''I fell for the super surgeon fantasist who promised the Pope would marry us and Elton John would play at our wedding': The moment investigative journalist Benita Alexander realised she'd been duped will leave you gobsmacked

At first glance, Dr Paolo Macchiarini seemed almost too good to be true. A world-renowned doctor nicknamed the ‘super surgeon’, he was handsome, charismatic and appeared to have an inherent empathy for his patients.

In 2013, his work in the field of transplants was deemed so ground-breaking that Benita Alexander, an award-winning producer with the U.S. broadcaster NBC, was dispatched to interview him for a TV special on regenerative medicine.

‘We joked that he was a George Clooney lookalike with international flair - speaking several languages and jetting around the world for work,’ says Benita. ‘He was impressive and intriguing.’

So charismatic, indeed, that the two enjoyed a whirlwind romance and, after just ten months, became engaged.

Until, in a twist worthy of any hospital soap opera, Macchiarini was unmasked as a Walter Mitty-esque fantasist, dragging in a cast of characters that included, extraordinarily, Princess Diana and the Pope.

Benita fell for ‘super surgeon’ Paolo Macchiarini and enjoyed a whirlwind romance - and became engaged after just ten months together

Benita, now 57, cuts a glamorous figure and is a 'tough' investigative journalist living in New York

‘I no longer knew this man who had been lying beside me in bed,’ says Benita, understandably.

Despite her heartbreak, it turned out, however, that she was one of the luckier ones. Not only was her fiance a fraud in love, he has also been found guilty of unscientific misconduct in his research.

‘I went through profound heartache and humiliation,’ says Benita. ‘But I wanted to tell this story to give the people who died some semblance of justice.’

Last year, she did just that in a Netflix true crime documentary, Bad Surgeon: Love Under The Knife.

Now 57, Benita cuts a glamorous figure as she speaks from her home in New York. A ‘tough’ investigative journalist, she’s the last person you would expect to fall for Macchiarini’s picaresque tales.

Yet when they first met in Boston in 2013 to discuss his work for the TV special, Leap Of Faith, she says she ‘felt like a giddy schoolgirl’.

Macchiarini, then 54, was already flying high. He was contracted to Sweden’s Karolinska Institute — one of the world’s most prestigious research facilities which awards the Nobel Prize in medicine.

Benita, though, was at a low point in her life. Her former husband, John, had been diagnosed with brain cancer, ‘and I was tasked with telling our nine-year-old daughter that her dad was going to die’.

She recalls: ‘I was distraught. What I didn’t realise is that con artists have a vulnerability radar.’

Initially, Macchiarini proved an empathic friend. ‘He was a very good listener,’ says Benita. It was a similar compassion that he appeared to display for his patients.

Their relationship didn’t become intimate until June 2013, after John had died. ‘I desperately needed someone to wrap their arms around me and tell me everything would be OK — and that’s what he did.

‘He took me to Venice and swept me off my feet.’

Their courtship, she says, was ‘romance on steroids’. In Venice, he showered her with red roses.

‘He’d take me on wild shopping sprees. Once, in London, he spent £8,000 on me at the Diane von Furstenberg store.’

Did his over-the-top gestures make her suspicious?

‘No, but definitely uncomfortable,’ Benita admits. ‘I kept saying: “I love you: you don’t need to impress me”.’

Paolo and Benita first met in Boston in 2013 to discuss his work for a TV special called Leap Of Faith - their courtship was described as 'romance on steroids'

A Netflix true crime documentary, Bad Surgeon: Love Under The Knife, tells Benita's story

Not long into their relationship, one of his patients died. Benita had got to know two-year-old Hannah Warren, who had received one of the synthetic tracheas, during the making of her film for NBC and was devastated by her loss. As was Macchiarini, it seemed. ‘When I phoned him, he was crying,’ says Benita.

On Christmas Day 2013, Macchiarini proposed to Benita at her home in New York, quietly handing her a box containing an £80,000 diamond engagement ring. ‘The proposal was beautiful because it was so simple,’ she says.

He had previously told Benita that he and his estranged wife lived separate lives — she in Italy, he in Spain — and later told her that their divorce had come through. Yet after the proposal, Macchiarini added that he couldn’t stay for the New Year because he had an important surgery to perform.

‘That’s when he claimed he was part of this clandestine network of doctors that catered to VIP clients.’ These included the Obamas, the Clintons and Emperor Akihito of Japan. Did she believe him?

‘On the one hand, it sounded ridiculous,’ Benita admits. ‘But on the other, it was plausible since he was known as the “super surgeon”.’

He also told her brother he had been called in after Princess Diana’s car crash in Paris. Had he got there in time, he boasted, he could have saved her life.

The wedding was set for July 11, 2015, in Rome, and by October 2014 Macchiarini had some exciting news. He had been Pope Francis’s private doctor for many years and, as a personal thank you, the Pope had vowed to officiate at the wedding, even offering to host it at his summer residence, Castel Gandolfo.

‘I didn’t believe that at first,’ says Benita, but after researching online she discovered that the Pope had recently married a group of couples at the Vatican. Why not them too?

