Love and Death: A Mercy Killer’s Anguish

For Wallace Cooper--a nurse and physician’s assistant--the matter of dying had always involved a stranger.

Cooper had confronted death in Israel as a volunteer medic during the 1973 Yom Kippur War and later in rural Alaska as the sole medical practitioner for a village of fishermen and Indians.

“The choices were always simple,” Cooper said. “You either saved life, extended life or eased pain.”

Cooper said he never assumed there were any other choices until he began caring for a loved one, his dying uncle, in Pasadena in the summer of 1984. Unable for the first time to ease the suffering of a patient, a man he loved like a father, Cooper desperately searched for another choice.

In the end, Cooper said, the decision to kill his uncle, Wallace Goulden, was an expression of love, an act of mercy.

“I had no other alternative. I couldn’t turn my back on my uncle,” said Cooper, 46. “This was something I did very reluctantly.

“I’m a healer. I want to heal again. I don’t want to go down in history as a killer.”

For two weeks that August, court records show, Wallace Goulden had begged his nephew and namesake to end his life with a lethal injection of drugs. For two weeks, Cooper refused the entreaties of the 81-year-old Goulden, who had refused hospitalization and was suffering from three terminal diseases: congestive heart failure, kidney failure and chronic intestinal bleeding.

“The first time he asked me, I just stood there shocked,” Cooper, a Pasadena resident, recalled in an interview. “He said ‘Wally, give me something to make me sleep and not wake up again.’ I said, ‘Wally, I can’t do that.’ It was like being hit over the head with a sledgehammer.”

But while Goulden continued to deteriorate and suffer, death eluded him. And Cooper, unable to ease the pain despite administering increasing dosages of medication, found it harder and harder to ignore his uncle’s pleas.

“I was the court of last resort for him. He asked me again and again and again if I would put him to rest. I denied him and I denied him until I couldn’t deny him anymore.”

Earlier this month, a Pasadena Superior Court judge agreed that Cooper was motivated by compassion and not malice when he injected his uncle with a lethal mixture of morphine and the heart drug, digoxin, on the afternoon of Sept. l, 1984. Goulden died two hours later at his Pasadena home. His wife of 54 years, Cooper and other family members were at his bedside. No one but Cooper was aware of the injection.

Calling it a “classic mercy killing case,” Judge Coleman Swart sentenced Cooper to five years’ probation after Cooper pleaded no contest to a charge of voluntary manslaughter. Cooper originally had been charged with first-degree murder.

Today, Cooper, a husband and father of three, is struggling to put his life back together. He has taken a job as a construction worker while officials at the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center decide whether to accept him back into a residency program for physician’s assistants.

He was eight days short of receiving certification in emergency medicine when he was arrested after blurting out to a supervisor that he had killed his uncle.

“When my father died, I was able to bury him, grieve and move on. But with Uncle Wally’s death, I never had that chance,” Cooper said. “With every court date, every postponement and delay, it was like he was dying all over again. I’ve had a hard time putting this thing behind me. I’ve never been allowed to finish my grieving.”

A deeply religious and contemplative man who has studied the Bible and attended a Christian college, Cooper said it has taken more than a year but he has finally reconciled his actions with his religious convictions. Cooper, who retains his professional license, hopes his experience will increase public awareness and underscore the need to change the law under which mercy killing is considered first-degree murder.

“It’s such a Pandora’s box. No one wants to open it for fear of what they are going to find inside,” Cooper said. “You don’t want to kill people. God, no one wants to do that. But then you’re confronted with a situation that won’t go away.”

Since 1980, the number of mercy killing cases nationwide has grown significantly, according to figures cited by the Hemlock Society, a Mar Vista-based organization advocating the legalization of euthanasia. But it remains an infrequent crime. Ann Wickett, an author and co-founder of the group who closely followed the Cooper case, said 36 known mercy killings have occurred in the past five years. This compares to 31 cases nationwide from 1920 to 1980.

Wickett attributes the increase to improvements in medical technology that bring about prolonged life. Prolonged life often translates into situations in which the dying and their families feel trapped, Wickett said.

“America can be a very inhospitable place to grow old,” Wickett said. “Technology has become a double-edged sword so that many people are now suffering slow and painful deaths from chronic diseases like cancer and heart disease.”

Anticipating more and more cases of mercy killing, the Hemlock Society is working to change the law in two areas. Currently “passive” euthanasia, or the withholding and withdrawing of life-support systems, is allowed in California and 35 other states, but only if the attending physician agrees. No state allows the “active” form of euthanasia as seen in the Cooper case, which is considered first-degree murder.

Wickett said her organization has drafted proposed legislation that would sanction active euthanasia in the form of a pact between a patient and a doctor. The proposed law would allow the doctor to carry out the pact without being criminally liable. Wickett said she hopes to find state legislators to introduce and sponsor the proposal in California, Arizona and Florida--three states where the group is the strongest.

