Reverend Death

Hannah and the Crisis Team just came, and I have officially been dispatched, therefore am no longer considered to be in a crisis. Hurrah! I do feel mentally better, although rather sad, though that’s for real life reasons. I feel physically like toss at the moment, but hey ho.

There’s a documentary called “Reverend Death” on May 19th on Channel 4 that some of you might be interested in watching. It follows Reverend George Exoo, who assists non-terminally ill people in committing suicide. However, after reading this article, I feel he coerces, rather than assists.

Whereas I feel that people have the right to end their life, I don’t think that they should be encouraged, not without serious psychological and psychiatric intervention to explore those feelings, and the alternatives to suicide.

Mental health problems can be terminal, a lot of people, either treated or untreated, do go on to commit suicide, and I can understand wanting someone to be with you, who won’t judge you, or won’t try to stop you.

Whereas Exoo himself seems to consider his mission his purpose, it’s his assistant that I feel is the most questionable part of the operation.

Exoo drove off to do some real estate business and I was left alone with Susan. We sat on her porch. And she said something extraordinary. She said that unbeknown to Exoo she had set up her own suicide business and was willing to help practically anyone if the price was right.

“I see this as a business,” she said. “George sees it as a calling. There’s a big difference there. For me it’s no cash, no help.” She said her price was approximately $7,000.

“You’re bound to get it wrong, aren’t you?” I said. “And help someone who shouldn’t be helped.”

Susan shrugged. “Probably, at some point, yes,” she said.

She said Exoo’s worst crime was his financial imprudence: that he’ll help people who can’t afford to pay.

“George will get to a point where he’ll run out of money,” she said. “He won’t scale down the expensive cuts of meats every night. He would rather kill himself than economise.”

“He seems quite keen on killing himself,” I said.

“I think he’ll do it soon,” said Susan. “And that’s why I’ve been pressing him to give me a list of his current clients.”

A few weeks passed. Then I got an early morning call from Susan. She said the FBI had just arrested Exoo. His partner McGurrin had woken up to find Exoo and two men standing there. They said, “We’re putting George in prison until we can take him to Ireland.”

A few weeks after that (I later learned) Susan flew to New Zealand to help a depressed, non-terminally ill woman she had met on the internet commit suicide. The woman had previously asked a mainstream right-to-die group called Dignity NZ to help her, but they had refused.

“I was of the impression that she needed assistance in living rather than advice on how to end her life,” Dignity NZ’s founder, Lesley Martin, later explained to me in an email. She added, “I imagine you are developing a good understanding of what an absolute mess the euthanasia underground is. Unfortunately, there are ‘gung-ho’ individuals involved [she meant Susan] who, in my opinion, treat the matter of assisting someone to die as an exciting relief from the boredom of their own lives and do so completely ill-equipped and dismissive of the responsibility we have of ensuring that people who need mental health assistance receive it, while still working towards humane legislation that addresses the real issues.”

I visited Susan and asked her what had been wrong with the New Zealand woman. “She had some sort of breathing disorder,” she said, “and the doctors there wouldn’t give her the medication that she needed. I happened to take the same medication. I gave her a little bit of mine and she was fine.”

“But you helped her commit suicide, even though you helped her breathe better?” I asked.

“Yeah,” said Susan. “Isn’t that ironic?”

“You shouldn’t do it,” I said.

“Somebody’s got to pay the bills so you can have some water in that glass you’re drinking,” she said.

I had agreed to protect Susan’s identity before I knew she was going around the world helping people die for money.

On October 25 2007 a federal judge in Charleston, West Virginia, freed Exoo. He decreed that because assisted suicide is not a crime in 25 of the 50 states, he couldn’t allow the Irish prosecutor to try him in Dublin.

I visited Exoo one last time. I thought there wouldn’t be any more twists and turns in this story about the messy assisted suicide underground, but he offered one.

“You know I provided you with a tape?” He meant the Shirley/Arizona telephone tape. “That was not a real deathing. I was talking to a dial tone.”

I looked at him askance.

“You’re a very good actor,” I said.

“I wanted to give you an example of how I would work with somebody,” he shrugged. “And she was the only possibility.”

He explained that Shirley was a real person, and he really had visited her on many occasions, and that she really had prevaricated. All that was true.

“She really is now dead,” he added, sounding quite triumphant. He said she killed herself in Kingman, Arizona, while he was in prison. (The Kingman police later confirmed this.)

Extraordinary, rather chilling stuff. Do read Jon Ronson’s article in The Guardian and tell me what you think.