Entertainment
Dr Death season 3: Woman who fell for con artist surgeon finds love again after romance turned into a nightmare
Journalist Benita Alexander’s life was turned upside down by her relationship with surgeon Paolo Macchiarini (Picture: Benita Alexander/PA)
A woman who was engaged to notorious, disgraced surgeon Paolo Macchiarini has found love again after their relationship ruined her life and career.
Macchiarini is currently the focus of the third season of Wondery podcast Dr Death, the first season of which (that centres on a totally different case) has been made into a TV series in the US starring Joshua Jackson.
Subtitled Miracle Man, journalist Benita Alexander gives listeners her account of life with the globe-trotting surgeon.
Her story is well documented. Benita fell for Macchiarini while a producer for NBC, working on a story on him in 2013.
She and the world were under the belief that he was a something of a star in the medical field through his synthetic organ transplants.
The pair became engaged and he promised her a lavish wedding that would be officiated by the Pope.
Things began to unravel when a friend sent Benita an article which said the Pope was scheduled to be in South America on the day he was meant to be at the wedding. Plus an investigation into Macchiarini’s professional life and medical research saw his career mired in controversy.
Benita made a film, He Lied About Everything, about her ordeal in 2018 and now wants to help other women who have been through something similar with her Love Conned project.
‘I’ve always trusted my instinct. I’m a journalist, I’ve always been inquisitive and sceptical so it was like being hit by a truck,’ she tells Metro.co.uk of the unravelling of their romance.
‘You blame yourself, it’s so humiliating and I get why women blame themselves but it’s the wrong response. It’s not your fault.
‘What I tell women all the time is, “What’s your crime? You fell in love.” That’s not a crime. It’s not a crime to want to trust a person that you love. These con artists are so adept and manipulation. There’s brain washing and there’s gaslighting. I want to take the blame of the women because it’s not their fault.’
In 2019, Macchiarini – who has never spoken about his relationship with Benita – was sentenced in Italy to 16 months in prison for abuse of office and forging documents.
Surgeon Paolo Macchiarini has not spoken about their relationship publicly (Picture: PA /Rex)
In 2020 he was indicted by a Swedish court for aggravated assault in connection to three of his surgeries. Macchiarini denies all the charges and a hearing is set for 2022.
Despite going through such professional and personal horror, Benita reveals she has managed to open her heart and mind to love again.
She told Metro.co.uk: ‘I dated but I was choosing people that were safe, that I knew that I would never fall in love with, or where it was obvious from the beginning this would not be a sustainable relationship. It took me a little while to realise that’s what I was doing. Now I feel like I’ve crossed the hurdle.’
Although she is now in an ‘incredibly supportive’ relationship with someone who knows her story, Benita confesses she still has a ‘defence mechanism’.
‘You lose some of the ability to trust yourself,’ she said.
Benita hopes to help other women with her Love Conned project (Picture: Benita Alexander/Loveconned)
‘I thought that I was a good judge of character and I have that gut instinct and I could see this coming. I didn’t see it coming.
‘That takes a long time to go away. I still get that nervous thing in my stomach but I think it’s not a bad defence mechanism. You have to be more alert. But he is very much aware and incredibly supportive.’
Through Love Conned, she hopes to ‘give women the tools to understand that we need to be dilligent and looking at who we’re dating’.
‘I don’t think I’ll ever stop helping other women’, she added, and her advice extends to her 17-year-old daughter, although she describes her as a ‘tough cookie’.
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‘I don’t need to rehash my entire story. I feel like, this is it. It’s exhausting and draining, but it’s a means to an end now.
‘In order for other women to understand, it is vital I can be as raw and open as possible to show that what happened to me can happen to anyone. If I can somehow help women by doing that, then yes I’ll keep talking about it.’
Episodes of Dr Death: Miracle Man drop Mondays everywhere you get your podcasts including the Wondery app.
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