GBI: Assisted suicide group didn’t gather proof of illness

The organizers of the Final Exit Network said they had to have proof a “member” was terminally ill before volunteers would help with a suicide by inhaling helium.

Undercover agents said that was not the case.

In affidavits filed Thursday to support applications for search warrants in Cobb and DeKalb and arrest warrants Forsyth Counties, Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent Wesley Horne said two people assisted by the Final Exit Network were not terminally ill.

Final Exit helped John Celmer, 58, of Cumming commit suicide in June 2008, the affidavit said. Celmer was cancer free but was embarrassed by his appearance after two surgeries to repair his deteriorated jaw and to graft skin over a hole in his jaw, the affidavit said.

The investigation into Jana Van Voorhis’ death in 2007 in Phoenix, Ariz., found she also was not “terminally ill but was mentally unstable.”

On Wednesday, Final Exit Network founder and president Thomas “Ted” Goodwin, 63, of Punta Gorda, Fla., formerly of Kennesaw, and Claire Bleher, 76, of Atlanta were arrested in Dawson County. Two other people — the group’s medical director and coordinator — were arrested in Maryland. They are charged with assisting a suicide, tampering with evidence and violating the state’s RICO Act.

A first hearing for Goodwin and Blehr is scheduled for Friday between 9 a.m. and noon in Forsyth County, said Forsyth jail spokeswoman Anita Prestage. She said they would appear before a Forsyth County magistrate judge not yet determined via a remote video hookup from the Forsyth jail. She said no bond hearing has been set.

Goodwin was arrested Wednesday after he allegedly walked an undercover agent through the group’s steps for dying. Other agents came in after Goodwin demonstrated how he would hold down the hands of the undercover agent to keep him from removing the “exit bag” over his head as the helium flowed in.

The same process was used last June to kill Celmer, the GBI alleges.

Celmer’s family found his death to be suspicious. They contacted the Cumming Police Department, which led to the GBI’s involvement.

GBI spokesman John Bankhead said agents found evidence in Celmer’s house linking him to the Final Exit Network, a Marietta-based volunteer organization — of which Goodwin is president — supposedly dedicated to serving individuals who are suffering from an incurable illness or intolerable pain.

Blehr was one of those volunteers, Bankhead said. She wasn’t present when Goodwin was arrested; she was in a minor car accident en route to Dawson County, where she was taken into custody.

Bankhead said the woman was with John Celmer the day he died.

Blehr and Goodwin were charged with assisted suicide, tampering with evidence and a violation of Georgia’s RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) Act. Officials said these were the first arrests they knew of for assisting a suicide in Georgia.

According to the Georgia criminal code, ” ‘intentionally and actively assisting suicide’ means direct and physical involvement, intervention, or participation in the act of suicide which is carried out free of any threat, force, duress, or deception and with understanding of the consequences of such conduct.”

The maximum penalties facing the defendants are five years in prison for assisting a suicide, three years for tampering with evidence and a possible 20 years for the RICO violations.

In Maryland, authorities on Wednesday night arrested Dr. Lawrence D. Egbert, 81, and Nicholas Alec Sheridan, 60, both of Baltimore.

Jerry Dincin, a retired clinical psychologist and vice president of Final Exit, said in a telephone interview Wednesday night that volunteers do not assist in suicides.

“We observe. We hold hands. We offer psychological support,” said Dincin, of Highland Park, Ill. “We are very passive.”

The GBI alleges that the four charged were not mere observers, but participants in Celmer’s death.

The Cumming man was not terminally ill, Bankhead said. “He had cancer of the jaw, but that was under control,” the GBI spokesman said.

John Lemac, who lived two doors down from Celmer, said his neighbor did not seem preoccupied with death.

“He talked a lot and never once said a word about suicide,” Lemac said.

Goodwin had no trouble talking about the issue. In a February 2006 interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, he talked of watching his father die after an agonizing 10-year battle with emphysema.

“That made me decide to get active,” he said. Goodwin was described as a driving force in the right-to-die movement by Derek Humphry, author of the best-selling book “Final Exit.”

In the interview, Goodwin said he had already witnessed the deaths of 12 people who had come to Final Exit looking for a way out.

“We feel there will be a prosecution based on political reasons,” he said. “But we are willing to take that risk to do the compassionate work that needs to be done.”

Blehr’s former husband, Mike Thatcher, described the longtime Atlantan as “a gentle person, a compassionate person.”

Thatcher, who lives in Dayton, Tenn., said Blehr once volunteered with an organization that provided dogs for the elderly and very ill.

Investigators were at her home off LaVista Road in northeast Atlanta well into the night Wednesday.

Bankhead said agents are looking for additional evidence at 16 locations in seven states.

In the Dawson County case, the GBI alleges that Final Exit did not request any confirmation of the undercover agent’s claim he had pancreatic cancer.

“They didn’t even check to see if this was his actual residence,” Bankhead said.

Dincin said he doesn’t believe his associates are guilty.

“It would have to be extremely untrue if it involves Ted,” said Dincin, who said he knew all of those charged except for Blehr.

He said Egbert is Final Exit’s medical adviser who determines whether those seeking to die meet the group’s guidelines.

“We tell them to read a book (‘Final Exit’) and we tell them that, in our experience, this is a lot better than pointing a gun and blowing your brains out,” said Dincin, who joined the group after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, currently in remission. “Our policies forbid any direct involvement.”

The suspects will be prosecuted in Forsyth County.

— Staff writers Chris Reinolds, Doug Nurse, Nancy Badertscher and David Markiewicz and researchers Nisa Asokan and Joni Zeccola contributed to this report.