Narcissist, fantasist, and a sociopathic liar: Inside the twisted mind of a brilliant family doctor who became one of America's most 'murderous drug dealers'

Paul Volkman is a criminal with an impressive resume.

The 77-year-old is currently serving four life sentences in an Arizona federal prison for the overdose deaths of four patients, and his connection to the deaths of numerous others. But he was once a high school valedictorian and respected family doctor.

A friend who knew him in med school said: ‘I honestly thought that one day I would pick up the newspaper and see that Paul had been given the Nobel Prize in Medicine.’

Instead, in 2012, Volkman received one of the longest sentences given to a doctor during the opiate epidemic. A DEA agent who worked on his case described him as a ‘murderous drug dealer.’

Between 2003 and 2006, while working out of cash-only pain clinics in Southern Ohio, he prescribed a torrent of controlled substances – painkillers, sedatives, muscle relaxers – in a region that was dubbed the ‘OxyContin capital of the world.’

Paul Volkman, 77, is currently serving four life sentences in an Arizona federal prison for the overdose deaths of four patients , and his connection to the deaths of numerous others

Volkman and Philip Eil's father went to University of Rochester together - photos from the time show an uncanny physical resemblance

Volkman and Eil fell out of touch after medical school in Chicago - and by 2004 Volkman was the leading purchaser of oxycodone in the country

His prescriptions - according to a search warrant, one patient received 270 oxycodone pills, 270 Percocet, 120 Somas (a muscle relaxant), and 60 Xanax in a single visit - were so large that local pharmacies refused to fill them. In response, he and the clinic’s owner opened an on-site pharmacy. 

Volkman maintained then, and continues to claim, that all of his prescriptions were legal and appropriate.

In 2004, he was the leading purchaser of oxycodone in the country.

By now, nearly 30 years since OxyContin’s launch and subsequent downfall, tales of doctors who ‘broke bad’ are nothing new. It has been the subject of documentaries, and scripted shows (based on real events) including Dopesick and Painkiller. 

And one study identified more than 350 criminal cases involving physicians and opiates between 1995 and 2019. The CDC reports that hundreds of thousands of people died from opiate-related overdoses during a similar timeframe, and that prescription opiates account for the ‘first wave’ of those deaths.

But Volkman was different, because I know him personally.

He went to college and medical school with my father. Both men were brainy, Jewish guys from the East Coast. They played bridge together and both sang in the University of Rochester Glee Club. Photos from their time at the University of Rochester even show an uncanny physical resemblance.

In a letter from jail after his conviction, Volkman wrote: ‘My best days are those in which I am the most angry. In my position, anger and fury is the energy which keeps me going’

Volkman patient Scottie Lin James (left) died in September 2005 at age 30. 'Everybody loved her,' said her sister Jakkie. Ernest Ratcliff (right) died the following month, at age 38

High school athlete James Estep (left) died in February 2004 at age 32 - his death by overdose was linked to Volkman's prescriptions. Father of three Danny Coffee (right) died in November 2003 at age 47

They fell out of touch after medical school. But when I learned about Volkman’s case, I was fascinated. What on earth had happened to this guy?

This was in 2009, two years after he was indicted. And I’ve spent the years since answering this question. It was a quest that began by reaching out to Volkman, who, as it turned out, was eager to talk.

There were at least two defining character traits that I noticed during my 12 years of conversations with Volkman. Foremost was his anger.

The targets of his fury were almost too numerous to count. He spoke disparagingly about his mother, his father, his late wife, and his two grown children. During one conversation, he said, of his older brother – and lone sibling: ‘I can’t stand the son of a bitch… Hopefully, he’s dead.’

When narrating the early years of his career, he lashed out at a former supervisor who he felt had stifled his research career and, at other times, described lawyers who had helped patients sue him for malpractice as ‘ethically-challenged, financially struggling barristers’ who were seeking ‘an easy payout of Other People's Money.’

His most fiery comments were saved for his criminal case. The federal agency that investigated him was ‘a vicious, criminal organization, corrupt from top to bottom.’ The expert witnesses who testified against him at trial were ‘whores.’ 

A former employee who testified against him was – as he told her in a Facebook message that he sent while he awaited the jury’s verdict – ‘truly disgusting.’ At his sentencing hearing, he called the judge a ‘heinous criminal.’

A prescription signed by Volkman for 240 oxycodone tablets

In 2004, Paul Volkman was the leading purchaser of oxycodone in the country

The graves of two of Volkman's patients, Mark Glenn Reeder and Jeff A Reed

In a letter from jail after his conviction, he wrote: ‘My best days are those in which I am the most angry. In my position, anger and fury is the energy which keeps me going.’

The other pillar of Volkman’s personality was grandiosity. Even as his circumstances became more diminished – indicted, convicted, and, eventually, imprisoned for life – his sense of himself seemed to only grow.

At one point, he said the chair of the department where he studied for his PhD had called him ‘the best grad student he had had in 30 years.’

Elsewhere, he described his skills as an ER physician as almost superhuman. ‘The only time I have made mistakes is when subsequent events provide additional information which changes the results of analysis,’ he wrote. ‘Those mistakes are not really mistakes, but failure to predict the future.’

From prison, he boasted that, after his years of legal research related to his case, he was now ‘an accomplished legal scholar.’

Perhaps his most eyebrow-raising statement came shortly after his sentencing hearing, when he recounted the moment when the judge called him a ‘truly dangerous man.’ Volkman somehow viewed this as a compliment.

