Cancer Found in Suicide Linked to Kevorkian

A woman who died in the presence of Jack Kevorkian last week after battling breast cancer also had cancer in her spine, the medical examiner’s office said Friday.

Dr. L. J. Dragovic, who performed an autopsy shortly after Patricia Cashman’s death Nov. 8, had said she had no visible signs of cancer except a mastectomy scar.

But a microscopic examination detected the cancerous cells in Cashman’s spine, said Dr. Kanu Virani, Oakland County’s deputy medical examiner. He could not determine how much pain she might have been in, but said she did not appear to be near death.

Kevorkian and his attorney, Geoffrey Fieger, had disputed Dragovic’s initial statement, saying Cashman, 58, was in crippling pain from bone cancer that had spread from the breast cancer.

Cashman, of San Marcos, Calif., was the 26th person whose death Kevorkian has acknowledged attending since 1990. The retired pathologist is awaiting trial in two of those deaths.