Angela Kennecke: 0:07

We're all taught to put our trust in doctors and most of us believe they'll make the best decisions about our health. However, that's not always the case, even for celebrities. One of the latest examples involves Friends actor Matthew Perry. Two doctors are now facing charges in connection with his ketamine death. According to the indictment, the doctors exchanged text messages, discussing, among other things, how much they could charge Perry, with one writing, I wonder how much this moron will pay.

Charlotte Bismuth: 0:41

As we've seen lately in the news with the Matthew Perry arrests, there are still physicians out there who are

Angela Kennecke: 0:49

For many, seeking justice against these doctors is an uphill battle, even if you're famous. During Prince's lifetime, the Purple Rain icon sold more than 100 million records, making him one of the best selling musical artists in history. Despite his global fame, The circumstances surrounding his sudden death from fentanyl poisoning remain unclear, no one has been held accountable, and Prince's doctor continues to deny any wrongdoing. Prince's cousin and his wife, who have been on a relentless quest for justice, shared their story with me on a previous episode of Greeting Out Loud. In

Victoria Smith: 1:29

the entire inner circle, they all lawyered up, they refused to cooperate with investigators.

Chazz Smith: 1:35

From the moment they came on set, they weren't charging anybody. I just said, I don't care what it takes. I said, I don't know how I'm going to do this. But I said, we're going to keep the attention.

Angela Kennecke: 1:45

Of course, it's not just celebrities who have been impacted by physicians who are focused more on profit than patient care. Between 1998 and 2010, In 2019, more than 370 United States physicians faced criminal charges related to opioids, according to a report from the Rothman Opioid Foundation. One of them was Stan Lee, who was known as New York's deadliest pill pusher. Lee wrote more than 21, 000 prescriptions for drugs like oxycodone and Xanax. and was ultimately found guilty of manslaughter and the overdose deaths of two of his patients.

Charlotte Bismuth: 2:26

It seemed like he developed a double life. He was a very well credentialed anesthesiologist. And all these stories are so complex. This was somebody who had lived through the Cultural Revolution in China, who'd made it over to the U. S., who was very well educated.

Angela Kennecke: 2:44

I'm Angela Kenecke, your host of Grieving Out Loud. In this episode, I'm sitting down with Charlotte Bismuth, a former assistant district attorney who prosecuted Dr. Lee. She's also written a book about the case titled, Killer in a White Coat, the true story of New York's deadliest pill pusher and the team that brought him to justice. Join us as we explore the shocking details of this case, the uphill battle to hold doctors accountable, and the challenges of getting justice for overdose victims. Well, Charlotte Bismuth, it is a pleasure to welcome you to a Grieving Out Loud today. I am so excited to talk to you, to talk to you as a prosecutor of a pill mill doctor, but also to talk to you as an advocate in this crisis that we're facing.

Charlotte Bismuth: 3:39

Angela, thank you. It's really an honor to meet you. I'm very honored to be speaking not only to you, but to all of your listeners. Yeah. Let's start off by talking about, take us

Angela Kennecke: 3:49

back to the years when you were, you know, A prosecutor in New York. You're in the state court system, correct? Correct.

Charlotte Bismuth: 3:57

I was in Special Narcotics, which is an unusual office. They cover all five boroughs of New York City because I think, as we all know, you know, the selling of substances does not respect city or county boundaries. And so it makes for a more effective approach. I had asked to be assigned to that unit because I really believed that all of these lives mattered so much, and I wanted it to stop. I had two children at the time, I have four now, and it really upset me. So. What I did not expect was this case that came in in 2010 about a doctor, you know, at the time, even though the Purdue scandal was already underway with OxyContin, doctors were still seen as those we could trust, you know, the people in the white coats who were authorized and licensed by the state, and they were the ones who would take care of our kids and help us. And in this case, a very brave young man who actually had a criminal record and had suffered from substance use disorder himself, had the courage to call in a complaint and say this doctor is selling, you know, lethal doses to kids.

Angela Kennecke: 5:24

That doctor was Dr. Stan Lee. A highly regarded anesthesiologist who on weekends operated a pain management clinic from a basement office in Queens.

