Canadian man tried to have his incompetent wife killed by euthanasia, against her consent.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Roxanne Egan-Elliott reported that Justice Bradford Smith removed a Canadian man’s power to make health-care decisions for his 77-year-old wife with advanced Alzheimer’s after the court learning that the man intended to end her life and then take his own.

The article that was published by the Times Colonist on December 23, 2025 reports that a woman known as E.W. was diagnosed with Alzheimer's in 2017 and her husband has pushed to have her killed by euthanasia, without her consent. The article states:

E.W. was assessed as eligible for medical assistance in dying in 2020, but by September 2021, a doctor determined in a second assessment that she was ineligible because her condition had progressed to a point that she no longer had sufficient insight into dementia to consent to MAID.

E.W. also told the doctor at that point that she was not interested in receiving MAID in circumstances related to worsening memory or confusion, the court decision says.

Her husband, T.W., is a “strong advocate” for MAID and has told various people that if he and E.W. are eligible for MAID, they intend to receive it.

He has also told family, friends and Island Health staff that if his wife becomes ineligible, he intends to end her life and take his own, the decision says.

Clearly, her husband was considering murdering his wife and then dying by suicide.

The court heard that E.W. never agreed to her husbands "death plan." Egan-Elliott reported:

“On the contrary, E.W. was understandably upset by it,” and told their daughter that T.W. “was trying to kill her,” the decision says.

Island Health increased the frequency of its wellness checks and clinical assessments of E.W. after receiving a report from the doctor who assessed E.W. for MAID that she had said she was not ready to die, and that if her husband learned she was ineligible for MAID, he planned to carry out the death plan, which he referred to as “dignicide.”

The article reports that in January 2022 that Island Health obtained emergency powers to remove E.W. from the couple's home and to place her in a long-term care facility for protection.

Egan-Elliott reported that the husband continued to inappropriately treat his wife. He would call the care facility every day, against her wishes, at 6:30 am to wake her up, she was often dressed in tattered clothing and shoes, that TW provided, including worn-out men's work boots, that he insisted that she wear, and more.

Justice Bradford Smith decision stated:

“Having regard to what is in E.W.’s best interest and her lack of cognitive capacity, I find that the only currently tenable solution that will protect E.W. from risk of death or grievous harm is to remove T.W.’s authority as her personal representative,”

Isabel Grant, a law professor at the University of British Columbia’s Peter A. Allard School of Law, told Lisa Steacy for CTV news on December 22 that:

“The death plan is contrary to our murder laws. And I think it’s really important not to have us talk about the murder of elderly people as some slightly improper form of MAID. That’s not what it is. It’s murder. Just because she has a disability does not transform this into something else. This case demonstrates how our MAID regime has normalized death as a response to disability for the elderly."

Steacy also reported Grant as stating:

Grant also said she finds it troubling the decision does not indicate that any moves were made by any authorities to limit or prevent T.W.’s contact with his wife in light of his seemingly unabashed professions of his intent to kill her, or that there was any discussion about how or whether his actions would warrant a criminal investigation or charge.

The relationship between T.W. and E.W. is also one with all the hallmarks of coercive control—a form of intimate partner violence that Canada is taking steps toward criminalizing, Grant pointed out.

In that context, Grant said the repeated references to T.W. advocating for MAID for his wife, his apparent attempts to find a way consent to it on her behalf, and his plan to kill her if MAID was not available are particularly troubling.

Grant's concerns are correct. E.W.'s life was directly threatened by her husband. E.W. has Alzheimer's and needs support, but her husband is not only controlling her but doing so in an abusive manner.

E.W. not only needed her husband removed as her medical decision maker but he should be barred from seeing her as a protection for her. The husband is abusive and is willing to kill her.

This article might be seen as proving that the law protected E.W. from her husband but considering that Québec has approved euthanasia by advanced request and the federal government is considering expanding euthanasia to advanced request, the situation may have been different if advanced requests were permitted.

I have published several articles about domestic murder/suicide over the years (Articles Link).

Assisted Suicide and Domestic Abuse.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

An article by Jess Asato (MP) and Cherryl Henry-Leach that was published by PoliticsHome concerns the UK Assisted Dying bill that is sponsored by Kim Leadbeater (MP) and the lack of protection, in the bill, for victims of Domestic Abuse.

Jess Asato is the Labour MP for Lowestoft and Cherryl Henry-Leach is CEO of the charity Standing Together Against Domestic Abuse (STADA). The writers explain their concern:

Jess Asato Labour MP

The bill as it stands does not adequately protect victims of domestic abuse. It needs more protections to prevent MPs from creating a new and legal way for perpetrators to abuse — and, ultimately, kill — their victims.