In addition, the group is lobbying for a law designating mercy killing as a crime distinct from first-degree murder and punishable by a maximum of two years in prison. Switzerland and Germany have passed similar laws.

“Right now, the law sort of winks at some mercy killings by refusing to indict the person, and then punishes others,” Wickett said. “It’s inconsistent and messy.”

A. J. Levinson, executive director of Concern for Dying, a New York-based patients’ rights group, said there are both moral and practical reasons for opposing a law allowing mercy killing. Such a law, Levinson said, would have enormous potential for abuse, and the category of those eligible for euthanasia would inevitably expand to include questionable cases.

“I don’t think society should be in the business of killing people. I don’t think killing is a patient’s right,” he said.

Levinson said the push for a mercy-killing law grows out of the mistaken belief that the pain of terminal illness cannot be controlled. She said hospitals should follow the example of hospice care and begin administering the dosage of drugs necessary to counteract pain.

“If society were to do a better job of treating pain and treating the suffering of terminal illness, we wouldn’t have patients saying, ‘Kill me,’ ” Levinson said.

Both the judge and the prosecutor in the Cooper case agreed that the best way to deal with the moral and ethical complexities of mercy killing is not through legislation but through the courts and sentencing.

“Each case has to be judged individually,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Susan Wondries, who would have had to prosecute Cooper for first-degree murder if he had not agreed to a voluntary manslaughter conviction.

“No one can condone what happened in the Cooper case,” she said. “But in sentencing, you can take several factors into account like the condition of the patient and whether the defendant was motivated by malice or by compassion.”

Throughout the preliminary hearing and sentencing, Cooper insisted that he acted solely out of love for his uncle. In 18 letters submitted to the court on behalf of Cooper, friends and relatives described an uncommonly close relationship between Goulden and Cooper.

Cooper’s father, Jack, and Goulden were best friends back in Sioux City, Iowa. They met their wives-to-be, identical twin sisters, on the same summer evening in 1929. And Cooper followed Goulden to Southern California in the 1930s to raise his family.

“Jack was an extrovert and my Wally was an introvert,” said Goulden’s 81-year-old widow, Elma, who has given both financial and emotional support to her nephew throughout his ordeal. “Jack was gregarious and Wally had a dry sense of humor.”

Despite being taciturn and a loner, Goulden excelled at running the family business, the Los Angeles-based J. G. Goulden Food Brokerage Co., from 1953 until June, 1984. In his spare time, family members said, Goulden was a meticulous craftsman, building furniture and the stone walkways that wind through his beautifully manicured backyard garden.

“He loved this home. He thought our garden was the prettiest place in all the world,” Elma Goulden said. “He didn’t like going out or traveling. We owned a beach house in Oregon and he went there only a few times.”

About the only time Goulden would leave his home on weekends was to go deep-sea fishing with his nephew. The Gouldens were unable to have children so Goulden took a paternal interest in Cooper. Their relationship grew even closer after Jack Cooper died in 1964.

“After Dad died, I came to depend a lot on Uncle Wally. We were the closest of friends,” Cooper said. “I’d come over and watch a football game and maybe we’d exchange two or three comments. That was love to Uncle Wally. He wasn’t a demonstrative kind of guy.

“Everything I did, he took an interest in. He wanted me to become a doctor.”

Although he never attended medical school, Cooper, who had already spent four years in the Marine Corps, joined the Army’s Special Forces in 1967 and served as an assistant medic. After two years of active duty, Cooper left the Army and traveled to Israel, whose land and people had long fascinated him. He studied Hebrew and lived and worked on a kibbutz near the border with Jordan.

“I’m a Christian but I never had a problem being accepted,” Cooper said. “On a kibbutz there is a simple rule: You work like all the others and you’re treated like all the others.”

A year later, in 1970, Cooper came home to Pasadena to finish his college education in science and nursing. Then, with the sudden outbreak of the Yom Kippur War in 1973, Cooper decided to return to Israel. Through a month of fighting, he served as a volunteer medic with the Israeli Army, providing medical care not only to wounded Israelis but to Arabs as well. It was during this time that Cooper became convinced of the worth of a career in medicine.

Cooper became a registered nurse in 1975 and spent the next few years at County-USC Medical Center undergoing intensive training in emergency and trauma care as a physician’s assistant. Believing his skills were best utilized in a rural or medically underserved area, Cooper took a job in South Naknek, Alaska. For two summers, in 1979 and 1980, he was the sole medical care provider for a village of 4,000 cannery workers, itinerant salmon fishermen and Aleut Indians.

