Prosecutors says it's not malpractice; it's manslaughter.

It's rare, but a doctor is being criminally charged in the deaths of some of his patients.

All of the patients were treated in Australia, but KOMO 4 Problem Solvers found out before Dr. Jayant Patel ran into trouble in Australia, he performed surgery on patients in Oregon and wanted to operate in Washington state.

"We should have known from the beginning things were not going to go well," read Paula Tucker, from a journal she wrote 13 years ago.

She started writing the journal as her husband Jerry was dying.

"I debated whether to call the folks or not, but in the end decided they had a right to know," she read, shaking and unable to fight back tears.

She decided they had a right to know her husband Jerry was dead -- something Jerry himself predicted just a month before his pancreas surgery.

"He told me on the way to the hospital, 'I might not come home."' she said.

He never did. The Washougal father of five died at Portland's Kaiser Permanente Hospital. His wife blames his surgeon. Dr. Jayant Patel operated on Jerry's inflamed pancreas. It was February 17, 1995.

"The doctor went down there (pancreas) to remove adhesions, he nicked his bowel." Paula said.

She said Jerry's bowel leaked deadly waste into his bloodstream. The autopsy showed infection and internal bleeding killed him.

"He made choices and he should be held accountable for them," said Paula. The widowed mother made sure of it and settled for nearly a million dollars out of court.

"The lawsuit happened cause my husband came to me. It was a weird dream. As he went to leave I said - and it was so vivid - 'shall I pursue the lawsuit?' And he turned to me and said 'yes.'"

Now, 13 years after her Jerry's death, Patel is sitting in jail.

"It's been like - Yes! He can't hurt anybody else," says Paula.

In Australia Patel earned the nickname "Dr. Death." There he faces manslaughter charges - for what the government calls 'the unlawful killing' of three patients.

Patel is accused of causing bodily harm to three others and lying about his professional misconduct all while he was chief of surgery at an Australian Hospital.

Patel has refused to make any comment. A friend of his insists the doctor's arrest is political, but won't elaborate on his theory.

"This is not right," said Patel during an ambush interview attempt with Australian TV last November.

Ten years before the trouble in Australia surfaced, Patel got into trouble in Oregon. He was banned from certain types of surgeries after 79 complaints were filed against him. One of the complaints came after Mari Mesecher of Vancouver, Washington died.

Mesecher's daughter says Patel severed her mother's artery during surgery and she bled to death.
That was in 1997, two years after Jerry Tucker's death.

"I want him to pay for my mother's death too, just like everybody else," said Sandra Ickert.

Eventually Patel's surgical privileges were revoked at Kaiser Permanente. Patel quit before he could be fired.

But prosecutors say Patel never told the Australian medical community about Jerry Tucker, Mari Mesecher and six other patients in Oregon. All filed lawsuits against Patel. And he never mentioned his trouble with the medical board in New York, where worked there prior to his surgical duties in Portland.

The KOMO 4 Problem Solvers wanted to know if Patel ever tried to work in the state of Washington. We combed the medical license applications at the state Department of Health. There we found a file an inch thick on Dr. Patel.

It turns out Patel filed for a medical license. When asked on the application whether he had any medical misconduct, Patel checked "no." The state figured out that was not true, confronted him, and Patel withdrew his medical application.

Five years after his trouble in Oregon, Patel ended up in Australia. Prosecutors say he "bungled surgeries with tragic results." Australian nurses say it got so bad, they reportedly hid patients from Patel. Prosecutors say he never told the Australian hospital the complaints in Oregon, or that he had been banned from specific surgeries.

"I have felt the pain of the people in Australia," said a tearful Paula. She told KOMO 4 News on two different occasions that the pain never goes away and never gets easier. What she wrote 13 years ago is still true today. The last line of her journal reads "I'll need the Lord's help to be able to go on without him."

Patel is fighting extradition to Australia. He insists he won't get a fair trial. His extradition hearing will be held later this month in Portland. If convicted on all counts in Australia, he could get three life sentence, plus 100 years.