The $650,000 Killing — Predators in the Living Room When “Mercy” Becomes Manslaughter

This article was published by Kelsi Sheren on her substack on April 2, 2026.

When “Mercy” Becomes Manslaughter

By Kelsi Sheren

The “Death with Dignity” crowd is lying to you, shocker. They want you to think this is about a peaceful goodbye. It’s not. It’s about vultures circling the vulnerable, and a Colorado courtroom is finally exposing the bone-chilling truth.

A family is facing manslaughter charges for the death of a 91-year-old woman. But they didn’t act alone. They had a playbook provided by the Final Exit Network (FEN)—a predatory group of “exit guides” who specialize in teaching people how to die in the shadows.

Article: Family members charged with manslaughter in Colorado "assisted suicide" (Read)

Let’s call FEN what they are, a domestic threat to our elders. They don’t provide hospice. They don’t provide comfort. They provide a technical manual for suicide. They fly across the country to whisper in the ears of the fearful, telling them that their “civil right” is to quit. They operate on the fringes of the law, hiding behind the excuse that they only provide “education.”

Education? No. They provide the blueprints for a killing.

“Police say Kim attended a Final Exit Network workshop weeks before Milsy's death at The Lodge at Balfour, the same facility where Milsy lived. Texts show Kim brought in gear to make sure they had the right equipment, stating, "We've got the right equipment. I brought it in a (sic) showed it to one of the guides."

This wasn’t a doctor in a lab coat. This was a mechanical, cold-blooded execution. Following the FEN method, this 91-year-old woman was killed using a “suicide hood”—a plastic bag fitted with a tube and connected to a tank of nitrogen. They literally murdered this women with a plastic bag and called it compassion.

The goal of this method isn’t just death; it’s concealment. Nitrogen displaces oxygen, suffocating the victim while leaving almost no trace for a coroner to find. It’s designed to look like a “natural death” so the predators can walk away clean. It is a cowardly way to die and an even more cowardly way to “help” someone.

Here is the jagged pill the “mercy” activists don’t want you to swallow: $650,000.

That was the inheritance waiting on the other side of that nitrogen tank. When you normalize the idea that life is disposable, you create a market for death. If a grandmother is worth more dead than alive to the people in her own home, and an organization like Final Exit Network is there to provide the “how-to,” she is as good as gone.

This wasn’t compassion. It was a transaction. It was the ultimate abandonment of a woman who had seen 91 years of life, only to be ushered into the dark because she became an obstacle to a payout.

As a veteran, I’ve seen what happens when we decide some lives aren’t worth protecting. We are losing our collective soul to convenience and greed. We are trading our grandmothers for bank balances and calling it “progress.”

I’m done being polite about this and have been for a while. If we don’t stand up against groups like the Final Exit Network, Compassion and Choices, Dying with Dignity and the culture that empowers them, we are next and so are your kids.

Family members charged with manslaughter in Colorado "assisted suicide" death.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Boulder District Attorney Michael Dougherty

Jennifer Kovaleski reported for Denver 7 (ABC) News that Mildred “Milsy” Roller (91) died on February 18, 2024 by asphyxiation and not by assisted suicide. Assisted suicide is legal in the state of Colorado.

If you have suicidal thoughts, do not read this article, but seek help through a suicide help-line.

Kovaleski reported that:

Officers with the Louisville Police Department said they found Milsy inside her room at The Lodge at Balfour, a Boulder County assisted living facility, with a bag over her head connected by a tube to a nitrogen gas bottle. Beside her was a suicide note with the date changed from Feb. 5 to Feb. 18, 2024.

Family members have been charged with manslaughter. Kovaleski states:

An indictment details text messages, purchases, and planning that prosecutors said crossed the line from the right to die into felony manslaughter. According to the indictment, texts included statements like, "We need to talk about whether mom needs a will," and "She needs to write a suicide note and she really couldn’t today."

Court records say Milsy's daughter, Kim Roller, bought a nitrogen tank three days before Milsy died. Kim's brother-in-law David Norton ordered a pressure flow regulator from Amazon and helped Milsy install it, according to the indictment. Prosecutors say there had been a failed suicide attempt earlier that month.

According to the indictment Milsy had no terminal diagnosis and her family stood to inherit more than $650,000.

Boulder District Attorney Michael Dougher said:

"This is definitely about fighting for justice. And she doesn't have a voice in this process,"

Final Exit Network (FEN) involvement.

Kovaleski reported that Milsy's daughter Kim attended a FEN meeting where she learned how to kill her mother.

Police say Kim attended a Final Exit Network (FEN) workshop weeks before Milsy's death at The Lodge at Balfour, the same facility where Milsy lived. Texts show Kim brought in gear to make sure they had the right equipment, stating, "We've got the right equipment. I brought it in a (sic) showed it to one of the guides."

FEN is a group that provides instructions to enable people to die by suicide, but these instructions also enable people to kill, which is what happened to Milsy.

