KILLED - Episode 1: The Doctor

Episode Date: April 13, 2023

A Pulitzer prize-winning reporter accuses the Los Angeles Times of delaying his exposé on a dangerous doctor. Featuring Paul Pringle, Davan Maharaj, and Marc DuvoisinTo submit your KILLED story, visit www.KILLEDStories.com.

It started with a tip, young woman overdosed if this fancy hotel in Pasadena, in a room that was registered to the Dean of the USC Medical School. The woman was rushed to the hospital, paramedics and police were called. They found methamphetamine in the room. So I started to investigate, I thought it would be a fairly straightforward story because it was a public event, paramedics, police, an overdose, and instead I immediately encountered a stone wall at the police department and complete silence at USC. Nothing.

They wouldn't even acknowledge my queries. But I kept banging away, knocking on doors. Eventually I got enough to do a story. My editor loved it. The managing editor reviewed it, so did the page 1 editor and the newsroom lawyer all approved it for publication. And at the very last minute, the top editor killed it. And I mean, he killed it. From Justine Harmon and AudioChuck, this is Season 2 of Killed, the podcast that brings

dead stories back to life. Season 2 Episode 1, The Doctor. Paul Pringle is an investigative reporter for the Los Angeles Times and the author of the recent book, Bad City, Parallel and Power in the City of Angels. Paul Pringle might look like a washed-up surfer, what with his Owen Wilson's shag of blonde hair, but he's a merciless reporter. He gets in, he gets the story, and he gets it published with the next day's dispatch.

Paul likes for his stories to cause what he calls righteous damage. I've always specialized in run and gun investigations. In other words, you get that first good story you get it published knowing that it's going to lead to more stories. Back in April of 2016, Paul received a juicy tip and thought it could be perfect for his next run and gun exposé. Well again, it started with a tip that came in through a very brave whistleblower who was a manager at the hotel where this overdose occurred.

Devon Khan had been working as the reservation supervisor of the upscale hotel constants in Pasadena. When the housekeeper manager told him that there was an unconscious young woman in room 304, Khan quickly looked up the guest's name. A Mr. Carmen Puli of Fido? Huh, didn't ring a bell. Khan then went up to room 304, knocked on the door and took in the scene with his own eyes.

There he saw the girl, slumped in a wheelchair, her pink underwear peeking out of her hotel robe, and the meth burns on the 400 count linens. Next to her was Pooly a Fido, a rum old 60-something with widespread eyes and a deeply lined forehead, a man who looked old enough to be the woman's father, and like he was coming off a day's long bender. Khan took it all in, and he told the man I'm calling 911. An ambulance was summoned, Khan went home, and the next day, when he asked around whether Puliafido had been arrested, his colleague just shrugged.

The cops seemed like they knew him or something, he said. He's like, some important doctor? And this upset Devon, for the obvious reasons, So he filed an anonymous complaint with the city attorney's office. Nothing was done. He called the president's office at USC, gave a very detailed account of what he witnessed. Nothing was done. He even tried to call the LA Times at one point.

You called us and switchboard person, referred him to voicemail. He didn't want to leave voicemail because if he was discovered doing any of this, he would be fired. If it hadn't been for a chance meeting, He didn't want to leave voicemail because if he was discovered doing any of this he would be fired If it hadn't been for a chance meeting Devin might have given up He might have gone back to work eventually forgetting all about the gruesome scene he saw in room 304 So he just happened to bump into a colleague of mine at a house party and told a story there and it got back to me.

When I got the tip, the first thing I did, of course, was just to look around on the web to see who this guy was. Dr. Pooley Affito is a visionary and an academic leader. He is also an innovative clinician scientist who co-invented optical coherence. You know, he wasn't a household name, but he was a very important person in not just his field, but in LA and anybody in academia knew who he was. Then he saw the story the LA Times had published the previous month. Dean of USC's Keck School of Medicine steps down. What the? Three weeks after the overdose, he stepped down his dean. He stayed on the faculty and he continued to treat patients at USC. And the school put out this announcement.

They said he was stepping down just because he got some wonderful opportunity in the private sector. We actually published a brief on that. It made no sense that it was like in the middle of the school term, like on a Thursday afternoon and he resigned immediately, the dean ship. I found that brief. I thought, wait a minute. Yeah, there's something here. USC had always been something of a tough nut to crack at the times.

