecretary to give him a message for me. I wanted to hear it from Schneider that he lied to us all these years, that my mom had a broken back that she' is walking around with hardware that's not even connected to her bones and I wanted to hear it from him. What his thoughts are Did he know all these years that my mom's fusion didn't heal that he put her through so much pain and agony And I remember a few of the people in the parking lot looking at me because I was screaming on the phone. demanding him to get on the phone and talk to me and tell me what he thinks of this She just kept saying he's too busy, he's with patience, he cannot come to the phone. But I'll be sure to tell him A week later Her mom got a letter. It was from Dr. Schneidder He wrote, I was aghast that your daughter would intimate and accuse myself or my staff of medical error or ignoring your needs He went on with a warning for her. I am very concerned you chose doctor Noratsky for your second opinion and would encourage you to be very, very careful before believing or letting this doctor treat you I would be happy to sit down with you and your family and review these issues As she scanned through the words, Christie could only think one thing What an asshole? point you think he's like He doesn't want any other surgeon to see what he did to my mom inside her back Christie and her mom did not take up Dr. Schnyder's offer of a follow up appointment nor did she pay any attention to his warnings about Dr. Noratsky. Instead, she moved ahead with her mom's surgery Then not long later, a second letter arrived in the mail with the warning that made her wonder what. and who she was really dealing with panicked compleompletely panicked I'm Raza Jaffrey, and in the new season of The Spy Who open the file on Benedict Arnold y who betrayed the American Revolution America is fighting to free itself from the British Empire. And one of its foremost generals was Benedict Ar He's a smugger turned battlefield hero. admired for his aggressive tactics But when a war wounds. H new wife, debts and politics test his loyalty to the max Turn spine and devises a plot to shoutter the revolutionary. and help Britain capture rebel commommander in chief, General George Washington And that plot would make him the most infamous traitor in US history Follow the Sy whoo now, wherever you listen to podcasts You can also listen to the full season of the spy who betrayed the American Revolution early and ad free on Audible The second letter was kind of strange and mysterious There was no return address, and it was typed in a font that mimicked handwriting It was signed simply Julie Hey Mary I thought about you when I heard on the radio that several lawyers and the Feds are investigating that Naratsky doctor for malpractice and fraud They say his specialty is redo surgeries when people don't need them. and a bunch of doctors are suing him for fraud too The lawyer I talked to said Noratsky was losing so much money that had been operating on people for years that didn't need it. Christy was scared What if there really was a problem with Dr. Noratsky We've already been screwed over once by one neurosurgeon. So then when you receive a letter like that I wanted to cancel it So Christie gave Dr. Noratsky a call He listened as she told him about the letter and its claim that he was under investigation my knowledge, I've never been investigated by any of the medical organizations, societies, boards, And then he told her something else She said that we weren't the only person getting that letter Another patient of his had received the same note The letters were identical, the same words, the same computer font that mimicked handwriting And just like Christie and her M, this other letter had been sent to a former patient of Dr. Schneidder's Very confusing You're just not sure who to trust The whole thing was so bizarre Who in their right mind sends letters when you're a neurosurgeon out to patients like that It's justust so weird. Dr. Norotsky, the motive seemed clear because this was not his first rodeo with Dr. Schnyder It all started some years earlier when he says a small hospital near Cody got in touch. The infection contontrol commommittee was concerned because they were seeing that he was having a lot of infections and They asked me if I would review those cases for them and give them opinions was this normal for neurosurgery, was this abnormal. and so I agreed to do that And so at their request, he dug into Schneider's records. He was deeply troubled by what he found His infection rate was extremely high After Noratsky sent off his report, he thought little of it until patients began to turn up at his door with long and complicated medical histories all tracing back. to this same doctor I would reudy them MRI scan, myelogram, CT scan, combination of all of those things In some cases, he says he found spinal fusions that had failed with screws separating from bone or in one case even missing its target entirely put the screw in their wr own place. missing a pedacle by this much just It shouldn't happen Just shouldn't have Another time, Naratski says Schneider had operated on the left side of a patient's spine when it should have been the right And when the patient complained, Schneider denied he'd done anything wrong and sued the patient for defamation That patient got an almost identical letter attacking Nurotsky Only the