The Principal Who May Have Hypnotized His Students to Death
On March 15, 2011, 16-year-old North Port High School student and star quarterback Marcus Freeman died in a puzzling car accident following a visit to the dentist. Over the next few weeks, two of his classmates, 16-year-olds Wesley McKinley and Brittany Palumbo, killed themselves. Occurring in such short succession, these tragedies rocked their close-knit neighborhood in Sarasota, Florida, and it wasn’t long before questions emerged about what, precisely, was going on at the high school.
The answer, it turned out, was hypnosis—conducted by none other than the school’s principal, Dr. George Kenney.
The latest installment in SundanceTV’s True Crime Story series, Look Into My Eyes (June 15, also on AMC+ and Sundance Now) is a four-part investigation into a story whose sensationalistic accusations transformed it into national news. For years, Kenney had been practicing hypnosis on students both in psychology class and in one-on-one sessions held in his office, which he recorded. By all accounts, he believed hypnosis was a therapeutic tool capable of alleviating pain, stress, anxiety, and other conditions (such as Tourette’s-like tics), and kids flocked to him for help; he hypnotized more than 70 students during this five-year period. Those included Freeman, McKinley, and Palumbo, and when the strange circumstances of their deaths came to light (including Freeman freezing up behind the wheel, and McKinley and Palumbo hanging themselves without a struggle), attention shifted to Kenney and his unusual behind-closed-doors activities.