Kovaleski reported that the police have instructed the FEN to change its Colorado workshops, making sure participants understand the law and cutting out step-by-step instructions.

FEN is a type of "criminal" killing organization, as it provides information and advice to people to enable them to kill.

FEN has been associated with multiple concerning deaths. 

• In February 2026 a Texas woman was arrested for assisting her husband's suicide (Read).

• In July 2024, a retired doctor and assisted suicide activist, who worked with FEN, was charged with manslaughter in New York State (Read).

• In June 2021, FEN launched a court case to try to overturn the Minnesota assisted suicide law. The court case was an attempt to overturn the 2015 conviction in the death of Doreen in 2007. The Final Exit Network or FEN was found guilty, by a jury, of assisted suicide in the suicide of Doreen Dunn (57) in 2007, who was depressed but not terminally ill. (Read).

FEN continues their work under the guise of free speech and they avoid being prosecuted based on the fact that dead people don't talk.

Milsy Roller was not terminally ill. Milsy was allegedly killed by her daughter and son-in-law with instructions and coaching from the FEN.  

Since assisted suicide is legal in Colorado, If Milsy was terminally ill she may have been pressured to death by "legal" assisted suicide. So what's the difference.

Being killed by assisted suicide is legal. They cannot prove coercion in assisted suicide deaths. Being killed by manslaughter, a type of murder, is not legal with the same outcome.

It's time that we simply stop allowing people to kill people.

Texas woman arrested for assisting her ex-husband's suicide.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Caitlin McCormack reported for the New York Post on February 18 that Sarah Regmund was arrested in the suicide death of her ex-husband Joseph Cheffo. The report indicated that Regmund assisted the suicide of Cheffo by following and participating in how-to instructions from the Final Exit Network.

The Final Exit Network (FEN) provides information, advice and sometimes trained people to assist a suicide.

According to McCormack:

Joseph Cheffo was found dead in his home in Odessa, Texas on Feb. 13. Even though assisted suicide is illegal in the Lone Star State, his ex-wife and primary caretaker, Sarah Regmund, allegedly helped suffocate him with how-to instructions from the Final Exit Network, the Odessa American reported.

I will not describe the assisted suicide death, but McCormack reported:

During an interview with police, Regmund explained that she had been in touch with the Final Exit Network, whose founder authored the book found near Cheffo’s bed. She claimed that the nonprofit’s representatives showed Cheffo how to kill himself the same day he died, according to the Odessa American.

McCormack stated that it was not clear whether or not FEN members were present at the death. Regmund admitted to following the FEN instructions, to setting up the suicide, and waiting two hours before reporting the death.

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition will follow this case.

FEN have been involved in many known assisted suicide deaths.

In 2015, the Final Exit Network or FEN was found guilty, by a jury, of assisted suicide in the suicide of Doreen Dunn (57) in 2007, who was depressed but not terminally ill. The group was sentenced on August 24, 2015. FEN appealed to the Minnesota Court of Appeals, the Minnesota Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court to no avail. They argued the Minnesota assisted suicide statute violated the free speech protections of the U.S. Constitution. 

After exhausting their appeals of the 2015 jury verdict, FEN filed a federal lawsuit in the Minnesota District Court in 2018 seeking to have the Minnesota assisted suicide law ruled unconstitutional on free speech grounds. The District Court dismissed the case in 2019 because it was simply a repeat of the state appellate case they had lost. Once a decision is final, you don’t get “overs” under the legal doctrine of collateral estoppel.

In May 2021 FEN filed a federal lawsuit with the Minnesota District Court seeking to invalidate the assisted suicide statute on free speech grounds. The legal arguments were the same as those in the 2018 suit that was dismissed, but the facts are different. The case appears to have died in 2023.

John Celmer

FEN has been prosecuted in several assisted suicide deaths. In Georgia, FEN assisted the suicide of John Celmer, who was depressed after recovering from cancer. Susan Celmer, John's widow, testified against the Final Exit Network.

FEN assists the suicide of people at the most vulnerable time of their life. Larry Egbert, the former medical director for the Final Exit Network, lost his medical license in Maryland for assisting suicides.

Retired doctor/assisted suicide activist, charged with manslaughter in New York State.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Stephen Miller

Marlene Lenthang reported for NBC news on February 6, 2024 that 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 a New York motel in November 2023. 

Assisted suicide activists, Derek Humphry and Richard MacDonald are also advisory board members with Choice and Dignity.

Lenthang stated:

The investigation started shortly before noon on Nov. 9, when police responded to a report about an unconscious and unresponsive person at a Super 8 on Washington Avenue in the city of Kingston, about 100 miles north of New York City, Kingston police said in a statement Friday.

First responders found a person who initially appeared to have died by suicide alone in the motel room, police said.

But further investigation led to evidence that a second person had been present who “contributed to or assisted in the suicide,” the statement said.

