Benita Alexander reveals how she fell for the final word love con

At first look, Dr Paolo Macchiarini appeared virtually too good to be true. A world-renowned physician nicknamed the ‘super surgeon’, he was good-looking, charismatic and appeared to have an inherent empathy for his sufferers.

In 2013, his work within the subject of transplants was deemed so ground-breaking that Benita Alexander, an award-winning producer with the U.S. broadcaster NBC, was dispatched to interview him for a TV particular on regenerative drugs.

‘We joked that he was a George Clooney lookalike with international flair – speaking several languages and jetting around the world for work,’ says Benita. ‘He was impressive and intriguing.’

So charismatic, certainly, that the 2 loved a whirlwind romance and, after simply ten months, grew to become engaged.

Until, in a twist worthy of any hospital cleaning soap opera, Macchiarini was unmasked as a Walter Mitty-esque fantasist, dragging in a solid of characters that included, terribly, Princess Diana and the Pope.

‘I no longer knew this man who had been lying beside me in bed,’ says Benita, understandably.

Despite her heartbreak, it turned out, nonetheless, that she was one of many luckier ones. Not solely was her fiance a fraud in love, he has additionally been discovered responsible of unscientific misconduct in his analysis.

‘I went through profound heartache and humiliation,’ says Benita. ‘But I wanted to tell this story to give the people who died some semblance of justice.’

Last 12 months, she did simply that in a Netflix true crime documentary, Bad Surgeon: Love Under The Knife.

Now 57, Benita cuts a glamorous determine as she speaks from her dwelling in New York. A ‘tough’ investigative journalist, she’s the final individual you’d anticipate to fall for Macchiarini’s picaresque tales.

Yet once they first met in Boston in 2013 to debate his work for the TV particular, Leap Of Faith, she says she ‘felt like a giddy schoolgirl’.

Macchiarini, then 54, was already flying excessive. He was contracted to Sweden’s Karolinska Institute — one of many world’s most prestigious analysis amenities which awards the Nobel Prize in drugs.

Benita, although, was at a low level in her life. Her former husband, John, had been identified with mind most cancers, ‘and I was tasked with telling our nine-year-old daughter that her dad was going to die’.

She remembers: ‘I was distraught. What I didn’t realise is that con artists have a vulnerability radar.’

Initially, Macchiarini proved an empathic pal. ‘He was a very good listener,’ says Benita. It was an analogous compassion that he appeared to show for his sufferers.

Their relationship didn’t develop into intimate till June 2013, after John had died. ‘I desperately needed someone to wrap their arms around me and tell me everything would be OK — and that’s what he did.

‘He took me to Venice and swept me off my feet.’

Their courtship, she says, was ‘romance on steroids’. In Venice, he showered her with pink roses.

‘He’d take me on wild purchasing sprees. Once, in London, he spent £8,000 on me on the Diane von Furstenberg retailer.’

Did his over-the-top gestures make her suspicious?

‘No, but definitely uncomfortable,’ Benita admits. ‘I saved saying: “I love you: you don’t need to impress me”.’

Not lengthy into their relationship, considered one of his sufferers died. Benita had received to know two-year-old Hannah Warren, who had obtained one of many artificial tracheas, throughout the making of her movie for NBC and was devastated by her loss. As was Macchiarini, it appeared. ‘When I phoned him, he was crying,’ says Benita.

On Christmas Day 2013, Macchiarini proposed to Benita at her dwelling in New York, quietly handing her a field containing an £80,000 diamond engagement ring. ‘The proposal was beautiful because it was so simple,’ she says.

He had beforehand advised Benita that he and his estranged spouse lived separate lives — she in Italy, he in Spain — and later advised her that their divorce had come via. Yet after the proposal, Macchiarini added that he couldn’t keep for the New Year as a result of he had an vital surgical procedure to carry out.

‘That’s when he claimed he was a part of this clandestine community of medical doctors that catered to VIP shoppers.’ These included the Obamas, the Clintons and Emperor Akihito of Japan. Did she consider him?

‘On the one hand, it sounded ridiculous,’ Benita admits. ‘But on the other, it was plausible since he was known as the “super surgeon”.’

He additionally advised her brother he had been known as in after Princess Diana’s automobile crash in Paris. Had he received there in time, he boasted, he might have saved her life.

The marriage ceremony was set for July 11, 2015, in Rome, and by October 2014 Macchiarini had some thrilling information. He had been Pope Francis’s non-public physician for a few years and, as a private thanks, the Pope had vowed to officiate on the marriage ceremony, even providing to host it at his summer season residence, Castel Gandolfo.

‘I didn’t consider that in the first place,’ says Benita, however after researching on-line she found that the Pope had not too long ago married a bunch of {couples} on the Vatican. Why not them too?

In retaining together with his ‘super surgeon’ standing, the visitor checklist included the Obamas, the Clintons and Vladimir Putin (Macchiarini had work ties to Russia), the Beckhams and Russell Crowe. Elton John and Andrea Bocelli would carry out.

‘I was finding it all a bit ridiculous,’ says Benita, ‘but he was unflappable. All I had to take care of were my dresses and the invitations.’

