Kevorkian Helps Woman Kill Self at His Residence

Jack Kevorkian was present Friday when a woman killed herself, the 19th suicide he has attended and the first at his apartment, an attorney for the retired pathologist said.

Kevorkian helped Merian Frederick, a 72-year-old with Lou Gehrig’s disease, kill herself by inhaling carbon monoxide, attorney Geoffrey Fieger said.

Kevorkian, 65, has advocated that the terminally ill have the right to commit suicide with a doctor’s help. He already is facing two charges of assisting a suicide in violation of a Michigan law passed specifically to stop him.

In a handwritten statement released by Fieger, Frederick said that she no longer wanted to live.

“To sum up, I want out, the earliest, most humane way possible,” she wrote. “The quality of my life is now such that I have no enthusiasm for solving the new level of problems that my deteriorating condition is causing.”

After a four-year illness, Frederick could no longer speak and was fed through a tube in her stomach, Fieger said. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also called Lou Gehrig’s disease for the baseball player who died from it, is a degenerative nerve disorder.

Frederick, who lived in Ann Arbor, had her hand on a string used to release a clamp on a tube to allow a flow of carbon monoxide gas into a mask, Fieger said. He added that Kevorkian, Frederick’s Unitarian Church minister Ken Phifer, her son, Richard Frederick, and his wife attended the suicide.

“There was a sense of relief among the family members. She was very peaceful,” Fieger said.

Police found Frederick’s body in Kevorkian’s downtown apartment shortly after 7:30 a.m. Lt. Don Novak said authorities had received an anonymous call about a suicide. Authorities will hand over results of the investigation to the Oakland County prosecutor’s office early next week, he added.

Kevorkian has remained free on bond on two charges in neighboring Wayne County. He is charged with assisting in the Aug. 4 suicide of Thomas Hyde, a 30-year-old man suffering from Lou Gehrig’s disease, in Detroit.

He also is charged with assisting in the suicide of Donald O’Keefe, 73, of Redford Township, who had bone cancer.

A provision of Kevorkian’s bond in the criminal cases has been that he not assist in more suicides.