Dr. Jack Kevorkian helped a 39-year-old woman with multiple sclerosis commit suicide, his lawyer said Wednesday. It was the 33rd life Kevorkian has helped to end since 1990, the fifth since May.
The 68-year-old retired pathologist personally delivered the body of Rebecca Badger of California to the emergency room at Pontiac Osteopathic Hospital late Tuesday night while an unidentified person waited in a car.Kevorkian gave doctors her name, home state and the disease she was suffering from, then left, said Dr. Robert Aranosian.
It was the first time Kevorkian had taken a body into an emergency room; earlier practice had one of his lawyers or a relative of the patient notify authorities about the location of the body.
There were no efforts to resuscitate Badger, who was propped in a wheelchair, because "she was obviously dead," Aranosian said. He said he couldn't speculate on the time of death. An autopsy was being done.
Kevorkian didn't say whether he had taken part in another death, Aranosian said. But one of his attorneys, Michael Schwartz, told WWJ radio that Kevorkian had helped Rebecca Badger end her suffering from multiple sclerosis.
Schwartz's secretary said he was out of the office and could not immediately return a phone call. Another of Kevorkian's attorneys, Geoffrey Fieger, refused to comment.
Kevorkian, reached at his home late Wednesday morning, referred questions to Fieger and hung up.
Police got a call from the hospital at 11:35 p.m., said Sgt. Clarence Buggs. Investigators have little information on Badger and don't know where, when or how she died, he said.
The body of an Ohio woman whose suicide Kevorkian assisted was brought to the same suburban Oakland County hospital last month.
Kevorkian, 68, has been cleared five times in three trials of criminal wrongdoing since he began his campaign for assisted suicide in 1990. He has stepped up activities since his latest acquittal in May, assisting in five suicides.
In his first two acquittals, Kevorkian was tried under a temporary state law targeting him. The last case was based on a 1994 Michigan Supreme Court ruling that said assisted suicide was a felony under the common law - the traditions and legal precedents dating to old England.