So I just found him very, I don't want to say intimidating, because intimidating's not the word. Why don't you, can you just for once sit back and let somebody else take over, just let him, let him take it over." We had 300+ people coming from all over the world. You know we went on this incredibly romantic trip to Greece, and he was always videotaping me. [00:03:01] Benita: Yeah, one of the ones um, there was a father in New Jersey, whose wife had abducted their son to Brazil, parental abduction, which is when one parent takes the child, against the other parent's will to another country. I mean it was crazy. That hideous under eye makeup , the obvious heavy Botox , that absurd VERY heavy makeup AND that over-dyed silly black hair says it all. Anyone that knows anything about private schools in New York knows how hard that is. "The surgeons in Turkey tried to repair it and there were some complications," said Rosemary Pinto, a personal injury lawyer later hired by Cetir's family. View this post on Instagram And it was very difficult for us um, with the story because, you know, we had all hoped for one of these happy endings, you know, this was, the hope was to do a two-hour special, and at the end of it, you know, Hannah's home in South Korea, running around the backyard with her, her big sister, and you know, being a happy toddler as, as she should have been all along, and you know, Hannah was the most vibrant little girl. And he was not doing well, and I was really struggling with the fact that I was about to become a single mother. In the course of that operation, the surgeons had nicked her trachea. In mid-2013, they became a couple and in December that year they became pre-engaged as Macchiarini, who lived in Barcelona, Spain, said he was still legally married with two children but had been separated for a long time and was filing for divorce. And spent months, you know, this did not happen overnight. She had spent her entire little life in the hospital, never left the hospital because she had a tube down her throat just to live. And so they got FDA approval for Paolo to do the surgery in Illinois, and they got him a special medical license to do the surgery in Illinois. He's Catholic. On your mark, get set, go. "I talked to my editors and we started thinking, 'Well, let's just keep pulling on this thread. Yeah. She is an executive producer, narrator, writer and director known for her work in the true crime genre. Benita was also the Co-Executive Producer and narrator for the 2016 TLC documentary, "Breaking the Silence," about sexual abuse. And she was Daddy's Little Girl. But before the wedding can happen, Benita makes a . We had been divorced for a couple of years at that point and for three years, and he was diagnosed with glioblastoma which is a very, there's no good kind of cancer, no good kind of brain cancer, but the, you know, the outlook is not good, you know they, they kind of give someone two years at the most. [00:36:00] Matthew Christopher: On Valentine's Day, I met him. A successful TV journalist, the single mother-of-one was interviewing him for a report on cutting-edge medicine. When her ex-husband died, Macchiarini helped Alexander cope. And it's Paolo who helps Benita figure out the best way to say goodbye. [00:19:53] Bob: While the romance is intense, it's also very secretive. And so now his son, who I think was about 8 or 9 at the time, was in Brazil with her family, and he was engaged in this very difficult and complicated fight to try and get his son back, and such a loving father. He was incredibly generous with them as well. Alexander, an award-winning documentary TV producer, met Macchiarini in 2013 while working on a story about the surgeon's pioneering work transplanting synthetic tracheas, or windpipes. [00:04:22] Bob: And you had a happy ending. Meanwhile, the investigation into Macchiarini's professional life was ramping up -- the Karolinska Institute was investigating whether he'd fabricated aspects of his medical research. "From that moment on, it felt like my head was spinning," Alexander said, "and it didn't stop spinning.". (chuckle). In February, 2021 it was featured as a two-hour special on ABCs 20/20. Her story is now featured as the third season of Wondery's hit podcast, "Dr. On what was supposed to be the day of her wedding, Alexander flew to Rome, where she eventually met others who'd kept their travel plans. How do we, how do we tell this story? The group eventually grew into four doctors, who compared the journal reports Macchiarini had published about his procedure -- all of which reported relatively positive results -- to the actual medical records of those patients. The two-part special details how Alexander, an award-winning investigative news producer, met Dr. Paolo Macchiarini while she was producing an NBC News special about the renowned surgeons work in the field of regenerative medicine. And he said, he finally said, "Well, I'm going to go and talk to my contacts at the Vatican." In her personal life, she's also looking for a medical miracle, a miracle that, well it wasn't going to come. My friends and my family all adored him. [00:15:28] Bob: As Hannah's story becomes more intense, the news on Benita's ex-husband, John, gets worse. Learn how vehicle tech like blind spot warnings and drowsy driving alerts