The Bill Committee did accept amendments that would require the medical practitioners and panel members involved in the assisted dying process to have undertaken training to help them identify domestic abuse. However, this does not go far enough, and the broader issue of how this bill will impact the lives of domestic abuse victims has been under-discussed.

Asato and Henry-Leach continue:

New data out this week from the National Police Chiefs Council shows that suicide following domestic abuse has overtaken homicide as the primary cause of domestic abuse-related deaths. We know from research by the women’s organisation The Other Half that 88 per cent of unlawful assisted suicides in the UK currently are perpetrated by men against women. These deaths are all too often romanticised as ‘mercy killings’, but given one woman is killed every week by their male partner and one in four women experience domestic abuse more generally, many of these suicides are likely in fact manifestations of abuse and control.

Asato and Henry-Leach explain that health care professionals often miss signs of domestic abuse:

We also know from years of working with Domestic Homicide Reviews that professionals across public services, particularly in health, often miss the signs of domestic abuse, sometimes with fatal consequences. Investment in policy and practice is needed urgently to resolve this. Research by Standing Together Against Domestic Abuse with Macmillan Cancer Support indicates that many domestic abuse survivors disclose their abuse in healthcare settings, yet these disclosures frequently go unrecognised or unacted upon by medical practitioners. Research from the Pathfinder project found that 80 per cent of women in violent relationships seek help from health services, usually from GPs, at least once, but the response is often inadequate, with many survivors not receiving the support they need, leaving them vulnerable to continued abuse.

The writers explain that assisted suicide enables abuse to lead to death:

This bill gives those most at-risk of abuse the means to end their lives, at a time when we do not have systems in place to identify their abuse and support them to live well. Older people, disabled people, severely ill people — these are some of the most vulnerable to abuse and coercive and controlling behaviour.

The writers conclude that:

We believe that one wrongful death is one death too many, but as this Bill progresses through Parliament, it is the responsibility of MPs to ensure that this Bill’s new assisted dying process leads to the fewest number of wrongful deaths possible.

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition completely agree with Jess Asato (MP) and Cherryl Henry-Leach. They are correct that Domestic Abuse is more intensely carried out upon people when they are at the most vulnerable time of their life.

The founding Euthanasia Prevention Coalition VP, Jean Echlin, was a renowned palliative care nurse, but she was also a victim of domestic abuse. We have also written about elder abuse as it relates to euthanasia and assisted suicide.

The argument was clearly made by Asato and Henry-Leach and applies to every jurisdiction that is debating the legalization of euthanasia and/or assisted suicide.

Articles on similar topics:

• Homicide or Mercy Killing? (Link) 
• Euthanasia and assisted suicide - Ugly issue back again (Link). 
• A dance of death (Link).
  
• Death with Dignity or Obsenity? (Link).

Sarco Selling Murder-Suicide

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Philip Nitschke with Sarco

Sarah Oliver and Sanchez Manning reported for the Daily Mail on September 7, 2024 that Peter and Christine Scott have decided to not only be the first people to die by assisted suicide with the Sarco pod, but that they intend to die together.

Peter and Christine Scott are part of a death campaign that romanticizes suicide where the "wish to die" is turned into a "love story."

The Sarco suicide pod was designed by suicide promoter Philip Nitschke, formerly known as Australia's Dr Death, to enable suicide by being gassed to death. The person activates the nitrogen gas which causes a suicide death by suffocation.

In July, the media reported that: 

Peter Sticher, a public prosecutor, cautioned that Mr Nitschke would face serious consequences for aiding, abetting, and inducing suicide, particularly if done for selfish reasons.

In a letter obtained by Swiss media, Mr Sticher said: ''There is no reliable information about the method of killing. [It is] completely unclear who has control over which mechanical process during the dying process.''

Since Peter and Christine Scott plan to "die together" the deaths would be defined as a murder-suicide, since one person would activate the nitrogen gas but both would die by suffocation, meaning one death is a self-murder while the other is clear murder.

The Sarco was developed by Nitschke as a way to gain media attention and to promote his websites that sell suicide books, materials and gadgets. 

Nitschke is 'making a killing' on selling suicide.

Compassionate homicide deaths are usually not compassionate.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Kenzie Beach with Fox News Atlanta published an article on July 8, 2024 about the murder of Brenda Gelleny (65) by her husand Michael Gelleny. Michael Gelleny claimed that it was a "mercy Killing" that he killed his wife to end her pain and suffering. My concern is that the article uses this murder to promote the legalization of assisted suicide.