Cautious editors might argue. You don't take a shot at an institution as powerful as USC and miss. And there was reason for editor-in-chief Dave on Maharaj to be cautious. In addition to overseeing all news coverage, he had recently assumed publisher responsibilities too. He and his second-in-command, Mark Duval-Sen, were always straddling that murky line between creating content and creating revenue at a legacy brand. You'll hear from both of them in a bit. USC was a corporate client of ours at Baud Avertising.

We had this book festival that we partnered in. USC is a place where former Times journalists go to work. It's common knowledge that USC was a very difficult subject to cover with these editors. I had trouble in the past getting stories published with any dispatch. Another story by a colleague of mine was killed about USC. So this was something that was in the air. Paul started making calls. He called the Pasadena Police Department,

who said they had no record of the overdose, okay. And then he called USC, Crickets. But eventually I got enough to do a story. I filed public records requests under the California Public Records Act. I got recordings of 2911 calls. One of which appears to be the very call Devon Khan initiated after seeing the scene in Room 304. Hello. Hi, this is the Fire Department.

Did you call for 911? I grew up right here ahead of lots of drinks. room 304. The police department to my amazement actually created a police report retroactively. And of course I had statements from the police spokesperson, from the city hall spokesperson. I had enough for a very good story. What I expected to be the first of many stories.

It was the story of a tenured doctor who had spent years hobnobbing on behalf of one of the most moneyed and influential universities in the country by day and providing drugs to young people and cavorting with criminals by night. Sure, the university had parted ways with this guy, but they'd also thrown him a going-away party and told the public he was pursuing some exciting new career directions. Pooley Fido was still treating patients. Paul Pringle was hopeful that top editor Maharaj would see that they're there. There should have been nothing but enthusiasm for this story, the minute these editors learned about it.

There should have been a sense of urgency. There was no enthusiasm for this story, the minute these editors learned about it, there should have been a sense of urgency. There was no enthusiasm for this story. I told the top editor, fairly early on, you know, all the details of it, and he just looked like I gave him some bad news, and he said you should be doing something else, you should be doing something to puts people in jail. Paul says that Dave on implied that he didn't have one vital detail pinned all the way down. Whether the overdose and Puli of Fito's retirement, three weeks later, were directly connected. That pointed a poison arrow at the university's president. That would mean he knew about Puliafito's behavior and did nothing. Daven was afraid, he said, of what we don't know.

To Paul and his editor, the story was dead. At the very end of that very contentious meeting, when he killed the story, the top editor said, well, I'm not closing a door to further reporting. I think he feared that if he did, the newsroom would rebel. This is Killed, the podcast that brings dead stories back to life. Paul's story about the overdose and USC physician Carmen Puleofido had been killed. And he was livid. In what world would the biggest newspaper in Los Angeles not want an exclusive story about a top doctor, meth, and a wealthy university covering up its track. Just need I'd like to just break in for a second.

And I see that you're kind of stepping into the realm of what Paul perceived. That's Mark Duboison. What he felt. He was managing editor of the Los Angeles Times. And Dave on Maharaj's number two. If Dave on or I said something or did something, we're prepared to answer for it and to be held accountable.

But it's something else entirely when Pringle will derive an impression or he'll develop a concern based on things that aren't real, that are not facts. I didn't kill the story I sent it back from a reporting. And that is David Maharaj, the papers then editor slash publisher. When I got the story, there were so many unknowns. It was like, had a lot of holes. And I started circling stuff that Pringle did not know. He did not know the name of the

overdose victim. He did not know why Puliofeato was present there. When I met with Pringle, I told him, if you find that woman, you will have a hell of a story, right? And he got angry and he said, I was giving him an impossible task and I was setting the bar too high. Fair to say that these two do not agree with Paul's version of events, especially with what Paul says happened after the story was killed. Of course I was very upset as with the two editors I was working with. I know they were hoping I would drop it and my colleagues would drop it and move on to something else, and we just couldn't do that. So we decided to force the issue by putting together a secret team of reporters, adding four more people to the story, without the top editors' knowledge. They knew how these top editors could be vindictive. They didn't hesitate, though. They didn't hesitate to say, absolutely.