can help make driving safer. Documentary producer Benita Alexander thought it was love when her job introduced her to internationally renowned surgeon Paolo Macchiarini. Lindquist's three-part documentary series "The Experiments" began airing just over a week after the damning Vanity Fair article was published in early January 2016. (Pasadena, Calif.) - This Valentine's Day, Investigation Discovery (ID) presents a love story gone wrong with HE LIED ABOUT EVERYTHING, the astonishing true tale of the love affair between award-winning investigative news producer Benita Alexander, and the brilliant, world-renowned surgeon Paolo Macchiarini.What started as a picture-perfect dream relationship between two people at the . And we got involved and started doing the story, and it got very intense. [00:35:01] Matthew Christopher: No, no, just her friends who are so much fun. [00:13:10] Benita: When I met Dr. Paolo Macchiarini, and when I was working on this story, I was at an extremely vulnerable place in my life. I really felt that we made a difference, you know, we, our story played a huge role, I think, in paving the way for him to finally bring his son home, and those are the kind of things that really mean a lot, at least to me in journalism. And the two go on a magic carpet ride together. Nobody, except my closest friends and family, knew about the Pope because we weren't allowed to talk about it, but they knew that was a big VIP wedding. Who lost her dad. [00:36:55] Bob: Benita, the TV producer, is very used to managing all the details of a big event. [00:18:58] Bob: I love you in rose petals on the bed. Her film "He Lied About Everything," about her own personal story with a con man, aired on Investigation Discovery in 2018 and continues to air around the world. [00:06:46] Benita: And he was, as I said, called the super surgeon, and he was the pioneer in this field. [00:41:47] Bob: But not as scary as what happens next. I have to tell you, and I'm like, you know, I'm a very boisterous, fun guy, that's, you know, and very um, slap-happy fun, and I literally stopped in my tracks, and was like, "Huh?" He was speaking at a conference in Boston, and we went there to interview him, sort of ahead of Hannah coming to the US, about his work and about Hannah. Reality struck Alexander's fantasy romance eight weeks before she was supposed to marry Macchiarini in 2015, when she received an email from a colleague with the subject line saying, "The Pope.". Oxygen.com interviews filmmaker and reporter Benita Alexander, an executive producer of the 90-minute documentary "Seduced by Evil," about con man Derek Alldred. "He and I started going to dinners and I was kind of pouring my heart out to him about all this stuff. This service is provided on News Group Newspapers' Limited's Standard Terms and Conditions in accordance with our Privacy & Cookie Policy. I found him very um, hmm, he had a presence about him. And so it was kind of the perfect case for us to focus our story around. She was able to get the Vatican to verify that he had never been the pope's personal doctor. Macchiarini had been credited with developing innovative surgical techniques using stem cells in synthetic trachea transplants. NEW YORK Dr Paolo Macchiarini, He Lied About Everything with Benita Alexander Armchair MBA 18K subscribers Join Subscribe 1.5K Share Save 128K views 2 years ago I chat with Benita Alexander. It really affects you. She couldn't run around and play. [00:39:32] Bob: And as the day approaches, Benita gets to try on that custom-made wedding dress. What do they discover? After Cetir's surgery, doctors say she had to undergo an additional 191 surgeries for other complications. In 2013, she was featured in the NBC documentary "A Leap of Faith." She has won numerous awards for her work. 5. He actually brought him home on Christmas Day, and he and I are still in touch. Benita Alexander is a producer, director, writer, and narrator, who has actually been behind several episodes of ID's 'Now,' 'Dateline,' and even 'Inside the Obama White House.' It thus comes as no surprise that her professional success has given way to her confidence. [00:23:20] Bob: Bo also spent many months following Paolo around the world, getting to know him, getting Paolo to open up to him. Macchiarini did not respond to a request for comment from ABC News. Benita Alexander's documentary chronicles her fairytale romance with a celebrity surgeon that turned into a scam. He was dying and Macchiarini became someone Alexander could lean on. "He said he was having trouble finding a priest to marry us," she said. "I was angry as hell. And these were all couples that were quote-unquote living in sin, you know, they had children out of wedlock, or whatever. [00:38:44] Benita: I should say this wedding turns into something akin to the wedding of the century. Wake up to the real world! I was torn up about it, and my last day at NBC was in May of 2015. [00:05:31] Bob: Benita worked on several stories about medical miracles, and at the time, there was one kind of medical miracle that just kept coming up. I mean I'm going to achieve this; you know what I mean? With Whoopi Goldberg. [00:14:35] Benita: The thing about Paolo is he's a very good listener, and we, after a shoot sometimes, would go out to dinner, or we would be in a group of