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- [00:01]
Podcast Host (True Crime Network)
We'll get back to your true crime story in just a moment. This podcast is part of the Always True Crime Network, home of thousands of episodes exploring gripping true crime cases. If you're looking for somewhere to start, check out our recent investigative series, Project Mind Control. It uncovers a chilling chapter in history, examining the disturbing experiments carried out on vulnerable people in an attempt to erase and reprogram the human mind. Featuring testimony from one of the last known survivors of a notorious Canadian psychiatric institution, it's a powerful story that's as shocking as it is important. Check out the show and more@always truecrime.com.
- [00:45]
Thomson Reuters Sponsor Voice
This podcast is brought to you by Thomson Reuters. The best don't just do their work. They change what's possible. Cases won, audits completed, jobs saved. Behind every one of those moments is a professional who needed to get it right and did. Thomson Reuters builds the technology that sharpens insights, speeds up decision making, and powers the outcomes that matter. So when professionals act, the impact is felt by everyone. Be a changemaker visit tr.com changemakers running
- [01:16]
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- [02:26]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
If you sold somebody a loaded gun who you knew was in a vulnerable state and they shot themselves, I think it is murder. Just because you're using the Internet doesn't mean you get away with murder.
- [02:38]
Damon Fairless (Host of Hunting Warhead)
I'm Damon Fairless, host of Hunting Warhead. This season I take you inside the business of suicide and the places desperate people go when they can't find what they need in the real world. Hunting the Suicide Salesman available now wherever you get your podcasts.
- [03:03]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
What had started as a medical disciplinary had spiraled into a criminal investigation.
- [03:09]
Bernard (Police Officer)
There were very serious allegations. There was good reasons for keeping him on the island. He clearly was a flight risk.
- [03:14]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
Bernard and his wife Sandra were part of a gaggle of British serving and retired cops dispatched to the island of St. Helena to find out what this Dr. Sergio Villatoro Bran had been up to. Before they arrived, the wayward surgeon had been arrested, interviewed, he'd had his passport taken off him.
- [03:34]
Vince (Local Newspaper Editor)
There was an occasion when he. When he tried to sneak off. Idiot.
- [03:40]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
Local newspaper editor Vince told me it was clear that Dr. Sergio didn't want to stick around.
- [03:45]
Vince (Local Newspaper Editor)
He was up at the airport and waiting for a plane and he was going to climb aboard and sneak off into the wild blue yonder. But a policeman tapped in on the shoulder and said, come with me.
- [04:00]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
But then Dr. Sergio turned to officialdom. He just applied to the court to have his passport back.
- [04:07]
Bernard (Police Officer)
Why would it be in the interest of justice to restore his passport and let him off the island and then take the risk that he could have gone anywhere?
- [04:16]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
What kind of a cause is going to give the passport back to a surgeon being investigated for many, many serious crimes? Well, according to St. Helena from Audio Always and me, Luke Jones. This is The Surgeon of St. Helena. Episode 2 Good Company. In 2021, just before police officers Bernard and Sandra arrived to join the investigation, Dr. Sergio was off. A hearing was held at very short notice by then Chief Justice Charles Eakins.
- [04:54]
Bernard (Police Officer)
He said, I want his passport returned to him today. He's booked on a flight to go tomorrow. If anyone interferes with him getting on that flight, there will be repercussions. You read into that what you like. Because he knew the police were not going to be able to appeal it quick enough to stop him getting on that plane. And when they appealed it, yes, it was overturned, but it already gone. And I think it's, it's only fair to point.
- [05:18]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
You seem angry still at talking about angry.
- [05:20]
Bernard (Police Officer)
I'm very angry because these are decent people who are not being served properly by a part of the government that should be.