signatures were different. Whereas Mary got one that was signed Julie, the other one was signed Doug So for Norowsky, the pattern felt all too familiar He's aware that I was honest with these patients He goes after anybody that processes him in any way And he's not subtle about it. the night before Mary's operation doror Norsky called Christie at the hotel where they were staying He could tell I was still scared. She stepped into the hallway to take the call, not wanting to wake her kids Gently, he told her that he understood why she was scared and that he would do everything he could to help her mom I wasn't going to let him get under my skin and I wasn't going to change what I was going to do, which was to Take care of the patient and be honest with the patient. Christie hung up feeling better He was right The next day, Dr. Noratsky got to work. Slowly, carefully, he removed the screws and rods that Dror Schneider had implanted in Mary's back One by one, he placed them onto a surgical tray He said about reusing Mary's spine, vertebra by vertebra. When it was all over Christie anxiously went to the recovery room My mom's face was all swollen from being on her stomach that long She woke up and looked at me and said, The pain's gone. It's all gone I worked at the hospital On a surgical floor. I've never heard anybody say that I started crying because I hadn't heard my mom say she was out of pain in so long. She was just chatting away, talking and saying, she feels great I can't believe it. She feels wonderful. For Dr. Noratsky, the question was what to do next He had no faith that the system would be able to deal with a doctor like Schneider Even if hospitals suspected that something was wrong Dr. Noratski didn't believe they would really do anything Part of the problem that I've seen out west and in other rural communities when these rural hospitals attract a neurosurgeon these smaller hospitals We're suddenly getting tremendous revenue. Those are the procedures that neurosurgeon or a spine surgeon was doing and it caused the administration, I think, in some instances to Look the other way. let those bad practices continue to happen Medicine can be a small world. and in a place like Wyoming, it's even smaller aren't keen to call out other doctors. It puts your name and reputation on the line and it's not a step that's taken often Dr. Norowki knew what strong armed tactics looked like. He'd seen them long before he became a surgeon My father was a physician I started following him around when I was probably in junior high school They lived in a little mining town in Michigan, one of those places where the company owns almost everything. Many of his father's patients were miners who developed breathing problems He diagnosed them with lung disease And the bigig wigs of the mining company came to him and said, stop calling it that because We have to pay a lot of compensation when you call it that. And He told the mining company officials where they could go and he fought the mining company And now, decades later, his son wasn't about to back down either doror Noratsky gathered together the records of all the redo operations he'd done on Dr. Schneyder's patients I finally put all of those cases together And I talked to the Wyoming Board of Medicine. Bard won't confirm the details doror Noratski says he handed over a dossier containing the records of seventeen patients Now, it was up to the authorities Dr. Schnneidder wasn't about to take this quietly Because when he was challenged, He fought back Some of the things that Schneider did golly and intimidate people that were trying to bring him under control I me this sociopath Before Christie took her mom home from the hospital Dr. Narotsky handed her a plastic pouch It contained all the hardware he'd taken out of her mom Thick screws in total, each several inches long Some of the rods were bent The side of them stayed with Christy If she wanted to hold Dr. Schneidder accountable, she would need to take him to court To do that, she needed her mom's medical records So one day, Christie walked into doror Schneidder's clinic, with her young daughter in tow As she waited for the assistant to get the files, Christie held the bag of screws in her hand I was just lightly jingling them And one gentleman asked me What are those? I said these are screws from a previous surgery that my mom had from a doctor in this office and they had to all be taken out And he's like, o, I hope your mom's doing better now. And I was like, oh yeah, she's doing much better now As she spoke, Christie says Dr. Schneider's assistant sat silently, shuffling papers behind her desk And then she told Christie, Well, We will be getting these out to you You don't need to wait here for them. You need to leave And I said well Okay Are you gonna to mail them to her? Like Can we expect them? And she wouldn't answer me. She just said, you need to leave now Listie says she left the office without complaint. Th then her phone rang It was the police And he told me that Dr. Schneidder's office had called and filed a report against me. and he said that I Apparently went into the office screaming. on a rampage and I took a package of screws and through them through the receptionist window and shattered her computer screen It sounded surreal. But the officer told Christie that he would need to give her a no trespassing citation He told her to stay where she