On September 25, Reuters reported that several people had been arrested by the Swiss police for “inducing and aiding and abetting suicide,” after a 64-year-old American woman with a compromised immune system died in a so-called “Sarco” suicide capsule “in a wood in the municipality of Merishausen” on September 23. Among those arrested was Florian Willet, who heads up the pro-euthanasia group The Last Resort and was present when the woman died.
The “Sarco” pod—short for “sarcophagus”—is the brainchild of Philip “Dr. Death” Nitschke, who has bee accused of attempting to glamorize suicide through his slick, 3D-printed capsule. The capsule proved controversial even in Switzerland, where assisted suicide has been legal since 1942 for those considered to have “sound” judgement. On the side of the capsule is a quote by pop scientist Carl Sagan: “We are made of star stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.”
According to Willet, everything went off without a hitch. The woman, identified only as an American and mother of two, died in the middle of a forest. The capsule had never been used before, and Sarco inventor Philip Nitschke attempted to follow the process by video call but missed some of what went on due to technical difficulties. Nitschke had designed the pod to allow the person inside to push a button, filling the sealed pod with nitrogen gas. In theory, the person should be put to sleep, and then die by suffocation.
Willet insisted that this is what happened. He was the only person present for the woman’s death, which he described as “peaceful, fast, and dignified.” But according to multiple media outlets, there may be more to the story. From the UK’s LTC:
The Swiss chief prosecutor of the case, Peter Sticher, thinks the death might have gone quite differently, raising suspicions that the woman may have been strangled in a case of ‘intentional homicide,’ reports the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant. The newspaper reports that the pod was opened and closed several times before the woman pressed the button which triggered the procedure, to test its closure. A forensic doctor present at the scene told the court that the woman had, among other things, severe injuries to her neck.
According to the news outlet, the company president, who was standing beside the woman throughout the event, was heard to tell the pod’s designer over video call: ‘She’s still alive, Philip.’ The comments came six-and-a-half minutes after the user pressed the button to end her own life. The president is said to have been confused by the sound of an alarm – thought to be a heart-rate monitor. The court heard how he continued to lean over the Sarco pod to peer inside, before the alarm ceases.
Police had previously warned Sarco’s operators that prosecution would follow any usage of the capsule, although they did not appear to suspect how grim the situation might become. The Last Resort insisted that the woman opted for Sarco because she had “skull base osteomyelitis,” which caused her “severe pain” for “at least two years.” Two lawyers “involved with the project” who were also present at the scene of the alleged suicide alerted the police of her death; the police then swept the forest and arrested everyone in the vicinity (including a press photographer).
Chief Prosecutor Peter Sticher told the Swiss outlet Blick: “We warned them in writing, we said that if they came to Schaffhausen and used Sarco, they would face criminal consequences.” All those involved with the Sarco death have been released with the exception of Willet, and a “criminal investigation into the pod is underway and all of the 371 active applications have been suspended for use.” Nitschke is defending his invention, insisting that the woman “almost immediately” pressed the button after climbing into the capsule. “She didn’t really say anything,” he said. “She really wanted to die. My estimate is that she lost consciousness within two minutes and that she died after five minutes.”
Questions around the woman’s death hark back to a similar case a year ago, where a young woman being euthanized in Belgium was allegedly suffocated by the euthanasia practitioner with a pillow when the lethal injection failed to kill her.