DEL.ICIO.USUpdated: 5:59 a.m. February 27, 2009
Assisted suicide group may have had role in 130 deaths
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thursday, February 26, 2009
The Cobb County-based Final Exit Network offered a methodical way to commit suicide by helium gas that quickly asphyxiated the victims and left no trace. As many as 130 deaths around the country may have been hastened by the group, according to a court document.
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John Bazemore / AP
This Cumming townhome (center) is where police say members of an assisted suicide ring known as the Final Exit Network helped cancer victim John Celmer, 58, to end his life.
ASSISTED SUICIDE
• For complete coverage and the latest news on the assisted-suicide cases and the Final Exit Network, go to ajc.com/suicide.Now investigators are trying to figure out how often members of the group simply witnessed the deaths versus taking an active part to end people’s lives — as they allegedly tried to do Wednesday in Dawson County.
An affidavit filed in the case Thursday revealed greater detail in the Georgia Bureau of Investigation sting operation that so far has resulted in the arrest of four people, two in Georgia and two in Maryland.
A leader of the Final Exit Network defended the group’s mission.
“We’re just there to help,” Jerry Dincin, a vice president of the group, told The Associated Press. He was not arrested. “People insist upon it. They want to do what they want to do. They’re suffering, and if they have intolerable pain, then they want to sometimes get out of that intolerable pain.”
Searches by GBI agents in seven states set in motion the potential reopening of scores of death investigations across the country.
The founder of the group, Thomas “Ted” Goodwin of Florida and Kennesaw, says he personally helped 35 people in the past four years commit suicide using helium, according to the affidavit. Though Goodwin is not a doctor, he owns a medical testing lab in Kennesaw, OHR/Medical Dimensions.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation arrested Goodwin, 63, Wednesday in Dawson County in North Georgia as he was taking a man, an undercover agent, through steps that would have led to the agent’s death.
Authorities said Final Exit instructs a person who wants to commit suicide to pump helium from a 50-balloon tank into a plastic bag pulled over his or her head. The person suffocates, but there’s no trace of helium left in the body to indicate a suicide.
Goodwin and an “exit guide” with the network, Claire Blehr, 76, of Atlanta, also arrested Wednesday, posted bonds of $66,000 each and were released just after 10 p.m. Thursday, said Forsyth County Sheriff’s Deputy Shana Cox.
Dr. Lawrence Egbert, 81, and Nicholas Alec Sheridan, 60, were arrested Wednesday in Baltimore and are still being held there.
All four are charged with assisting the suicide of John Celmer of Cumming, tampering with evidence, and violating the state RICO act. Celmer, 58, died June 20, 2008, of asphyxiation.
The group claims on its Web site an extensive, multi-state network with more than 3,000 members. GBI spokesman John Bankhead said the agency hopes the sting operation and investigation will “get the information out” so that authorities and families can re-examine suspicious deaths around the country.
The affidavit that was the basis for search warrants laid out the Final Exit Network’s requirements before it will facilitate a suicide. The court document also described how the GBI agent, going by the name Richard Sartain, asked the organization to help “hasten” his death.
Warren County, Ohio, prosecutor Rachel Hutzel said Thursday that GBI agents searched the Mason, Ohio, home of Judith Snyderman, 74, who is listed on the Final Exit Network’s Web site as one of the group’s board members.
Snyderman had talked to the undercover agent, Hutzel said. When the agent asked her what would happen if they “botched the job,” Snyderman told him, according to the affidavit: “You end up a vegetable.”
Staff writer Ben Smith contributed to this article.
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