Free Under the Knife: A Beautiful Woman, a Phony Doctor, and a Shocking Homicide by Diane Fanning Page A

his credentials. Some doctors who enabled Dean’s practice and addictions throughout the years turned their backs on common sense and ethics because of the sexual attraction they had for Faiello or out of a greedy willingness to accept fees for the questionable services they provided.Whether either of these motivations drove Keavy—or if there was some other unknown compulsion at work—may never be known with any certainty.
    Although not working in the same office, Keavy was the nominal medical director of SkinOvations and Dean was the chief laserist. Dean, the college drop-out, also claimed on line to have a master’s degree in engineering from RPI.
    Meanwhile, Muriel kept up her business in an independent office space, but was working at Dean’s two days a week for three hours at a time. She noticed that a great number of his clients were gay men who had or were having a sexual relationship with Dean.
    She was concerned about the number of clients who ranted and raved in the front office about the ineffectiveness of their laser treatments. She recalled one man in particular who said, “I’ve given you five thousand dollars. You told me the hair would disappear.”
    Dean soothed him, as he did everyone with complaints, but Muriel grew increasingly uncomfortable. She didn’t know where the fault lay—with Dean’s operation of the equipment, the particular type of machine or that the technology proved far more effective on the lower half of the torso than it did on any areas above the waistline. Overall, the situation made her doubt whether it was wise to add laser services to her electrolysis business. She was still eager to learn more, but Dean was not as willing to teach her as he had been when they first met.
    He did allow Muriel to practice using the laser on his lower back, but that was it. The rest of the time, Muriel took care of the electrology work that Dean did not want to do. When Muriel brought in her customers for laser hair removal, Dean would not instruct her as they had agreed. He simply did the work himself—and kept all the money, too. To Muriel, it seemed as if he were robbing her of clients and cheating her out of revenue.
    Behind her back, Dean told Muriel’s clients, “You do not want Muriel doing this. She is not ready yet.” To Muriel’s face, he said, “Well, I can’t help it. Your clients just don’t want to go to you anymore.”
    She knew Dean presented an excellent bedside manner. He was calm, patient, attractive and unpretentious; it did not surprise her that her clients found him likeable. Still, she and Dean had an agreement and Dean was not fulfilling his part of the bargain.
    She listened to his lame excuses for a few weeks, then confronted him. “I don’t want to believe that what you are doing is unethical. I want to assume there is a misunderstanding. There must be a reason you are not teaching me.”
    Dean, however, would not respond. He would not engage in any discussion or conversation about the issues between them. He just shut her out.
    Muriel gave up, packed up her equipment and terminated the relationship. She got her laser education elsewhere.
    WITH OR WITHOUT DR. KEAVY’S KNOWLEDGE, DEAN EXPANDED his services to include tattoo removal, benign pigmented lesion removal, vascular lesion removal and laser skin resurfacing, a procedure that destroys the top layer of the epidermis, allowing fresh, new skin to take its place.
    Since New York was one of the few states that did not require a medical license to operate a laser, performing these procedures and giving lidocaine injections did not technically break the law—especially given the supposed oversight of Dr. Keavy. But Dean pushed closer and closer to the edge.
    He claimed that he was certified in laser skin treatments, and he did in fact have certificates for every laser class he attended. But when he advertised that he was a member of the American Society for Laser Medicine &Surgery, he crossed a line. The