was so he could drive down and meet her. I asked him, I said, if I threw those screws through that window How would I have the screws still And I showed him the screws that I still had. and he goes, yeah, that doesn't make sense to me. Dr. Snneyder has a different version of what happened He sent us an account from his receptionist, claiming that Christie slammed the bag on the desk, causing damage to a computer monitor He says she was loud and disruptive and was upsetting his patients I never yelled My voice didn't even raise. I had my daughter with me. I wouldn't have scared her like that in there When we asked Schneyder about his treatment of Christie's mom, he denied harming her He described Mary as, quote, an elderly obese woman with severe degenerative disc disease and previous failed back surgeries from multiple doctors He says her ongoing pain was caused by chronic scar tissue And that other doctors agreed, quote, there was nothing they could do to help her And he goes on to say, She then found her way to the infamous Dr. Noratsky She, as usual, reported that all her previous surgeries were incorrectly done, not healed, and needed a revision surgery He performed all that and the patient did not improve Christie doesn't see it that way. She says that doctor Naratsky's intervention gave her mom priceless years with a better quality of life She could enjoy things She got out of the wheelchair In fact, She made me give it away immediately She was proud of the walker after that after being in a wheelchair Kids would jump on it in the little seat and she would walk them around and she'd get up and dance and . This is stuff that my mom could never do before. Fire In the end, the lawsuit with doctor Schneidder was settled like so many others, with no admission of wrongdoing. Meanwhile, the Wyoming Board of Medicine was moving ahead with its own investigation They wanted to know not just about the accusations of medical negligence, but also those strange anonymous letters from Julie and Doug doct. Schnyder wrote back with a different version of events He said that the letters were actually from Noratsky himself He wrote Dror Naratsky hired or convinced a collaborator or patient representatives to mail these letters in an effort to misdirect this investigation The letters from Julie and Doug were, Snyder said, all part of Dr. Noratsky's quote master plans to destroy his business. plan that involved brainwashing, his word, patients and their families into believing that they were victims of malpractice People like Christie and her mom Schnyer wrot This is a despicable, unethical and malicious practice that reflects the core of Norodsky's personality and is key to his business expansion plans. The way Schneider describes it, Naratski had decided that Wyoming just wasn't big enough for the both of them And he was trying to run him out of the state In the end The identities of Julie and Doug were never proven Dr. Snyidder's complaint against Naratsky was not upheld by the Board of Medicine When we asked the board's executive director about it, he told us that Dr. Noratsky was a wonderful man. and said that he helped them on many occasions As for Snyder's claim that he was a victim of professional rivalry dor. Norvski says there was never any bad blood to begin with I don't think've ever spoken with him and I've never met him Dr. Schneidder would not let it go As time went on, his apparent threats only escalated. For a while, Stidder had a blog And he used it to lash out at those he thought wronged him callalling on friends from his time in Los Angeles My few contacts with shaded pasts who I saved during my time in the Gangland LA days have kept close watch and asked to help I held these wolves at bay. Tounds are released and promise to visit my rivals The list isn't too long few specialty doctors in Wyoming and Montana, such as Jewel Lane and Casper When he heard about the blog Dr. Norotsky knew exactly who Schneider was referring to Oh Jel Lane was My home address in Cas I don't take it lightly. He somebody who' gone off the deep ending, you know I do have a concealed carry permit. After your podcast I will probably start carrying a gun Meaning I wouldn't be surprised if Schneider say that pay me a visit Dr. Norodski waited to hear back from the Wyoming Board of Medicine about the evidence he'd given them call never came. Not one of the seventeen cases he said he handed over resulted in any action being taken. When we approached Dr. Snneyder, he told us via his lawyer that throughout his career, he maintained a commitment to patient care and medical ethics. He told us he helped thousands of patients and that bad outcomes are an unavoidable risk in neurosurgery He says that he was the victim of underhand tactics by his competitors and adversaries, who he says were motivated by quote professional rivalry. When it comes to the malpractice lawsuits, he said that the majority of claims were dismissed or settled without admission of fault And he claims that impartial panels found doctor Snyder's care to be within the standard of practice in most cases. Though when we asked, he declined to provide evidence Even after Dr. Noratsky alerted the Board of Medicine, there was nothing to stop Dr. Schneidder from operating. Outside the hospital, his behavior was becoming more and more erratic He saw enemies everywhere. Dark forces that he believed were out to destroy him.