Episode 9: The Golden Handshake

2024-05-23 00:47:04

<p>A mysterious drug overdose at a posh Pasadena hotel leads our host and LA Times investigative reporter, Paul Pringle, into Los Angeles’ darkest corridors of power and wealth. Pringle discovers that the dean of the University of Southern California's medical school is leading a secret double life. As Pringle and his team at the LA Times untangle a sordid web of lies, drugs, and greed, they encounter obstacles and resistance at every turn—from USC, law enforcement and even within their own organization. <em>Fallen Angels </em>explores how money and privilege can corrupt our most important institutions and destroy people's lives.</p> <p><em>Fallen Angels: A Story of California Corruption is based on Pringle’s book, Bad City: Peril &amp; Power in the City of Angels.</em></p>

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Speaker 1
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I'm John Walczak, host of the new podcast, Missing in Arizona. And I'm Robert Fisher, one of the most wanted men in the world. We cloned his voice using A.I. In 2001,. police say I killed my family and rigged my house to explode.

[00:14.00 - 00:20.98]

Before escaping into the wilderness. Police believe he is alive and hiding somewhere. Join me. I'm going down in the cave. As I track down clues.

[00:21.02 - 00:25.86]

I'm going to call the police. and have you removed. Hunting. One of the most dangerous fugitives in the world. Robert Fisher.

[00:26.04 - 00:34.38]

Do you recognize my voice? Listen to Missing in Arizona every Wednesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows.

[00:36.38 - 01:02.70]

Hi, it's Andrea Gunning, the host of Betrayal. I'm excited to announce that the Betrayal podcast is expanding. We are going to be releasing episodes weekly, every Thursday. Each week, you'll hear brand new stories, firsthand accounts of shocking deception, broken trust, and the trail of destruction left behind. Listen to Betrayal weekly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[01:08.54 - 01:25.84]

Back in 96, Atlanta was booming with excitement around hosting the Centennial Olympic Games. And then a deranged zealot willing to kill for a cause lit a fuse that would change my life and so many others forever. Rippling out for generations.

[01:28.10 - 01:33.88]

Listen to Flashpoint on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[01:36.84 - 01:55.58]

In the early morning hours of September 6, 2016,, St. Louis rapper and activist Darren Seals was found murdered. That's what they gonna learn. I went for death, I went for nothing. Every day, Darren would tell her, All right, ma, be prepared, they are going to try to kill me.

[01:55.68 - 02:07.04]

All episodes available now. Listen to. After the Uprising, The Murder of Darren Seals, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Content warning. This episode features topics related to sexual assault and abuse. For those in search of help, there are resources in our show. notes for today's episode.

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We're always going to have predators, but it's the good people who stand by and do nothing that allow them to flourish. And that's certainly what happened here. Audrey Nafziger is a top sex crimes prosecutor for the DA's office in Ventura County, California. But in 1990, she was a 23-year-old law student at USC. During a visit to the Student Health Center on campus, Audrey was sexually assaulted by Dr.

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George Tindall, a gynecologist who worked there. And for more than 25 years, Tindall continued to prey on USC students while on the payroll. I'm one of the first people that saw him. I'm sure he perfected his craft over time. But I was young and naive, and I trusted him.

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It's February 2018, six months since we published the blockbuster story about Carmen Pulliofito, former dean of the medical school at USC. We're still deep into our reporting on Pulliofito's involvement in the death of Dori Yoder's baby. when reporter Harriet Ryan gets an anonymous tip urging her to look into a, quote, creepy gynecologist. Harriet and Matt Hamilton start to dig. We were so, like, desperate for any kind of information.

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Everybody had their own perspective. And usually at the end, the person would say, you should also talk to, you know, this other woman or this other man, but don't tell him that you talked to me.

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Slowly but surely, over months, we start to catch some breaks. We speak to low-level employees of the clinic who decide to risk their jobs to give us a scrap of information on Tindall. We find survivors and ex-staffers who have spent years feeling guilty for not doing more. We track down administrators who knew there were complaints about Tindall. And we find the nurse who put everything on the line to take Tindall down.

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What we learn is horrific, and not just Tindall's crimes. Again, like with Pulliofito, we discover that USC just let it happen. This is Fallen Angels, Episode 9, The Golden Handshake.

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For the next four months, we knock on doors and gather leads. And we begin to see the patterns. Tindall clearly had an M.O. One after another, women share their stories with us. And even though they span decades, a lot of the details start to sound familiar.

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One of the key things is that he was making the same comments to woman after woman, which was he was saying, like, oh, you're so tight, you must be a runner. And he was doing ungloved exams. Like, he was making the women who came in, like, have these long discussions with him in his office with the door closed. A lot of them were, like, Asian international students. He would, like, show them a picture of his young Asian wife.