Let's do this. David and Mark didn't know a secret group existed. This whole idea that reporters were working outside, their editors knowledge is just silly and it's false. Killed spoke with two members of this group, including current Los Angeles Times investigative reporter Adam Elmerak, who told us, quote, I was in the room for the formation of the secret team. That part of the story is absolutely true.

Paul and his motley crew of truth-seeking misfits had one job. Make the Puliifido story bulletproof. We decided to fan out across Southern California to try to find anything that would make this story unkillable. For example, getting an administrator at USC to acknowledge that the dean lost his dean's ship because of this incident. So we did that and we didn't have much luck. Another thing that had been eluding Paul.

He didn't have anything other than a first name for the woman in Room 304. The supervisor had heard the paramedics call her Sarah. Hadn't he? I did not have the identity of the young woman because of medical privacy laws, and she had a common name. Paul and his team scoured social media, property deeds, Facebook, anything that would connect

Carmen Poulierofito to someone named Sarah. Finally, they got a hit. She happened to do something, could have been a parking ticket, a credit report, that finally matched her name to the Deans and in a dress. So I finally saw her had her name, I was able to, it's still a common name, Sarah Warren. I was able to go back to Devon Khan who had seen her at the hotel. I pulled pictures of Sarah Warren's off social media and sent them to him

hoping to get a match and I finally got a match. So now we knew who we were looking for and the team just started scrubbing every record, court records, police records, property records. Eventually, Paul would reach out to Sarah's family just started scrubbing every record, court records, police records, property records. Eventually, Paul would reach out to Sarah's family to ask the million dollar question. Did they know a Carmen Puliafito? Did they know him?

They do anything to never hear that name again. For years, the doctor had been keeping their daughter addicted to drugs, going so far as sending her bags of skittles stuffed with Xanax while she was at rehab. They had tried everything to get this guy away from their daughter and nothing had worked. They went to several police departments. At one point, their family therapist even called the FBI. Nothing. Nothing was done.

So, I think when I found them, they just saw me as their last resort, which often happens with investigative reporting, where the last resort for people who tried to do everything else by the book, and would just turn away. Paul had one shot to convince the warrants that telling their family's story could actually help save their daughter. What he could offer, he told them,

was a commitment to the truth. You can't guarantee justice. You hope they'll get justice once the story is published. You can sympathize, you can empathize, but you also have to maintain a clinical distance from these folks because it's a news story. And you have to maintain that objectivity. You can't become their advocate, in other words.

But in this case, of course, the truth was their advocate. A partnership was formed between the Grizzly News reporter who won't take no for an answer and the beleaguered parents with absolutely nothing left to lose. At one point, Sarah's mom even got in on the intel collecting, cornering Polly Fido about buying drugs for Sarah over lunch at a stake in seafood restaurant, while two of Paul's colleagues eavesdropped in a neighboring booth and texted Paul bits of what they heard. Paul would go on to interview Sarah at length on the record and then her younger brother Charles. interview Sarah at length on the record. And then her younger brother, Charles,

to whom Puli Fido had been supplying drugs since he was a teenager. She laid her life out there on the line. She was in rehab then. She was trying to get clean, something to deen, sabotaged again and again. The warrants also gave Paul evidence his editors couldn't deny.

They provided me with photos and videos of the dean doing drugs and providing drugs to others. So now the story was unkillable. All this devastating information, everybody on the record, photos and videos, and we put it together and filed it, thinking that it would run imminently. Instead, the two top editors went into this, as I call it, the delay in dilute mode, where they wouldn't publish it, they kept trying to water it down, and that went on for over three months. For three and a half

months, while this dean is hurting people, he's providing dangerous drugs, invulnerable young people, he's treating patients, he's performing surgeries. And during this whole period, he's abusing drugs himself. And Sarah would beg him not to perform surgeries because his hands were shaking so badly from all the drugs. And yet the story wouldn't run. This has never happened to us before, not like this. Our story, this important, you know,

this wasn't a finance story, it wasn't a political story. This is a story about people being hurt, and they just would not publish it. Paul had to do something drastic. The warrants had trusted him, and Paul had seen too much. He'd seen the prescription record for an inhaler, Puli Fido prescribed to Sarah's 17-year-old brother Charles to help him with lung pain from smoking meth. I eventually decided to go to corporate

