‘Pill doc’ gets four life terms

COLUMBUS — A Chicago doctor who prosecutors say dispensed more of the powerful painkiller oxycodone from 2003 to 2005 than any other physician in the nation was sentenced Tuesday to four life terms in the overdose deaths of four patients.

Dr. Paul Volkman, 64, made weekly trips from Chicago to three locations in Portsmouth in southern Ohio and one in Chillicothe in central Ohio before federal investigators shut down the operations in 2006, prosecutors said.