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And he had a map of China to point out where they were from. Here's Audrey Nassinger. again. He pulled out a camera and had me hold my body parts in certain positions so he could take pictures and dim the lights. I felt like I couldn't say no.

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I think something that a lot of men don't understand is that the whole thing is so mortifying for a young woman that you could do almost anything during an exam and they would not complain. Like, you could bring in a giraffe in the middle and then the giraffe could leave. And they'd be like, oh, I guess that's what happens during a gynecological exam. I just can't wait until this is over. Like, it's so cringey, the whole thing.

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And especially when you're, like, a 17-year-old girl and a much older man who's a medical professional. He said I had a disease that no one's ever seen. I think I was in my early 20s when I saw him.

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But I believed him. I mean, I took him at his word. He's a doctor. He said he could give me several treatments or he could give me one. But if we did one, it would be painful.

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And I said, well, let's just do one. I mean, who wants to keep coming back over and over? I remember him looking really unhappy that that was my decision. And he tried to talk me out of that. And I remember thinking, why are you trying to talk me out of this?

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He used that ruse on a lot of women, the exact same diagnosis on a lot of women, to get them to keep coming back again and again. Lucy Chee, a USC grad student, sensed there was something very wrong with the way Tyndall was treating her. And her suspicions were confirmed as soon as she was treated by another doctor. I actually had a complication. And so Tyndall told me that he would have to send me to USC Tech, USC's off-campus hospital, to see a gynecologist there.

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While I was at the clinic there, the gynecologist told me she needed to retest me, because sometimes they make mistakes at the on-campus clinic. And I asked the gynecologist at Tech, I said, don't you need to relax my vaginal muscles? And she said, oh, we don't do that here. And she was clearly taken aback.

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As Harriet begins looking into Tyndall, she learns that he had left USC in 2016, but still had his medical license, and he could still be out there treating patients. And Harriet's anonymous source tells her they're afraid Tyndall is trying to get his old job back at USC. At first, we can't tell if the university pushed him out because of the abuse, but then we find that actually there have been formal complaints about Tyndall going back decades. Before I saw him, somebody had complained in writing, and said they were molested, and the university said, we'll give you your money back for the exam. There had been discussion going to the police within the clinic, he'd been caught taking photographs of girls' genitals, and he hadn't been fired after that.

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The more we learn, the more people are willing to say. Harriet and Matt Hamilton had spoken to a number of people who worked with Tyndall at the Student Health Center, including a long-time nursing supervisor named Cindy Gilbert. But she was hesitant at first to go on the record. I remember talking to her early on, but she was, like, very guarded. I mean, I think a lot of times people want to see you work.

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They're like, are you just going to, like, make me do everything for you, or are you going to go out and work? And, like, we talked to her, she didn't want to be on the record, and then we went out and worked. And when we came back, you know, again, we had a lot more people. We had a lot more accounts. Cindy Gilbert had worked at the Student Health Center for many years.

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She was committed to USC. But she and the other nurses had seen Tyndall's abuse go unchecked again and again. They were the ones trying to steer women to other doctors and console his traumatized patients. She and the other nurses had pleaded with Dr. Larry Neinstein, the head of the health clinic, to take action.

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And Neinstein had a very good idea what Tyndall was doing. Here's Matt. We had heard from many people at the clinic who were alarmed by his use of a camera to photograph students' bodies or genitals in ways that seemed to deviate from standard medical practices. And at one point, Dr. Tyndall was barred from using this camera.

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Neinstein had also heard graphic complaints from students about Tyndall's deeply troubling behavior. He reprimanded Tyndall and ordered him to desist. But Tyndall was defiant. Feeling he was out of options, Neinstein informed USC's vice president of student affairs. So there's an email from Dr.

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Larry Neinstein to his boss, Michael Jackson, in 2004.

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. The subject line is confidential. And he says that he's, quote, increasingly concerned about Dr. Tyndall. And at the end of his email, he says, I have not personally seen any threatening behavior or violent behavior from Dr.

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Tyndall. But, he says, I believe he was in an employment position before he went into medical school. that, quote, included possessing a gun. So he's suggesting that Dr. Tyndall, you know, owns a firearm and that somehow might factor into response from the university if they were to question his conduct.

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But the official response to Neinstein's confidential report was to do nothing. And Jackson has since denied he was ever informed about Tyndall's abuse.

