it was a government agency that tried to help place people who had lost their jobs in this area. and she really liked that. narrator: a big part of that job involved public speaking. but by the time mark weinberger was popping champagne corks down in the caribbean that new year s eve, that part of phyllis career was over. surgeons had taken drastic action to fight the advanced cancer in her throat. she ended up losing her voice box. and it was a very disfiguring surgery. but i think she felt like after all she d gone through, that she was going to be ok. and so phyllis barnes soldiered on. there was the usual litany of chemo and radiation treatments. but phyllis also underwent additional throat surgeries and volunteered for experimental treatments. she suffered in silence. i think she kept a lot of what she
weinberger didn t even bother to look at her throat. rob stafford: as if calling his next witness from the grave, ken allen played a recording of phyllis barnes on a large tv monitor. he s told me that he only took whatever the insurance was willing to pay. and, you know, i felt like, you know, that was everybody seemed to be that was this was all good, that it was just sinuses. and no problem. so he did order a cat scan of the sinuses and scheduled surgery. rob stafford: this, ken allen told the jury, is the cat scan dr. weinberger did phyllis barnes s sinuses. according to experts who testified at trial, the scan showed phyllis s sinuses were actually clear. ken: weinberger and i hesitate to call him a doctor treated phyllis barnes as nothing more than an insurance paycheck. rob stafford: according to the ear, nose and throat doctor who discovered phyllis s throat cancer two months later,
because there was so much unhappiness ahead. in three years, he would be on the run, somewhere in europe, and she would be alone, broken-hearted and bankrupt. of course, they had no way of seeing any of this coming, not here, not on this night. mark weinberger: new year s eve 2002. i ve never been so happy in my whole life. this is my dream. narrator: but far to the north in indiana, one of dr. weinberger s patients, phyllis barnes, could clearly see her future was looking grim. my sister went through hell. narrator: phyllis sister, peggy hood, says phyllis road through hell began three months earlier when she went to see dr. weinberger. she had trouble catching her breath. she seemed to have sort of cold-like symptoms or bronchitis. she just seemed run down. you thought it might be allergies or a cold. yeah.
but michelle wouldn t give up. on more than one occasion, michelle flew to europe in hopes of tracking down and confronting her husband. michelle weinberger: just me and a pair of handcuffs. i brought handcuffs because i figured that if he saw me, he might be freaked out. and i just wanted an explanation. narrator: she even came close one, arriving at a paris hotel just a day after weinberger had checked out. but back home, she still faced a growing pile of unpaid bills. mark had never allowed her to see the bills before or even have her own checking account. it s almost laughable in a way, when i get faxes from banks saying i owe $3.5 million, because i don t even have a concept in my head of what $3 million is. narrator: eventually, michelle learned that mark weinberger left her $6 million in debt. we first met michelle in february 2005, five months after her husband had vanished.
like i would have to have surgery and how i would have to be taken care of afterward i understood. narrator: but there was a problem. valerie says the university of chicago doctors told her scar tissue from the weinberger sinus surgery prevented them from removing more than 5% to 10% of the tumor. her neurosurgeon, her neurologist, and her endocrinologist, and her oncologist all said why each one of them said a nine-year-old doesn t have polyps that need to be removed. narrator: in time, more than 350 of mark weinberger s former patients would join in lawsuits against him, while he was lounging in the cafes and casinos of europe. almost all of them accused him of the same things, misdiagnosing real problems and performing unnecessary surgeries. mark weinberger ran a surgery mill. he saw up to 100 patients or more a day. he did 100 or 150 surgeries a month. and he made a lot of money.