Chum

"Doctor of Villains": The Anonymous Physician Who Treated Chicago's Most Dangerous Employees

By Dana Smith, The Chicago Review

March 2024

In a quiet suburb on the edge of Chicago, one man hides in plain sight. Once, he was an upstanding doctor with a small private practice, a family, and dreams of making a difference in his community. Today, he's an ex-"villain doctor," formerly entangled with one of Chicago's most infamous powers-based criminal organizations, the Lakefront Syndicate, one of the few lucky survivors of the Big Raid. In an exclusive interview, he opens up for the first time about the dangerous world he left behind, a life shaped by unexpected choices and moral compromise.

"You Treat One Guy, and That's How It Starts"

The doctor--who we'll call Dr. X--speaks softly, a man clearly worn down by years of anxiety, secrecy, and ethical conflict. His story began innocuously enough. "It started with one patient," he recalls. "I had this guy come in, asking for care outside office hours. Friendly enough, quiet. Said he'd pay in cash, and I figured he was just one of those guys who prefers to avoid hospitals."

The man, as it turned out, was a "contractor" for the Lakefront Syndicate, a well-organized villain group with legitimate businesses that doubled as fronts for their real work. Initially, Dr. X thought nothing of it--he was just providing medical care, not asking questions. But soon, that patient told his friends and colleagues, who told others. More people started showing up with unexplained bruises, lacerations, and chemical burns, all with stories that didn't add up.

"By the time I realized who they all worked for, it was already too late," Dr. X explains. "My clinic was filling up with guys who didn't exactly make eye contact and paid well to keep things off the books. My regular patients started to feel the tension, too. They stopped coming, which only made me more dependent on my new clientele."

Ethics in the Gray Zone

For Dr. X, the ethical dilemma was immediate and heavy. In medical school, he'd been trained to treat every patient with dignity and confidentiality, to care without judgment. But here he found himself bound to a new clientele whose actions he increasingly found repugnant.

"At first, I tried to rationalize it. I wasn't helping them commit crimes; I was just treating their injuries. But when you're patching up someone you know is going back out there to hurt others or reinforce a protection racket, it starts to eat at you."

As more members of the Syndicate came to him for care, Dr. X found himself facing requests that blurred ethical lines further. Falsify a medical report here, administer painkillers without documentation there. Occasionally, he'd be called to private residences, where he'd treat higher-ups with wounds sustained in "hero encounters"--a euphemism for battles with vigilantes or even known superheroes.

"You start to see the damage these people do, and yet you're treating them like anyone else," he says. "But they're not like anyone else. They're hurting the city, hurting innocent people. It didn't feel like medicine anymore--it felt like complicity."

Held Hostage by Dependency

Over time, Dr. X found it impossible to leave. The money was good, far better than he could have made in his small practice, but it came with invisible shackles. As he became the Syndicate's trusted doctor, attempts to disengage were met with reminders of how much he owed them--financially and, in their words, "for his own safety."

"They never threatened me directly. But the implication was always there, like a shadow over everything I did," he says. "And by the time I realized it, I didn't know how to leave. I'd gone from being a doctor with a good reputation to someone whose entire practice was people who'd sooner hurt me than let me walk away."

The emotional toll was immense. Isolated from colleagues, working in secrecy, and constantly on edge, Dr. X began to feel he was a prisoner in his own life. His family, unaware of the full extent of his involvement, worried for his health as he withdrew into a private shell. "It was like I was under siege," he says. "Constantly looking over my shoulder, second-guessing every decision, wondering if I'd be called in for something I couldn't ethically handle."

Escape and Release

In an unusual twist, Dr. X was eventually given permission to leave. After nearly a decade as their physician, he approached a high-ranking member of the Lakefront Syndicate and explained, carefully, that he needed to walk away for the sake of his health and family. Remarkably, they allowed him to leave on the condition of silence.

"They let me go," he says with an almost disbelieving tone. "I'd been so tied up in this world that I didn't think I'd ever get out. But they respected that I'd served them loyally for so long. I think, for them, loyalty runs both ways. They had new doctors - I wasn't their old reliable anymore."

With his departure came conditions. He couldn't speak about his experience openly, especially not to law enforcement, and he was advised--gently but firmly--to keep a low profile. Returning to a traditional medical practice was impossible; his reputation had shifted too drastically. Today, he works in telemedicine, helping patients remotely while staying under the Syndicate's radar.

"It feels surreal to be free," he says. "There's guilt, sure. But more than anything, there's relief. I wish I could say I'd made the right choices from the beginning, but once you're in that world, right and wrong blur together."

The Aftermath and Reflections

Dr. X reflects on the gradual entrapment that pulled him into the underworld. "One patient turns into two, then into an entire clientele," he says. "Before you know it, you're the doctor for the Syndicate, and there's no way out."

When asked what advice he would give to medical professionals facing similar situations, Dr. X pauses. "The best thing you can do is set boundaries early and stick to them. You think you're just helping one person, doing a quick favor, but once you're in, that world is hard to leave. No matter the money, no matter the loyalty, there's no replacement for the peace of mind that comes from ethical practice."

Today, Dr. X lives quietly, a man haunted by a world he once served but ultimately escaped. He may be free, but the shadows of the Lakefront Syndicate linger in every cautious step, every guarded answer. For now, he says, that's enough.