Charlotte Bismuth: 5:38

It seemed like he developed a double life. He was a very well credentialed anesthesiologist. And all these stories are so complex. This was somebody who had lived through the cultural revolution in China, who'd made it over to the U. S., who was very well educated. He was working as an anesthesiologist in a hospital, very well respected there, but then he opened this clinic on the weekend, probably to make a little extra money. So the investigation took a very long time. It took four years. We went as fast as we could to shut down the clinic because we knew that there were deaths happening.

Angela Kennecke: 6:17

While Lee's clinic was open, patients would sometimes line up down the block, waiting for hours before he even arrived. Charlotte says some of the patient's families contacted Lee, pleading with him, asking him to stop giving their loved ones dangerous drugs. But he did not stop. The prescriptions kept coming and money kept rolling in.

Charlotte Bismuth: 6:42

And it was interesting because from the outset, though he treated elderly people from his own community, he did commit insurance fraud. And that was sort of the key in a way for the jury because they saw that there was this constant thread of financial motives. And then it developed to where he was selling prescriptions in exchange for cash. And depending on how many pills you wanted or which substances you wanted, you would pay more or less. If you tried to come early for an early refill, you would pay more. If you had suicidal ideation or you expressed suicidal ideation to him or he caught wind of it through someone else, you paid more, you know, those were not deterrence in his mind. Those were risk management issues. And we identified 16 patients. related to his practice, who had died of overdoses within three months of his treatment.

Angela Kennecke: 7:46

One of them was 21 year old Nicholas Rapold. During Lee's trial, Rapold's girlfriend testified about the tragic day she and her mother found him. He was slumped over the wheel of his vehicle. lifeless with empty pill bottles on the seat.

Charlotte Bismuth: 8:04

We examined those deaths very closely. We went through with a fine tooth comb. We interviewed families and friends. Tried to understand how the law could capture this egregious breach of trust.

Angela Kennecke: 8:18

Now, we've seen TV series. We've seen movies, lots of books out about this kind of thing. You know, we know that it happens. And it is outrageous. It is difficult to believe. But I want to ask you about the tediousness prosecuting a case like this. I mean, it took years, right? And a lot of work. You were behind a desk doing research. And I think sometimes there's so much glamour behind these cases when they're shown on movies or TV series. And really, it's not a glamorous task at all.

Charlotte Bismuth: 8:50

Right. We used to joke that if they did a law and order show about our case, it would be me, you know. Late at night in front of my computer or not sleeping because I was worried about what my children would encounter later in life You know, I had an incredible team Joe Hall former homicide detectives from the NYPD who he was out in the field every day He was knocking on doors he would hear a rumor of you know an overdose in a community and he would go try to find that person and speak to their parents and Understand what happened and see if there was anything we could do to You know, to reach accountability in that case. And just to go back to what you said earlier, tedious, I wouldn't call it tedious because it was my reason for living in many ways.

Angela Kennecke: 9:38

Gave you meaning. This case gave you, gave your work meaning. I

Charlotte Bismuth: 9:42

really, there was a moment when I really felt haunted by some of the young people who had disappeared and I've grown very close to some of those families, but also it changed everything around. I mean, as a prosecutor. I think we end up with sort of a binary thinking about, you know, who's the victim and who's the criminal. And here people who suffered from substance use disorder, they were the victims. And yes, they were gonna get up on the witness stand and tell the jury that they may have lied to the doctor to get more prescriptions or done other things, but. that didn't matter. They were not there to be judged. Somebody else was being held accountable. Somebody who the state had endowed with an authority and a power that nobody else had.

Angela Kennecke: 10:27

When I was working as an investigative reporter, I always felt to a prosecutor, I guess, or somebody in law enforcement who's trying to be the voice for the little guy, for the voiceless, for the people that are often overlooked, the people nobody cares about, the people that the powerful or more credentialed people care about.