An investigation by police and the Ulster County district attorney’s office led to an arrest warrant’s being issued for Miller citing second-degree manslaughter under the state penal code regarding a person who "intentionally causes or aids another person" to die by suicide.

Ed Shanahan reported for the New York Times on July 8, 2024 that the woman who died was Doreen Brodhead, a 59-year-old Kingston, New York native.

Shanahan also reported that Stephen Miller served three years in jail for tax evasion. The article stated:

In 2006, court records show, federal prosecutors charged him with tax evasion. He had hidden more than $1 million in income offshore with the help of a corrupt financial planner, they said.

He was convicted despite insisting that the planner had duped him. His wife divorced him, and he spent three years in prison and three more on probation. Regulators in Texas and California revoked his medical licenses, according to government documents; his licenses in Arizona and Massachusetts expired.

After leaving prison in 2009, Mr. Miller moved to Tucson, Ariz. His older brother, Alan Miller, spent part of each year there, and they lived together for about a year until Stephen moved into a trailer. His main income was $2,000 a month in Social Security benefits.

Shanahan wrote about the evidence on how Doreen Brodhead died. [Based on my concern for people experiencing suicidal ideation I will not share this information.]

Robert Rivas, the former general counsel for the Final Exit Network a group that assists suicides in states where it is not legal, told the New York Times that:

philosophically speaking, Mr. Miller “probably deserves a medal as far as I’m concerned.” As a legal matter, however, Mr. Rivas added: “He’s toast.”

Shanahan interviewed Jim Schultz, the board president of Choice and Dying:

...he had only learned of Mr. Miller’s role in Ms. Brodhead’s death from news accounts. He declined to comment on the criminal charges. He said he was impressed by the “dedication to his cause” Mr. Miller had shown by traveling to New York to be with Ms. Brodhead.

In his release agreement, Miller's lawyer agreed that his client wouldn't be involved in anything related to assisted suicide. Shanahan reported that Miller was recently involved with a

Mr. Schultz said Mr. Miller had recently participated in a Choice and Dignity class on “deliberate life completion,” including alternatives when legal methods like medical aid in dying are not available.

The discussion included a how-to on the option Ms. Brodhead chose.

Assisted suicide is not about autonomy. It is a form of abandonment of a person in a time of need ... abandoned to death.

Concerned with the growth of the radical assisted suicide groups.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The assisted suicide lobby have a more extreme groups that are lobbying for suicide on demand. There are groups that provide ordering information for suicide substances and the "last will pill", there are groups that promote the concept of the "completed life" for people who are not sick but who have given up on living, and there are groups that sell books and provide information for suicide on demand.

Politically, the more extreme element within the assisted suicide lobby enable the "mainstream" groups to appear moderate.

All of these groups are intertwined with the euthanasia and assisted suicide lobby and the more radical groups see themselves as the natural outcome or final outcome for euthanasia and assisted suicide laws.

Why should you be concerned?

I have a close friend who is living with suicidal ideation. I am concerned that one day he will stumble onto one of the radical suicide promoting websites. The difficulty with suicidal ideation is that it doesn't go away. People resist the idea of suicide but once the thought that dying is better than living is firmly implanted into a person's thoughts, it seems to constantly return and it sometimes leads to a tragic end.

Ximena Knol

For instance, Randy Knol, the father of Ximena, who died by suicide when she was only 19 wrote the following about the death of his daughter:

Ximena used the “Substance X” as promoted by a Dutch radical group that came in the news 6 months prior to her death. On a television news show FWC came out in a poorly acted report that it was a substance that was painless, fast and certain. They made the idea of death so easy, however the promise they made was a big lie, it’s one of the most inhumane ways of ending your life. With “substance X” death is in fact inhumane. Science cases report about an agonizing five-day struggle to die, where no antidote is available.

Three weeks after Ximena died we warned against this substance through the media with a news article starting a wave of attention. We told our horrific story for the first time in a Late night talk show. I called the FWC radicals “end-of-life-terrorists”, which was apparently a good description because it made the headlines in many newspapers the next day.

...They are so radical, they had the plan that after a six month membership you could acquire the substance, no consulting no questions asked.

The Cooperatie Laatste Wil promotes "substance X" which is the suicide powder that caused Ximena's death.

Philip Nitschke has become a notorious and wealthy promoter of suicide through the sale of his books and devices. He has become famous with the creation of his "suicide pod" that is attractively designed to gain the attention of the media.

Nitshcke is known for his support for suicide on demand. He once told a reporter that even troubled teens should have access to the "peaceful pill". Nitschke believes that anyone should have access to an inexpensive suicide pill.

In America, a group called The Completed Life Initiative promotes suicide, assisted suicide and euthanasia. This group believes that people should be given the means to end their life when they decide that their life is complete. They provide information and advice to people who would not "qualify" for assisted suicide but who are seeking suicide. The Completed Life podcasts interview people who are planning to die by suicide. Even though the podcasts offer warnings for people who are suicidal, the instructions within the interview may lead a person with suicidal ideation to copy the suicide death.

