A Bitter Legacy : Angry accusations abound after the suicide of Hemlock Society co-founder Ann Humphry.

In the early afternoon of the day she killed herself, Ann Wickett Humphry, 49-year-old author and once-vocal right-to-die activist, made a final call to her friend Julie Horvath in Los Angeles.

“She said she was checking out,” recalls Horvath, who had just returned from visiting Windfall Farm, Humphry’s 50-acre ranch 25 miles north of Eugene. “I said, ‘Let me come up.’ She said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘I love you. Come down here and I will support you. I will help you.’

“She said, ‘Julie, you’ve got your life to live, and I’m not going to do that to you.’ . . . I said, ‘OK.’ . . . She sounded so tired.”

Shortly after hanging up, Humphry--co-founder with then-husband Derek Humphry of the controversial Hemlock Society, which advocates assisted suicides for the terminally ill--took a last drive, a winding 100-mile journey into the Oregon wilderness. She was headed for one of her favorite places.

And all of a sudden she was in a hurry.

After a morning spent methodically writing letters and notes, Humphry’s mood apparently shifted and she left Windfall Farm in haste. A friend later discovered the door to the house standing wide open. Humphry also had uncharacteristically left the gate to the cattle pen open, allowing her five prized Scottish Highland cattle--long-horned, yak-like creatures--to escape.

With her Chevrolet pickup pulling a horse trailer carrying Eben, her chestnut Arabian gelding, the trip probably took about four hours. Along the way, Horvath believes that Humphry “made peace with herself.”

Another friend, Pam Wilson of Monroe, Ore., wonders if Humphry listened to some of her favorite music, albums by Ray Charles and the soundtrack from the movie “Rocky IV.”

Humphry passed through the McKenzie River Valley, east of Eugene, before climbing into the mountain town of Sisters. There, she turned right on a narrow road that meanders 15 miles to Three Creeks Meadow. She parked, saddled the horse and rode another three miles up a trail before veering into the forest. She found a place that faced the Three Sisters Mountains, unsaddled the horse and sent it away.

Then Humphry, daughter of a Boston banker, a former Peace Corps volunteer and a student of Shakespeare, sat down against a tree and swallowed a fatal dose of pills. Friends calculated that it was about sunset on an October day.

Deschutes County searchers found her body six days later, on Oct. 8. Vials of pills lay scattered nearby. The searcher who found her said she looked as if she had gone to sleep.

Afterward, Ann Wickett Humphry’s small band of friends took some comfort from the fact that Humphry had gone peacefully and that she had picked a gorgeous place to die.

But since her headline-making suicide, those small consolations have been overshadowed by what her friends say is the tarnishing of a valiant legacy.

At the end of a brave fight against physical pain and emotional torment, Humphry had been unfairly demeaned by assertions that she was mentally unstable and could not “cope with life,” they say.

Above all, they assert, Humphry was a woman in rebellion against the darkness of her own past. A bout with breast cancer had changed her perspective on illness, they explain, and turned her against the philosophy of the Hemlock Society.

In life, Ann Humphry had fought for the right to die. Now her friends are determined to make her death a battleground. Motivated by grief, they are determined to tell the story of Humphry’s final struggle--and they note with some satisfaction, their friend left them plenty of ammunition.

The target of their anger is the Hemlock Society and its executive director, Derek Humphry, Ann Humphry’s former husband and the author of “Final Exit,” a self-help manual on suicide that has topped several best-seller lists this year.

In an advertisement placed by the society in the New York Times, Derek Humphry wrote, “Sadly, for much of her life Ann was dogged by emotional problems, and although she had extensive treatment and fought for stability, her life was a series of peaks and troughs.” The ad was placed to counter what the Hemlock Society admits was a public-relations setback for its cause.

“People will use this to distort the purpose of the Hemlock Society,” says the group’s deputy director, Cheryl K. Smith.

The ad notes that the Hemlock Society “supports suicide prevention in appropriate cases” and ends with the statement, “What organization does not have casualties? Emotional illness knows no boundaries.”