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In 2010,, after yet another student reported that Tyndall had abused her, Neinstein informed a lawyer in USC's Office of General Counsel. He also notified the school's Title IX coordinator in the Office of Equity and Diversity, or OED. The general counsel and the OED did nothing. I think that the concerns of women, female employees, and students were not respected. I think that their concerns should have set off an alarm.

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I just don't think that their concerns were taken seriously. The other thing is just that I think USC just has this, like, had this culture of, like, no bad news. Like, nobody wants to hear any bad news. Just solve the problem. Whether or not USC wanted it, this was bad news that wouldn't go away.

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Cindy and her colleagues continued to pressure Neinstein to do more. And he complained again to the OED. Dr. Neinstein had reported that several staff and a student had actually made allegations that Dr. Tyndall was making inappropriate comments.

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And the complaint that came in was classified as harassment along sexual and racial lines. He had apparently mentioned that Mexicans are taking over. And that prompted this big investigation. Tyndall himself was not interviewed. And less than two months after this complaint reached OED, they closed it, saying there was insufficient evidence, and basically kicked it back to Dr.

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Neinstein to handle it. And it's clear that Dr. Neinstein wanted to take further action. He was told he hadn't reached the threshold, reached fire Tyndall. So he continued to work at the clinic.

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But the concerns of nurses and medical staff just continued to intensify. And a lot of this came to a head in June 2016..

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Cindy could not take it anymore. She was done with trying to solve this with HR and bureaucratic divisions and finally reported Tyndall to the director of USC's Rape Crisis Center. And it's right at this time that Tyndall took a vacation. There was a fruit fly infestation in the student health clinic. So there was this swarm of insects.

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No one really knew where it was coming from. And it leads Cindy, Gilbert and a colleague to Dr. Tyndall's office.

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They unlock the door. They eventually find rotten fruit and food under Tyndall's desk. With Tyndall out of the office, Cindy and her colleague could look around. The place was filthy, covered in trash, dirty needles, decaying fruit. But that wasn't the worst of it.

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While they're looking for other sources of rotten food in his office, they find a box of images of patients' genitals. They were from 1991, 1992.. There was identifying information of some patients on them. There was no reason for him to have this stack of patient images just sitting in his office. These images were impossible to ignore.

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USC's administration now had no choice but to finally deal with Cindy's repeated complaints about the sexual assaults. They called Dr. Tyndall. He was basically banned from campus on some sort of paid leave. And they initiated this investigation into Dr.

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Tyndall.

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The investigators uncovered more than enough evidence to fire Tyndall, report him to the medical board, and to the police. But instead, USC allowed Tyndall to challenge the findings in an appeal. The school kept him on the payroll through 2017, while they worked out an agreement. Tyndall finally chose to resign in return for a secret payoff of $200,000.. He retained his medical license, and the administration would keep everything under wraps, from the staffers who had complained, from the authorities, and from Tyndall's many victims.

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Here's Audrey. The lengths they had to go to to finally get him fired was pretty extraordinary. The fact that other employees, primarily female nurses, had been trying to get him to stop, USC had more than enough notice and didn't care at all. But now, USC is starting to care. The administration learns of our investigation, and a few things happen.

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They change course and decide they will report Tyndall to the medical board, eight months after he's been allowed to resign. Another three months go by before they finally notify the police, after they learn, our reporting is focused on allegations of sexual assault. As USC starts to think about damage control, we're preparing to publish. And the atmosphere at the LA Times is totally different, under interim editor-in-chief Jim Kirk. He was cracking the whip.

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He wanted us to be digging in to find out what USC's role was, what USC knew, what USC did or didn't do about George Tyndall. Jack Leonard is one of our editors on the new story. You had top editors who trusted the reporting, they trusted the editing, and they were not afraid to go with a big blockbuster story when they had one. Just like with Pull Your Feet, there's still one more step we need to take. We have to at least try to interview Tyndall, give him a chance to respond to these allegations.

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But unlike Pull Your Feet-o, Tyndall actually agrees.

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Hi, it's Andrea Gunning, host of Betrayal. I'm excited to announce that the Betrayal podcast is expanding. We are going to be releasing episodes weekly, every Thursday. Each week, you'll hear brand new stories, firsthand accounts of shocking deception, broken trust, and the trail of destruction left behind. Stories about regaining a sense of safety, a handle on reality after your entire world is flipped upside down.

[17:00.61 - 17:03.69]

From unbelievable romantic betrayals.

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. The love that was so real for me was always just a game for him. ...to betrayals in your own family... When I think about my dad, oh, well, he is a sociopath. ...financial betrayal...

[17:18.35 - 17:31.07]

This is not even the part where he steals millions of dollars. ...and life-or-death deceptions. She's practicing how she's going to cry when the police calls her after they kill me.

