In spring 2011, three students from the same small town in Florida died — and all three were previously hypnotized by their principal, Dr. George Kenney.
The then-North Port High School principal hypnotized more than 70 people, including many students, during his tenure, despite never being a licensed hypnotherapist. Some students praised his methods and credited him with their improved athletic and academic performance, according to the 2023 docuseries True Crime Story: Look Into My Eyes.
Then, students Marcus Freeman, Wesley McKinley and Brittany Palumbo — who each had private hypnosis sessions with Kenney — all died within weeks of one another.
Though Kenney has long denied performing hypnosis with adverse effects on students, parents of the teens accused Kenney of showing the students how to go into trances, during which they couldn’t understand the ramifications of their actions — including taking their own lives.
Now, the events are the subject of an episode of the ID docuseries The Curious Case Of…, which premiered on Feb. 16. Here’s everything to know about the bizarre case of Dr. George Kenney.
Kenney began hypnotizing students in groups, then individually
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In Look Into My Eyes, Kenney said he developed an interest in hypnosis when he was a teenager, reading about and trying hypnosis with a friend.
When Kenney began working at North Port High School in North Port, Fla., he went to a conference where a hypnotist performed for 2,000 students. It inspired Kenney to take a five-day course with the National Guild of Hypnosis at the Omni Hypnosis Center in late 2009. However, he did not become a licensed hypnotherapist.
“It was excellent training,” he said in Look Into My Eyes. “I felt I was effective and knowledgeable about what I was doing.”
Kenney then began what he said was “assisting” in hypnosis portions of the school’s annual Project Graduation lock-in parties, demonstrating it in classes and performing hypnosis on the school’s JROTC, according to the docuseries.
Soon after, Kenney began offering private hypnosis sessions to students for help with various issues, including test anxiety, trouble focusing, improving athletic performance and more. He videotaped and documented the sessions, requiring their parents to sign permission slips for students to attend.
The first student he hypnotized in a private session, Eric Williams, said his hypnosis improved his test scores dramatically. According to Kenney in the docuseries, some others benefited greatly from his sessions as well.
In July 2011, the Sarasota-Herald Tribune reported that Kenney hypnotized at least 75 people, including students, North Port athletic teams, school staff and parents, with one student in particular undergoing 40 sessions.
He claimed to not know of potential adverse effects of hypnosis
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In legal documents obtained by the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, Kenney claimed that he did not know hypnosis could be harmful in some cases, such as if someone was depressed, and admitted that he never asked his students about their medical or mental health history before sessions.
Some students he hypnotized claimed to still feel adverse effects from the experience. During a JROTC field trip in 2009, Kenney reportedly hypnotized at least four students. One testified that he was given what he was told was sunblock to apply, but woke up with lipstick smeared all over his face and no memory of what happened, per the documents.
The student kept his experience a secret for years, explaining, “Being so young, I was kind of intimidated by it, afraid to talk to my parents about it. I didn’t want anybody to know. I felt embarrassed.” He added that he found Kenney “intimidating,” noting, “I didn’t feel safe or comfortable around him, knowing what he had done.”
Another student claimed to have gotten lost in the hotel they were staying in after Kenney hypnotized him to see numbers in a foreign language and woke up wearing pantyhose and lipstick. He reported still having memory and focus issues years later.
Freeman died in a car crash after frequent hypnosis sessions
North Port Police Department/Facebook
In Look Into My Eyes, Freeman’s best friend, Deric Thomas, claimed that Freeman, 16, began going to sessions with Kenney every Friday before football games to make him not feel pain so he could keep playing.
According to Thomas, Kenney would put Freeman in a “trance” in which he was mentally present, but couldn’t feel his body. Thomas claimed the hypnosis appeared to make a “huge difference on the field” for Freeman, who would “take hits from kids three times the size of him and just keep going,” but would sometimes leave the field with a “blank stare.”
In the docuseries, Kenney affirmed that he hypnotized Freeman to help his brain “see things more slowly on the field,” but denied using hypnosis to stop physical pain.
On March 15, 2011, Freeman and his girlfriend were driving home from a painful dentist appointment when he got a “strange look on his face,” the girlfriend later told police, according to The Guardian. Freeman veered off the road, crashing into a tree.
Freeman died in the accident. His girlfriend was seriously injured, but survived, per The Guardian.
McKinley was hypnotized before he died by suicide
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McKinley, 16, took his own life on April 8, 2011, just weeks after Freeman’s deadly crash.
Kenney hypnotized McKinley, a promising young musician preparing for an audition at Juilliard, the day before his death, according to ABC News. In total, he had three known sessions with Kenney, per Look Into My Eyes.
In the docuseries, McKinley’s mother Peggie claimed that one time after leaving a session, he did not answer to his name and thought he had 11 fingers. She said that his behavior was “almost zombie-like, very out of character for him,” and that he was hypnotized to skip the number seven when counting.
The day McKinley died, Peggie said, McKinley was again behaving strangely.
“It was Friday afternoon. Wesley had come home from school, walked past me, put his bookbag down and walked out the back door,” she said in the docuseries. “He had told me friends were coming over. I asked what time they were coming over, and he just walked past me out the back door … an hour later I heard sirens.”