- [05:29]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
Remember, this is a British island with a British legal system. After the Chief justice made that controversial decision, Dr. Sergio didn't wait around. He was gone in less than 24 hours on one of the flights away to South Africa and then on to Guatemala. The decision though, to give him his passport back was then overturned by the Court of Appeal. But In September, when Dr. Sergio was long gone, soon police officers Bernard and Sandra were on the island and ready to assist the investigation. After emerging from COVID isolation, they set up shop in Jamestown's police station. It's halfway down the High Street.
- [06:10]
Sandra (Police Officer)
You feel as though you're going back into Georgia in 18th century. You feel like you're going back in
- [06:14]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
time down the hill. They'd commute every morning you have to
- [06:18]
Sandra (Police Officer)
drive down this long windy road that only has single passes in certain and then you get right to down into the valley of the road of Jamestown, which is the main town.
- [06:30]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
They had an office, two desks at either side of a room big enough to take eight or 10 offices.
- [06:35]
Sandra (Police Officer)
They say it was locked all the time. It was supposed to be quite secret, the operation that we were involved in, although clearly everybody did know some of
- [06:43]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
those affected would come down to the capital, just a 20 minute drive from literally anywhere else on the island. But some, because of what had happened to them, of course, had mobility issues. So Bernard and Sandra would take off in their 4x4 up and around St Helena's steep and bumpy roads. And it seemed like almost everyone had a grim story to tell. Every day Bernard and Sandra were coming face to face with some dreadful doctor Sergio created mess.
- [07:13]
Sandra (Police Officer)
Oh, for me, without a doubt, it was the elderly lady that had fallen in the street, fallen face first, put her arms down, down to stop her.
- [07:23]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
She was rushed to hospital.
- [07:25]
Sandra (Police Officer)
She ended up in there for several days before they even discovered that she'd broken both her arms.
- [07:31]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
Dr. Sergio unfortunately operated on her. He put a long metal pin in her arm to fix it. So far so good. But as Bernard and Sandra found with lots of his patients, she remained in excruciating pain for months. It just got worse and worse.
- [07:48]
Sandra (Police Officer)
They have finally agreed that she would be sent to which sometimes happened, they would send them to hospital in the uk.
- [07:56]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
Just days before being flown out though, she turned up again at St Helena's Hospital. The pain was bad, but also her elbow had started bleeding. A different surgeon took a look, said,
- [08:09]
Sandra (Police Officer)
well, as you're going to the UK again, I'll just bandage it. There's obviously something wrong, but I'll bandage it and they can assess it in the uk. And as he lifted her arm to bandage it, the pin fell out and it was like a knitting needle. It was like 12 inches long and it fell onto the bed. And I must say, when I took that statement, we were all in tears because this lady at that point still couldn't raise her arms above her head. They were having to put adaptations into the house. All her dresses had to be adapted because she couldn't dress herself anymore. And this was the person that actually said to me on the day that we were going, please will you Try and find somebody in the UK that can help us. Still, I can't stop thinking about that woman to this day. Her life changed and it shouldn't have.
- [09:04]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
Bernard tells me about a young woman they met.
- [09:06]
Bernard (Police Officer)
She had an active job, she was having problems with her knees.
- [09:10]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
She went in for knee surgery with Sergio and came out in agony. For months she struggled.
- [09:16]
Bernard (Police Officer)
She was basically sat at home, she couldn't even bathe herself and she was totally reliant on her husband to leave her food for the day at times because she couldn't physically move too much within the house. Going back to Sergio, she then said to him, well, you know, you said this was going to be, you know, I'd be back up on my feet within a couple of weeks. And he said, oh, no. What I ended up doing was different to what I proposed to do and unfortunately I've only done that operation a small number of times and there's never been a good outcome.
- [09:46]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
Was he experimenting on people, trying out different bits, using people as basically on the job training? I've spoken to one of his patients who needed relatively routine knee surgery and he remembers being wheeled into the operation and catching a glimpse of, of Sergio on his phone watching a video of how to do the surgery. A bit of last minute instruction. This person says they woke up afterwards and his leg from the knee down was sticking out at an angle. He spoke to one of the nurses who said when Sergio made the cut, it was immediately obvious he'd cut too much bone. So when he bracketed it back together, he had no choice but to have it coming out at an angle. I look disfigured. This person told me I look like I've had an accident. It's created back problems for them. They've had to have more surgery and haven't been right since.