According to the Fox News report:

Michael Gelleny, 67, called the police on himself telling them he shot his wife Brenda, 65, in the back of the head on July 6 in Goodyear.

He reportedly told police the morning that he killed her, that he kissed her and told her he loved her before getting the gun in the other room and pulling the trigger.

Gelleny reportedly thought about taking his own life, but instead turned himself in. Police paperwork states his reasoning was to make it as quick as possible and put an end to her four years of pain and suffering.

Gelleny is accused of first-degree murder and tampering with evidence.

It appears by the article that Gelleny originally planned for the death to be a murder-suicide. Another news article stated that Gelleny had been planning the death for a couple of weeks.

The media sometimes jumps to supporting the compassionate homicide defense when in fact these murders are rarely compassionate. Donna Cohen, a suicide researcher, and others prove that murder / suicide is rarely related to "compassionate" homicide.

Cohan stated the following in a Minnesota Tribune article from March 2009:

When people read reports of a murder-suicide they will often ask the question, was this an Act of love, or desperation? Cohen who has researched this question tries to find answers. 

She stated in the article:

That notion is common in murder-suicides, said Cohen, who has testified before Congress, written extensively and helped train families and physicians. She is a professor of aging and mental health at the University of South Florida and heads its Violence and Injury Prevention Program. 

"If they were consulted, families usually would try to stop it,'' she said. "In fact, murder-suicide almost always is not an act of love. It's an act of desperation."

Cohen also recognizes that murder-suicide does not equate with assisted suicide. Cohen stated:

Some people equate murder-suicide with assisted suicide and the right to control when you will die, Cohen said. "It usually is not the same. This is suicide and murder.''

Future reports may or may not uncover further reasons for his action but Cohen's research is clear. These cases are usually an act of murder, not a compassionate homicide.

Further to that the Fox News report stated:

In 2013, 86-year-old George Sanders shot and killed his wife Ginger. He was charged with first-degree murder after his wife allegedly begged him to kill her.

He got two years probation.

By claiming that the murder was based on compassion he may be more likely to get a lesser sentence. 

Even if his wife, Brenda, was experiencing a difficult health condition, she deserved a proper treatment, care and support, not death. The law should also recognize the vulnerability of the spouse in these cases.

Killing a spouse is not loving nor compassionate

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

People Magazine published an article on August 1 by Emily Palmer stating that David Hunter (76) who was recently convicted of manslaughter for killing his wife Janice, on December 18, 2021; did so "out of love."

The story of David and Janice Hunter will be used by the assisted suicide lobby to justify the concept of "compassionate homicide."

David Hunter was convicted of manslaughter, meaning that the judge determined that it was not a pre-meditated murder, and sentenced him to two years in prison. He was then released after being credited for serving 19 months in jail awaiting trial.

A previous article by Ryan Fahey published by the Mirror on May 10 reported that Hunter confessed to killing his "terminally ill" wife. Haematologist Dr Ourania Seimeni said Janice had myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), which is not necessarily terminal. The doctor admitted that 30 per cent of cases of MDS lead to leukaemia.

Fahey also reported that Hunter tried to plead guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter but the charge of murder went forward to trial.

According to the accepted statement of facts, David Hunter killed his wife Janice by asphyxiation and then attempted to cause his own death by consuming a large amount of pills, but medical staff saved his life.

Research by Donna Cohen, a suicide researcher, and others prove that murder / suicide is rarely related to "compassionate" homicide.

Cohan stated the following in a Minnesota Tribune article from March 2009:

When people read reports of a murder-suicide they will often ask the question, was this an Act of love, or desperation? Cohen who has researched this question tries to find answers. 

She stated in the article:

That notion is common in murder-suicides, said Cohen, who has testified before Congress, written extensively and helped train families and physicians. She is a professor of aging and mental health at the University of South Florida and heads its Violence and Injury Prevention Program. 

"If they were consulted, families usually would try to stop it,'' she said. "In fact, murder-suicide almost always is not an act of love. It's an act of desperation."

Cohen also recognizes that murder-suicide does not equate with assisted suicide. Cohen stated:

Some people equate murder-suicide with assisted suicide and the right to control when you will die, Cohen said. "It usually is not the same. This is suicide and murder.''

I accept the idea that David Hunter was emotionally moved by his wife's "wish to die" but I do not accept the concept it is loving or compassionate to kill her.