Charlotte Bismuth: 10:47

Yeah, I relate to that. And especially I think, you know, you've spoken so much about stigma and the stigma is such a silencing force because it not only prevents us from protecting, you know, our communities in advance of a threat, it prevents people from receiving help when they need it. And it also blocks them from justice, you know, or from being entitled to the same kind of justice. And. I was so impressed by our jury because they sat for four months, four days a week. You can imagine the sacrifice that that represented. And they were so discerning, Angela. They listened to these patients come through or parents whose children had died. And they were very, very careful and really made what I thought were extremely wise and detailed decisions about. What fault could be attributed to Dr. Lee and what was the result of an unfortunate circumstance or, you know, something that didn't have a required criminal intent, but they, they treated everyone like a real person and they gave everybody the benefit of the doubt and they made a really careful decisions and did not apply stigma. And that was a really, really incredible thing to witness and something that I, I think is really possible and so important. Did Dr.

Angela Kennecke: 12:14

Stan Lee ever admit any wrongdoing? Did he take the stand in his own trial? He

Charlotte Bismuth: 12:20

did. He took the stand for several days. It was quite painful. He maintained that his patients had lied to him, that he believed them, and he was just performing a medical service. But, There was such overwhelming evidence. I mean, we had handwritten logs kept by his receptionist that showed that there were days on which he, quote unquote, treated over a hundred patients in one day.

Angela Kennecke: 12:51

Lee didn't bother with medical records or tests. According to Charlotte's book, all it took was for patients to tell him a story. any story, and you start writing a prescription. Patients would then take those scripts to a pharmacy down the road.

Charlotte Bismuth: 13:06

We were never able to find a financial connection between the two, but of course I suspected it existed. But, you know, when you see somebody for two minutes, and, and I, I met many of these people, I heard their stories. I have, to this day, never understood how he could sit across from them, and hear them talk about themselves.

Angela Kennecke: 13:26

It is hard to understand. It's hard to understand how someone could do this in the first place. And then how they could justify it in their own mind and maintain that they're innocent once they're being prosecuted. Ultimately, though, the jury did find him guilty.

Charlotte Bismuth: 13:40

They did. They did. And I think on the overdose homicide counts, you know, that's really important. And those are the counts that went up to the highest court in New York State, the Court of Appeals, and were upheld and were perhaps considered the most controversial. The ones that I found most meaningful, though, were the depraved indifference counts because I thought it just sent such an important message. That when you disregard the pain and suffering that someone is in, it doesn't matter what they're suffering from is an addiction. They are suffering like someone who has, you know, a severe illness and that is what it is.

Angela Kennecke: 14:17

It is, yes, it is a severe illness. And it's an illness of the brain, right? So we differentiate illnesses of the brain, mental illness and addiction. We differentiate it from illnesses of the body. Right. But it's an illness of the brain and it also affects the body as well, of course.

Charlotte Bismuth: 14:30

Absolutely. And so the fact that he disregarded their pain and suffering and made it worse and that that was found to be at a level that was, you know, Prosecutable from a criminal standpoint. That was so meaningful to me because in New York State, there's a very, very high bar for depraved indifference. What was his sentence? He was sentenced to up to 20 years. He was sentenced near the end of 2014. But then the pandemic came along and Dr. Lee died in custody of COVID in prison,

Angela Kennecke: 15:03

as so many prisoners did during COVID. Actually, that was one of the stories that I did when I was working as an investigative reporter was about the prisoners who were dying of COVID. So ultimately, he's, I mean, he's not here anymore. But when you got that verdict, Of guilty, especially on the charges that you mentioned that could be very difficult to prove in a court of law. Did that sort of vindicate everything that you'd been working so hard on?

Charlotte Bismuth: 15:27

No, I mean, I, that's such an interesting question. Actually, it's never been phrased quite that way. It opened up new hope for me, hope that I didn't have before. I had a huge wave of respect for the jury. I felt a tremendous amount of hope for our criminal justice system. I think. You know, especially as a prosecutor, and I used to be an investigator in New York City for allegations of police misconduct. So, you know, I'm very, very aware of how that system can go wrong. And so it just gave me this sense that if we come together and we are thoughtful and we are detail oriented and we set aside stigma and these unhelpful beliefs, we can do anything. And we can make decisions about accountability, and we can make news that actually makes an impact on how people act going forward.