“I couldn’t even find the place on my map,” Cooper said. “The Aleuts worked like crazy, drank like crazy and fought like crazy. They were very honest people, with few pretenses. Living close to nature and close to death, they didn’t have any time for con games.”

Shortly after Cooper returned to Pasadena in 1980, his uncle had a massive heart attack. Over the next four years, according to court records and interviews with family members, Goulden’s health slowly deteriorated and he came to depend more and more on Cooper.

Cooper would often work 10-hour shifts at the county medical center and then drive to his uncle’s home to care for him. Letters to the court from doctors and colleagues describe Cooper as an excellent physician’s assistant who cared deeply about all his patients.

“Wally always put his uncle’s needs ahead of his own needs,” Elma Goulden wrote in a letter to the court requesting leniency for her nephew. “And he did it with such love and compassion.”

In August, 1984, Goulden’s longtime doctor told family members that his heart was “absolutely worn out” and that they should begin making funeral arrangements. Elma Goulden said the hardest thing she ever did was to plan for her husband’s funeral as he lay in bed on the other side of the house.

On Aug. 15, according to court records, Cooper called his supervisor at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center and said that he needed some time off to care for his uncle, who was terminally ill.

Arnold Zigman, who heads the medical center’s residency program in emergency medicine for physician’s assistants, testified at the preliminary hearing that Cooper said in a phone conversation that Goulden was suffering terribly and hinted that he was considering mercy killing.

“I don’t recall the exact words,” Zigman testified. “I just remember responding to him not to do anything that he might regret later.”

According to testimony, Goulden had refused to be hospitalized and entrusted his care to Cooper. He was bedridden and unable to move without help. He had lost the ability to swallow and could breathe only in one position, which meant that he was forced to lie on a large, painful bedsore. A stoic and fastidious man, Goulden no longer had control over his bodily functions. He wore a diaper. As he took in oxygen from a tube, his lungs slowly filled with fluid, giving him the terrifying sensation of drowning.

“My uncle was a proud, dignified man and now he’s got no control over his bowels,” Cooper recalled in an interview. “You should have seen his face. He was so embarrassed. He kept saying, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ every time we had to clean him up.”

Elma Goulden was with her husband throughout much of his last days, kneeling at the side of his bed and reading Scripture out loud. Cooper said his aunt would stroke Goulden’s shoulders and cheeks and wipe the fluid constantly discharged from his lungs.

Goulden was unable to sleep for more than 15 minutes at a time. Cooper said his primary concern became offering comfort and rest to his uncle. At one point, Cooper tripled the dosage of sedatives. “Every time I thought we finally got him to sleep, he would wake up and call ‘Wally, Wally. . . . ‘ Nothing worked.”

Cooper said that whenever his aunt would leave the room and he was left alone with his uncle, Goulden would plead for an injection to end his life. “How many more weary miles are you going to make me travel?” Goulden pleaded to his nephew, according to court records. Cooper never revealed his uncle’s request to his aunt, a deeply religious woman who he felt might not understand.

“I didn’t share the pressure with anyone,” Cooper said. “That was something between Uncle Wally and me.

“I did a lot of soul searching. I said, ‘God, Uncle Wally may want to die but it’s wrong for me to help him.”’

On the morning of Sept. 1, Cooper said goodby to his uncle and left for home. The strain had become unbearable.

“I went home with no intention of seeing Uncle Wally again. I just loved him too much and there was nothing I could do for him. I had to run away from it. I couldn’t look into his eyes and deny him anymore.”

Cooper had been home for less than an hour when his mother called to say that his uncle needed him. Cooper returned with four partially filled vials of morphine.

“It came to a moment where one more hour was too damn much,” Cooper said. “He was in great pain and what made it worse was that he was alert and able to articulate the pain.

“I gave him everything I had in morphine, which wasn’t very much at all, and some digoxin. The morphine was more than eight years old. I hoped it would work. I prayed it would.”

Cooper administered the injection at 2 p.m. Two hours later, his uncle died.

“What I did, I did out of love,” Cooper said. “I felt I had no choice. Uncle Wally gave me no choice. I was willing to sacrifice myself for Uncle Wally.”

Two weeks after his uncle’s death, Cooper returned to finish the residency program. He was arrested after confiding to his supervisor Zigman that he had killed his uncle.

“I never hid anything from the police. My whole defense has been to tell the truth,” Cooper said.

Cooper also refused to hide the truth from his children, ages 15, 11 and 7. He asked them to be prepared for the cruel taunts of their classmates. “My little one responded, ‘Yes, but they don’t know how Uncle Wally suffered.’ ”

Now, assured of his freedom, Cooper dreams of a physician’s assistant job in an rural area.

“I want to work again. I want to heal again,” he said. “It may sound corny, but I want to do some good while I’m here.”