A loving and compassionate response would be to help her receive pain and symptom relief and to assure her that her life had meaning, purpose and value.

Cyprus man confessed to killing his wife because she was allegedly terminally ill.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Janice Hunter

An article by Ryan Fahey published by the Mirror on May 10 claims that British expat, David Hunter, who is on trial in Cyprus for killing his wife Janice by "assisted suicide" that Janice may not have been terminally ill. Janice died on December 18, 2021.

The media should not refer to the death as an "assisted suicide" when Hunter is on trial for murder. Fahey reported that Hunter confessed to killing his "terminally ill" wife and Fahey also reported that Haematologist Dr Ourania Seimeni said Janice had myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), which is not necessarily terminal. The doctor admitted that 30 per cent of cases of MDS can lead to leukaemia.

Fahey reported that Hunter tried to plead guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter but the charge of murder went forward to trial. According to a BBC report Hunter pled guilty to killing his wife Janice by asphyxiation.

Hunter's defense team is arguing that his confession was inadmissable because he was not given legal representation or offered a right to remain silent and he did not have a psychiatric assessment before being interviewed.

Hunter's defense team is focusing on Janice's possible terminal illness of but it should not matter because David Hunter confessed to killing her by asphyxiation.

Assisted suicide should not be a defense for murder. 

First, murder is not the same as assisting a suicide. With assisted suicide, the person kills oneself with the assistance of another person but with murder the person is kills the other person. 

Second, offering a lesser charge based on the health of the victim is a form of discrimination. The law needs to equally protect everyone.

Canada's euthanasia law devalues people with disabilities.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Janine Benedet and Isabel Grant, who are law professors at UBC, wrote an excellent opinion article that was published in the Globe and Mail on April 17 titled: Canada’s permissive assisted-dying culture is devaluing people with disabilities. The writers are commenting on domestic murder and how Canada's assisted dying law affected the sentencing of a murder victim who was a woman with a disability.

We know that the home continues to be a dangerous place for women, and that an average of one woman in Canada every week is killed by a current or former male partner. And so, as a society, we are supposed to be taking domestic violence seriously. The Criminal Code has a provision that makes violence against an intimate partner an aggravating factor in sentencing, and another that states that where the victim is vulnerable because of age or personal circumstances, the primary sentencing objectives are denunciation and deterrence.

And yet, in Edmonton last month, a man who killed his wife in 2018 through a lethal injection of insulin was sentenced to just two years of house arrest after pleading guilty to manslaughter.

Why was the deliberate killing of 69-year-old Christiane Belzile by her husband Francois, then 73, treated so leniently? We believe the reason was simple: she was a woman with disabilities.

The lenient sentence was based on the fact that Christiane had a disability. The writers explain:

In 2011, after Mrs. Belzile had a stroke, her husband decided that he would be her sole caregiver, preventing her from receiving care from professionals. But she developed diabetes and dementia and, after a fall in 2018 that led to an infection, Francois told her they had “reached the end.” After the injection, when she stopped breathing, he tried to end his life.

If she had been a woman without disabilities, these actions might have been seen as examples of coercive control in an abusive relationship; instead, a combination of sexism, ableism, and ageism appears to have obscured the fact that she was exactly the kind of vulnerable victim the law must protect.

Instead, the judge accepted that Francois Belzile was suffering from “caregiver burnout” in imposing house arrest, even though Mr. Belzile had already received significant mitigation when the Crown reduced a first-degree murder charge to manslaughter.

The writers explain that Mr Belzile referred to his case as"Latimer Two":

Tracy Latimer

After his arrest, Francois Belzile referred to himself as “Latimer Two,” in reference to Robert Latimer, a Saskatchewan father who murdered his 12-year-old daughter Tracy, who had severe cerebral palsy, in 1993. Mr. Latimer went on to be sentenced to life in prison. Mr. Belzile’s lawyer told the sentencing judge that “the world has changed since Latimer, at least in Canada” – an argument that we believe sounded plausible because of the rapid expansion in Canada of medical assistance in dying (MAID) to persons with disabilities considered to be suffering intolerably, but who are not at the end of their natural lives.

The writers explain how this sentence is based on the disability of the victim.

When MAID was legalized in 2016, Canadians were assured that the law would protect vulnerable people from outside pressure, including from family members, and that it would be limited to those who could express a settled, informed choice to die after exhausting other options at the end of their lives. We were told MAID would protect against the possibility that individuals claiming to be acting out of mercy would take matters into their own hands. But by expanding MAID to those whose death is not imminent, with few safeguards and only a façade of monitoring, we have reached the point that killing can now be passed off as an extension of caregiving in a Canadian court.