and file a written complaint saying that this is damaging a newspaper, that because of the newspaper's relationship with USC, that it created at least the appearance of a conflict of interest, if you can't get a story like this published. And after that message was delivered, a corporate officer warned the top editor that if the story did not run,

it would be bad not just for the LA Times, but for him personally. David Maharaj denies he ever received a warning. And on Monday, July 17th, 2017, a team led by Paul Pringle finally published a piece titled An Overdose, A Young Companion, Drug Field Parties, The Secret Life of a USC Med School Dean. So after that story was published, I called a meeting in my office and Pringle was like he was not, he did not look like a man who had just broken one of the biggest stories of the year. Okay? Actually, he looked beaten down and only later on I realized that what was going on.

He was telling the newsroom that we were corrupt, that we were colluding with a new editor to stop history when the story wasn't even ready. At the last minute, the two top editors stripped it of the most damaging material to USC, which was the fact that the dean was a provider of drugs, not just abusing them. And they did this without any discussion. They said it was the lawyer's idea. It was not. The lawyer was instructed to do it by them. So that was very frustrating. When you go into the story at the last minute and take out the most damaging material, I mean, at minimum, that's cowardice. The material was solid. It was on the record. It was cooperation. Again, photos and videos.

Was there something beyond cowardice, though? Something personal? That was in the back of our minds. You put that together and yeah, you got to wonder what's going on. This is Killed, the podcast that brings dead stories back to life. Paul Pringle and a reporting team that included Harriet Ryan and Matt Hamilton would eventually publish photos and videos of Puliafido abusing drugs

while employed as Dean of USC's Keck School of Medicine. Here he's taped himself chasing a pink tab of E with perier before a gala. Each story made a splash, and each one revealed yet another way, Puliafido's brazen behavior seemed to just play out in plain sight. A week after the original story ran, the LA Times team published tape of the Pasadena Police Department interviewing Puli of Fido the day of the overdose back in 2016. In it, Puli of Fido can be heard telling the officer that he just showed up to the room Sarah, you came here for Sarah, right? Yes, I did. And you were saying they're with it. In it, police, you know, can be heard telling the officer that he just showed up

to the room and found Sarah there wasted. I mean, she just got out of rehab three weeks ago. Did you call Paramex? Or did they call the, I call it hospital, the, the hotel and they call Paramex? How do you know her? Family Fred, Fred Roof, Dan. You're Dan, your friend or that? You guys have a romantic relationship between two? No, no, just friends.

Just friends. Once Puli Fito leaves, the officer walks back down the hall with the social worker assigned to Sarah. Buy it, the social Buy it? Buy it? The social worker asks? No, he says. Not for a minute. Old family friend.

Old family friend, they scoff. A girl and her customer. Tale as old as time. Sarah would later tell the LA Times that not but six hours after she overdosed. She and Dr. Puliifido went back to the hotel constants to do more drugs. Well, let's say they just screwed up on the day of the overdose. The cops did. They didn't write a report.

They didn't question him thoroughly, that kind of thing. All right, let's grant them that. But then I come around not long after. So now they know the Los Angeles Times is looking into this and they still don't do it in investigation. They still don't bring him in for questioning. In a statement to the LA Times, Pasadena Police Chief Philip L. Sanchez

defended his department's handling of the overdose, saying it lacked evidence to arrest Puli Fido in connection with the 1.6 grams of methamphetamine that officers found in the hotel room registered in his name. And when the medical board finally did an investigation because of our story and they did a thorough investigation, they did make a referral to the DA's office which had all the information that we had reported and then some about him providing drugs to these young people including a minor not to mention his own drug abuse and the DA rejected it with a one page

memo. Didn't do any interviews didn't reach out to a Warren family they just dropped it. Less than a month after Paul Pringles blockbuster expose was published, Mark DuVoisen and David Maharaj were removed as the top two editors at the Los Angeles Times. The official company line would be that their exit was part of quote, important management changes. So it was a big sweep and in my exit interview, which was remarkably simple. The CEO of the company and the HR director told me, look, this has nothing to do with the Poulier-Tito story and Pringles allegations. They both told me that explicitly. I was still the same thing.

