Criminal - Final Exit

Episode Date: March 13, 2015

No one disputes that it's against the law to take another person's life, but is it against the law to sit with someone and watch while they die by suicide? We meet an elderly woman named Fran Schindler who sneaks around the country as an "exit guide."  This is a live interview from Motorco Music Hall in Durham, North Carolina. Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts: iTunes.com/CriminalShow. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop.  Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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In January, we held a live show at Motorco Music Hall here in Durham, North Carolina, where we live. It was our first, and we were pretty sure no one was going to show up. But people did come, it was a good crowd, and we hope a good show. We're going to play part of it today. It's an interview I did live on stage with Fran Schindler, who is, without a doubt, one of the most surprising people I've ever met. Okay, so I first met Fran Schindler three years ago. What I'll say is that she wasn't exactly what I expected.

She's in her 70s, she's retired, and she's pretty sure the FBI has a rather keen interest every time she leaves town. Please welcome Fran Schindler. We aren't even scripted on this one, so we can really, we can mess up, we can do whatever we want. Yes, we can. And we will. We will. We will. So let's just start with a question everyone gets asked. What is your criminal record? I have none. A parking ticket here and there, but that's it. And how often do you travel? Depending on the

cases that I cover I could travel once a month sometimes I don't travel for quite a while it all depends. And when you travel how long do you stay? Generally, oh, three to four days. However, recently I had cases in two different parts of Florida. And since I detest renting cars at airports, I decided to drive. And I was gone for five to seven days, driving 1,900 and 50 miles up and down the state of Florida. And I'm all over any more road trips. You're fine next time. When was the last time you saw someone die? January the 2nd of this year. Can you describe what you do? I am known as an exit guide.

I sit with people who have made a decision and made a choice to end their lives on their own terms. And how does that process work? Well, I can tell you a little bit about, and this might be jumping the gun, and if it is, let me know. Well, I mean, how do you find, how do you even get in touch with these people? I'm a volunteer with an organization that supports an individual's right to choose to end their lives if they are mentally competent and suffering intolerably from a physical illness. The name of the organization is Final Exit Network and generally people find us by word of mouth or once they get a terrible diagnosis they start cruising the internet and they find us. So they call, you go through a rather rigorous process

to make sure that everything's above board. And then you go there and what you do is act as a guide to educate and help them understand what the process will be. But what happens when you go is that what your organization has found to be the most effective, peaceful, whatever word you might like to use, way, is to place a, an individual will place a bag over their head, and that bag will be connected in some way to a source of gas, which will create a peaceful death. How long does it take for someone to die in that manner?

Our preferred method is, as you say, the use of an inner gas that requires the use of a hood. It is easy, it's 100% effective, and it's peaceful. Once a person pulls that hood down over their head, they are unconscious in 5 to 10 seconds. That's all they know. And they will die within 15 to 20 minutes when their entire brain and brain stem shuts down. How many deaths have you been present for? I have been a compassionate presence at the bedside of 30 people. When you're sitting in that room with someone who's chosen to end their life, are you just sitting there with them? What role, what are you doing when you're sitting with all these

people? My role is a support person for the individual and for their family. In order for anybody to be able to do this that is involved with our organization, they must be mentally competent and physically able to carry this out themselves. I do nothing. I do not touch anything. I do not bring them anything. I sit with them because absolutely, I believe, nobody should ever have to die alone. We do not come into this world alone, and we should not have to leave it alone.

And I will sit there to witness their choice to end their life on their own terms, which I think is their absolute right. What are some of the kind of the range of laws which govern suicide and euthanasia and what you do? What I do is not against the law. And what a lot of people don't know is that to end your life, to kill yourself, to commit suicide is not against the law. But to assist a suicide is against the law, which we do not do. Assisting means providing something for someone, giving to someone we do not do that and you ask about euthanasia and people are often confused about this Jack Kevorkian euthanized Thomas Yalke he put a needle in his arm and pushed the

medicine into his body because Thomas Yalke had Lou Gehrig's disease and was totally paralyzed. Euthanasia is most definitely against the law. So essentially, I'm taking a risk. I'm taking a risk by sitting with someone who is not committing a crime, but I am at risk of being accused of assisting when I do nothing. Go figure. It's illogical and irrational, but there is that risk. And so, you know, I imagine we've all heard, you know, that people assisted suicide and that that's illegal. But I imagine because of this and because you're aware to go to rather extreme lengths to protect not only yourself but to make sure that the person who wants to end their life has been

able to do it? There are several cases I can tell you about. which entailed being able to have access to where the woman lived and her caregiver had to all-clear sign sitting at a bus stop. And the buses would pass and say, you want to get on? And we'd say, oh, no, we're waiting for the express bus. And one bus driver said, you know, you two are just so cute and precious sitting there. He had no idea that he was going to take off. And we just looked at each other and rolled our eyes because it's almost surreal. We were on our way to sit with someone who was going to die,

and we're just sitting at this bus stop waiting for the sign that we can come and get into the apartment. Because you need some time, because you need to make sure that the person has a chance to die, that someone doesn't walk in and rip the hood off or say, what is going on here? Absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, the biggest thing is that this is a family decision also. It makes it more difficult when people have no family. But generally, the family is there. And I've walked into the most secure apartments and condominiums in New York City with a family member accompanying me. And wherever we go, really, we come as friends. And we spend enough time with people that we do become their friends, and they trust us.