What would happen if my friend who lives with suicidal ideation starts to listen to these podcasts?

More reasons to be concerned.

The assisted suicide lobby sells the legalization of assisted suicide by claiming that "safeguards" will prevent people who are not otherwise dying or living with mental illness, from dying by assisted suicide.

First, assisted suicide law "safeguards" are written in an imprecise manner to enable a wide interpretation of the law.

Second, in states that have legalized assisted suicide, the assisted suicide lobby are now working to eliminate the original "safeguards" in the law.

The final goal for the assisted suicide lobby is suicide on demand. For those who question my statement go to list of organizations that are members of the World Federation of Right to Die Societies website. You will notice that the extreme groups are recognized as members of the World Federation

We are concerned that the "mainstream" assisted suicide lobby groups are working to achieve cultural change while the more radical groups are working on the "final solution".

2022 Assisted Suicide US Predictions.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

I predict that 2022 will be a very active year for US assisted suicide bills, especially in the eastern US. The US assisted suicide lobby are sponsoring bills in many states, but they are focusing on New York and Massachusetts. I predict that they will also focus on bills in Connecticut and Maryland.

The assisted suicide lobby have invested significant money into 2022 campaigns as they fear that they may lose supportive seats in the November 2022 mid-term elections.

I also predict that in many states, the bill that will be debated will be similar to the New Mexico bill (HB 47) that passed in 2021. New Mexico has the most extreme assisted suicide law in America.

Among other things, New Mexico Bill HB 47 approved:

• Expanded who can approve and prescribe assisted suicide by creating the term health care provider which includes advanced nurses, and other non-physicians.
• Required a 48 hour waiting period (rather than a 15 day waiting period) that could be waived if the person is nearing death (same day death).
• Waives approval by a second health care provider if the person is enrolled in a hospice program.
• Trampled on conscience rights for medical professionals.

Assisted suicide expansion laws.

When examining the assisted suicide expansion bills and the court cases to expand assisted suicide, clearly these laws are expanding over time. Legislatures pass assisted suicide laws with "safeguards" that are designed to sell legalization.

In 2022, the assisted suicide lobby will continue to support bills to expand current assisted suicide laws. In 2021, California, Hawaii, Vermont and Washington State had bills to expand their current assisted suicide regimes, only the California bill passed. Assisted suicide expansion bills in Hawaii, Vermont, Oregon and Washington state will be strongly pushed in 2022.

Most of these bills concern lessening or waiving waiting periods, expanding who can approve assisted suicide and trampling on conscience rights.

There are several court cases to legalize or expand US assisted suicide laws.

The assisted suicide lobby has launched court cases to expand assisted suicide and euthanasia in the United States, because other jurisdictions, such as Canada, have legalized and expanded euthanasia through the courts.

The California (Shavelson) case states that people with disabilities, due to their physical abilities, are experience discrimination with the California assisted suicide law. Shavelson et al argues that the law must be permit death by lethal injection (euthanasia) to enable equality under the law. 

The Shavelson case is not asking the court to expand the assisted suicide law, but rather it is asking the court to legalize euthanasia, which is a form of homicide. (Link to article on the case). If an activist judge agrees with Shavelson, the door to euthanasia in every state that permits assisted suicide will be opened.

The Oregon (Gideonse) case is challenging the residency requirement in the Oregon assisted suicide law. The Gideonse case is arguing that a patient, who lives in Washington state, should be permitted to die by assisted suicide in Oregon. If an activist judge agrees with Gideonse et al, then every American will be able to die by assisted suicide in Oregon. (Link to an article on the case).

The Massachusetts (Kligler) case claims that prosecuting doctors for prescribing lethal assisted suicide drugs violates the Massachusetts State Constitution. (Link to an article on the case). 

I believe that even though the Kligler case focuses on the Massachusetts State Constitution, that it may be used to challenge the Supreme Court 1997 Glucksberg decision that found that there was no right to assisted suicide.

The Minnesota Final Exit Network case is a continuation of previous cases are challenging the Minnesota law prohibiting assisted suicide based on free speech statutes. I personally think that the Final Exit Network case will fail again. (Link to an article on the case).

The assisted suicide lobby will continue to lobby is hoping to win in New York. They have put a lot of money into this campaign.

Assisted suicide laws give medical professionals the right in law to cause your death. These laws are not about choice or autonomy but abandonment and physician control.

We need a society that cares not kills its citizens.

Link to: Preventing the spread of assisted suicide in America (Link)

The euthanasia lobby is promoting suicide?

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

While reading an article published by the Cal-Alumni Association that was promoting the expansion of the California assisted suicide law I wondered: Why does the death lobby get away with promoting suicide?

The article focused on stories of people who died by suicide / assisted suicide. I was shocked by the descriptions and lionizing of the deaths.