- [10:41]
Patient or Patient's Spouse
I had two operations for surgery, the shoulder, and then I had to go for the third one to Gibbert because it wasn't done right.
- [10:48]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
This couple have both been under Sergio's knife. She eventually had to go to South Africa to get another surgeon to look at what he'd done.
- [10:56]
Patient or Patient's Spouse
He did the operation on my shoulder again and his words was to me was to say he took a lot of muck out of there. He did. Took a lot of muck from Sergio's daddy work. So it was all infected, you know, so it's still not right. Still not right. It still hurt.
- [11:16]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
This is an elderly couple living in very modest circumstances with very little money and for the husband, they've had to fork out for multiple trips abroad to sort out what Sergio did to his knees. So what about getting there and staying there and all of that?
- [11:32]
Patient or Patient's Spouse
Not an expense. And I mean, he went twice. Three times. Three times.
- [11:37]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
Do you have that kind of money spare? I have to break in a bike.
- [11:42]
Bernard (Police Officer)
No, I know.
- [11:44]
Patient or Patient's Spouse
I want to. No, no, we're struggling. Yeah, we're struggling, but I just thought, you know, you're healthy, it's your health.
- [11:52]
Damon Fairless (Host of Hunting Warhead)
Yeah.
- [11:52]
Patient or Patient's Spouse
You know, no help from the government.
- [11:54]
Vince (Local Newspaper Editor)
No.
- [11:54]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
I don't get no help.
- [11:55]
Patient or Patient's Spouse
No.
- [11:56]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
And I can't get no personal at all because I'm on 72. Yeah. So how are you affording it?
- [12:04]
Patient or Patient's Spouse
When we go away, we bring the things home to sell. Like with the clothing. Yeah.
- [12:08]
Bernard (Police Officer)
Like just very clever.
- [12:10]
Patient or Patient's Spouse
Yeah. To help Boots up. Yeah. I mean, we like to know, we let the doctors operate on us. We don't know it, you know, and that's the outcome.
- [12:22]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
Do you worry that it might never be sorted?
- [12:24]
Patient or Patient's Spouse
Yes.
- [12:26]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
It became clearer and clearer to the investigation that a broad spread of people, a decent chunk of this island's population was affected. And it seemed Sergio was doing what he liked to whoever he liked to children, even.
- [12:44]
Rita (Mother of Savannah)
So he presses twisted it around and everything. And after giving her a physical examination, said she needed to have an operation.
- [12:54]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
For reasons that'll come clear later, we're not going to use the real names of this mother and daughter. Instead we're going to call them Savannah and Rita. No scans?
- [13:03]
Rita (Mother of Savannah)
There was no scans?
- [13:04]
Savannah (Patient)
No.
- [13:04]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
Not at any point?
- [13:05]
Rita (Mother of Savannah)
No.
- [13:06]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
So he did surgery on your knee without at any point doing any imaging?
- [13:10]
Boost Mobile Advertiser
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- [13:11]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
Savannah was one of Sergio's first patients on the island and was just nine years old at the time.
- [13:17]
Rita (Mother of Savannah)
He came across as a person who knew what they were talking about. You know, it's a meniscus tear, you need to have this.
- [13:24]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
So of course, even diagnosed a specific thing.
- [13:26]
Rita (Mother of Savannah)
Yes.
- [13:27]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
Just from feeling the knee. That's sort of incredible.
- [13:30]
Rita (Mother of Savannah)
Yes. So you went by what the expert told you. He's saying she won't be able to walk in six months time. So of course, you take that as the expert. They know what they're doing. So you agree to the surgery post
- [13:48]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
surgery, and despite lots of asking, her mother, Rita says they weren't given any physio. Savannah even had to just walk out of the hospital with her leg in a cast. But months later, you guessed it, she was in terrible pain, her knee was swollen. So they went back to Dr. Sergio.
