Here's How Doctor's Orders Distorted April Kauffman's Murder

So a biker gang named the "Pagans Motorcycle Club" got a fake Vietnam veteran and actual doctor, Jim Kauffman, to supply them with OxyContin to use in their illegal drug ring. And when they suspected that his second wife, April, an outspoken radio host, might "rat him out," they had her shot and killed in 2012. Also, this story is being told by former gang member Andrew Glick, who went by "Chef" and later became a chef at a retirement home, and who was a former mentee to the Pagan's former leader, Ferdinand Augello, who goes by "Fred." Fred was convicted and sentenced in 2018 for arranging April's murder, while Kauffman the fake veteran and pill mill supplier committed suicide in jail that same year. And the biker-gang-drug-ring assassin who allegedly pulled the trigger — Francis Mullholland — died of a reported overdose in 2013 (all per ABC News and Decider).

Well... no reason any of that would sound confusing, right? 

Apparently, the production team over at Discovery's "Doctor's Orders" found it all a bit confusing, indeed. Perhaps that's why they left the bulk of this tale's narrative in the hands of Andrew "Chef" Glick, the person who sold out the Pagans to the police. As a result, even though Kauffman's case is solved and Augello is currently serving 30 years in jail, "Doctor's Orders" transforms Kauffman's death into pseudo-factual fodder for our mass media's perpetual hype machine.

The falsities in "Doctor's Orders" stem less from particular facts surrounding Kauffman's case and more from the show's overall presentation of its subject matter, including any inconsistencies and inaccuracies derived from unverifiable accounts of its sole point-of-view character, Glick the bike gang defector. In turn, the truth gets transformed into something more closely resembling fiction.

On paper, Glick likely looked frameable to the production team as a cool, exciting person of interest suited to fiction: a once bike gang member turned police informant. Choosing to couch the narrative in his sparse anecdotes and deflated charisma, though, results in a mess of juvenile embellishments intended to pad the show's run time and interest. As Decider depicts, we've got silly animated segments with growling biker dudes, supercuts of crime-scene stills overlaid with the melodrama of a swelling score, and entirely fabricated, staged scenes between Glick and environmental characters. 

One such scene, the show's opener, features a tattoo artist not actual inscribing ink onto Glick's arm and hunched over in what might have been intended as poorly lit badassery. He nonchalantly murmurs his line from the script, "The case you were involved in... it was a murder for vengeance?" Cut to animated purple flames rising behind the one-story ranch house of the presumed murder scene. Such contortions of truth disrespect the deceased and stand to mislead the public, to boot. When "Doctor's Orders" isn't trumping up facts, it's embarrassing and disingenuous.