people talking. This story is extremely personal and difficult for me to share, but the journalist in me couldnt let it be, Alexander says in the release. Benita Alexanders personal life story was part of the documentary film, He Lied About Everything. Of course, it's Valentine's Day, I'm like, oh my God. You know, the equivalent of going to a drugstore and buying whatever, you, they, the idea is ultimately we'll get to the point that, you know, you have a failing organ or you lose a body part, you just order up a new one. I, I thought it was ridiculous. [00:05:44] Benita: Yeah, I mean the, we wanted to do a story about this field called regenerative medicine which added base core, the most simplistic way to define this is, it's sort of sci-fi, futuristic medicine where the, the goal is to be able to create body parts or organs in the lab, man-made. But, she said he was in a "foul mood" the entire time they were there as he dealt with the continuing fallout from the allegations. And it's presented to me by Paolo, it's not even about our wedding or about our love story. Her mother was Korean, and her dad, Canadian. After sweeping Alexander off her feet by taking her to jet-setting and romantic locales all over the world for months, Macchiarini proposed. Um, made dinner, and did all this, and then we were discussing and showing fabrications and doing sketching and then like, you know, where were we going to begin? In 2019, she produced the Oxygen doc Seduced By Evil, which chronicles another con-man, Derek Alldred. [00:42:33] Bob: When Benita comes to her senses, she switches back into investigative reporter mode, and decides to find out the real truth behind Paolo. She couldn't eat. And so that meant me quitting my job at NBC and leaving New York and pulling my daughter out of her very difficult to get into private school in New York. A presence. And this trip had been planned for a very long time. [00:34:35] Bob: The first step is working with Benita on ideas for the wedding dress. For more compelling true crime coverage, follow our Crime magazine on Flipboard. Give it to me. [00:30:47] Benita: It was all very hush-hush, you know, everybody that was involved in the wedding planning, including the people that designed the wedding invitations, the people that made my wedding dresses, everybody had to just, had to sign nondisclosure agreements. [00:18:02] Benita: Oh, there was so many. Eventually, she died. And they kind of laughed. And I was really wrestling with all of it. ET on ABC. Well actually, dresses. And she, unfortunately, was born with no windpipe. [00:31:07] Bob: But what is a couture wedding gown designer? With the preparations nearly finished, Benita decides to take maybe the toughest step she's ever taken in her 20-year career as a journalist. I see a woman and two kids," she said, adding that she knew about Paolo's wife in Italy. In 2015, she served as a co-executive producer on Breaking the Silence, which featured DWTS pro Cheryl Burke, and Counting On alums Jessa Seewald and Jill Duggar Dillard. [00:32:14] Matthew Christopher: She actually came to my private showroom which was really cool, and um, I had my whole staff there, and we had to sign a nondisclosure agreement, and I was like, what is going on here? Its so damaging. Death." Cetir came to Macchiarini's attention after undergoing an elective procedure to correct a condition that caused excessive sweating. I mean it got to the point where he loved to surprise me, everywhere we went. It basically was, we've been asked to do this, and by virtue of being my fianc, because I'm this famous doctor, I feel that this is something we should do. And I think I was even blushing. I had to understand what happened and why. You know, "You've, you've renewed my faith in love.". She said she later sent a lengthy text message to him, and received a single-word response: "Wow! Maybe help me, help with the invitations 'cause I don't want to deal with that. While Macchiarini continued to deny any wrongdoing, he lost his job at the Institute and Swedish prosecutors began looking into whether his behavior was criminal. What to tell her. Capping off a whirlwind romance filled with gondola rides in Venice and quiet dinners in the Greek islands, she was promised a wedding in the Italian countryside officiated by the Pope himself. Which clearly would completely change the face of, of medicine and, you know, all these people that been told they have no hope or no chance, it, it would be, it would be a gamechanger, right. And there are special considerations now that the wedding is going to be at the Vatican, so she asks the store how she can get in touch with the designer? In the most recent development, she narrated her story on ABC's The Con, so that more people can be made aware of such practices. Then, two years later, her father, whod married a neighbor, asked her to pack up her bags and leave for good. He has been convicted of research-related crimes in Italy and Sweden. I was, I was conflicted about it. "When I started reading specifically the papers that Paolo himself had written, then we could quite quickly come to the conclusion that what was written in the papers was not what was going on in reality," Corbascio said. [00:00:01] Bob: This week on The Perfect Scam. A successful TV journalist, the single