[17:32.75 - 17:49.11]

Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm John Walczak, host of the new podcast, Missing in Arizona. And I'm Robert Fisher, one of the most wanted men in the world. We cloned his voice using AI. In 2001,.

[17:49.41 - 17:57.25]

police say I killed my family. First mom, then the kids. And rigged my house to explode. In a quiet suburb. This is the Beverly Hills of the Valley.

[17:57.39 - 18:06.35]

Before escaping into the wilderness. There was sleet and hail and snow coming down. They found my wife's SUV. Right on the reservation boundary. And my dog blew.

[18:06.35 - 18:15.55]

All I could think of is he's going to sniper me out of some tree. But not me. Police believe he is alive and hiding somewhere. For two years. They won't tell you anything.

[18:15.65 - 18:23.69]

I've traveled the nation. I'm going down in the cave. Tracking down clues. They were thinking that I picked him up and took him somewhere. If you keep asking me this, I'm going to call the police.

[18:23.69 - 18:30.25]

and have you removed. Searching for Robert Fisher. One of the most dangerous fugitives in the world. Do you recognize my voice? Join...

[18:30.25 - 18:34.47]

An exploding house. The hunt. Family annihilation. Today. And a disappearing act.

[18:34.47 - 18:41.25]

Listen to Missing in Arizona every Wednesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows.

[18:44.75 - 19:00.59]

It started with a backpack at the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games. A backpack that contained a bomb. While the authorities focused on the wrong suspect, a serial bomber planned his next attacks. Two abortion clinics. And a lesbian bar.

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But this isn't his story. It's a human story. One that I've become entangled with. I saw, as soon as I turned the corner, basically someone bleeding out. The victims of these brutal attacks were left to pick up the pieces.

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Forced to explore the gray areas between right and wrong. Life and death. Their once ordinary lives, and mine, changed forever. It kind of gave me a feeling of pending doom. And all the while, our country found itself facing down a long, and ugly reckoning with a growing threat.

[19:33.65 - 20:02.99]

Far-right, homegrown, religious terrorism. Listen to Flashpoint on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. New from Double Asterisk and iHeart Podcasts, a 10-part true crime podcast series. In the early morning hours of September 6, 2016,, St. Louis rapper and iconic Ferguson activist, Darren Seals, was found shot dead.

[20:03.09 - 20:22.63]

Every day, Darren would tell her, they are going to try to kill me. A young man in 2016 was killed on this block. I'm a podcast journalist. And I'm a former state senator, Maria Chappell-Nadal. I was in the movement with Darren, and I've spent two years with co-host Ray Novoshelsky investigating his death.

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Even if I did want to tell you something, that's a dangerous game to play. FBI did this to myself. They've been following him for months. That's enough proof right there. All episodes available now.

[20:33.87 - 20:44.09]

Listen to After the Uprising, Season 2, The Murder of Darren Seals, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[20:48.35 - 20:52.45]

In the spring of 2018, Matt and Harriet sit down with Dr. George Tindall.

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When we went out to his apartment building, it was like, he lived there, but his name wasn't on the buzzer. You couldn't buzz his name. And we asked the super, and the super's like, yeah, he lives here. He doesn't want anyone visiting him. And so I waited a few minutes, and I called his house phone and left a message, and he didn't pick up.

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But then, when I got back to the office, got a call from him, and he was like, I'm concerned about the message you left. You said there's allegations against me. And I was like, yeah, there are. And he was like, I think we should meet.

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He wanted to meet at the park near his house, the bottom of the street. So Matt and I went out there. We met with him. He did not want to talk on the record at that time, but we set up another meeting shortly thereafter, and from then on, he was on the record. He eventually shows up and shakes our hand.

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He's really tall, like, I think, well over six feet. And I just remember shaking his hand and thinking it was really big. Like, it was a big hand. We've talked to everyone who's worked around him, so we've heard everything. Like, people think he just has very poor hygiene.

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They talk about his shirts and idiosyncratic habits. And he did smell a little bit. He wore sunglasses, and he wore a Barong shirt, which is like a Filipino dress shirt. We spent 10 hours with him, and he doesn't dispute a lot of the things. It's just, like, a matter of interpretation.

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He thinks he's, like, an excellent gynecologist. And there were a lot of, like, weird moments during that interview where Matt Hamilton bought a textbook. He was always referring to this one textbook that he used, gynecological textbook. Matt Hamilton bought it on Amazon. So it talks about how to do a regular exam, and we brought it to the park, and he's like, and he's, like, going through all the steps that you're supposed to do at a regular gynecological exam.