Kenney said in Look Into My Eyes that McKinley was a victim of cyber bullying and “drama behind the scenes,” but that he didn’t know that McKinley was depressed at the time of their sessions.
“I do not understand … what went on with Wesley,” Kenney said in Look Into My Eyes. “He had a bright future. That one still haunts me.”
Palumbo wanted to improve her test scores before she died by suicide
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Meanwhile, Palumbo, 17, met with Kenney at least once in late 2010 to try improving her SAT scores and reduce her test-taking anxiety.
In Look Into My Eyes, her mother Patricia said that Palumbo had recently broken up with her boyfriend of several years and was stressed about not being accepted to her ex’s college, the University of Central Florida (UCF).
“She was sad, but not depressed,” Patricia told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune in December 2012. “She had her whole life ahead of her.”
Patricia attended Palumbo’s hypnosis session, which was recorded. During the session, Kenney told Palumbo to relax and had her bend forward for eight to 10 minutes. Patricia said in the docuseries that after the session, Palumbo did not recall being bent over at all.
When Palumbo retook her SAT scores after the hypnosis session, she still did not perform well. According to Patricia, Palumbo became distraught because she believed hypnosis was “her last resort” to get into UCF.
On May 4, 2011, Palumbo walked into her room and said she was going to take a nap. She didn’t respond later when her parents called out to her for dinner. After several minutes, they went into her room, where they found her dead in her walk-in closet.
“I don’t think that he programmed her, obviously, to go in and [die by] suicide,” Patricia said in Look Into My Eyes. “But I think he possibly gave her a tool that allowed her to do what she did, because she did not remember most of that hypnosis session. She did not remember the form in which she sat, she didn’t remember what he said. Was that what took away her fight and her desire to live?”
In an interview with a local newspaper shortly after Palumbo’s suicide, Kenney denied ever hypnotizing Palumbo. In his deposition later, he denied contributing to her death and claimed he “accidentally” lied from all the stress he was under, per the docuseries.
Some students supported Kenney and said he helped them
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Shortly after Palumbo died by suicide, Kenney was placed on paid administrative leave, according to ABC News. After protests from students and staff alike, Kenney was permitted to give students their diplomas at their graduation ceremony in 2011.
Several students spoke in Look Into My Eyes in support of Kenney, saying he was a “scapegoat” for grieving families.
North Port student Stephen Ware credited Kenney with helping him graduate high school on time. Ware said he failed the FCAT standardized test five times until he and his mother attended Kenney’s hypnosis sessions.
“You could trust him,” Ware said of Kenney. “That’s like the main key between a patient and a therapist, is that trust. You’re still coherent enough, but your subconscious took over. You’re in a dream state, but he states [if] you, at any time, are not OK with something, you’re free to come back.”
Ware passed the FCAT following the hypnosis sessions and had the highest test scores of anyone in his retake pool.
He was investigated for hypnotizing students and took a plea deal
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After Palumbo’s death, the Sarasota County school board hired the Steele Investigations Agency to look into Kenney’s hypnosis activities at North Port High School, per the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.
In the report, the North Port High School nurse, Denise Brislin, accused Kenney of interfering with her first aid to an injured student on at least one occasion. In Look Into My Eyes, witnesses claimed that the student injured his shoulders in the school weight room. They then alleged that Kenney tried hypnotizing the student in an attempt to alleviate the student’s pain and deliberately kept Brislin away from the student before paramedics arrived.
Kenney said in the docuseries that he simply got to the student before the nurse did and was trying to keep the student calm. “It was very effective,” he said, adding, “The nurse was upset that she felt like I’d interfered with her. Looking back, I did do that, but I didn’t do it on purpose. I did get in the way.”
The Florida Department of Health investigated the incident and several other cases and alleged that Kenney violated state law because he wasn’t a licensed healthcare professional.
Kenney ultimately pleaded no contest to practicing therapeutic hypnosis without a license — a misdemeanor charge — and resigned in June 2012. He did so to avoid charges of practicing therapy without a license, which would have meant prison time.
“In Florida, if you’re convicted of a felony, as an educator, you can lose your retirement [benefits],” Kenney said in Look Into My Eyes. “So I worked with my attorney and pleaded no contest.”
He was sentenced to two consecutive sentences of six months of probation and 50 hours of community service, per the docuseries. After his probation and community service ended, Kenney moved out of Florida.
“We lived in town for another year after this happened, complete with news crews on the front lawn and people knocking on the front door and neighbors telling them to get lost,” he said in Look Into My Eyes. “I had 30 years [of] teaching, so at 52 years old, I could retire.”
The Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported that Kenney moved to Lake Junaluska, N.C.
“I think of retiring and moving to the Smoky Mountains as turning the page,” Kenney said in Look Into My Eyes.
Parents of deceased students sued the North Port school board
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In December 2012, Freeman, McKinley and Palumbo’s parents sued the Sarasota County school board for wrongful death of each of the teens. The suit alleged that Kenney’s hypnosis led to the deaths and that the board should have stopped Kenney from performing hypnosis.
In October 2015, the families and the school board settled, with each family receiving the maximum sum of $200,000, per NBC News.