A retired academic who was found dead in her Devon cottage on Wednesday would not have taken her own life this week had police not heavy-handedly raided her property days earlier, according to the euthanasia advocate Philip Nitschke.
Prof Avril Henry, 81, took her own life using an illegally imported drug. A few days earlier police had raided her property after a tipoff from Interpol and seized half of her supply of the drug. She was a member of the voluntary euthanasia group that Nitschke founded, Exit International.
Nitschke tore up his licence to practise medicine in his home country of Australia last year after a lengthy investigation by medical authorities into his conduct.
He said on Friday that Henry had feared it was only a matter of time before police once again raided her property and found her second stash of the drug, which she had managed to keep hidden from police in the raid.
While Henry was not terminally ill, she suffered from numerous chronic health conditions which she said made her life difficult, including recurring urinary tract infections, ear infections and cardiac and renal problems.
“What the police action did was push her along to take action to end her own life sooner,” Nitschke said. “The police only took half of her drugs because they didn’t know she had split her supply in half, but she felt it was only a matter of time before her luck ran out.”
Nitschke said he had been on his way to Henry’s home to reassure her about the purity of the drug and its effectiveness when she rang him to say that police had raided her property and seized the drug.
Nitschke said that when he arrived at her property he was shocked by the damage to her door, which he said revealed the force with which police had entered her property. Henry was visibly upset and shaken by the incident, he said.
“The police had even brought a psychiatrist to her home at midnight to try to get her sectioned, or in other words deemed unsound of mind, but they failed,” Nitschke said.
“She knew the risk of authorities behaving like that again and finding the rest of her drugs and she wasn’t going to risk that by prolonging her death any longer.”
A couple of days after the raid, Nitschke said he received a “cryptic email” from Henry. The hospital had called to check on her, she wrote to him. Nitschke believes she was worried that the hospital was trying to determine if she was psychiatrically unstable so that they could admit her to hospital and take end-of-life decisions out of her hands.
“She wrote in her email: ‘I might skip tea tonight and have a bath instead’,” Nitschke said.
“That was her euphemism for dying. She had previously told me that she wanted to die in the bathtub, because she didn’t want to make a mess.” Nitschke said he did not email back to to tell her to see a psychiatrist or to seek counselling.
“I don’t think you need a psychiatrist to tell you whether you’re of sound mind,” he said. Nitschke believes Henry made a rational decision to end her own life based on her poor quality of life and declining health, and admits he gave her advice about obtaining the drug.
He said that he had originally helped to arrange a trip to Switzerland for Henry, where assisted suicide is legal, including liaising with a clinic which would accept her despite her not suffering a terminal illness. But he said her health had declined quickly, and she had decided that travelling would be too difficult and that she would prefer to die in her own home.
She obtained the drug from overseas. She then ordered a testing kit from Exit International to determine the purity of the drug and ensure that it was legitimate.
Nitschke said he had received news on Thursday night that a second person he had been interacting with in the UK had their home raided. He said the UK was tackling the issue of assisted suicide, which is illegal, with a “newfound intensity”, which included placing him under scrutiny.
Currently in the Netherlands, Nitschke said he was fearful of returning to the UK in case police arrested him and accused him of talking Henry into ending her life.
“I think it might be better for me to sit here in Holland for a bit,” he said.
In the UK, the Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14.