Angela Kennecke: 16:32

I understand why my question may be sort of a loaded question, because yes, he was punished, sentenced to prison, later died from COVID, but the people whose lives were lost and destroyed, By this doctor, we'll never be made whole. I mean, that is just the truth. Yes. There is nothing the law can do. My daughter's case, the people that sold her, the drugs laced with fentanyl are in prison. It doesn't bring her back. It doesn't ease my pain. I mean, I'm glad they're not killing other people, although. I think in their place pops up other dealers who are doing the same thing. And I don't know, when it comes to doctors, I know we've had a lot of reform, a lot more oversight in terms of prescribing practices, so I don't know if it's as common as it was in the 2000s when we saw these horrific cases, and he's not the only one.

Charlotte Bismuth: 17:21

No, he's not, but you're absolutely right. I think that's why I answered the way I did because in that moment, you know, I felt this hope about the jury, but I also felt that the The losses were irremediable, irreversible, and that, that really hit me, you know, like a truck in that moment and letting the first mother that I called Margaret Raphold, whose son was 21 when he died alone in his car at night, I called her and we both cried because it was a moment when, you know, justice had been done, the value of her son's life had been recognized, and yet, you know, her life would not be materially different. You know, the other reason why I answered maybe such a dark way, I'm sorry, is we really thought over the course of the four year investigation that we would see fewer doctors commit these sorts of crimes, and we didn't. And, you know, certainly by 2024, I never imagined that it would continue and be so bad. And, you know, as we've seen lately in the news with the Matthew Perry arrests, there are still physicians out there who are. breaking their oath, violating their oath.

Angela Kennecke: 18:35

Yeah, that is an excellent point that there are still doctors willing to do whatever. And it sounds in the case, at least from what the prosecutors are saying in Matthew Perry's case, that those doctors were motivated by money. According to a text, how much is this guy going to pay? I looked into both of those doctors and Neither had ever been in trouble before or disciplined before. So, I think also, it leads to what we have in this society still, and maybe some of that has been jaded a little bit, but we are taught to trust doctors. We're taught to look up to them, to not question them, to think that they know what they're doing and that they're going to do it with integrity.

Charlotte Bismuth: 19:12

Absolutely. And, you know, they are granted privileges by our society that go along with those expectations. It's a very complex issue because in 2021, I worked with the Prosecutor's Center for Excellence to write a manual for prosecutors on investigating overdose homicides and on making charging decisions in those cases. Based on my own experience and in speaking with state prosecutors across the country, we came up with a list of factors that should be considered when exercising that prosecutorial discretion. And every life. is important. Every death should be investigated. Every family should be updated and informed and be given, you know, some degree of choice.

Angela Kennecke: 20:03

Yeah, unfortunately that doesn't happen. I speak to families every day that are so frustrated by the legal system and the killer of their child is never held accountable. Yeah. I guess I'm lucky in the fact that my child's killers were held accountable, but So many people don't get that

Charlotte Bismuth: 20:19

they don't and I mean one of the wonderful programs. I saw on your website was the overdose response because so many families just feel, you know, very adrift and lost and Isolated afterwards when really they should be at the heart of the investigation goes

Angela Kennecke: 20:34

back to stigma goes back to stigma and blame

Charlotte Bismuth: 20:36

it does Absolutely, and you know, they need to have a sense of agency

Angela Kennecke: 20:42

Have you lost a loved one to overdose or fentanyl poisoning? I'd like to invite you to share their story on our new Emily's Hope Memorial website called More Than Just a Number. They were our children, siblings, cousins, husbands, wives, aunts, uncles, And friends, so much more than just a number. You can submit a memorial today on more than just a number.org. Charlotte put together the manual for prosecutors working on overdose homicide cases by gathering insights from district attorneys nationwide. The resources available online through the Prosecutor's Center for Excellence. You can find a link to the site under the show notes of this episode. And while you're there, we'd certainly appreciate it if you'd take a moment to rate and review our podcast and share it with your friends and family.