- [14:06]
Rita (Mother of Savannah)
Then that meeting was when he said, no, he didn't operate on her. I said, yes, you did. No, no, no, I didn't operate. I said, yes, you did, you operated on her. So at that point, you know, alarm bells start ringing because this is the only orthopaedic surgeon we've had and you tell him he didn't operate.
- [14:28]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
It'll have been in her notes or something, wouldn't it?
- [14:31]
Rita (Mother of Savannah)
Was that when they said the notes disappeared or was it afterwards? I think afterwards, yes. So funny that. Yes. So we just had to do our own thing.
- [14:44]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
For years, Savannah struggled in pain. Sergio vanished and they'd have to see a new surgeon every few months.
- [14:51]
Rita (Mother of Savannah)
Can't remember his name, but he was the one who told me to shut up. We were there and he told me to shut up. And she walked out, out. So she walked out of the surgery and left me there. And I was like, oh my God, we got nowhere to go. We got nobody who will actually sit and listen.
- [15:10]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
One surgeon couldn't believe that that kind of surgery had been done on a child.
- [15:14]
Rita (Mother of Savannah)
He was saying to me, you know, do you realize that you shouldn't have done this operation on a nine year old child? I said, well, nobody told me that. He said, because they're too young or something is, you know, they're still growing.
- [15:28]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
This went on for years and still isn't sorted. Savannah has a very active job. She's a young woman but is really worried about getting to the point where she's just signed off from work.
- [15:39]
Savannah (Patient)
Within a working area, there's a few steps that we need to walk up and sometimes if my knee on a bad day, it will start hurting there. July last year, there was an issue where my knee popped out and it was really bad and I had to go to the hospital. So there was talk within my job that I could be deemed unfit.
- [16:02]
Rita (Mother of Savannah)
I've been with her once to a doctor and the minute they open the screen up and they look at her records, their attitudes change. I think one of them said to you, oh, you're a Sergio case. And the whole atmosphere changed. And I thinking that's got nothing to do with the problem we hear. But now, you know, those that it happened to, they have to support and help. San Garment has to take accountability, you know, and those that still suffer and try to help him in some way, they still have their life ahead of them.
- [16:37]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
The moment Sergio's name was mentioned, the whole atmosphere changed. This is obviously just a flavour of what Bernard and Sandra heard. Their list started at 50 patients, but grew. More people were identified. But interestingly, they say many of them really didn't want to complain?
- [16:57]
Sandra (Police Officer)
Of course not. They didn't want to kick up a fuss. And also I think that they were worried if they did kick up a fuss, what would happen long term, you
- [17:05]
Bernard (Police Officer)
know, almost if you make too much fuss, then you're not going to get the basic support. There was a general feeling of acceptance that, well, what can we do? This is just life in St. Helena.
- [17:21]
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- [17:37]
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- [18:39]
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- [18:46]
Thomson Reuters Sponsor Voice
This podcast is brought to you by Thomson Reuters. The best don't just do their work. They change what's possible. Cases won, audits completed, jobs saved. Behind every one of those moments is a professional who needed to get it right and did. Thomson Reuters builds the technology that sharpens insights, speeds up decision making, and powers the outcomes that matter. So when professionals act, the impact is felt by everyone. Be a changemaker visit tr.com changemakers summer
- [19:17]
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- [19:35]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
I started digging more into Dr. Sergio's time on the island. There's little mention of him in Vince's newspaper or in photographs, but he is mentioned in an inquiry that was undertaken in 2015, when he did two stints as a visiting orthopedic surgeon. There's some quite lurid claims being made at the time about Child sexual abuse on the island. A QC from the UK undertook an inquiry into what was actually happening. They didn't find Pitcairn levels of widespread child sexual abuse that some claimed, but they did uncover some shocking stories about care. Catherine, who runs the Human Rights Commission on Ireland, remembers the case of a profoundly disabled young woman who was just languishing in a children's care home.