Ann Humphry’s friends say these and similar statements show a callous disregard for Humphry, whom they see as a tragic and poignant figure, and the agonizing battles of her last two years.

Moreover, they say, Humphry had come to regret helping her aging parents kill themselves in 1986, a double suicide depicted in excruciating and thinly disguised detail in her 1989 book “Double Exit.”

That book was one of a string of suicide-advocacy books that she and Derek Humphry had produced to spread the Hemlock Society gospel. All were inspired by the success of Derek Humphry’s first foray into the literature of death, “Jean’s Way.”

While still a London journalist, Derek Humphry had written that book with Ann’s help. It is a highly praised account of how in 1975 Derek helped his first wife, Jean, terminally ill with breast cancer, drink a lethal dose of drugs in a cup of coffee. Derek and Ann Humphry married the year after Jean’s death, when Ann was studying for a doctorate in English literature in Great Britain.

A few years later the couple moved to Los Angeles, and Derek Humphry worked for two years at The Times as a reporter before he and Ann founded the Hemlock Society in 1980.

In 1988 they moved the society to Eugene, a quiet university town on the banks of the Willamette River. Derek and Ann Humphry separated in 1989 and were divorced last year. He has since remarried.

Perhaps the most striking measure of Ann Wickett Humphry’s disaffection with the Hemlock Society was her secret friendship with Rita Marker, the head of an anti-euthanasia group and a frequent debating opponent of Derek Humphry.

“We felt it was not appropriate to make our friendship public,” Marker says now, adding, “She said she just felt like she could talk to me.” One of the things they discussed was her failed marriage and the Humphrys’ bitter divorce.

In the days after Humphry’s death, Marker received by mail a copy of a typewritten note that Humphry had left for her former husband. Marker supplied the note to The Times. It read:

“Derek:

“There. You got what you wanted. Ever since I was diagnosed as having cancer, you have done everything conceivable to precipitate my death.

“I was not alone in recognizing what you were doing. What you did--desertion and abandonment and subsequent harrassment (sic) of a dying woman--is so unspeakable there are no words to describe the horror of it.

“Yet you know. And others know too. You will have to live with this untiol (sic) you die.

“May you never, ever forget.

“Ann”

Although Marker and Ann Humphry had philosophical differences on death and dying, her friend “had changed her opinion about euthanasia,” says Marker, director of the International Anti-Euthanasia Task Force. “After she was diagnosed with cancer, she said she had never realized before what subtle and not-so-subtle pressures could be put on a person to die and get out of the way.”

Furthermore, Ann Humphry told friends and others that she had had direct experience in mercy killing.

In her book “Double Exit,” Humphry covered up for herself by disguising the story of her parents’ double suicide as an account supplied by someone else. But Marker and Horvath say Humphry had told them that the book was really about how she and Derek helped her parents consume lethal doses of Vesparax, a foreign-made barbiturate.

Although her parents suffered from a variety of debilitating ailments, neither was terminally ill, according to the book and Humphry’s friends. Her parents had, however, joined the Hemlock Society and had become increasingly distressed by the vicissitudes of old age. They requested Ann and Derek to help in their deaths.

“She and Derek killed her parents,” Marker says. “She had regrets about it.”

Last year The Independent, a British newspaper, published an article asserting that both Derek and Ann Humphry had referred a reporter to “Double Exit” for an account of her parents’ deaths. Derek Humphry says the article was by an old journalistic rival, adding that “the price of fame is this sort of treatment.”

Derek Humphry is out of the country, called to England by the death of the aunt who reared him. In an interview before he left, however, Derek Humphry repeated his belief that Ann was mentally unstable.

“She had a borderline personality, and to her great credit she fought it,” he says. She told him she had attempted suicide once before she met him, in the early 1970s after the breakup of her first marriage, he says.

Derek Humphry concedes that his former wife had remained angry with him because he left her shortly after her breast cancer surgery. But Derek Humphry insists that he did not leave Ann because of her disease, which also struck his first wife.