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He went through, and he highlighted everything he did, line by line, but, you know, by the time it came to actual contact with women's genitalia physically, he only closed the book. And what he described in terms of using his fingers, you know, it was not in the textbook. And that was a very big turning point, I think, for Harriet and for myself, because it's, like, kind of a real-life example of how he had convinced himself that what he was doing was appropriate. And then we started confronting him with things that, you know, eyewitnesses had said, and he was sitting right next to me, and I was just like, Dr. Tundle, do you understand that people are accusing you?

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of sexually assaulting young women for decades? He had made a lot of arguments at that point,

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and we had moved past them. And I think, when he just said it like that, he finally got that we were not going to be talked into adopting his point of view on his medical practice. And he got this, like, faraway stare, and they just stood up, and he walked away, and we never heard from him again.

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Use this moment to encourage you, to embolden you, and to literally push you into the rising of your life. May 11, 2018.. Oprah Winfrey is delivering an inspiring commencement speech to the graduates of USC's journalism school. At that same moment, Matt and Harriet are sitting with three top USC administrators. It's commencement day.

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It's swarming with people. There's just, like, families, and everyone's in a joyous mood. And I remember, like, Harriet and I, going to this office on the edge of campus. They had known for a long time that we had been reporting on Dr. Tindall and asking questions.

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So scheduling the sit-down interview on commencement day at least had the effect, whether intended or not, to guarantee that any story wouldn't come out until after all. the festivities surrounding graduation wouldn't at least be marred by any sort of story that put the university in a bad light.

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They had an hour set aside for the meeting. It was a big story, covering, you know, a wide range of time, when you consider that we had had hours to sit with Dr. Tindall, but only an hour with USC. We planned to move efficiently through the questions, and USC's administrators begin off by giving these, like, detailed bios of themselves that last, like, 20 minutes. I mean, we were trying to be friendly and just kind of take it in, but, you know, at a certain point, it was like, I don't need to know your resume.

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And because it was just this, it seemed like they were filibustering.

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And so we immediately were like, okay, we have, at this point, 40 minutes or so. We have to move into questions. And we start going over what they sent us in their responses, trying to drill down. I remember having whiplash after going through that interview and kind of debating the finer points of Dr. Tindall's conduct with students and what USC knew and why they fired him and why they paid him money and why they didn't report him to the medical board.

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And then walking out of that interview, and you see students beaming with their parents, and they're wearing the caps and gowns and taking photos and selfies.

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Four days after Harriet and Matt's meeting, USC issues a statement to the paper. The school claims it did not violate a California statute requiring hospitals and clinics to report problem doctors to the medical board because USC was, quote, a school and not a hospital or clinic. With our story just about to publish, Nikias tries to get ahead of it. He emails the entire university, disclosing the allegations against Tindall and apologizing to, quote, any student who may have visited the Student Health Center and did not receive the respectful care each individual deserves. But it's too late.

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We publish four hours later. Like our story on poliofeto, the news about Tindall explodes across the country. The doctor was suspended by USC two years ago. News of that wasn't made public until today. In fact, nothing pertaining to this doctor was made public until today.

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CBS News isn't buying the timing of Nikias' letter either. For survivors like Lucy Chi, it's a surreal experience. Suddenly, the full extent of Tindall's crimes are visible, and she can see them for what they are. The only time I actually realized there was something wrong was after the LA Times article came out, and I ended up calling some lawyers, and one of my lawyers told me, what you just described, that sexual assault. It really shocked me.

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It really shocked me. Like, I had been talking to multiple lawyers, and no one said that flat out to me. And it just blew me away. I was like, oh my God. That really happened.

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Now that the story is out there, USC looks for any way to dodge accountability. The administration blames Neinstein, the head of the Student Health Center, who died before Tindall was suspended in 2017.. USC says nothing about Neinstein's multiple complaints to the OED, to the General Counsel, the Title IX Coordinator, and HR, all of which were dismissed or ignored. Here's Audrey Nassinger again. It's a cover-up by people at higher levels that just do not care.

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I initially felt a sense of responsibility. Wow, if I had spoken out all those years ago, maybe I could have stopped those generations of women after me. But the more reporting that came out and the more I read, it was very obvious that they had plenty of notice, and they didn't care. It didn't matter to them at all.

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Six former students and patients join in a lawsuit against Tindall and also file suit against USC for failing to fire him. Within a month, there are 52 women involved. ABC's David Muir covers the fast-moving story on World News Tonight. They claim it went on for years and that the university failed to respond to complaints. Tonight, there have now been hundreds of calls to a hotline that's been set up.