Charlotte Bismuth: 21:46

Really trying to capture the essence of when should you look at a case and see that a person was really, Feeding their own need and trying to avoid their own increased suffering when sharing drugs or selling drugs. When was somebody really motivated by profit? What are the specific facts and factors that you have to consider? Who are the people that you need to speak to? And what are the tools that a community can have in place so that If and when overdoses occur, you really have a deep understanding of the context of programs like the OD map system that tracks every single overdose and tries to, you know, understand the factors that led to it. The, uh, overdose fatality reviews, which are incredible programs where healthcare law enforcement. Medical disciplines come together to examine every death and again, understand what can we do to prevent this from happening again. So we really tried to provide sort of a one single booklet that would bring all of this together and hopefully lead to a more consistent evaluation process, you know, and sort of a checklist for what district attorneys and law enforcement can do.

Angela Kennecke: 23:00

Another thing that you've advocated for, for the families who have been harmed by Purdue and the Sackler family. And I know we have a mutual friend, Ed Bish, who's a very outspoken advocate, thank God for Ed. And he's been on this podcast before, and he continues to speak 24 years later. Bish was an ordinary person, like you and me, who decided to take on the powerful pharmaceutical company behind OxyContin. Purdue Pharma after losing his high school son early on in the opioid epidemic.

Ed Bisch: 23:41

I just couldn't imagine my son's laying dead in his bed. I went out, I said, tell me, what did he do? They said an oxy. I said, what the hell's an oxy?

Charlotte Bismuth: 23:56

I actually met Ed Bish in the first weeks of the pandemic online. I organized a webinar with a bankruptcy law professor. I had come to realize by meeting people from Nan Goldin's group, Payne, and other activists that there was really a tremendous amount of confusion about the bankruptcy proceedings. And honestly, I shared it. I went to law school. I worked in a private law firm. I worked as an ADA. I practiced law for You know, 10 years. I was lost. I mean, trying to read those documents, understand the docket. I couldn't even imagine how someone struggling with grief and financial stress could do it.

Angela Kennecke: 24:39

So you're saying the victim's families that this is a huge hurdle to overcome to understand even how to file a claim, right?

Charlotte Bismuth: 24:46

I mean, at that time, the question was really, what is this proceeding and what does it have to do with my lawsuit? Our first task was to explain to people, you know, your lawsuit doesn't really exist anymore. It's been frozen. This is the only game in town. And what does it mean? And what are your rights? And So we organized this webinar, and the first voice I heard on the webinar call before it started was a man who said, You know, I've seen ads about the Purdue bankruptcy, but anything that has the Purdue name on it, you would never convince me to believe them. And it was Ed Bish. And that was really the heart of the issue, was, especially in a bankruptcy, when the company is kind of in charge of the process, That's already such an unfriendly, hostile gesture to families who have suffered because of that company. So you already have this huge bar to overcome where you need to make it as easy as possible for people to participate. And you also need not only the appearance of fairness, but actual fairness. So we ended up forming this kind of loose group called Oxyjustice of activists, where our goal was really to try to translate. the legalese into everyday language and, you know, without giving legal advice to try to orient families each in our own way. Ultimately, part of that group kind of broke off and created a more formal committee, the Ad Hoc Committee for Accountability, and they were represented by Mike Quinn, who was also the attorney who ultimately represented Ellen Isaacs in the Supreme Court case. So they began participating in the bankruptcy in a different way.

Angela Kennecke: 26:30

Meanwhile Charlotte worked on public education about the case and spoke to the media, trying to explain exactly what was going on in a way that an average person could understand.

Charlotte Bismuth: 26:42

I really believe that there should be law school clinics devoted to representing families who are filing claims in bankruptcies because they right now do not have access to unbiased counsel. All of the Attorneys have a huge financial interest in the case, and the usual sources for legal support, like the State Attorney General's offices, have a conflict of interest because, as you noted, they stand to receive a lot of money in the case. So what this all comes back to again is the stigma, the dehumanization of these families who, you know, because of this lingering feeling that their loved one did something wrong or somehow broke the rules or is responsible, that they are not entitled to the same kind of, you know, day in court or support in navigating, you know, the civil system in this case. I find that revolting. It makes me so angry, Angela.