“Through ‘87, ’88 and ‘89, we were in therapy together, but it didn’t make any difference. We were deeply unhappy with one another,” he says.

Humphry describes Ann Humphry’s disease as “a touch of cancer.” He explains that surgery and subsequent treatment eradicated the breast cancer, a fact that is not disputed by her friends.

“I was beginning to go to pieces,” Derek Humphry says. “I just couldn’t handle living with her. She was convinced I had left her because she had cancer and (that) I wasn’t going to look after her as I had done with my first wife.”

Later, he adds, “Yes, I left her, and if I am to blame, I accept that.”

Although Ann Humphry’s friends agree that she was free of cancer at the time of her death, they say the disease had a devastating psychological impact.

“She was absolutely certain she was going to die of cancer,” says Rita Marker, noting that within the space of weeks, Ann Humphry’s cancer was diagnosed and she lost her husband, as well as a job with the Hemlock Society.

Workers at the Hemlock Society support Derek Humphry’s contention that his former wife was beset with emotional problems. Although Ann had the “wonderful quality” of impulsive generosity, Smith says that in some of their encounters she believes that Ann “was irrational,” adding, “I just felt that she distorted reality.”

For a time, Smith says, she rented a house from Ann Humphry. Then, for what Smith says was no reason, Humphry told her she had to be out of the house the next day. The house “then sat vacant for months.” Smith also says that Ann Humphry’s claim that she was fired from the Hemlock Society was false. “She quit,” Smith declares.

“She went through friends very quickly,” Smith adds. “It could be a slight that you didn’t even know you had committed.”

Society members said Ann frequently proclaimed that she had her “personal stash” of suicide drugs, possibly the same type that had killed her parents. (Results of tests made after Ann Humphry’s autopsy have not yet been announced.)

Jean Gillett, a national board member of the Hemlock Society, says she and Ann Humphry were close friends for a time and that she observed the tension between Derek and Ann firsthand. Once, during an airport layover, Ann threw a suitcase at Derek, Gillett recalls.

“It wasn’t a big suitcase, but she threw it,” Gillett says.

She adds, “I felt very sorry for Ann sometimes. She had everything in the world to live for but did not get along with people. . . . I felt she was the angriest person I have ever known in my life.”

Ann Humphry’s friends agree that she was an emotional woman. But they argue that in the last two years of her life, Humphry had suffered a series of blows that left her ravaged in body and mind.

After cancer surgery Humphry underwent radiation and chemotherapy treatments, Horvath and Nancy Raymo, a cousin, explain. Throughout that time, Humphry was living alone on her farm except for the visits of friends, they say. Her appetite diminished and she lost at least 20 pounds. Raymo, who lives in St. Petersburg, Fla., recalls visiting Humphry and standing over her, urging her to eat.

About six months ago, Horvath says, Humphry was disfigured by botched reconstructive breast surgery. She became infected after one operation, nearly dying and sustaining permanent liver damage, Horvath adds.

To Horvath, Marker, Wilson and Raymo, Humphry had been defeated too many times at too many things.

Humphry’s hopes for writing a book about about her struggles had come to nothing, they say. No publisher was interested in another story about a woman with cancer.

Then, just days before her death, her attorneys had walked away from a libel and slander suit she had filed against Derek Humphry because of statements he has made about her mental condition. Even Derek Humphry believes this may have been what prompted her suicide, he told The Times.

Most poignantly, perhaps, last month a son whom Ann Humphry had given up for adoption in the early 1970s had tracked her down, friends say. Their reunion was warm, but it was not enough to turn Ann around.

In a final irony, the son, from a brief, failed relationship, helped retrieve the ashes of the mother he had just met. Ann Humphry’s body was cremated at a mortuary in Bend, Ore., after an autopsy.

Her friends scattered the ashes at night near the pond on Windfall Farm. That seemed to be in the spirit of a quotation from Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” that Ann Humphry had typed and left on her desk.

It read: “When he shall die, take him and cut him out in little stars and he will make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night and pay no worship to the garish sun.”