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David, I spoke with a lawyer who said today he talked to 36 other women who say they were also assaulted by Dr. Tindall, and he expects that number to grow. More and more women come forward to the L.A. Times with their stories of abuse. The LAPD opens what will become one of the city's biggest sexual abuse investigations ever.

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Currently, our detectives have the names of 52 former patients who have alleged inappropriate conduct by Dr. Tindall while he worked as a gynecologist at the University of Southern California. The time frame... Nikias tries to return to the polio-fetal playbook. He deflects blame, says he knew nothing about Tindall, and issues a vague apology.

[30:10.45 - 30:29.59]

But this time, the drumbeat is just too loud. And the faculty at USC, they decide they've had enough. Hi, it's Andrea Gunning, host of Betrayal. I'm excited to announce that the Betrayal podcast is expanding. We are going to be releasing episodes weekly, every Thursday.

[30:30.29 - 31:00.07]

Each week, you'll hear brand new stories, firsthand, accounts of shocking deception, broken trust, and the trail of destruction left behind. Stories about regaining a sense of safety, a handle on reality, after your entire world is flipped upside down. From unbelievable romantic betrayals. The love that was so real for me was always just a game for him. to betrayals in your own family.

[31:00.17 - 31:18.17]

When I think about my dad, oh, well, he is a sociopath. financial betrayal. This is not even the part where he steals millions of dollars. and life or death deceptions. She's practicing how she's going to cry when the police calls her after they kill me.

[31:19.85 - 31:36.17]

Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm John Walczak, host of the new podcast, Missing in Arizona. And I'm Robert Fisher, one of the most wanted men in the world. We cloned his voice using AI. In 2001,.

[31:36.47 - 31:44.35]

Police say I killed my family. First mom, then the kids. And rigged my house to explode. In a quiet suburb. This is the Beverly Hills of the valley.

[31:44.45 - 31:53.47]

Before escaping into the wilderness. There was sleet and hail and snow coming down. They found my wife's SUV. Right on the reservation boundary. And my dog flew.

[31:53.61 - 32:02.59]

All I could think of is him going to sniper me out of some tree. But not me. Police believe he is alive and hiding somewhere. For two years. They won't tell you anything.

[32:02.71 - 32:10.77]

I've traveled the nation. I'm going down in the cave. Tracking down clues. They were thinking that I picked him up and took him somewhere. If you keep asking me this, I'm going to call the police.

[32:10.77 - 32:18.27]

and have you removed. Searching for Robert Fisher. One of the most dangerous fugitives in the world. Do you recognize my voice? Join an exploding house.

[32:18.33 - 32:28.31]

The hunt. Family annihilation. Today. And a disappearing act. Listen to Missing in Arizona every Wednesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows.

[32:31.95 - 32:47.67]

It started with a backpack at the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games. A backpack that contained a bomb. While the authorities focused on the wrong suspect, a serial bomber planned his next attacks. Two abortion clinics. And a lesbian bar.

[32:50.75 - 33:02.59]

But this isn't his story. It's a human story. One that I've become entangled with. I saw, as soon as I turned the corner, basically someone bleeding out. The victims of these brutal attacks were left to pick up the pieces.

[33:03.33 - 33:10.69]

Forced to explore the gray areas between right and wrong. Life and death. Their once ordinary lives. And mine. Changed forever.

[33:11.01 - 33:30.33]

It kind of gave me a feeling of pending doom. And all the while, our country found itself facing down a long and ugly reckoning with a growing threat. Far right, homegrown, religious terrorism. Listen to Flashpoint on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[33:39.61 - 33:59.87]

In the early morning hours of September 6, 2016,, St. Louis rapper and iconic Ferguson activist, Darren Seals, was found shot dead. Every day, Darren would tell her, they are going to try to kill me. A young man in 2016 was killed on this block. I'm a podcast journalist.

[33:59.99 - 34:16.95]

And I'm a former state senator, Maria Chappell-Nadal. I was in the movement with Darren, and I've spent two years with co-host Ray Novoshelsky, investigating his death. Even if I did want to tell you something, that's a dangerous game to play. The FBI did this to my son. They've been following him for months.

[34:17.15 - 34:31.15]

That's enough proof right there. All episodes available now. Listen to After the Uprising, Season 2, The Murder of Darren Seals, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[34:33.19 - 34:59.17]

Poliofeto was shocking and disturbing and deeply problematic. Dr. Jane Jeon is a professor of political science and international relations at USC, as well as gender and sexuality studies. We didn't actually know all of it until much later, because much of it had been attempted to be covered up by the university, and, I believe, to some degree, participation of the Pasadena police. Dr.

