In 2013, Benita Alexander produced an NBC documentary on Paolo Macchiarini — a medical superstar credited with using plastic tracheas to treat throat conditions. While doing so, Alexander and Macchiarini grew close and fell in love. Macchiarini, however, was already married, and when Alexander found out, the surgeon’s complex web of lies fell apart.
At that time, Macchiarini was hailed as a visionary, and there was no reason for Alexander, or anyone else, to think otherwise. The Swiss-Italian surgeon — the subject of the three-part, 2023 Netflix documentary true crime series Bad Surgeon: Love Under the Knife — belonged to the international medical elite, and his purported innovations, like plastic organs, were seen as groundbreaking innovations.
Based on that acclaim, Alexander’s NBC Macchiarini documentary, A Leap of Faith, was produced in 2013 and broadcast a year later, according to Esquire. By that point, Alexander and Macchiarini — who told Alexander he was divorced — were engaged to be married. The date was set for 2015, with Pope Francis set to officiate their marriage, according to Macchiarini.
The only problem? Macchiarini was already married.
Who is Emanuela Pecchia?
Long before he became embroiled with Benita Alexander, Macchiarini was living the married life with his first wife and the mother of his two children, Emanuela Pecchia. He kept her concealed from Alexander, and a bulk of the people he interacted with, but Pecchia was among the first women to fall for Macchiarini’s lies.
Ahead of his would-be marriage to Alexander, Macchiarini buttered the producer up with endless fabrications. On top of deceiving her about Pope Francis, he also spun lies about other A-list celebrities attending the wedding and concealed his marital status. While carrying on his relationship with the NBC producer, the surgeon was still married to Pecchia, who lived in Barcelona with his two children. And they weren’t even the only women Macchiarini made a habit of misleding.
Since 2010, Macchiarini and Ana Paula Bernardes — the mother of one of his transplant patients — had been in a relationship and even had a child together. But after Macchiarini’s operation on Bernardes’ son, her son died. And like Bernardes’ son, most of Macchiarini’s patients later died as well.
Because of that fact, Macchiarini’s claims about medical innovations like plastic organs were exposed as frauds, much like everything else, including his research, education, and even romantic life.
Where is Emanuela Pecchia now?
According to The U.S. Sun, unconfirmed reports say Paolo Macchiarini and Emanuela Pecchia split and possibly divorced around 2016. Otherwise, little else is known about Pecchia’s life, or Pecchia and Macchiarini’s two children.
Since Macchiarini’s personal and professional lies came crashing down, the once-prominent surgeon has been embroiled in legal issues related to his false claims and fraudulent surgeries. In 2023, Reuters reported that Macchiarini was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison for “gross assault” stemming from plastic trachea procedures. Macchiarini says he’s innocent and will appeal the ruling.