Angela Kennecke: 27:43

Yeah, the system itself is not set up to really help victims or to help them figure things out or even to Really find relief for victims not as massive and as complicated as the system is today. Right. And it was so interesting to me that the justices were nearly split on that decision that came down this past summer five four. So not everybody agreed. In case you're not familiar with the details, the US Supreme Court recently made a significant ruling. throwing out Purdue Pharma's bankruptcy settlement and a 5 4 decision. As part of the original settlement, the family, which controlled the company, had agreed to pay 6 billion that could be used to settle opioid related claims. However, the catch was that the family would only pay if they received complete immunity from future lawsuits. The justices ruled that the U. S. bankruptcy law doesn't give bankruptcy courts the authority to shield parties, like the Sackler family, from lawsuits when they themselves have not filed for bankruptcy.

Charlotte Bismuth: 28:54

The Sackler said, we'll give you this money, but we need generational immunity from civil liability, so no one would ever be able to sue us, or these 124 people we've listed on this obscure form. Or any of our children or grandchildren at any moment in the future for anything related to our opioid manufacturing business. And they were not even a party to the bankruptcy. Why? Because they are not bankrupt. The company was in bankruptcy and it wasn't even, you know, it was prospective. It was because of the threat of lawsuits that they faced. And, you know, a couple of things are really striking about that. Not only the fact that this family had the nerve to try to exploit the system in that way, but what I saw was a willingness to innovate and stretch the rules for a corporation that I have never seen for any of these families, right, who are ever, ever, ever, ever. Some of them experiencing real bankruptcy, and I would say even emotional devastation. We should be bending for them. We should be innovating for them. You know, I kept thinking about the idea of keeping somebody on life support. It was like the legal system was trying to keep Purdue on life support at any cost. When so many of those children had not been helped.

Angela Kennecke: 30:26

Among the justices who wanted the settlement to go through, conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh argued that the deal would have provided much needed financial support for opioid victims and their families.

Charlotte Bismuth: 30:38

I understand that it may delay some of the money. I realize that that is very difficult. However, You know, the idea is now that they will renegotiate. They've been given a couple of months to try to renegotiate a settlement. Hopefully an agreement will be reached and we will be able to find a resolution without letting the Sacklers off the hook.

Angela Kennecke: 31:02

Ultimately, hopefully things will move quickly. They rarely do, but maybe, maybe they will move quickly. Charlotte also worried that what has happened with the opioid crisis in the United States could be a warning for other countries, including her home country of France. She's worried that if not properly addressed, similar patterns of addiction and devastation could spread.

Charlotte Bismuth: 31:30

In France, I'm seeing the same perfect storm come together. There's a tremendous amount of money flowing in. There is a lot of stigma. The language being used in what they are calling prevention is very stigmatizing language. It's about misuse. It's about watching the patients. There's nothing in there about watching the companies or watching the doctors or tracking the money. We're seeing the money flow in for the marketing. It is all about the money. There was a tremendous amount of money spent by these companies to do the marketing and they created a terrible, terrible demand. As I've tried to explain so many times to people in France who say to me like, Oh, this kind of thing can never happen elsewhere. You know, all brains are equal in the face of these substances. And once you start, it doesn't matter which one you start with. You're going to be in so much pain without it. You may not end up knowing what you're getting, or, you know, you may turn to something else that is more available, and the other thing, honestly, I've been thinking about is how there's so much grief in the country, you know, better than anyone, and I wish you didn't, I'm so, I'm so scared as a parent, I really am, but I don't really understand why it hasn't brought people together more, you know, there's so much talk about division, and, And there is so much division, how is it possible that a country where so many people are suffering the same pain can't reach out to each other?

Angela Kennecke: 33:12

I really feel that when I'm with a group of other parents, especially at some of these DEA fentanyl conferences, summits that I've been to, there's so many of us now, I always say I think we're at a tipping point. Where enough people have been affected by this crisis, but I also think the American public, if you haven't been affected by it, there are so many crises out there, right? And people are just sort of want to stay in their own lane and not have to think about all these horrible things going on in the world, whether it's genocide, whether it's fentanyl poisoning, no matter what it is, discrimination, whatever it might be. Most of us feel pretty powerless and helpless to change the world. and what's wrong with it right now. And therefore, I also think that leads to division. It is an interesting time that we're in, and I often say, so many of us have been affected by this, that something has to change at some point.