I regularly read articles about euthanasia and assisted suicide but I clearly felt that this article was not only promoting the expansion of assisted suicide but it was also irresponsible in how it described the deaths and applauded those who died.

The World Health Organization published a resource for media professionals with protocols for responsible reporting of suicide deaths to prevent suicide and suicide contagion. The quick reference in the WHO media guidelines for preventing suicide states:

• Take the opportunity to educate the public about suicide,
• Avoid language which sensationalizes or normalizes suicide, or presents it as a solution to problems,
• Avoid prominent placement and undue repetition of stories about suicide,
• Avoid explicit description of the method used in a completed or attempted suicide,
• Avoid providing detailed information about the site of a completed or attempted suicide,
• Word headlines carefully,
• Exercise caution in using photographs or video footage,
• Take particular care in reporting celebrity suicides,
• Show due consideration for people bereaved by suicide,
• Provide information about where to seek help,
• Recognize that media professionals themselves may be affected by stories about suicide

Clearly a story describing how Debra and Lillian ended their lives with clear descriptions of the methods used to die not only normalizes assisted suicide but it will lead to more suicide, the suicide contagion effect.

The data shows that where euthanasia or assisted suicide have been legalized that the suicide rates increase (Link).

Further to that, the story promotes the radical assisted suicide group, the Final Exit Network. Without trying to provide too much negative information, the Final Exit network assisted Lillian's suicide. The article states:

Lillian was not ill, at least not terminally, but she was old. She had lived a full and creative life, but was no longer the person she used to be, or wanted to be, or wanted her friends and family to see. She was certain about that.

The article that I am refering to is only one of many irresponsible articles that appear to be promoting assisted suicide or the expansion of these laws while in fact they are promoting suicide, whether they are assisted or not, and denigrating the life of people with disabilities or the elderly.

The claim that this is all about freedom of speech is important, but all freedoms have limits based on our responsibility to others.

I believe in a society that upholds the value of living with disabilities, respecting the lives and experience of elderly people and upholding the equality of every human being. 

Suicide promotion articles and the philosophy of the Final Exit Network is oriented towards abandoning people to death.

Suicide, assisted suicide, disability rights and FEN.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Allison Wallis, wrote an indepth essay that was published by Aljazeera on August 8 titled: Death doulas and end-of-life rights: The debate on assisted dying.

I don't agree with much of Wallis's essay but she uncovers significant information related to the Final Exit Network (FEN). Wallis is from Hawaii where assisted suicide has been legal for several years.

Wallis begins by explaining her story that led to her interest in the issue she writes:

A few years ago, I spent a lot of time in bed. I had developed holes in my dura – the thick covering that surrounds the spine and brain – that were leaking cerebrospinal fluid. Every time I would sit up, I would get hit by a wave of dizziness and nausea, and the pain in my head from low brain pressure would become unbearable. Many times, I would faint, passing out on the floor or in bed.
...
Every single day, I felt like a burden. The pain never relented. Many of those days, I wanted to die.

My life is exponentially better now. I am no longer suicidal and have no remaining ideation. But I do still think a lot about the ethics of suicide – and especially of medical aid in dying (MAID), a practice legal in a small but growing number of states which allows a doctor to write a fatal prescription for a sick person who feels sure they want to die.

Wallis writes that she lives with chronic pain and supports the concept that someone should be able to end their life when they are dying or life becomes difficult. She states:

I decided I wanted to know what it would mean to choose to die with the help of my doctor under Hawaii’s MAID law: the Our Care, Our Choices Act. I spoke to death doulas, lobbyists and doctors, and one man who operates in the margins of the law by helping people learn how to end their lives.

Wallis examines opposition to assisted dying from the disability perspective.

This opposition means they also oppose limited laws like the Our Care, Our Choice Act in Hawaii, which allows terminal, mentally competent residents with less than six months to live the right to request medication that will end their life. It is the beginning of a slippery slope, activists say. Many disabled people have been told that they were terminal, but are still alive decades later. In January in Canada, a 35-year-old father named Chris Gladders died with medical assistance in a filthy room in a nursing home that investigators found to be poorly managed and neglectful. Disability rights advocates held the case up as an example of exactly what they were worried about. If he had been able to live at home, with his family and skilled care, would he still be alive today?...

The National Council on Disability (NCID) strongly opposes MAID and has produced a 70-page document (PDF) that outlines its concerns. These include insurance companies that have refused to pay for possibly life-saving care, but that did offer to pay for much less expensive lethal drugs. The Council also argues that medical science is not perfect and that disabled people are sometimes called terminal when they are not. People considering MAID may be living with demoralisation, caused by the internalised feelings that they are an expense or a burden to loved ones. Most physicians are not trained in recognising or addressing demoralisation in their disabled patients. Instead, these physicians may reinforce those feelings by conflating disability with a terminal illness or poor quality of life.

Wallis explains how disability advocates want better care not death.