mother-of-one was interviewing him for a report on cutting-edge medicine. And [00:14:24] Bob: It feels natural for Benita to share the family struggle with this world famous surgeon, a man who had spent his career cheating death, or trying anyway. It was eight months later when they became properly engaged after Macchiarini presented her with a $100K ring. Benita met and married a fellow reporter, John Noel, and moved with him to New York, where they welcomed their daughter in 2003. The famous surgeon, a miracle worker who gives hope to hopeless patients, who's rewriting the rules of medicine. It wasnt surprising being a surgeon in Italy. Once you confirm that subscription, you will regularly [00:17:35] Benita: Around this time that my ex-husband, John, passed away, we became romantically involved. He, he had sort of slowly moved his way into my heart and I, I think I just really needed to be wrapped in love at the time, and I, yeah, we fell in love. I, I had just, in that moment I didn't have the information yet, but I just knew he was lying about everything. As these events were unfolding, Maccharini allowed Lindquist to follow him for a documentary film. In fact, the scientist was embroiled in lawsuits and accusations at work. It has led to extensive reform work internally at KI in order to improve and clarify a number of regulations and routines.". [00:31:35] Matthew Christopher: Yeah, it is a special process. When Benita Alexander eventually realized her whole relationship with Dr. Paolo Macchiarini was nothing short of a scam, she decided she wanted the world to know the truth about him. People could be dying because of this man, and therefore, I couldn't stay silent, I couldn't crawl under the covers. Benita graduated magna cum laude from Wayne State University in Michigan, with a B.A in journalism. Javascript must be enabled to use this site. However, while filming with Macchiarini, Alexander's ex-husband, the father of her young daughter, had been diagnosed with brain cancer. Alexander had already sent invitations to her closed ones. [00:39:49] Matthew Christopher: Um, so Paolo was going to have a place where he came out, after he did something with the Pope, and he said he's going to give her this ring, and there were going to be fireworks and blah, blah, blah, but he was going to be handed off to her in this dress, right, for a reception, and the dress was going to come out with this tulle overskirt, and it was going to ripped off by Paolo, and it was going to have a dance gown underneath, like Dancing with the Stars. She's a star producer for NBC News in New York, working alongside Meredith Viera creating primetime TV specials. I think he needs to be behind bars. He never did that with me, but I, I've, I have seen him really being quite, quite unpleasant with um, PhDs and people who were sort of subordinate. If your response is to point a finger at a victim, thats really sad. The couple divorced in 2009. They live in the same area outside Florence. She was taking an incredible risk by getting involved with Paolo. I had to expose him.". Oh, and a dance gown too, that was crazy fun. Of the eight patients given artificial tracheas by Macchiarini, only one is still alive today. Documentary producer Benita Alexander thought it was love when her job introduced her to internationally renowned surgeon Paolo Macchiarini. That makes me crazy. The procedure uses the framework of a plastic tube lined with the patient's stem cells and is intended to help them replicate into a healthy version of the failing organ. "The Sun", "Sun", "Sun Online" are registered trademarks or trade names of News Group Newspapers Limited. Death podcast. You know, "What did he do this time? From what we can tell, Benita still resides in New York alongside her daughter, where shes primarily a freelance executive producer for Lion Television, all the while serving as a public figure. And so does anyone who has anything to do with the wedding. She said that in November 2014, they had planned a trip to California to spend Thanksgiving with her family, "and he had been really stressed in the weeks before, and he had been talking to me for some time about how there were people that were against him, and his 'enemies.'". The Karolinska Institute commissioned an external investigation into the allegations. [00:21:08] Bob: Benita is proud of her work and happy with her husband-to-be, excited to put the finishing touches on Hannah's medical miracle story, but before the piece airs, the story takes a dark turn. The third season, called "Dr. Death: Miracle Man" includes 6 episodes, along with a bonus episode that is an interview with Benita by host Laura Beil. But this magic carpet ride takes so many twists and turns that well, you just have to hear them for yourself. Gerdin also said Macchiarini had failed to obtain ethical permits to perform the transplants, which he said amounted to experimentation on human subjects. Get the Vatican to verify that he had a presence about him into the allegations he Lied about Everything,..., `` what did he do this time who has anything to do the. Of her young daughter, had been planned for a report on cutting-edge.! She was taking an incredible risk by getting involved with Paolo: While the romance is intense the. 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