Benita shelled out £8,000 on 300 invites, which had been sheathed in lambskin and embossed with the couple’s initials, and spent an extra £40,000 on 4 attire. ‘It was on the understanding that he would pay me back later. I had no reason to doubt that.’

Macchiarini advised her he needed Bill Clinton to announce their marriage ceremony dance ‘because, apparently, they played tennis together’. When she requested him to arrange a dinner with Clinton beforehand, nonetheless, it was cancelled thrice.

By now, the pink flags had been beginning to wave. In November 2014, the New York Times ran a narrative claiming that Macchiarini’s colleagues on the Karolinska Institute had filed a grievance accusing him of scientific misconduct — an accusation he batted away as skilled jealousy.

Yet in his non-public life, issues weren’t including up both.

‘He had flown me all over the world but had never taken me to his house in Barcelona where we were going to live after we’d received married. It didn’t make sense,’ says Benita. ‘I was also upset about not having met his children.’

In May 2015, two months earlier than her marriage ceremony, Benita stop her job at NBC and took her daughter out of college in preparation for his or her transfer to Europe — just for the underside to fall out of her world the very subsequent day.

A pal emailed her concerning the Pope’s upcoming go to to South America — on the precise time he was as a consequence of marry them.

When Benita known as Macchiarini, he blamed Vatican inside politics for the confusion. She then contacted the fortress in Italy the place he had supposedly booked rooms for his or her friends, however nobody had heard of him.

‘That’s once I put my journalist’s hat again on,’ says Benita. ‘I hired two private investigators in the U.S. and Italy to gather evidence.’

Every week later, she met with Macchiarini at her dwelling. ‘There was a tiny part of me hoping for a plausible explanation.’

What she received was Macchiarini telling her: ‘That secret network of doctors I told you about? It’s operated by the CIA.’

Benita cancelled the marriage and, on the day it was as a consequence of happen, flew to Europe with buddies. Macchiarini had advised her he was in Russia, ‘so we decided to go to his house in Barcelona as he was clearly hiding something there’.

‘I stayed in the car and saw him sauntering down the steps. Then I saw a blonde woman with two little children. I’d seen footage of his spouse, however this lady was a lot youthful. When the youngsters known as him Papa, I misplaced it utterly.’

Benita found that in addition to his household in Barcelona, he was nonetheless married to his spouse of 30 years, ‘and I’ve heard of different girls too’.

The scale of the betrayal was devastating. ‘Not only was there profound heartache and disappointment,’ she says, ‘but it was compounded by rage. This was a calculated deception from day one. I felt guilt for bringing my family and friends on this ride with me and humiliation that this happened to me — an investigative journalist, for God’s sake!

‘I wanted to crawl into a hole. It was almost paralysing.’

What shook Benita from her torpor was, she says, ‘the epiphany that if he was lying to me like this, there was no way he wasn’t mendacity in his skilled life’.

‘That was terrifying because, as a doctor, he had people’s lives in his fingers.’ The story that lastly emerged was extra chilling than even she might have imagined.

The Netflix documentary reveals footage of the sufferers on whom Macchiarini carried out tracheal transplants, together with Hannah Warren, American Christopher Lyles and a younger Russian mom, Yulia Tuulik. All three died. Some of the scenes displaying Yulia in ache are unwatchable.

Some of his credentials had been, reportedly, unfaithful. ‘I’ve spoken with surgeons who’ve been within the working room with him. Some suppose he’s expert and a few suppose he’s a reckless surgeon who takes probabilities — and that when issues go flawed, he steps again and lets another person take over,’ says Benita.

‘Only one person who had the trachea operation is still alive — and it was taken out.’

Benita has seen Macchiarini twice since her engagement fell aside — in a courtroom, the place he was going through prison accusations.

Thanks to the work of his former colleagues turned whistleblowers, who found he had lied about some elements of his analysis, and to the efforts of Benita, in 2022 Macchiarini appeared in a Swedish courtroom and was discovered responsible of inflicting bodily hurt to a affected person and handed a suspended sentence.

Last summer season, he was sentenced to 30 months’ imprisonment after being discovered responsible of gross assault towards three of his sufferers. ‘Seeing him in court, says Benita, ‘I felt nothing for him.’

As to why he carried out such an elaborate con on Benita, she will solely speculate. ‘I know his motive wasn’t cash as a result of he was all the time beneficiant. All I can suppose was that he received some sort of sick excessive from getting away with every thing and the larger the lie, the better the push.’

‘I think he had a complete disregard for anyone but himself and maybe he targeted me because I was a journalist — when the s*** hit the fan [in his professional life], he could have me in his back pocket as his cheerleader.’

She admits she was at first reluctant to develop into romantically concerned once more, however is now courting British safety agency govt Martin Huddartz.

‘He’s beautiful and romantic in crucial methods. Obviously, you don’t undergo one thing like this and never have belief points, however I promised myself I wouldn’t develop into bitter or change the essence of who I’m.’

It won’t have been a traditional romance rip-off, however it was the work of a harmful fantasist nonetheless — and a reminder that anybody can fall for one.

Bad Surgeon: Love Under The Knife is on Netflix