In keeping with his ‘super surgeon’ status, the guest list included the Obamas, the Clintons and Vladimir Putin (Macchiarini had work ties to Russia), the Beckhams and Russell Crowe. Elton John and Andrea Bocelli would perform.

‘I was finding it all a bit ridiculous,’ says Benita, ‘but he was unflappable. All I had to take care of were my dresses and the invitations.’

Benita shelled out £8,000 on 300 invitations, which were sheathed in lambskin and embossed with the couple’s initials, and spent a further £40,000 on four dresses. ‘It was on the understanding that he would pay me back later. I had no reason to doubt that.’

Macchiarini told her he wanted Bill Clinton to announce their wedding dance ‘because, apparently, they played tennis together’. When she asked him to set up a dinner with Clinton beforehand, however, it was cancelled three times.

By now, the red flags were starting to wave. In November 2014, the New York Times ran a story claiming that Macchiarini’s colleagues at the Karolinska Institute had filed a complaint accusing him of scientific misconduct — an accusation he batted away as professional jealousy.

Yet in his private life, things weren’t adding up either.

‘He had flown me all over the world but had never taken me to his house in Barcelona where we were going to live after we’d got married. It didn’t make sense,’ says Benita. ‘I was also upset about not having met his children.’

In May 2015, two months before her wedding, Benita quit her job at NBC and took her daughter out of school in preparation for their move to Europe — only for the bottom to fall out of her world the very next day.

A friend emailed her about the Pope’s upcoming visit to South America — at the exact time he was due to marry them.

When Benita called Macchiarini, he blamed Vatican internal politics for the confusion. She then contacted the castle in Italy where he had supposedly booked rooms for their guests, but no one had heard of him.

‘That’s when I put my journalist’s hat back on,’ says Benita. ‘I hired two private investigators in the U.S. and Italy to gather evidence.’

A week later, she met with Macchiarini at her home. ‘There was a tiny part of me hoping for a plausible explanation.’

What she got was Macchiarini telling her: ‘That secret network of doctors I told you about? It’s operated by the CIA.’

Benita cancelled the wedding and, on the day it was due to take place, flew to Europe with friends. Macchiarini had told her he was in Russia, ‘so we decided to go to his house in Barcelona as he was clearly hiding something there’.

‘I stayed in the car and saw him sauntering down the steps. Then I saw a blonde woman with two little children. I’d seen pictures of his wife, but this woman was much younger. When the children called him Papa, I lost it completely.’

Benita discovered that as well as his family in Barcelona, he was still married to his wife of 30 years, ‘and I’ve heard of other women too’.

The scale of the betrayal was devastating. ‘Not only was there profound heartache and disappointment,’ she says, ‘but it was compounded by rage. This was a calculated deception from day one. I felt guilt for bringing my family and friends on this ride with me and humiliation that this happened to me — an investigative journalist, for God’s sake!

‘I wanted to crawl into a hole. It was almost paralysing.’

What shook Benita from her torpor was, she says, ‘the epiphany that if he was lying to me like this, there was no way he wasn’t lying in his professional life’.

‘That was terrifying because, as a doctor, he had people’s lives in his hands.’ The story that finally emerged was more chilling than even she could have imagined.

The Netflix documentary shows footage of the patients on whom Macchiarini performed tracheal transplants, including Hannah Warren, American Christopher Lyles and a young Russian mother, Yulia Tuulik. All three died. Some of the scenes showing Yulia in pain are unwatchable.

Some of his credentials were, reportedly, untrue. ‘I’ve spoken with surgeons who’ve been in the operating room with him. Some think he’s skilled and some think he’s a reckless surgeon who takes chances — and that when things go wrong, he steps back and lets someone else take over,’ says Benita.

‘Only one person who had the trachea operation is still alive — and it was taken out.’

Benita has seen Macchiarini twice since her engagement fell apart — in a court, where he was facing criminal accusations.

Thanks to the work of his former colleagues turned whistleblowers, who discovered he had lied about some aspects of his research, and to the efforts of Benita, in 2022 Macchiarini appeared in a Swedish court and was found guilty of causing bodily harm to a patient and handed a suspended sentence.

Last summer, he was sentenced to 30 months’ imprisonment after being found guilty of gross assault against three of his patients. ‘Seeing him in court, says Benita, ‘I felt nothing for him.’

As to why he performed such an elaborate con on Benita, she can only speculate. ‘I know his motive wasn’t money because he was always generous. All I can think was that he got some kind of sick high from getting away with everything and the bigger the lie, the greater the rush.’

‘I think he had a complete disregard for anyone but himself and maybe he targeted me because I was a journalist — when the s*** hit the fan [in his professional life], he could have me in his back pocket as his cheerleader.’

She admits she was at first reluctant to become romantically involved again, but is now dating British security firm executive Martin Huddartz.

‘He’s lovely and romantic in the most important ways. Obviously, you don’t go through something like this and not have trust issues, but I promised myself I wouldn’t become bitter or change the essence of who I am.’

It might not have been a classic romance scam, but it was the work of a dangerous fantasist nevertheless — and a reminder that anyone can fall for one.

Bad Surgeon: Love Under The Knife is on Netflix