- For help and support, call the Samaritans for free from a UK phone, completely anonymously, on 116 123 or go to samaritans.org
The creators of the Sarco sucide pod have hit out at allegations that the first person to use it could have been a victim of ‘intentional homicide’, labelling the claims ‘ridiculous and absurd’.
The Last Resort and Exit International – the organisations behind Sarco – have insisted that its first user voluntarily entered the pod and pushed a button to fill the chamber with nitrogen, triggering her own death.
They say footage taken from inside and outside the pod, which was set up in a woodland close in Switzerland on September 23, shows this, adding today that it ‘worked precisely as planned and the user died peacefully from nitrogen hypoxia.’
But the chief prosecutor in the case has since raised suspicions that the woman may have been strangled, citing a conversation with a forensic doctor who was at the scene and allegedly claimed that the woman had severe injuries to her neck.
Dr Florian Willet, president of The Last Resort, was the only person present at the time of the woman’s death, and had been on a video call throughout with his associate Dr Philip Nitschke, the inventor of Sarco.
Willet was arrested after police arrived at the scene, and has remained in custody for five weeks as investigators continue to probe the death of the 64-year-old American woman.
However, Schaffhausen Chief Prosecutor Peter Sticher has not publicly accused Willet of ‘intentional homicide’, instead using his ‘suspicion’ to get a judge to extend his custody, according to Dutch newspaper de Volksrant.
There has also been no official autopsy report released to back up the claims of strangulation, with The Last Resort claiming that the results have ‘been kept hidden’, including from their lawyers and others involved in the case.
The deceased woman had reportedly been diagnosed with skull base osteomyelitis – a disease could manifest as an infection of the bone marrow, which could have been responsible for the marks on her neck resembling strangulation marks, according to a person close to The Last Resort who spoke to Swiss outlet NZZ.
Willet and Nitschke maintain that she died from hypoxia inside the capsule after entering and activating the capsule ‘unaided’.
Knowing there would need to be an investigation – as there is in any assisted dying case in Switzerland – they alerted the police, who they said got to the forest in Merishausen hours later.
‘The lid of the Sarco was not opened until forensic staff arrived at the scene of the Sarco at 19.22,’ The Last Resort said in a statement.
The woman’s oxygen levels were recorded and remained at lethal levels within the capsule until well after she had died, it went on.
The firm said it assumed that the prosecutor was in possession of the film footage which it claims to prove its version of events, which it says is corroborated by Volksrant’s report.
Volksrant said it had viewed and analysed the footage shared with it by The Last Resort and found no indication of tampering, although admitted that this can never be fully ruled out.
The newspaper also reported that film was captured when there were clear movements inside the pod, meaning there are gaps.
It starts at around 3.47pm on September 23, showing the woman approaching the capsule along with Willet, who removed a green tarpaulin from the device as she prepared to climb in.
‘If you’re ready…?’ Willet reportedly asked her. ‘Do I leave my shoes on?’ responded the woman, who was wearing loose black trousers, a woolly white cardigan and sandals.
He said she could keep them on, and she proceeded to step into the futuristic pod, lie down and adjust the purple travel pillow placed inside behind her head, according to Volksrant.
Before pushing the button, Willet asked the woman whether she would like to speak to Nitschke, who was on a video call from Germany to monitor the long-awaited launch of his device.
‘No. I’m okay,’ she reportedly replied. Willet, who was the only person present at the woman’s death, took this as an indication that the process could begin, Volksrant reports, telling Nitschke: ‘It seems that […] is ready to go.’
The blonde woman, who said she had wished to die for ‘at least two years’ while suffering with a ‘very serious illness that involves severe pain’, is then said to have closed the lid of the pod without hesitation.
A blue button indicating the pressure inside the capsule then lit up, while an internal camera showed parts of her hair, but little else, as she lay waiting, according to Volksrant.
‘Ready?’ she then said to Willet, according to the newspaper, in what would be her final words. He reportedly confirmed that he was, before she responded ‘okay.’
Almost immediately afterwards, at around 3.54pm, she is said to have pressed the button to trigger her death.
Under instruction from Nitschke the mother-of-two then began breathing deeply and calmly – a process he informed her would hasten her death as nitrogen filled the capsule.
Holding an iPad on which he monitored her heart rate, saturation, and oxygen levels, Willet told the woman to ‘keep on breathing’.
Her oxygen levels – 20 per cent in normal air – plummeted to 0.6, Willet told Nitschke after a minute, and then to 0.3 percent after almost two and a half minutes.
At around this time, her body began severely cramping up, Willet said, a common symptom in nitrogen deaths.
While little was visible on the internal camera, footage taken externally appeared to show a dark spot appear on the inside of the fogged up window, around where the woman’s knees were.
At 4.01 pm, an alarm blared from the iPad, thought to be the heart rate monitor, with a seemingly confused Willet reportedly telling his associate: ‘She’s still alive, Philip.’
He leaned over and peered into the Sarco, and after a while, the alarm stopped.
At 4.04pm, he reported that the woman had not moved for about two minutes.