In recent years, in response to the opioid epidemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been cracking down on the prescription of pain medication – even though the treatment of pain is considered a civil right. As a result, it is easier for some people who live with severe pain to obtain deadly MAID drugs than to obtain opioids – the only type of medication that may help with their pain. What disabled people need instead of aid-in-dying laws, the Council suggests, is adequate long-term care. Palliative care and pain medication that is fully funded and easily accessible. Home health aides that are affordable or paid by insurance. Instead of being encouraged to die, we need the ability, through support, to live the best life possible.

Wallis then interviewes Brian Rudder from the Final Exit Network (FEN):

Brian Ruder believes that a person should have a civil right to end their life on their own terms. He is with the Final Exit Network, a nationwide organisation that provides training for people who want to end their life. Clients do not need to be terminal. To request FEN’s services, you must write a letter and send in your medical records to be reviewed by a board of doctors. ...

When I called Brian to talk about it, he insisted that FEN does not assist or encourage suicide, but only provides information about various possible methods. I found it hard, however, to understand how a volunteer flying out to Hawaii to give a lesson about dying to someone who may be suicidal is not encouraging the act. He also said that FEN does not accept people with mental illness. Not yet, anyway. And he stressed that the group turns away applicants whose families are not on board, as well as people with severe medical issues who do not think they are within a year of wanting to die. These people are given a reference to a suicide how-to book. They are not given a referral for mental health care.

One of the reasons I like Wallis's article is that she uncovers some of the FEN practises. FEN is an assisted suicide group that assists in the deaths of people who don't qualify for death under the state assisted suicide laws or assists suicides in states where it is illegal. FEN promotes a "suicide how-to book" for people when they will not assist the death. In other words they will advocate for suicide in cases when they won't approve the suicide.

Wallis asks Brian whether FEN would have helped her to die when she was at her low time. He told her:

“Maybe,” Brian said. The medical board would have had to review my letter and medical records. While FEN does not approve people with solely mental health issues, they do not see depression as a barrier to approving people who also have serious health problems. He seemed to dance around my question a bit, but I got the impression that, if I had asked for FEN’s help to die, I probably would have been accepted.

Brian also told Wallis how FEN supports assisting a suicide for people who think their life is complete (completed life). Wallis responds by writing:

Brian seemed like a nice guy. Like he would be a good grandfather. My disabled friends would call him a serial killer. I left the interview feeling very uneasy. That feeling has not gone away.

Wallis then writes about death doulas, an "ideal" assisted suicide death and her memories of her grandmother's natural death. She ends her essay by stating that she supports disability organizations opposition to assisted suicide but she also supports the option of assisted suicide. Wallis is clearly inconsistent and divided.

I appreciate how Wallis shows how FEN is an extremist group. They say that they don't assist suicides but they assist in every way possible in suicide. Wallis shows how FEN will not approve everyone for assistance in suicide but when they do not approve they assist by providing "how to" suicide information. Finally she shows how FEN leaders support the concept of "completed" life and how they are willing to assist the suicides of people who have suicidal ideation.

I hope that Wallis will notice the inconsistency in the assisted suicide ideology, an ideology that enables other people to approve and be involved with causing death. These are dangerous concepts for people living in a difficult time of their life.

It is far more consistent to believe that nobody in society has the legal right to be involved with killing another person. True equality recognaized the value of every human life.

Final Exit Network Seeks to Overturn Minnesota Assisted Suicide Law AGAIN!

Attorney Sara Buscher
Chair, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition USA

The Final Exit Network (FEN) is an association of groups and individuals who assist the suicides of others by counseling, providing advice and providing the means for suicide.

Back in 2015, the Final Exit Network or FEN was found guilty, by a jury, of assisted suicide in the suicide of Doreen Dunn (57) in 2007, who was depressed but not terminally ill. The group was sentenced on August 24, 2015. FEN appealed to the Minnesota Court of Appeals, the Minnesota Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court to no avail. They argued the Minnesota assisted suicide statute violated the free speech protections of the U.S. Constitution.

The statute, § 609.215 Subd. 1 says: “Whoever intentionally advises, encourages, or assists another in taking the other's own life may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than 15 years or to payment of a fine of not more than $30,000, or both.” In unrelated litigation the words “advise” and “encourages” (but not “assists”) were removed from the statute as unconstitutional on free speech grounds.

After exhausting their appeals of the 2015 jury verdict, FEN filed a federal lawsuit in the Minnesota District Court in 2018 seeking to have the Minnesota assisted suicide law ruled unconstitutional on free speech grounds. The District Court dismissed the case in 2019 because it was simply a repeat of the state appellate case they had lost. Once a decision is final, you don’t get “overs” under the legal doctrine of collateral estoppel.

Just last month (May 2021) FEN filed a new federal lawsuit with the Minnesota District Court seeking to invalidate the assisted suicide statute on free speech grounds. The legal arguments are the same as those in the 2018 suit that was dismissed, but the facts are different. No one has been charged or indicted. The suit seeks a court order to stop that from happening.