Providing care to another human being is demanding work, mostly done by women. It should be better supported and better compensated, with options for assistance from professionals when needed. But a man who chooses to access none of those supports, and makes a unilateral decision that his wife is better off dead, should not be given a lesser charge and a considerable sentencing discount just because she was physically and verbally unable to resist.

The writers conclude:

Disability activists and scholars across Canada have warned in recent years against the expansion of MAID to disabled people who are not dying but are experiencing “intolerable suffering.” They worried that people with disabilities would seek MAID because they are denied the social and economic resources to live decent lives. They feared that people with disabilities would feel pressure to end their lives, and that non-disabled people, including doctors and other professionals, would undervalue disabled lives and normalize the premature deaths of people with disabilities. The legal system’s treatment of the killing of Christiane Belzile signals to us that they were right.

More articles on these topics:

• Canada passes Bill C-7 allowing euthanasia for mental illness (Link).
• Canada's law will provide not prevent suicide for some psychiatric patients (Link).
• Euthanasia for mental illness. Killing people with an uncertain prognosis (Link).
• Abbotsford police investigating euthanasia death (Link).
• Canada is not as advertised. Euthanasia is eugenics (Link).
• Canada's euthanasia law is the most permissive in the world (Link).
• (MAiD) euthanasia for disability and poverty (Link).
• (MAiD) euthanasia for mental illness and poverty (Link).
• Veterans affairs worker advocates euthanasia for PTSD (Link).\
• Abandoning people. Canada's broadening euthanasia laws (Link).
• Mother wants to stop 23-year-old son from dying by euthanasia (Link).
• Bereaved mother speaks out against euthanasia (Link).
• Woman died by euthanasia because of inadequate home care (Link).
• Infant euthanasia proposed by Quebec College of Physicians (Link).
• How poverty not pain is driving people with disabilities to euthanasia (Link).
• Ontario man seeks euthanasia to avoid homelessness (Link).
• Why did they kill my brother? (Link).
• Canada's doctors offer euthanasia before receiving a request (Link).
• Food bank clients asking for euthanasia based on poverty (Link).
• No other options. An expose on euthanasia in Canada (Link).
• Poverty and euthanasia creates public interest but euthanasia is abhorent on its own (Link).

Euthanasia’s Cultural Collateral Damage: Edmonton man killed his wife given house arrest.

This article was published by the National Review online on March 21, 2023

By Wesley J Smith

Euthanasia causes egregious cultural damage beyond the direct consequences of allowing the killing — or facilitating the suicides — of sick and disabled people. Eventually, the lives of the elderly, disabled, mentally ill, and seriously ill come to be seen as less valuable than the “healthy” and able-bodied — to the point that their homicides are often winked at by society. (We saw this phenomenon during Jack Kevorkian’s mass assisted suicides in the ’90s, supported by the much of the media and accompanied by the unwillingness of several juries to convict for nearly a decade.)

A recent homicide case in Canada further illustrates the point. As regular readers of my work are well aware, Canada has fallen off the euthanasia moral cliff by allowing broad categories of people to be killed by doctors as a means of ending “suffering.” But that denigrating attitude toward people with serious health conditions is catching on, and now, a man who killed his disabled wife has only had his hand slightly slapped on the wrist by a judge for the crime. From the Edmonton Journal story:

A retired accountant who killed his severely disabled wife will be allowed to serve his sentence on house arrest rather than in prison, with a judge ruling the accused’s “caregiver burnout” lessens his moral responsibility for the crime.

Belzile pleaded guilty last month to manslaughter for injecting Christiane Belzile — a 69-year-old, non-verbal stroke survivor for whom Francois Belzile had been sole caregiver for seven years — with a lethal dose of insulin after she was injured in a fall in 2018. Belzile then tried to end his own life.

Despite Francois’s refusal of state assistance — and a threat to end their lives if they ceased to be able to live “independently” before the crime — he was deemed unable to form intent to murder and allowed to plead guilty to manslaughter. Good grief.

There is no question that euthanasia advocacy and legalization impacted the case:

[Defense attorney] Hurley added that Belzile saw his actions as “the compassionate shortening of the final step.” Hurley also noted societal attitudes toward assisted death are rapidly changing, noting, “The world has changed since Latimer, at least in Canada.”

(Canadian Robert Latimer murdered his daughter Tracy, who was disabled by cerebral palsy, back in the ’90s. He served about ten years — but only because it was mandatory — and had the support of a majority of Canadian people according to polls.)