- [20:18]
Catherine (Human Rights Commission Representative)
She was lying in a cot with the sides up. There was white walls in the room she was in in this care home. It was quite cold.
- [20:27]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
She was four years old when she went into care and had a severe genetic neurodegenerative disorder which left her non verbal, unable to properly hear, with learning difficulties and unable to use any of her limbs.
- [20:42]
Catherine (Human Rights Commission Representative)
She'd not seen any doctor to look at her underlying condition for about 14, almost 14 years. She'd never had an X ray, she'd never had anything done. Her limbs were all bent out of shape because she'd had no physiotherapy.
- [20:59]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
The place stank of urine and it was infested with flies.
- [21:03]
Catherine (Human Rights Commission Representative)
She was shouting, screaming. She had bed sores that went through to her bones.
- [21:10]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
The woman was found by a new care worker who came to the island in conditions the inquiry later described as, quote, one of the most serious cases of institutional neglect we've ever encountered.
- [21:22]
Catherine (Human Rights Commission Representative)
It was a social worker who found her and phoned me and said, could I come up, because he was so concerned about what state she was in.
- [21:32]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
Eventually, a specialist team from the UK was brought out to have a battle look at the young woman.
- [21:36]
Catherine (Human Rights Commission Representative)
Words like appalling, neglect, shameful, astonishing. In this day and age, those sorts of phrases were used in the reports in the meetings.
- [21:49]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
This team said the young woman had to be taken off the island as soon as possible for medical care and they'd have to work to get her to a healthy weight. She was 19 years old at this point and weighed just 15 kilograms. A later court judgment noted that Dr. Sergio, who had recently arrived on the island, suggested instead chopping her legs off so she could sit more easily in a wheelchair.
- [22:12]
Catherine (Human Rights Commission Representative)
Fortunately, the anaesthetist said, no, I will not risk putting her under general anaesthetic.
- [22:20]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
It's quite the insight into how Dr. Sergio operated. He had the backing of the chief medical officer, another Guatemalan called Dr. Carlos Soto. The young woman needed a stomach peg or a nasal gastric tube. But According to Catherine, Dr. Soto wasn't convinced of the need for urgency and
- [22:40]
Catherine (Human Rights Commission Representative)
the head of the team said, no, you will do it today. And he said, oh, she's been starving for 14 years. What's another three or four days? At which point I was forcibly sat back down in my chair by the person sitting next to me because I just couldn't believe I'd heard that. And he basically just was,
- [23:01]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
what?
- [23:02]
Catherine (Human Rights Commission Representative)
Well, he just. I think he just thought her life was worth nothing and it'd be better to let her die rather than all the expense.
- [23:09]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
Catherine says that under the leadership of Dr. Soto, dynamics in the hospital started to change.
- [23:16]
Catherine (Human Rights Commission Representative)
The hospital became very cliquey. Doctors that stood up to him were bullied out. We had several doctors come here to say they didn't want to make a formal complaint because they wanted to keep their records clean. They'd resigned, so it wasn't like a disciplinary, but they wanted to keep their reputations intact, but they were no longer prepared to work with him.
- [23:39]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
It's thought that he actually helped get his friend Dr. Sergio over to the island when they were in need of an orthopaedic surgeon.
- [23:45]
Catherine (Human Rights Commission Representative)
I think what happened was that Guatemala is a hell of a place to live. It is unstable. If you've got children, if you want a future, it's a very difficult place to live and work. He was lucky he got out. If I'm being kind, I'd like to think that he wanted to help his friends and get them out too. If I'm being unkind, I might think they just wanted to bring other people who wouldn't notice his weaknesses or wouldn't say anything about them, but. So when he came, they changed the law to allow Guatemalan doctors and then he bought, I think, just two more out.