According to FEN’s complaint, the plaintiffs are FEN Exit Guides who visited the Minnesota home of an Exit Guide participant in May. Sheriff’s deputies arrived at the home minutes after the Exit Guides had arrived, stating they had received a call about an “assisted suicide” that was to take place. They seized the bags of the Exit Guides. According to FEN, no suicide was attempted and the conversation between the Exit Guides and persons in the home were an exchange of pleasantries.

Since then, deputies have refused to return the bags and have confirmed they obtained search warrants and searched the bags. They also confirmed they obtained warrants to conduct a forensic examination of a laptop in the backpack and an iPad in the travel bag.

FEN claims no assisted suicide was attempted and only protected speech occurred.  If I were to bet on an outcome, I’d say this will be dismissed for being filed too early.

We will keep you updated on this case.

Previous Final Exit Network articles:

• US Supreme Court upholds conviction of assisted suicide group in Minnesota death (Link).  
• Minnesota appeals court upheld conviction for assisted suicide (Link).
  

Euthanasia activists want to force caregivers to starve dementia patients to death

This article was published by National Review online on March 6, 2021

Wesley Smith

By Wesley J Smith

As I have warned here before, euthanasia activists are pushing for laws that permit people to write advance directives ordering themselves starved to death if they become mentally incapacitated. That effort is apparently gaining steam.

The assisted suicide supporting organization Final Exit Network published a poll that supposedly found only 15 percent of respondents would oppose. Here’s how the question was worded as quoted in the pro-euthanasia crusading bioethicist Thaddeus Mason Pope’s blog:

Some people also propose that individuals with early stage dementia, who are still competent, should be able to stipulate for their future incompetent selves, that they want food and drink withdrawn and for doctors to keep them comfortable so they can die peacefully.

Notice the passive language. If I threw you in a room and locked the door until you starved and dehydrated to death, would you consider that dying “peacefully?” Would you consider it “peaceful” if a doctor drugged you so deeply that you could not ask for food?

But Wesley, you may say, that’s what they want!

No! It’s what they may have wanted in the past out of understandable fear. But we are talking about starving people who willingly eat and drink. We are saying that people can become incompetent to ask for the basics of life. We are pondering a circumstance in which vulnerable patients may ask for food only to have it refused because of something they may have written years previously. (That awfulness happened at least once in a feeding tube case.)

And these are people who may not be suffering or whose symptoms can be palliated effectively. In a sense, we are making dementia patients slaves to the thoughts and fears of their younger selves.

We are also talking about forcing caregivers to starve their patients to death at risk of lawsuits for “wrongful life” or other legal sanction.

Moreover, advance directives are supposed to be about accepting or refusing medical treatment. Oral sustenance is not medical treatment, but humane care akin to keeping warm or turning to prevent bed sores. I mean, if someone directed that they be left without a blanket in front of an open window so they die of hypothermia–which can be a ‘peaceful’ death–would we ever say that should be done? Of course not!

There are some things that no one should have the right to force others to do. Killing them — by whatever means — is one of them.

Pope says these advance directives are legal in several states. He is very knowledgeable about these issues — he really keeps track — but I know of only one where the permission is somewhat explicit: Nevada. If I find out otherwise, I will add an update to this post.

Editor’s note. Wesley’s columns appear at National Review Online and are reposted with his permission.

Utah man claims his wife's death was not murder but assisted suicide.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition
 

Dennis & Jean Chamberlain

Dennis Chamberlain was convicted for attempted murder in the death of his wife, Jean, in 2014. Dennis is asking for parole by claiming it was an assisted suicide and not murder.
 
Marcos Ortiz, for ABC news - The Justice Files, reported:

In 2014, he was arrested for the murder of his wife, Jean. He eventually accepted a plea bargain and the charge was reduced to attempted murder. He was sentenced to a minimum of three years and up to life in prison.

Chamberlain claimed, during the parole hearing, that it was an assisted suicide, not murder.

Before the hearing officer, Chamberlain continued to maintain it was an assisted suicide, not murder. But an assisted suicide is still against the law in Utah.

“We decided the two of us together to help her pass on to the next life,” he said. “And so what I did is I put a plastic bag on her head … and she didn’t survive very long after that. ”

The act of asphyxiating a person with a plastic bag is murder not assisted suicide. Chamberlain claims that he received advice from the Hemlock Society:

During the 2015 defense of his actions, Chamberlain claimed the two of them were followers of the Hemlock Society. The organization believes it is one’s right to choose when they died. He said he met with members of the group who told him that helping his wife die was an option.

“It wasn’t just my decision,” he said. ” It was mine and my wife Jean’s decision and we went along with the people that were part of that organization.”