Charlotte Bismuth: 34:04

You would think, and you would, you would hope, and I don't want anybody else to die. Right, and

Angela Kennecke: 34:11

I worry about your kids. That's why we do the education curriculum at Emily's Hope. I want to teach every child out there not to take anything from anybody, right? No, absolutely. Because all of these substances, unless it comes from a trusted adult or your doctor, good doctor, you know, it is a very scary world. It's hard to know who to trust when it comes to mind altering medications and pharmaceutical companies, and it's hard to know who to trust. Now, you no longer practice law, correct? Correct. Why did you leave?

Charlotte Bismuth: 34:39

Margaret Rappold, who I mentioned earlier, the mother of Nicholas Rappold, one of our homicide victims, told me the first time I met her, She said, you know, everybody told me that I was so overly protective of my kid and she said, you know, be on them every day. And at the time, you know, my kids were telling me like, please back off, right? Because you are all over us and we are nine years old and you're talking to us about all these things and we have no idea why. Speaking to her, I realized, you know, I'd invested a lot of my life in the law. I loved it. This case had meant the world to me. But I needed a change. There were other things I wanted to do, and I was divorced. I ended up remarrying and having two other kids, and I wanted to try organizing my life in a different way.

Angela Kennecke: 35:34

When you're working in a prosecutor's office, that's like 70, 80 hours a week, right? I mean, that's all consuming. One of the projects Charlotte began working on was writing the story of Dr. Stan Lee. Her book is titled Killer in a White Coat, the true story of New York's deadliest pill pusher and the team that brought him to justice. And was it hard to put the story on paper for you or did that come naturally for you?

Charlotte Bismuth: 36:05

It was very hard. In fact, I refused to do it for a couple of years and two things would happen when I told people about the case. The first thing they would say is, why did it take so long? And then they would say, you should write about it. You know, the first question was frustrating because I thought, well, As you said earlier, tedious in some ways, very, very detail oriented. It's a huge undertaking. It is a massive, massive undertaking, and I was so lucky to have the trust of Bridget Brennan, the special narcotics prosecutor, an incredible team. I ended up working only on this case. It was the only thing I worked on for a couple of years. So I wanted to describe that because also it's an example of, you know, when we come together and we devote the resources. We can do things that appear to be really impossible, and this is how hard it is to get accountability in our system today. Like, yes, it took a long time, and there were many hurdles, and it shouldn't be that way, right? You know, the medical profession is supposed to be regulating itself to a great degree. There are organizations that are supposed to monitor doctors in each state. You know, all of those fell down on the job. Prosecutors shouldn't be going after doctors.

Angela Kennecke: 37:22

It shouldn't get to that point is what you're saying. It should be stopped before it gets to that point by the boards and the governing boards that are in place to monitor those people. Yeah. Well, thank you for writing the book. We will have a link for people if they want to purchase your book, Killer in a White Coat, about Dr. Stan Lee and what happened in his case and to him. And it's not an isolated case by any means. And as you pointed out, this kind of thing continues to this day. And it's up to us to be very vigilant and aware of what's going on.

Charlotte Bismuth: 37:51

Absolutely. Thank you so much, Angela, for having me on. And to all of your listeners, I hope that any contacts that you have with the legal system or in trying to reach accountability, that you are as supported as possible.

Angela Kennecke: 38:07

Yeah, I really hope for that too. And I know it's not happening for many families, but we'll continue to push for that in our advocacy work. Thank you so much. And thank you for listening to this episode of Grieving Out Loud. You can find more episodes, read my blog, and get all of the latest news regarding the opioid epidemic on our website. That's at emilyshope. charity. Thanks again. Until next time, wishing you faith, hope, and courage. This podcast is produced by Casey Wundenberg King and Kaylee Fitz.