Minnesota nurse to be prosecuted for his role in counselling suicide deaths.

An article in yesterday's Daily Mail newspaper in the UK confirms that William Melchert-Dinkel, the Minnesota nurse who admitted to being an internet suicide predator, will be charged with encouraging others to commit suicide.

Melchert-Dinkel has admitted to being involved with the suicide death of Nadia Kajouji, the 18 year-old first-year student at Carlton University in Ottawa in March 2008. Kajouji died by drowning after establishing a suicide pact with Melchert-Dinkel who claimed to be a female nurse from Minnesota.

You will notice by the comment from Deborah Chevalier (below the blog entry) that the article had some false comments. Melchert-Dinkel has not been charged yet, even though they expect that he will.

The article stated that:

Melchert-Dinkel, a married father of two, allegedly spent years posing as a young woman who may have contacted more than 100 desperate people across the world.

‘Most important is the placement of the noose on the neck,’ he allegedly wrote in one web chat. He then went on to detail where to place the knot ‘for instant unconsciousness and death.’

He has allegedly admitted to U.S police that he was involved in at least four deaths, including that of an 18-year-old Canadian student Nadia Kajouji.

Melchert-Dinkel also admitted to establishing a suicide pact with Mark Drybrough an IT technician from Coventry in the UK to commit suicide in June 2005. The article stated:

Mr Drybrough’s mother Elaine said that she believed that Melchert-Dinkel appointed himself as her son’s ‘executioner’.

Mark Drybrough killed himself at his home in Coventry in June 2005
‘Mark had had a nervous breakdown and he was depressed and incredibly susceptible,’ she said.

‘This person was there whispering in his ear every time he logged on. In the last email, this person claimed to be a nurse, saying he had medical training, and proposed a suicide pact.’

Mrs Dryborough eventually tracked down Mr Melchert-Dinkel with the help of a Wiltshire youth worker, Celia Blay, who discovered that dozens of people had received similar emails to Mark’s.

Celia Blay worked hard on her own to uncover Melchert-Dinkel's activities:

Mrs Blay had been enraged when a 13-year-old friend of hers had told her that she had made a suicide pact with a female nurse called Li Dao

Mrs Blay contacted members of internet groups used by Li Dao and discovered that she used the pseudonyms Falcon Girl and Cami D.

Li Dao would persuade people to enter pacts in which they would hang themselves in front of internet webcams and watch each other die.

But at the crucial moment there was always a problem with Li Dao’s webcam.

Mrs Blay said: ‘We found out everything about him on Google, including where he lived in Minnesota.’

She added: ‘He befriended them using a female identity, was very loving and sympathetic, but never suggested an alternative to death, even when they were only teenagers.

‘He’d tell them that he intended to kill himself too, and said they should set up a web camera and he would do the same thing so they could watch each other die over the internet.’

‘It took months and months to collect the evidence but when I went to the police [close to her home, which was then at Maidenhead, Berkshire] they just said if it bothers you, look the other way,’ she said.

At this point Melchert-Dinkel has only been disciplined by the Minnesota nurses association who revoked his right to be a nurse. The article stated:

The Minnesota Board of Nursing, which revoked Melchert-Dinkel's licence in June last year, said he encouraged numerous people to commit suicide and told at least one person his job as a nurse made him an expert on the most effective way to do it.

His medical notes record that he told nurses that he was addicted to suicide chat rooms and had ‘posed as a 28 yo female formed suicide pacts with some that he had no attention [sic] of following thru . . . 4 yrs suicide fetish offered medical advice for assisted suicide x2’.

Harold Albrecht MP, (Kitchener-Conestoga) unanimously steered Motion 388 through Canada's parliament to urge the Canadian government to take action in the death of Nadia Kajouji and to protect Canadians from internet suicide predators.

Link to the article at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1259379/The-suicide-voyeur-nurse-encouraged-people-kill-online.html#ixzz0ioCWmlI0