So, in essence, Francios put Christiane out of his misery and out of pride — i.e., him preferring death over dependency — and the judge winked at the crime by imposing such a light sentence for an egregious act.

What a frightening illustration of the lowered respect for “compromised” human life that euthanasia consciousness breeds. People with disabling conditions and those who love them should be terrified.

Florida woman charged with killing her husband released on bail.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Ellen Gilland

I rarely comment on cases of murder, but Ellen Gilland (76) was charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death of her husband, Jerry Gilland (77)  and aggravated assault for attacking a police officer on January 21, 2023 in Daytona Beach Florida. Gilland claims that she shot her husband as part of a "failed" murder-suicide pact. Acts of murder-suicide may have other mitigating factors but a person consenting to be killed should not change the charges for the killer.

The Associated Press Reported:

A 76-year-old woman accused of fatally shooting her terminally ill husband in a Florida hospital was released on $150,000 bond Friday night.

Ellen Gilland was initially charged with first-degree murder in January after police said she shot Jerry Gilland, 77, in a suicide pact that she claimed had been in the works for weeks. However, she could not carry through with turning the gun on herself after shooting her husband in his 11th-floor AdventHealth Daytona Beach hospital room, Daytona Beach Police Chief Jakari Young said at a news conference after the Jan. 21 incident.

Instead, Gilland engaged in a four-hour standoff with police officers. They eventually used a nonlethal explosive to distract her and take her into custody, Young said. She had been held at the Volusia County Jail since her arrest. Jail records show she was released Friday night.

On Wednesday, Gilland was indicted on lesser charges of assisting self-murder/manslaughter and aggravated assault of a law enforcement officer.

I am concerned that the lesser charge is based on the claim that her actions were based on a murder/suicide pact. There may be other mitigating factors, but first degree murder is based on clear planning and carrying out of a murder, which appears to have happened in this case.

The concept that prosecutors will lessen the charge when a person appears to have consented to being killed is a concern since acts of killing should not be based on the motivation of the person who has been killed but rather the motivation of the killer.

The Mansfield case should never be a reason to change the law on assisted suicide in the UK.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Phil Friend posted the following comment on the Not Dead Yet UK Twitter page. The Mansfield case (UK) concerns Graham Mansfield who killed his wife Dyanne in a suicide pact, but then failed to kill himself. The UK assisted suicide lobby claim that this case is a good reason to legalize assisted suicide. Friend wrote:

A man who slit his wife’s throat “in an act of love” and tried to kill himself has been found not guilty of murder after a judge accepted the couple had made a suicide pact.

Mr Mansfield called for a change in the law on assisted dying: “I’d just like to say, the law needs to change. Nobody should have to go through what we went through. Unfortunately, today, my wife is not here. She shouldn’t have had to die in such barbaric circumstances. That was what we had to resort to.” Guardian Story link

Not Dead UK says, “The Mansfield case (Guardian, 23 July) should never be a reason to change the law on assisted suicide in the UK. This was not an act of compassion, it was an irrational and horrific response of someone who desperately needed mental health support. The current system works as an effective deterrent to some who may want to end the life of a vulnerable person for reasons which are currently unlawful. It is crucial to protect and support all people in that situation. What this story tells us is that Mr Mansfield and his wife did not receive this help.

Unfortunately, those who support assisted suicide are using this horrific tragedy to promote a need for a change in the law. But this will not help those people and their loved ones who are in desperate need of both timely physical and mental health care, not an assisted death. We at Not Dead Yet UK find using this tragic case to promote assisted suicide is disturbingly unethical”.

More articles on this case:

• There is nothing civilized about assisted dying (Link).
  

UK Millionaire claims he killed is first wife "compassionately" and beat his second wife.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthansia Prevention Coalition

On Saturday I published excerpts from an article by Simon Caldwell accusing the Sunday Times of championing the euthanasia story of an abusive husband because it fit their pro-euthanasia stance.

An article by Gregory Kirby published by the Daily Mail on Sunday January 23 further uncovers the story of the millionaire ex-army medic, Douglas Laing. Laing confessed to killing his first wife in 1998, in what he referred to as an "assisted death" as part of a campaign to legalize euthanasia in the UK.

With a little digging researchers uncovered that in October 2017, Laing was accused by his second wife, Susan, of hitting her three times with a wooden mallet. Laing was convicted with a three year jail sentence for beating his wife.

