COLUMBUS, Ohio (WSYX) — Vascular surgeon Michael McKee, accused in a high-profile double murder in Columbus, managed to evade a malpractice lawsuit for months before the alleged crime.
ABC6 Investigates has uncovered nearly a dozen failed attempts to serve McKee with the lawsuit, which originated in Nevada. The lawsuit, filed by Las Vegas lawyer Dan Laird, claims McKee failed to train a physician’s assistant who injured a patient at Las Vegas Surgical Associates LLP in 2023.
Laird revealed that attempts to serve McKee were thwarted by fake addresses and questionable state-issued phone numbers.
“Interestingly, the address that was given to us by the surgery group that he worked for turned out to be a fake address,” Laird said. “It was an address that doesn’t exist.”
McKee’s disappearance was noted months before he was arrested in Chicago for the murders of his ex-wife, Monique Tepe, and her new husband, Spencer, in their Columbus home in December. Laird’s process servicer documented at least nine attempts to locate McKee, with the address provided by the medical group proving non-existent and his phone number issued with the state medical board leading to a fax machine.
Laird’s efforts to contact McKee through former colleagues, including Dr. Peter Caravella, who is also listed in the malpractice suit, were unsuccessful.
“He said he has no idea where Dr. Michael McKee is now,” Laird recounted from his response in October. “He just disappeared.”
McKee’s Nevada medical license expired last summer. ABC6 Investigates asked Laird if it is common practice for a surgeon to leave contact information with former employers due to consultations regarding patient care.
“They tend to be highly responsible people,” Laird said. “They’re not the kind of people who just disappeared suddenly, and this was very surprising to us.”
Despite tracking McKee’s current medical license to Rockford, Illinois, in November, repeated phone calls made by Laird went unanswered. Laird was unaware of the Columbus murders until ABC6 Investigates informed him this week.
“Shocking,” he said. “If you listed out the people who would likely be accused of committing a double homicide, a fully trained vascular surgeon would be at the bottom of my list.”
Laird told ABC6 Investigates that he also found it unusual that an attorney did not contact him on McKee’s behalf who would be funded by malpractice insurance. Laird is now determining if McKee did not extend this insurance when he left Las Vegas. If he did not, Laird calls the action unusual due to unforeseen complications or claims by former patients.
In October, a judge granted a declaration of due diligence in the malpractice case, allowing McKee to be served via a newspaper notice. This is only the second time in Laird’s 12-year career that he has had to resort to such measures. Attempts to contact the medical group where McKee worked were unsuccessful, as no one returned calls to ABC6.