‘Whether she realized it or not,’ he wrote in a subsequent letter, ‘[the judge] called me “dangerous” the way Martin Luther was “dangerous” to the Pope, the way Thomas More was “dangerous” to Henry VIII, the way Thomas Jefferson was “dangerous” to George V [sic], the way good, principled, honest, courageous, outspoken men are always “dangerous” to cruel, evil, corrupt, petty tyrants.’

Dopesick, starring Michael Keaton, told the fictionized story of a family doctor drawn into the opioid crisis

Most of Paul Volkman's employment at Tri-State Healthcare took place in this building, at 1219 Findlay Street, in Portsmouth

After leaving Tri-State Healthcare, Volkman ran a pain clinic out of this house, at 1310 Center Street, in Portsmouth. Within weeks, after numerous complaints from neighbors, the house was raided and the clinic was shut down

A faded sign for Volkman's offices. Even after his conviction - in the face of damning evidence - he maintained his innocence and claimed all of his prescriptions were legal and appropriate

A third defining trait of Volkman’s only became clear when I started to independently dig into the events of his life: he was not an honest man.

I interviewed dozens of people from his life, career, and period of alleged crimes. I took numerous trips to the overdose-ravaged region of Southern Ohio where his alleged crimes took place. And I tracked down documents from various points in his life and career, including the 4,000-page transcript of his criminal trial.

The story I found often strayed drastically from Volkman’s tale of a decent man beset by bad luck and the corruption of others.

Volkman once described himself as a ‘family man.’ Yet his son had long been estranged from him, and referred to his father as a ‘jerk’ and a ‘vindictive, malicious person.’

His daughter said her father was stubborn, arrogant, and characterized by an ‘unusually limited social awareness.’ By the end of my reporting, she, too, was estranged from her dad. She told me at one point: ‘He ended up living in his own reality I think.’

I found his most glaring truth-twisting when I traveled to the troubled region where his pain clinics had been. One of his lawyers had described him as ‘an accomplished, experienced, competent physician working in a rural under-served area trying to help manage the pain of his patients.’

And at his sentencing hearing, Volkman stated: ‘I have no regrets about my treatments and no apologies to make.’

Yet the local public health officials I interviewed believed Volkman was contributing enormously to an already out-of-control flow of pills.

One family member of a patient who had died described Volkman, bluntly, as a ‘pill doctor.’ Another – the mother of a former patient who was desperate to protect her son while he was in recovery from addiction – had gone to the Volkman’s office, barged into an examination room and pleaded with him not to prescribe opiates to her son.

She would later repeat this story under oath at his criminal trial in 2011. From the witness stand, she recalled how she told the doctor: ‘If you write another prescription in my son’s name, I will blow your brains out.’

Volkman eventually stopped speaking to me after I published an article in Cincinnati magazine in 2017 headlined: ‘The Pill Mill that Ravaged Portsmouth.’ He called it a ‘vicious, biased screed’ and said that I showed ‘amazing arrogance and stupidity’ by writing it.

A few years later, we resumed our correspondence briefly. But when I declined his request to help him with research for a long-shot legal ploy to get out of prison, he stopped talking to me for good.

So, what did I learn from my 12-year interview with an intelligent man convicted of heinous crimes?

Volkman portrayed himself as a family man, but he is now estranged from most of his family, including his daughter, who said: 'He ended up living in his own reality'

In Painkiller, Matthew Broderick played Richard Sackler, whose pharmaceutical family Purdue manufactured and marketed OxyContin

Perhaps the most memorable – and haunting – lesson is just how normal he could appear. During our in-person meetings in 2009 and 2010, Volkman’s behavior was unremarkable. He didn’t shout or fidget. He spoke with an impressive command of legal and medical facts.

His hobbies included chess, listening to classical music, and going to the Art Institute of Chicago. If you didn’t know anything about his case, you could easily mistake him for a run-of-the-mill highly-educated urban retiree. And some people did.

I spoke with numerous people who were taken in by his story. His longtime therapist in Chicago told me that Volkman was a ‘brilliant guy’ who possessed ‘a great compassion for people.’ His second wife – whom he had married after his indictment – was convinced of his innocence as well. (The marriage fizzled after his conviction.)

One of his bridge-playing friends, a retired CEO, told me that what Volkman was doing in Ohio sounded to him like Doctors Without Borders, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning organization dedicated to bringing medical care to conflict zones.

This, apparently, was a benefit of working in cash-only clinics that were 400 miles away from his Chicago apartment, and commuting back and forth every week. Aside from a few scattered press reports, people from Volkman’s life in the city were reliant on him – a bright, highly-qualified, and deeply persuasive man – to describe his case.

In my time interviewing and researching Volkman, I also noticed how he seemed to assess the world not by independent measures – good and bad, just or unjust – but, rather, how people interact with him. If you support him, work for his benefit, or otherwise believe in him, he is likely to speak highly of you. 

In contrast, his anger and vitriol burn hottest toward the people or parties who most directly antagonize him, including the DEA, federal prosecutors, and the judge in his case.

In all of the years I reported on his case, his belief in his own innocence has never wavered. In a recent legal filing, from nearly 20 years after his criminal activity began, he wrote: ‘I was practicing good, proper and legal medicine. Every single prescription I issued was authorized and required. I was not then, nor am I now, a criminal.’

Prescription for Pain: How a Once-Promising Doctor Became the ‘Pill Mill Killer' by Philip Eil is published by Steerforth Press, April 9