Kirby explains that a murder investigation into the death of Laing's first wife has been launched. The story is significant since Laing released his "confession" as part of a campaign to challenge the laws prohibiting euthanasia and assisted suicide.

Douglas Laing

According to Kirby's article:

Laing said doctors familiar with his military nursing experience provided him with the lethal drugs to prevent his wife dying in a hospice.

He kept it secret until last year, when he began to follow the Sunday Times campaign Dying with Dignity, which backs efforts to legalise assisted dying.

Laing was being supported by Dignity in Dying, a separate campaign to change the law on assisted suicides, but the charity distanced itself from him after the latest revelations emerged.

Chief executive Sarah Wootton said: 'Dignity in Dying will not be commenting further while police investigations are ongoing.'

It is important to note that Dignity in Dying were supporting Laing and likely wrote his confession letter where he admitted to killing his first wife. Notice how they are now silent about their campaign with Laing.

In his contrived confession letter that was published by the Sunday Times in October 2021 Laing stated:

...'I'm in tears as I recall that conversation. 

'I have struggled with what I did and only recently spoken to close family about it. 

'I wanted to make my actions public knowledge in support of the move to legalise assisted dying.

'Taking the brave decision she did allowed my wife to say goodbye to our two sons while she was able to, and allowed us to have a final cuddle. Then she was gone. 

'I know the consequences and it doesn't bother me one jot.' 

To me, Douglas Laing feels eerily similar to the profile uncovered  byresearch done several years ago on murder-suicide by Donna Cohen, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and a suicide researcher, proving that murder-suicide is rarely related to assisted suicide.

Cohen stated the following in a March 2009 Minnesota Tribune article:

When people read reports of a murder-suicide they will often ask the question, was this an Act of love, or desperation? Cohen who has researched this question tries to find answers. 

She stated in the article:

That notion is common in murder-suicides, said Cohen, who has testified before Congress, written extensively and helped train families and physicians. She is a professor of aging and mental health at the University of South Florida and heads its Violence and Injury Prevention Program. 

"If they were consulted, families usually would try to stop it,'' she said. "In fact, murder-suicide almost always is not an act of love. It's an act of desperation."

According to Cohen, the typical murder-suicide case involves a depressed controlling husband who kills his ill wife. 

"The wife does not want to die and is often shot in her sleep. If she was awake at the time, there are usually signs that she tried to defend herself."

The clear difference is that Laing killed his wife but did not kill himself but he appears to fit the profile of a controlling husband who killed his wife.

Legalizing assisted suicide does not reduce murder-suicide.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

A commentary by Karen Chaffraix that was published in the Fauquier Times (Virginia) on November 10 infers that legalizing assisted suicide will somehow remedy the tragic acts of murder suicide. 

Chaffraix's commentary concerns the tragic deaths of Linda and Clark Johnson by murder-suicide. Chaffraix states that European studies suggest that people should have the right to end their own lives, in these situations. Chaffraix does not provide links to these "studies".

Research by Donna Cohen, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and a suicide researcher, and others prove that murder-suicide is rarely related to assisted suicide.

Donna Cohen

Cohen stated the following in a March 2009 Minnesota Tribune article:

When people read reports of a murder-suicide they will often ask the question, was this an Act of love, or desperation? Cohen who has researched this question tries to find answers. 

She stated in the article:

That notion is common in murder-suicides, said Cohen, who has testified before Congress, written extensively and helped train families and physicians. She is a professor of aging and mental health at the University of South Florida and heads its Violence and Injury Prevention Program. 

"If they were consulted, families usually would try to stop it,'' she said. "In fact, murder-suicide almost always is not an act of love. It's an act of desperation."

Cohen explains that murder-suicide does not equate with assisted suicide. She said:

Some people equate murder-suicide with assisted suicide and the right to control when you will die, Cohen said. "It usually is not the same. This is suicide and murder.''

According to Cohen, the typical murder-suicide case involves a depressed controlling husband who shoots his ill wife. "The wife does not want to die and is often shot in her sleep. If she was awake at the time, there are usually signs that she tried to defend herself." 

Murder-suicide are tragic actions, but legalizing assisted suicide will not reduce the incidence of murder-suicide.

Former California politician charged with assisting the suicide of his wife.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Steven Clute, a former member of the California Assembly, was charged with assisting the suicide of his wife, Pamela Clute. Pamela Clute died from a gun shot wound on August 21, 2016 at their home. Her husband stated that the suicide was related to her severe pain.