Chamberlain's daughter, Sonya Balling, and Jean's sister, Janis Farran don't believe him and don't want him released. Ortiz reported Farran as stating:

“He was not a grieving widower but a calculated killer who planned the execution of our beloved sister and then covered it up,”

“In the face of the evidence of his actions Dennis still denies that he killed her. He has shown no remorse whatsoever.”

“He’d tape her to a chair and leave her,”

“And (he’d) be upset and punish her if she soiled herself.”

Balling also commented on her father's crime:

“In my father’s mind he hasn’t done anything wrong so until he makes an effort to acknowledge his actions for what they truly were or try to change his mindset or make amends, I do not believe he should be released”

If assisted suicide were legal in Utah, Chamberlain could have argued that all he did was complete an act that is legal for doctors to do.

The fact is that putting a plastic bag over someone's head and asphyxiating them to death is murder. He did the act, therefore he should serve his time.

• Nitschke possibly connected to a murder in America (Link).

The Economist Swoons over Death Doctor & His Suicide Machine

This article was published by National Review online on December 13, 2019.

By Wesley Smith

The mainstream media mostly went head over heels over Jack Kevorkian’s ghoulish assisted suicide campaign, rarely mentioning that his ultimate goal was to gain the right to conduct human vivisection on people being euthanized.

The Australian Kevorkian — Philip Nitschke — hasn’t advocated that. But he has traveled the world teaching people how to commit suicide, published a suicide recipe he invented made of common household ingredients, and pushed a pernicious death-on-demand philosophy. Now The Economist swoons over “the bad boy of the euthanasia movement,” touting his new suicide pod machine in a profile of a length few presidents have received. From, “A Design for Death:”

My host’s name is Philip Nitschke and he’s invented a machine called Sarco. Short for sarcophagus, the slick, spaceship-like pod has a seat for one passenger en-route to the afterlife. It uses nitrogen to enact a pain-free, peaceful death from inert-gas asphyxiation at the touch of a button. With the help of his wife and colleague, the writer and lawyer Dr Fiona Stewart, Nitschke is ushering the death-on-demand movement towards a dramatic new milestone – and their enthusiasm is palpable.

And he’s such a jolly fellow!

Nitschke and Stewart are much jollier than you’d expect the right-to-die movement’s only power couple to be. They’re full of – well – joie de vivre and arch banter about everything from Brexit to the roadworks that have denuded the front of their home of a beloved creeper. “If it’s not dead, boy is it doing a bloody good impression of being dead,” observes Nitschke, correctly.

And he’s so good at the suicide sales pitch!

It’s undeniable that Nitschke’s campaigns have exhibited a certain PR-savvy pizzazz. He is the originator, no less, of the euthanasia flash mob, which took place to celebrate his 70th birthday and 20 years of Exit International (soundtrack: Bon Jovi’s “It’s My Life”, naturally). When he announced plans for Sarco, it was dismissed by some, says Nitschke, as “a stunt, or some virtual creation in someone’s mind that didn’t have any prospect of physical reality.”

I can attest that the machine exists, having had the singular experience of reclining on a prototype at Nitschke’s workshop on an industrial estate in Hillegom, South Holland, amidst the incongruous spring blaze of the tulip fields. Plus, scratch the surface of his provocative patter and there’s a person – a patient – lurking behind each of his convictions.

I think we should be very clear about who, exactly, The Economist is touting. Nitschke, the nihilist, told NRO’s Katherine Jean Lopez that he wants suicide pills made available in supermarkets. Katherine asked Nitschke whether they should be available to “troubled teens.” Why, yes, he said. From Katherine’s NRO interview:

My personal position is that if we believe that there is a right to life, then we must accept that people have a right to dispose of that life whenever they want. (In the same way as the right to freedom of religion has implicit the right to be an atheist, and the right to freedom of speech involves the right to remain silent). I do not believe that telling people they have a right to life while denying them the means, manner, or information necessary for them to give this life away has any ethical consistency.

So all people qualify, not just those with the training, knowledge, or resources to find out how to “give away” their life. And someone needs to provide this knowledge, training, or recourse necessary to anyone who wants it, including the depressed, the elderly bereaved, [and] the troubled teen. If we are to remain consistent and we believe that the individual has the right to dispose of their life, we should not erect artificial barriers in the way of sub-groups who don’t meet our criteria.

Nitschke has taught elderly people how to get animal euthanasia drugs to use on themselves. He has repeatedly lied about those he counseled on suicide, such as that of Nancy Crick, who Nitschke falsely claimed to the media that she had terminal cancer. Nitschke wasn’t near her when she died to avoid criminal his own culpability, but his fans were — and they applauded when she swallowed the pills. When I traveled to Australia in 2001 to expose him about the above-quoted interview with Katherine, he accused me of lying in the media. He also used to sell plastic suicide bags to suicidal people until stopped by the Australian government.

The man is thoroughly reprehensible. No wonder the mainstream media is attracted to him like a magnet to metal. They love their transgressives!