Gone also was Matt Toig, the assistant managing editor of Investigations, who had originally been hired to help ramp up investigations at the times. Pouliathito would go on to testify that his behavior was the result of undiagnosed bipolar disorder. Testifying that he was in a quote, hypoametic state, a mental illness that he says took hold of him in 2015. You know, he lost his medical license, he was fired, of course, but he wasn't prosecuted, he wasn't arrested.

I don't have an answer for that. And back at the Times newsroom, well, things were back to normal. If not normal, then cleanse maybe. And then it happened again. This time Harriet Ryan fielded the anonymous call. When the story finally did run, it led to follow-ups. And the ultimate follow-up was the George Tindall tip. In that case as well, there were brave whistleblowers who

tried to get help and they were turned away and they finally came to us. Over the course of multiple run and gun exposés across the span of seven months, Paul Pringle, along with Matt Hamilton and Harriet Ryan, revealed decades of allegations against longtime USC gynecologist George Tindall is accused of making rude comments. Photographing. In 2021, USC settled with some 17,000 victims to the tune of $1.1 billion. Allegations against Tindall first surfaced 30 years ago, yet he was allowed to keep practicing.

And we got justice for those women who had been abused over decades. Highly doubt that would have come into the paper if they pulled the afeto story had to run. Ethics is our weapon. We go up against people who are wealthy and powerful, influential. What do we have on our side? We have the truth. That's what they're afraid of, and that comes down to ethics. I am optimistic that in the end, when you do the right thing, it does pay off.

One way or the other. And in this case, we went on to win a Pulitzer Prize. Under the gun for the second scandal in less than a year, USC's president resigned nine days after the Tindall story broke. Of the Poolyaf Fido saga he later admitted, we could have done better. In response to a request for comment, USC directed killed to its commitment change website. On July 19, 2022, five years after he broke the Puli of Fido story, Paul Pringle published his book, Bad City. The New

York Times called it, a masterclass in investigative journalism. You can imagine what Mark DuVosen and Dave and Maharaj think about it. Former Los Angeles Times assistant managing editor of Investigations Map Doig calls the claims made in Bad City, quote, utter bullshit. But Paul isn't giving an inch. They say things like all oh, the story was legally

sensitive, and that's why it took so long. That's a lie. The newsroom lawyer signed off on the first story almost immediately, and the second story, the same thing, months before it was published. They're just lying about this because they're embarrassed. They're trying to salvage their reputations. The Warren family told me that if that first story had been published they would have been in touch with me the same day. You can take any story and say, oh we we could use more of this but that's not what we do. When we get news we publish the news. As for the whistleblowers, well their endings aren't tied up with a bow either. This isn't the movie's people. Devin Khan is still in hospitality.

He's actually a he and his wife and her daughter moved to Germany. I believe he's back in the hotel, business there. Creeps of Germany, you've absolutely been warned. And Sarah, who nearly lost her life that night in Room 304, who spent so many years in the thrall of an addiction, personally tended to by a powerful physician. She's doing better. She's off drugs. She's planning to get back into school.

She's back home with her family in Texas. Charles, her younger brother, he's also doing better. Better than he was when I finished the book. He's back in school as well. So there's good news there, but the damage that Pulleo Fet did to that family is lasting. Months after Poul Pringle blew the lid off the Puglifito story, the warrants quietly received a $1.5 million payout from USC. As part of the agreement, the

warrants agreed to have all remaining images of Puliifido engaging in illegal activity wiped from their phones and computers. The agreement was reached while detectives were investigating the death of a newborn whose mother had a relationship with Puliifido and whose blood work tested positive for meth and phetamine. Carmen Pouley-Fito has never been charged with a crime. Coming up on this season of Killed. It's just an emotional roller coaster when you get connected to a story and then it gets shut down.

Well, this was just a nutty story from the very beginning. Anna didn't like them, so she just killed the story. It didn't matter what had happened in the interview. As much as we want society to be okay with sex, is this a thing that, like, a big magazine is actually going to put out? It was a very good beat plus, but it wasn't an A, and every piece needed to be an A. Wait, am I a crazy conspiracy theorist?

Something's not right here. That piece sort of had a scarlet letter on it. It destroyed the newsroom. There was a lot of like, fuck you, energy going through me where it was like, you wanted my dad to suffer, you know, well, he did. So many profound journalistic sins of this. For the first time, I really saw the limits of journalism. you