True crime TV series explores deaths of 3 North Port teens hypnotized by principal. How to watch
North Port High School will be featured in a SundanceTV four-part true crime docuseries on June 15th.
"Look Into My Eyes" will uncoil the strange story of former North Port High School principal George Kenney and the subsequent death of three students in the spring of 2011 who underwent hypnosis with him.
Where to watch the true-crime series?
"Look Into My Eyes" will be airing June 15 at 10 p.m. ET on SundanceTV, AMC+ and Sundance Now.
Two of those students died by suicide following a hypnosis session with Kenney, and another student crashed his truck after using self-hypnotizing methods taught by Kenney, a lawsuit alleged.
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Who was the principal who hypnotized students?
Kenney worked as a principal at the school from 1999 to 2011. He had been in education altogether for 30 years, working as both a teacher and administrator.
He hypnotized up to 75 people at the school, including students, staff members and their children for better athletic or academic performance and smoking cessation.
He learned his techniques from DVDs and attended a five-day training session at the Hypnosis Training Center nearly 200 miles away in DeLand in late 2009.
Kenney was placed on administrative leave in May 2011 and resigned in June 2012.
What happened to the students he tried to ‘help’?
Brittany Palumbo, Marcus Freeman and Wesley McKinley died months and in some cases days after Kenney hypnotized them. Palumbo and McKinley both died by suicide in the spring of 2011, and Freeman died in a car accident March of that year.
McKinley underwent three hypnosis sessions with Kenney, including one the day before his suicide in April 2011. He was a self-taught piano and guitar player who was preparing for an audition at the Julliard School.
Football athlete Freeman was learning self-hypnosis from Kenney to deal with pain management on the field. He was hypnotized five days before his fatal car crash where his truck left Interstate 75 and hit a tree. A lawsuit alleged that as he was driving home from the dentist, he hypnotized himself and went into a trance, veering off the road and crashing his car. The family’s attorney said that the teen dreamed of becoming a quarterback for the Florida Gators and then after treating sports injuries as a doctor.
Palumbo was dealing with sadness from a breakup and was hypnotized at least once in October 2010. She died by suicide in May 2011. Palumbo had a 4.0 grade point average and was in the middle of sending out college applications.
Did former principal George Kenney serve time in prison?
He was charged with two misdemeanors in Jan. 2012, including practicing therapeutic hypnosis without a license. In Feb. 2012, Kenney entered a plea of no contest as part of a deal that saw him serve one year of probation, during which he was not allowed to practice unlicensed hypnosis.
In Oct. 2015, the families of the three students who died received $200,000 each from the Sarasota County School District in a settlement agreement.
This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Florida principal who hypnotized students profiled in TV documentary
