Ohio man charged with assisting the suicide of his wife.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Ardis Macaulay

Jen Balduf reported for the Dayton Daily News on August 12 that Thomas Stuart Macaulay (78) of Ohio was charged in Greene County Common Pleas Court with two counts of assisted suicide.

Greene County prosecutor, David Hayes confirmed the assisted suicide charges in connection to the March 28 death of Macaulay’s wife, Ardis Susanne Macaulay (75). Hayes stated that:

“Assisted suicide is against the policy of the state of Ohio,”

Ohio Revised Code 3795.04 states that assisted suicide is “providing the physical means by which the other person commits or attempts to commit suicide” or; “participating in a physical act by which the other person commits or attempts to commit suicide.”

Balduf reported that:

Yellow Springs police responded around 3:20 a.m. March 28 to Aspen Court after Thomas Macaulay reported that his wife died, and that it was a nitrogen-induced suicide. He said she chose to end her life, according to a call log.

One of the responding officers reported he found Ardis Macaulay “visibly deceased, laying on a … recliner with an inflated translucent clothing bag over her head connected to an air tank.”

Thomas Macaulay told officers he had been with his wife. He said he did not participate in the suicide but that they had been planning it, according to the police report.

Inside the house officers found a suicide-type note on the table next to the recliner and instructions on how to die by suicide through nitrogen gas poisoning, the report stated.

Balduf reported that:

Macaulay, a retired Wright State University sculpture professor, is free on his own recognizance and is next scheduled to appear in court Sept. 6 for a pretrial hearing.

Police will need to prove that Macaulay assisted the suicide of his wife or if it were actually a homicide that he has claimed was an assisted suicide.

There have been many cases of spousal homicide where the perpetrator claimed that the act was an assisted suicide or euthanasia/"mercy killing."

Stephen Miller

This year, Stephen P. Miller, of Tucson Arizona, a former doctor and advisory board member with the group Choice and Dignity, was arrested and charged with manslaughter and assisting a suicide in the death of Doreen Brodhead (59) in a New York motel in November 2023

A case from Montecello New York, Andrew Moore claimed that he strangled to death his mother, Margaret Regalia, as part of an assisted suicide pact.

In 2010 I wrote an article titled: Homicide or "Mercy Killing" in response to another spousal homicide case in New York.

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition will closely follow this case.