- [24:22]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
We reached out to Dr. Soto. He didn't respond. Sergio had plenty of friends on the island, though, investigating him after he'd fled. Bernard and Sandra couldn't believe the pushback that they were getting from certain quarters.
- [24:37]
Sandra (Police Officer)
What's the word that some people felt
- [24:39]
Rita (Mother of Savannah)
it was, I would describe it pursuing
- [24:42]
Sandra (Police Officer)
somebody who was just doing his job and it went wrong. I think that was some people's views. People would say he was a really nice man, he was handsome, he was sociable. Why would he do this? And I often would say, well, Jeffrey diamond was handsome and he was being, you know, nice. People still commit offences, but I think that was a problem.
- [25:08]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
One of the surprising areas they met resistance in was the hospital itself. Jamestown Hospital is a great big yellowish building further up the high street from the police station. There are pot plants dotted around all outside. It has a breezy, open feel to it. It was built in the 1950s, replacing an old military hospital.
- [25:31]
Bernard (Police Officer)
You know, I worked for 32 years for the Metropolitan Police and I have never, ever experienced the sort of difficulty that we had with regard to this investigation in just getting straightforward medical details from hospital.
- [25:44]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
Bernard and Sandra applied, as you'd expect, to get access to the medical records of all these victims that they'd been speaking to with their permission.
- [25:52]
Bernard (Police Officer)
It was just common practice.
- [25:55]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
But only some were handed over and even they, Bernard and Sandra said, had heavy redactions.
- [26:01]
Bernard (Police Officer)
To this day, I still cannot see why it would be not in their interest. What have you got to hide? You know, you've got the consent from the patient, the patient has given the consent for their notes to be disclosed to police in a criminal investigation. It's as simple as that. It's not for the hospital to decide you don't need this, because again, we
- [26:19]
Sandra (Police Officer)
were being told that we were harassing them for these medical forms and that they had a lot of work and, you know, and it was causing them stress.
- [26:27]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
They were hampering the investigation, Sandra says, and some were being quite cagey when it came to giving statements.
- [26:34]
Sandra (Police Officer)
That was the other thing. Sometimes you say, oh, I told them I need to check first before I can say, you know. So constantly it was, they would double check in before anyone was open to talk to us.
- [26:46]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
What do you make of that?
- [26:49]
Sandra (Police Officer)
Why?
- [26:50]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
A new orthopaedic surgeon was in place now. Sergio had gone, someone who had relatives on the island. They were dealing with the enormous aftermath of Sergio's work. So Bernard, of course, wanted to speak to them.
- [27:02]
Bernard (Police Officer)
I rang him one day and said, oh, I'll need to take a statement from you as regards what your experience has been and the patients you've seen. His response was, well, who's paying for that? I said, I'm sorry, who's paying for it? You've got an obligation to speak to me. Oh, okay. Well, I'll need to speak to my seniors. I think it was the same day. Within an hour or so, he rang me back. I said, oh, I won't be speaking to you. And I did say to him, I said, well, just so you know, I believe that I'm going to need to make you aware of the fact that I'm going to have to contact the General Medical Council, and therefore it's only right that I point that out to you. He only accused me of threatening him. I said, I'm not threatening you, I'm just telling you what the next step for you could be, that I will need to do that. So then he made contact with the police station to make a complaint.
- [27:48]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
We did reach out to this doctor, but they didn't respond. He did make a lengthy statement to the police in the end, but Bernard says he wasn't best pleased when he next saw him.
- [27:59]
Bernard (Police Officer)
He just became, you know, so riled, literally upon seeing me get out of my hospital. Literally get out of my hospital. So hang on, hang on. It's not your hospital. I'm a police officer. I'll leave when I'm ready to leave, you know, so just totally unprofessional behavior. You know, I appreciate people get upset,
- [28:17]
Sandra (Police Officer)
the redactions and the. And the constant pushbacks. That's when you start to think, yeah, really, Are you trying to cover up?
