Kevorkian Attends 25th Suicide as MS Victim Dies in Michigan

Dr. Jack Kevorkian attended the suicide Monday of a woman with multiple sclerosis whose body was left in the back seat of an old car outside a hospital emergency room.

“As things went from bad to worse and I was nothing more than a bed veg, I knew it was time to say, ‘See ya,’ ” wrote Esther Cohan, 46, of Skokie, Ill., in an Aug. 9 letter addressed “to all.”

The suicide was at least the 25th in which Kevorkian has taken part since 1990.

Kevorkian’s lawyer, Geoffrey Fieger, would say little about how Cohan died except that it was “consistent” with other suicides Kevorkian has attended and that it happened in Oakland County.

The medical examiner’s office ruled the death a homicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. In most of the previous suicides, the person inhaled carbon monoxide from a canister.

Cohan’s body was left in a gray car parked outside William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, not far from where Kevorkian once lived.

Cohan, a former secretary, was unable to work after she was struck with MS, which attacks the central nervous system but is rarely fatal.

The Oakland County prosecutor’s office refused to comment, saying it would await the results of the police investigation.

Kevorkian, whose medical license has been revoked because of his crusade, faces possible charges in a number of deaths, including murder in some cases and assisted suicide in others.