According to the Associated Press article:

Steve Clute, 69, a former Navy pilot who served as a Democrat in the state Assembly from 1982 to 1992, allegedly gave her the handgun she used to take her life, John Hall, spokesman for the Riverside district attorney, said Monday.

The Clute assisted suicide trial may test the limits of the California assisted suicide law.

The Associated Press article stated that Steve Clute was not present at the time of his wife's death. Even if this is true, according to the law, it doesn't matter. 

The California Penal Code 401 - Aiding, Advising or Encouraging a Suicide states that it is a crime to: advise or encourage someone to commit suicide.

There were no independent witnesses at the time of the death.

Dying of Despair

This article was published by the National Review online on August 22, 2017

Wesley Smith

By Wesley Smith

I began my work against assisted suicide in 1993. 

In the intervening years, I have witnessed a very disturbing change. When I began, the emotional zeitgeist of society focused intensely on preventing suicide. Today, in many cases, the emotional oomph (if you will) supports suicide, not in all cases to be sure, but certainly in some. 

There has been a concomitant downgrading of suicide prevention intensity. As I wrote a few years ago, we now have what I call “invisible” suicide prevention campaigns. 

I write this because there is a very good article in First Things by UC Irvine psychiatrist Aaron Kheriaty that explores the general issue of suicide. He diagnoses the causes of our crisis as coming from a loss of hope, and to some degree, the decline of religious practice (as distinguished from affiliation). 

I intend to dig deeper into his article later. But for now, I want to focus on the assisted suicide aspect. 

I have long believed that promoting assisted suicide–even if you call it something else, like “death with dignity” or “aid in dying”–sends an enervating message to the suicidal that self-killing is an acceptable answer to suffering and life’s most difficult problems. 

Indeed I believe that the elevation of Brittany Maynard to movie star levels of adulation and celebrity–solely because she promoted and committed assisted suicide–was a tremendously destructive and subversive act that could help push people in dark directions. 

Dr Aaron Kheriaty

Kheriaty discusses that question too. From, “Dying of Despair: 

The law is a teacher, and American law ­increasingly teaches indifference to life when it runs up against respect for radical autonomy. 

California and Colorado recently joined four other states in permitting doctors to assist terminally ill patients to take their own lives. In the same week that Gov. Brown signed the California bill, two British scholars published a study showing that laws permitting assisted suicide in Oregon and Washington have led to a rise in overall suicide rates in those states. 

I wrote about that study here too. Back to Kheriaty: 

These findings should not surprise us. We know that publicized cases of suicide tend to produce copycat cases, often disproportionately among young people. Recall the recent spate of adolescent suicides in Silicon Valley. Social scientists call this “the Werther effect,” from Goethe’s eighteenth-century novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, in which the protagonist, thwarted in his romantic pursuits, takes his own life with a pistol. After the book’s publication, a rash of suicides among young men using the same means alarmed authorities in Germany…  

The case of fourteen-year-old Valentina Maureira, a Chilean girl who suffered from cystic fibrosis, illustrates both effects while highlighting the power of social influences.  

Maureira made a YouTube video begging her government to legalize assisted suicide. She admitted that the idea to end her life began after she heard about the case of Brittany Maynard, the twenty-nine-year-old woman who campaigned for the legalization of assisted suicide before ending her own life.  

Maureira, however, later changed her mind after meeting another young woman suffering from cystic fibrosis who encouraged her to persevere in the face of adversity. Her father complained that the media were only interested in her story when she wanted to die. 

If Maureira had killed herself, we never would have known she would, one day, change her mind. 

But that fact won’t resonate at all with those who increasingly believe that suicide, at least of the sick, is a right rather than a cultural crisis. They will simply shrug and sniff, “She didn’t do it so what’s the problem?” 

But there is a huge problem that could be taking the lives of some who would later want to live. Consider: We now see suicide parties extolled in the media–even joint suicides and euthanasia killings of elderly couples. Movies promote suicide of the sick and elderly. And one can’t discuss assisted suicide with out seeing the photo of a beautifully smiling Brittany Maynard holding a puppy. 

In all of this, I am reminded of a quote from Canadian journalist Andrew Coyne. Writing in the wake of widespread public support for a father who murdered his daughter because she had cerebral palsy, Coyne worried: 

A society that believes in nothing can offer no argument even against death. A culture that has lost its faith in life cannot comprehend why it should be endured. 

We aren’t there yet, but if we aren’t careful, we could become a pro-suicide culture, or at least a suicide-indifferent one. 

Indeed, when it comes to the ill, disabled, and elderly, many of us are already there. And the casualties are mounting.