It is unclear at what point it happened, but around half an hour after she pressed the button, Willet described to Nitschke how the woman died.
‘She had her eyes closed’, he said. ‘And she was breathing very deeply. Then the breathing slowed down. And then it stopped.’
‘She really looks dead,’ he added.
Willet was among several people arrested at the scene and reportedly remains in solitary confinement in custody.
Due to an immune disorder, the woman couldn’t be treated properly for the osteomyelitis, according to The Last Resort.
She told how she suffered such severe headaches on some days that she was barely able to move or go to the bathroom.
The creator of the suicide pod claimed she got into the device and ‘almost immediately pressed the button’ to take her own life.
The pod was set up in the woodland so the woman could see the trees and sky above her before she died.
‘It looked exactly as we expected it to look. My guess is that she lost consciousness within two minutes and that she died after five minutes,’ Nitschke told Dutch media.
‘We saw sudden, small contractions and movements of the muscles in her arms, but she was probably already unconscious by then.’
After being notified of her death, police swooped on the forest, where they discovered the woman’s lifeless body inside the pod and arrested several people.
Those detained were Willet as well as two lawyers and a Volkskrant photographer who had been taking pictures of the pod and documented the woman arriving in the woodland, before returning after her death.
The public prosecutor in the Schaffhausen canton said that Sarco’s creators had been warned not to use the device in the region, but that the warning had not been heeded.
‘We warned them in writing,’ prosecutor Peter Sticher said in September. ‘We said that if they came to Schaffhausen and used Sarco, they would face criminal consequences.’
Sticher attended the crime scene with a ‘large contingent’ of police and forensics teams on September 23, revealing that the operation lasted from early evening until around midnight.
‘We found the capsule with the lifeless person inside,’ he told Blick at the time.
‘We took the person out of the capsule and brought them to the Institute of Forensic Medicine. An autopsy will be performed there today.’
He said arrests were made so that those at the ‘were not colluding with each other or covering up evidence.’
It is understood that all four arrested – Willet, two lawyers and the Dutch photographer – were told that they were suspected of inciting suicide and providing suicide assistance. Everyone apart from Willet was released after 48 hours.
It is understood that the two lawyers and the Dutch photographer only arrived at the scene after the woman died.
According to Volksrant, the woman who died in the machine made an oral statement in a four-minute recording to The Last Resort saying it was her own wish to end her life.
The woman’s two sons ‘completely agree’ that it was her decision to die, according to Volksrant. ‘They are behind me 100 percent,’ she is reported to have said.
Fiona Stewart, a board member at The Last Resort, said the woman’s sons had confirmed this in written statements to the company.
It is understood that the two sons were not present in Switzerland at the time of their mother’s death on September 23.
Nitschke announced news of the pod’s premiere on X in September, saying: ‘An idyllic peaceful death in a Swiss forest where The Last Resort used the Sarco device to help a US woman have the death she wanted.’
The pod is designed to allow a person inside to push a button that injects nitrogen gas into the sealed chamber, according to its creators. The person is then supposed to fall asleep and die by suffocation in a few minutes.
The pods work by replacing air, which is 21 per cent oxygen and 79 per cent nitrogen, with 100 per cent nitrogen.
This renders the occupant unconscious and they then stop breathing in a process that its creators expected to take less than ten minutes.
Nitschke and his associates designed Sarco, which is made using a 3D printer, to be free, with people just paying for their body to be removed by funeral directors.
The woman who used the device only paid the costs for the nitrogen: 18 Swiss francs, according to the Last Resort.
The firm aims to make assisted dying almost completely free of charge, with the cost, which is equal to around £16, contrasting with the fees of most Swiss clinics, which usually charge around £10,000.
‘The use of the Sarco is free,’ Stewart said. ‘We don’t want to make any money from this.’ The woman did have to pay additional costs, such as her cremation, she added.
The device was used on the same day as Swiss Interior Minister Elisabeth Baume-Schneider told the National Council that she considers the use of the Sarco in Switzerland to be illegal.
‘The Sarco suicide capsule is not legal in two respects,’ Baume-Schneider reportedly said.
She added: ‘On one hand, it does not fulfill the demands of the product safety law, and as such, must not be brought into circulation. On the other hand, the corresponding use of nitrogen is not compatible with the article on purpose in the chemicals law.’
Swiss law allows assisted suicide so long as the person takes his or her life with no ‘external assistance’ and those who help the person die do not do so for ‘any self-serving motive,’ according to a government website.
Switzerland is among the few countries in the world where foreigners can travel to legally end their lives, and is home to a number of organizations that are dedicated to helping people kill themselves.
Some lawmakers in Switzerland have argued that the law is unclear and have sought to close what they call legal loopholes.
Nitschke and Stewart, who are married and have long campaigned for the right to die, have said that they want Sarco to become an established and accessible option for euthanasia.
Some 120 applicants hope to use the machine to end their lives, according to The Last Resort, with around a quarter of those on the waiting list said to be British people.
- UK: For help and support, call the Samaritans for free from a UK phone, completely anonymously, on 116 123 or go to samaritans.org.
- US: If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988. There is also an online chat at 988lifeline.org.