- [28:26]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
Could that really be the case? Bernard and Sandra were only on the island for a few months, and it would soon be time for them to leave and hand over what remained of the investigation to another police officer. They were really worried about whether their and their colleagues hard work would actually result in charges.
- [28:44]
Sandra (Police Officer)
We just felt that the whole process was trying to water down what was happening, what he'd done.
- [28:52]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
Sergio was very much in with the governing classes, they say.
- [28:56]
Bernard (Police Officer)
I would describe it as a little enclave of where they lived. And so Sergio, the chief justice, the governor, the assistant, the deputy governor, all lived in a very small, tight area. And when we reviewed and subsequently looked at Sergio's media, taking off phones, etcetera, There was parties. So they socialized. So as you'd expect, I suppose so they knew each other quite well. The deputy governor and his wife had given him. Sergio had given character references to him. This is after the criminal investigation had been instigated. That's the impression that I came out with with respect to some of these officials, that they were more interested in how it was going to look for them as opposed to being candid and
- [29:44]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
open and transparent what to do. If this was the environment they were trying to investigate in, how high up would they need to go to get help?
- [29:57]
Sandra (Police Officer)
I'm not churchy. Bernard's Catholic. There's nothing to do on the island. Our colleague had said, come to church on a Sunday morning. So every Sunday morning we would go to church. It was a very social thing. The father was not Catholic, preachy. He was really interesting, a really interesting man. Afterwards, you'd have tea and cake or biscuits that you'd take and you'd get to meet other islanders. But of course, sometimes they would be members of the government. Sometimes it came a bit awkward.
- [30:31]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
Q. The elderly and, as Sandra describes, not particularly preachy priest.
- [30:35]
Sandra (Police Officer)
He started giving this talk and basically we came out afterwards and we went, was he aiming at all these people that won't give us statements? Because it honestly sounded as though he was trying to say, sometimes you've got to stand up and do the right thing, wasn't it? And it was just. We were like, yes, Father David.
- [30:57]
Bernard (Police Officer)
Yeah, yeah, thank you, you.
- [30:59]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
Because they were.
- [31:01]
Sandra (Police Officer)
He obviously would have known because as you say, it's a small island. He probably knew these things were going on. And yeah, it was quite.
- [31:09]
Bernard (Police Officer)
Yeah, it was. And it wasn't in his sort of accusatory way, but it was, it was. He was shiving them along. He was very aware of who his audience were.
- [31:18]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
Bernard and Sandra started to pack up. Their time on the island was over. Time was also up for their senior investigating officer too, who they really rated. Funding for this beefed up expat team had run out, so the cases were being handed over to prosecutors and the rest that needed investigating to another police officer. What would happen, Bernard and Sandra wondered as they headed all the way back to London Stansted. And even if they did charge Sergio, would it even matter? I mean, he was in Guatemala now, the UK and St Helena by extension does have an extradition treaty with Guatemala from 1886. Would that work? Interestingly though, and shockingly, this isn't St. Helena's first brush with disastrous doctors.
- [32:08]
Vince (Local Newspaper Editor)
He had no qualifications whatsoever. He conned his way in. He was really, you know, somewhere short of a picnic.
- [32:17]
Luke Jones (Host/Narrator of The Surgeon of St. Helena)
Obviously, you know, that is Next time on the surgeon of St. Helena. Again, we did reach out to Dr. Sergio Villatoro Bran, who did not respond to our many requests for comment. The St Helena government who run the hospital declined to comment. If you want to listen to more of this show early and ad free, search for Always True Crime on Patreon where you'll find pictures from my time on the island as well. Or you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts. The surgeon of St. Helena is an audio always production. It's written and hosted by me, Luke Jones, Louisa Adams is the producer, Ailsa Rochester is the executive producer and sound design is by Craig Edmondson.
- [33:06]
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Podcast Host (True Crime Network)
Want more? True Crime this podcast and loads more are part of the Always True Crime network. It's packed with box sets to binge and twisted tales you won't find anywhere else. Find your next podcast obsession at always truecrime.com.