And we can walk in in nobody pays any attention to us but you have to have a plan to get out too because you can't be there when the cops or the paramedics are and you've got to be gone there's always a discovery plan in place whenever anybody ends their life. We never do this without having a fully developed discovery plan so that they are found by someone. And if that someone is not right there at the minute, we leave, walk out the door, just as if we were visiting. Are you ever scared you're going to be caught? Actually, I'm not. If I were really scared, I don't think I'd be able to do this.

I don't feel that I'm doing anything wrong. There's risk. You try to minimize the risk as much as you can and part of that comes by involving the family. But you have, you haven't been caught yourself, but you have colleagues who could easily have been swapped for you that have been. That's very true and I don't know if we've got the time. This is a rather remarkable story. I'll speed this up. In 2007, a very ill man in Georgia with a significant head and neck cancer made the decision to end his life. He had an estranged wife, maybe divorced.

I don't know the whole situation there. However, the man ended his life. The estranged wife came to the apartment after the fact, found out that he had done this. She was not involved and the reason I learned later that he never told her was because she had very strong religious convictions that he should not do it. It was totally against her religious beliefs but not against his. In her grief and anger, she called the Georgia police. The Georgia Bureau of

Investigation then mounted an inquest, an investigation that went on from 2007 until 2009 when the FBI perpetrated a sting on our organization and my colleagues. They had a man apply for exit guide services, supposedly with a terminal pancreatic cancer, complete with falsified medical documents. The man was an FBI agent. Exit guides visited. He went through the whole process. The date was set for his exit. The guides came to the house.

The man, just before he was ready to put on the hood and die, asked to leave the room for a minute, perhaps to go to the bathroom. I don't know what excuse he used, but he walked out of the room. As he did, FBI agents swarmed into the room, arrested the two guides. They had everything that went on on videotape they simultaneously as they arrested

those two guides arrested other members of final exit Network all over the country they arrested the medical director they arrested my colleague in Maryland, who was also a coordinator, the treasurer, several other people on the board of the network. They went to their homes, and if they were not home, they broke down the door. They went in, took their computers, their papers, their documents, and my four colleagues were arrested and jailed and indicted and finally let threat of jail time on bail for all those years. Subsequently, we prevailed in the state of Georgia based on the First Amendment. They could not prove that we had assisted a suicide. I might believe in the fact that someone should be able to take their own life.

I mean, many people do have that ability, but that doesn't mean that I'm going to go out and sit with someone while they do it. You know, I can feel passionately about a topic, but just talk about it with friends. I'm not going to get on an airplane or be driving through Florida. Why do you do what you do? What is it? What happened? I mean... Go ahead, ask me. What happened that led me to this? Right? I mean something, what happens? My background is in nursing. I've seen suffering. I've seen death. I have had my own foot on banana peel twice. I had a brain tumor. Fortunately for me, it was benign. Only cost me

total hearing in one year, small price to pay. I have had breast cancer and survived that. It has always been in the back of my mind that if things didn't actually work out for me, I would choose to end my life. Finally, I found out about Final Exit Network, joined. The year later, went and trained as an exit guide. And what I experienced there, learning about, number one, the method, and number two, the fact that there were people there who would sit with me. I couldn't in good conscience just take that away and say, oh, fine for me. I know what I need to know now wasn't to my liking, I had the choice to end my

life and there would be people there that would sit with me while I did it. And how could I not give that to other people? I guess the last question, how do you plan to die? Well, I will end my own life. I have benchmarks for myself. If I get a diagnosis of dementia, the clock starts ticking. If I really am in such straits that as long as I remain mentally competent and physically able to do this, but if I am in danger of losing my independence, I will end my life. I will not go to a nursing home. I saw my mother die horribly in a nursing home, and what I know is that my children will never see that happen to me. So you're prepared?

I'm prepared. I know what I have to do. Do you have any hoods yourself? Yes, I do. Right after I went through training, I ordered a hood from a woman named Charlotte Heidorn, who was in California. And do you have a backup? I do have two hoods. So you're ready to go. And that is why the FBI ended up coming to my door. This Charlotte Heidorn, who sewed hoods for the worldwide Death with Dignity movement,

was found on the Internet by a young suicidal man. Didn't have anything to do with our organization. He sent for one of her hoods, got it, and he killed himself. When his family found him dead in their grief and anger, they called the police, and the Border Patrol and the state police in California went to the door of 91-year-old Charlotte, took her to jail to see if she could get out. They spread that information all over, and consequently they got my name from buying my second hood,

so they were on their way to my house to see if I was suicidal. Fortunately, I watch enough crime shows that when a great big black SUV is parked in front of my townhouse, I'm not about to open the door. Well, thank you very much for speaking with us. Thank you. That was my interview with Fran Schindler from our live show back in January. A lot of people helped make that night happen. Motorco Music Hall, Ryan Shiver, Jeff Polish,

who runs Durham's version of The Moth, it's called The Monty, to our band, Uncle Igor. You can find out more about them at uncleigor.com. Thanks, as always, to our artist, Julianne Alexander, who designed our set and merchandise. By the way, you can buy hand-printed Criminal shirts and mugs at our website. This is criminal.com. Criminal is produced by Lauren Spohr, Eric Menel, and me.

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