First Sarco pod suicide: US girl ‘nearly instantly pressed button’

The first person to use the Sarco suicide pod got into the device and ‘almost immediately pressed the button’ to take her own life, its creator has claimed.

The capsule is designed to allow a person inside to push a button that injects nitrogen gas into the sealed chamber, causing hypoxia and death soon after.

It was set up in a woodland near a cabin in Merishausen, northern Switzerland, with the pod’s window allowing the 64-year-old American woman to see the trees and sky above her before she died.

‘It looked exactly as we expected it to look. My guess is that she lost consciousness within two minutes and that she died after five minutes,’ Dr Philip Nitschke, the pod’s inventor, told Dutch media.

‘We saw sudden, small contractions and movements of the muscles in her arms, but she was probably already unconscious by then.’

The woman, believed to be a mother-of-two from the American mid-west, had reportedly been suffering with ‘a very serious illness that involves severe pain’ and had wished to die for ‘at least two years’.

After being notified of her death, police swooped on the forest, where they discovered the woman’s lifeless body inside the pod and arrested several people.

Those detained are said to include a director of The Last Resort, the firm behind the Sarco, as well as two lawyers and a newspaper photographer who had been taking pictures of the pod.

The public prosecutor in the Schaffhausen canton said that Sarco’s creators had been warned not to use the device in the region, but that the warning had not been heeded.

‘We warned them in writing,’ prosecutor Peter Sticher said. ‘We said that if they came to Schaffhausen and used Sarco, they would face criminal consequences.’ 

Sticher attended the crime scene with a ‘large contingent’ of police and forensics teams on Monday, revealing that the operation lasted from early evening until around midnight.

‘We found the capsule with the lifeless person inside,’ he told Blick. ‘We took the person out of the capsule and brought them to the Institute of Forensic Medicine. An autopsy will be performed there today.’ 

He said arrests were made so that those at the ‘were not colluding with each other or covering up evidence.’

According to Dutch daily newspaper de Volksrant, which had been following the case, the woman who died in the machine made an oral statement to The Last Resort saying it was her own wish to end her life.

In the four-minute recording, she reportedly said that she had a death wish for ‘at least two years,’ ever since she was diagnosed with a ‘very serious illness’.

The firm said that she was ‘immune compromised’ and had been in ‘severe pain.’

The woman’s two sons ‘completely agree’ that it was her decision to die, according to Volksrant. ‘They are behind me 100 percent,’ she is reported to have said.

Fiona Stewart, a board member at The Last Resort, said the woman’s sons had confirmed this in written statements to the company. 

The sons are not believed to have been present in Switzerland at the time of their mother’s death on Monday.

Nitschke, announced news of the pod’s premiere on X, saying: ‘An idyllic peaceful death in a Swiss forest where The Last Resort used the Sarco device to help a US woman have the death she wanted.’

He added of the arrests in the aftermath: ‘What Swiss police didn’t mention was that those arrested included the Director of The Last Resort, two lawyers providing legal assistance to TLR, and a Dutch journalist!!’

Volkskrant reported that police detained one of its photographers who wanted to take pictures of the use of the Sarco, but gave no further details.

It said Schaffhausen police had indicated the photographer was being held at a police station but declined to give a further explanation. 

According to Last Resort, Willet said the woman’s death had been ‘peaceful, fast and dignified’, taking place ‘under a canopy of trees, at a private forest retreat in the Canton of Schaffhausen close to the Swiss-German border.’

Nitschke said that the woman’s dying process went ‘well’ and that ‘as soon as she lay down in the Sarco, she almost immediately pressed the button. 

‘She really wanted to die. She didn’t say anything any more,’ he said.

He added in a statement that his device ‘had performed exactly as it had been designed to do,’ saying it had provided a ‘non-drug, peaceful death at the time of the person’s choosing’.

Police, including forensics teams, arrived at the scene after being notified by a legal firm that an assisted suicide with the device had taken place. 

The Last Resort, who had anticipated that there would need to be an investigation after the launch of the device, said it had informed the police that it had been used.

Nitschke and Stewart said that the company was acting at all times on the advice of their lawyers.

The pods work by replacing air, which is 21 per cent oxygen and 79 per cent nitrogen, with 100 per cent nitrogen. 

This renders the occupant unconscious and they then stop breathing in a process that its creators expected to take less than ten minutes.

A camera inside the pod records their final moments and the footage is handed to a coroner.

Nitschke and his associates designed Sarco, which is made using a 3-D printer, to be free, with people just paying for their body to be removed by funeral directors.

The woman who used the device only paid the costs for the nitrogen: 18 Swiss francs, according to the Last Resort.

The firm aims to make assisted dying almost completely free of charge, with the cost, which is equal to around £16, contrasting with the fees of most Swiss clinics, which usually charge around £10,000. 

‘The use of the Sarco is free,’ Stewart said. ‘We don’t want to make any money from this.’ 

The woman did have to pay additional costs, such as her cremation, she added.

The device was used on the same day as Swiss Interior Minister Elisabeth Baume-Schneider told the National Council that she considers the use of the Sarco in Switzerland to be illegal. 

‘The Sarco suicide capsule is not legal in two respects,’ Baume-Schneider reportedly said.

‘On one hand, it does not fulfill the demands of the product safety law, and as such, must not be brought into circulation,’ she said. 

‘On the other hand, the corresponding use of nitrogen is not compatible with the article on purpose in the chemicals law.’ 

Swiss law allows assisted suicide so long as the person takes his or her life with no ‘external assistance’ and those who help the person die do not do so for ‘any self-serving motive,’ according to a government website.

Switzerland is among the few countries in the world where foreigners can travel to legally end their lives, and is home to a number of organizations that are dedicated to helping people kill themselves.

Some lawmakers in Switzerland have argued that the law is unclear and have sought to close what they call legal loopholes.

Nitschke and Stewart, who are married and have long campaigned for the right to die, have said that they want Sarco to become an established and accessible option for euthanasia. 

Some 120 applicants hoping to use the machine to end their lives, according to The Last Resort, with around a quarter of those on the waiting list said to be British people.

Among them are a former RAF engineer and his wife, who revealed to the Mail that they had signed up to become the first couple to use a double suicide pod.

Peter and Christine Scott, who have been married for 46 years, made the decision after former nurse Christine, 80, was recently diagnosed with early-stage vascular dementia.

Like the solo pod, The Last Resort said the two-person pod would be constructed using a 3D printer, and could be ready for use as early as January.

• UK: For help and support, call the Samaritans for free from a UK phone, completely anonymously, on 116 123 or go to samaritans.org. 
• US: If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988. There is also an online chat at 988lifeline.org.