[34:59.25 - 35:36.89]

Ariella Gross was a professor of law and history at USC for 27 years. It wasn't until the Poliofeto story was broken in the LA Times that we started to really pay attention. And I remember conversations with colleagues from the law school when the Poliofeto story came out about, wow, this is really bad. I remember firing off a letter to the president of the academic senate saying, isn't the faculty going to do something, say something? And them saying, look, there's an investigation happening.

[35:37.59 - 35:57.47]

Let's wait for the investigation. When the Tyndall story broke, that's when we were like, okay, that is the last straw. We should not have been silent a year ago, and we're not going to be silent now. For Dr. Jeon, there was a feeling among the faculty that they owed this to the students.

[35:58.01 - 36:17.17]

You feel, if not like complicit in it, you do feel like a bit of a bystander, that we couldn't protect them. We couldn't do anything to help them. We hadn't done anything, which is why we decided to do something. They never told us anything. They issued a few letters, which were frankly BS.

[36:17.55 - 36:39.63]

A lot of denials, like, oh man, we didn't know. Like, nobody believes that. So we formed a group, maybe 50 of us at the beginning, and we were all tenured full professors. We had decided that we would go public once we had 200.. We were having trouble figuring out, because it's such a secretive board, how to send it to the board.

[36:40.21 - 37:10.93]

And then finally somebody said to me, just email it to the president's office, even though it'll say to the chairman of the board of trustees, CC, the president's office, don't worry, they'll get it, you know, immediately. And the letter called for President Nikias to step down. Dr. Gross goes on national TV, on NBC's, The Today Show, to make their case. According to the LA Times, Tyndall was quietly paid off to leave the school last year.

[37:11.39 - 37:54.47]

President Nikias says he understands the faculty's anger and frustration, but the university's board of trustees says it has full confidence in his leadership. That, I think, really freaked the board out, because they were like, uh-oh, now this is really a national story. And the academic senate, which had absolutely ignored us before this, said, oh, I guess we need to call a public meeting. And that was held the following day, on a Wednesday. I actually worried that no one would come, because usually when there's some kind of a scandal or something negative, the faculty just go quiet.

[37:54.69 - 38:08.31]

And we go quiet because faculty have been punished for speaking out. You're sort of frozen out. It's a little bit Putin-esque, if you ask me. And when we got there, you could barely find a seat. The room was packed.

[38:08.61 - 38:36.53]

We were calling the man to be accountable. And we wanted him to take responsibility and to say they would fix it. USC's powerful, secretive board has been standing behind Nikias. But led by billionaire developer Rick Caruso, the board chair, they decide that, for the good of the school, they need to make a change. Caruso calls on leaders among the faculty to meet with Nikias and reinforce this position.

[38:37.29 - 38:59.19]

Dr. William Tierney, USC's professor emeritus, remembers the meeting. Max was kind of sober. I always remember reading that when it was over with Nixon, I think it was Everett Dirksen, a minority senator, went to the White House and he said, Dick, it's over. And that's the way I felt with us, is.

[38:59.19 - 39:23.31]

we weren't angry, but we needed him to see it was over. On May 25, 2018, Max Nikias resigns as president of USC. But today's show covers this development on the board's change of heart. Breaking overnight, a bombshell announcement at the University of Southern California. President C.L.

[39:23.37 - 39:40.75]

Max Nikias agreeing to step down in the wake of a scandal. This is an about face from the university's board of trustees. But, as Dr. Tierney might have predicted, Max Nikias does not simply walk away. As Nikias knows, probably better than anyone, USC likes to solve its problems with money.

[39:42.47 - 40:04.39]

He talked with his lawyer and he gets a $7 million buyout that the board provides him. The board at that time is really at loggerheads with one another. And there are some who want him to return. Like he was on leave for the summer and he's going to come back in September. It was crazy.

[40:05.17 - 40:31.87]

And he's still living in the president's house. How awkward is all this? When word gets out about this most recent backsliding, 670 faculty members signed a petition demanding the board make sure Nikias is gone by the fall semester. It was conveyed to Max. if he did not resign by whatever it was, August 15th or something, all holy hell would break loose.

[40:32.31 - 40:38.43]

Faculty wouldn't teach. I mean, it would have been nutty. So he did. But I mean,

[40:40.37 - 40:54.75]

$7 million? Really? The board still keeps Nikias on the faculty in the School of Engineering. It awards him the title of President Emeritus and names him to a prestigious position as a life trustee. It's a golden parachute.

[40:55.31 - 41:11.87]

And for those like Dr. Jane Jun, USC's response is not enough. We did not receive representation on the board of trustees. They promised to do an investigation. They told us it was underway, and then it was revealed last year that no investigation had taken place.

[41:12.01 - 41:29.03]

There was no report. USC was not the only university to have a doctor who preyed on women students. Dr. Ariella Gross. Unfortunately, that's happened at a number of major universities.

[41:29.55 - 42:07.55]

But USC is the worst in terms of its cover-up, its secrecy, its golden handshakes for wrongdoers, and its refusal to truly investigate and figure out what went wrong and how to avoid doing it again. None of that. On June 26, 2019, Tyndall is arrested by the LAPD. Almost two years later, USC settles a class-action lawsuit with over 700 plaintiffs, generations of young USC women who have been abused by Tyndall. The payout is $852 million.

[42:08.59 - 42:25.65]

And that's on top of more than $215 million. USC already had agreed to pay other groups of Tyndall's accusers. In the end, Dr. George Tyndall cost USC $1.1 billion. It's the largest sexual abuse settlement in the history of American higher education.

[42:26.63 - 42:27.93]

But it's not enough.

[42:29.89 - 42:59.55]

Honestly, I remember feeling really disappointed because I was convinced that I wasn't just fighting for restitution. I was convinced I was fighting for someone at USC to be held accountable because I didn't want this to happen again to anyone else in any other university or hospital. And I remember when the settlement came out, I thought, I hope this isn't it. I hope this isn't the end. I hope there's actually a sense of justice.

[43:00.27 - 43:15.55]

As a prosecutor, Audrey knows, the settlement settles nothing. I'm not done because only Tyndall has been investigated. And that's not enough. It's not about the money. It's about accountability.

[43:15.89 - 43:35.67]

Who signed the $200,000 check to Tyndall to make him go away quietly? Somebody on the board had to know that. I mean, they don't just sign $200,000 checks every day. And it's just like USC to buy their way out of a problem and nobody to be held to account other than Tyndall, who's still sitting at home right now. as we record this.

[43:36.55 - 43:48.55]

Tyndall's no longer sitting at home. And we'll get into that in our next episode. But accountability? That's another question entirely. That's coming up on the season finale of Fallen Angels.

[43:52.83 - 44:13.91]

Fallen Angels, a story of California corruption, is a production of iHeart Podcast in partnership with Best Case Studios. I'm Paul Pringle. This show is based on my book Bad City, Peril and Power in the City of Angels. Fallen Angels was written by Isabel Evans, Adam Pincus, and Brent Katz. Isabel Evans is our producer.

[44:13.91 - 44:35.09]

Brent Katz is co-producer. Associate producers are Hanna Leibovitz-Lockard and Anpaho Locke. Executive producers are me, Paul Pringle, Joe Piccarello, and Adam Pincus for Best Case Studios. Original music is by James Newberry. This episode was edited by Max Michael Miller with assistance from Nisha Venkat.

[44:35.73 - 44:51.87]

Additional editing, sound design, and additional music by Dean White. Harriet Ryan, Matt Hamilton, Sarah Parvini, and Adam Almarek are consulting producers. Our iHeart team is Allie Perry and Carl Kadle. Follow and rate Fallen Angels wherever you get your podcasts.

[44:56.19 - 45:22.51]

Hi, it's Andrea Gunning, the host of Betrayal. I'm excited to announce that the Betrayal podcast is expanding. We are going to be releasing episodes weekly, every Thursday. Each week, you'll hear brand new stories, firsthand accounts of shocking deception, broken trust, and the trail of destruction left behind. Listen to Betrayal weekly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[45:27.15 - 45:40.93]

I'm John Walczak, host of the new podcast Missing in Arizona. And I'm Robert Fisher, one of the most wanted men in the world. We cloned his voice using AI. In 2001,. police say I killed my family and rigged my house to explode.

[45:40.93 - 45:50.03]

Before escaping into the wilderness, police believe he is alive and hiding somewhere. Join me. I'm going down in the cave as I track down clues. I'm going to call the police and have you removed. Hunting.

[45:50.15 - 46:01.45]

One of the most dangerous fugitives in the world. Robert Fisher. Do you recognize my voice? Listen to Missing in Arizona every Wednesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows.

[46:04.41 - 46:21.45]

Back in 96, Atlanta was booming with excitement around hosting the Centennial Olympic Games. And then, a deranged zealot willing to kill for a cause lit a fuse that would change my life and so many others forever. Rippling out for generations.

[46:23.71 - 46:29.51]

Listen to Flashpoint on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[46:32.41 - 46:41.77]

In the early morning hours of September 6, 2016,, St. Louis rapper and activist Darren Seals was found murdered.

[46:50.61 - 47:02.67]

All episodes available now. Listen to After the Uprising, The Murder of Darren Seals, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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