PDA

View Full Version : Suicide tips creepy and sick, attorney says, but not illegal



Teh One Who Knocks
02-25-2011, 08:49 PM
Judge to decide fate of former Minnesota nurse within 20 days
By Emily Gurnon - The Pioneer Press


http://i.imgur.com/4Syuh.jpg

What his client did was "obsessive, morbid, abhorrent, sick" and "creepy," defense attorney Terry Watkins told a judge Thursday in Faribault, Minn. But urging two people to kill themselves was free speech — not a crime, he argued.

Former nurse William Melchert-Dinkel, 48, of Faribault has been charged with two felony counts of encouraging, advising or assisting another in committing suicide. After oral arguments Thursday morning, Rice County District Judge Thomas Neuville took the matter under advisement; he will issue a verdict within 20 days.

Watkins readily admitted at the hearing that Melchert-Dinkel engaged in online chats encouraging an 18-year-old Canadian woman and a 32-year-old man from England to kill themselves.

Police say Nadia Kajouji of Brampton, Ontario, jumped off a bridge into a frozen river March 9, 2008. It was just two hours after her last communication with Melchert-Dinkel, who posed as a young nurse offering to enter into a suicide pact with her and help instruct her via webcam.

Mark Drybrough of Coventry, England, hanged himself in his bedroom in July 2005, three or four days after Melchert-Dinkel, using the screen name "Li dao," advised him on how to position the rope.

But Watkins said that in order to be guilty of a crime, Melchert-Dinkel's actions would have had to prompt an "immediate and imminent incitement" of the suicides.

There wasn't enough evidence of that, he said. In fact, there was plenty of
evidence that both individuals had suffered from severe depression and had been planning to take their own lives for some time.

"There needs to be some respect for the autonomy of these two individuals," he said.

Watkins provided details about Kajouji that had not previously been disclosed.

As a freshman at Carleton University in Ottawa, Kajouji was troubled, Watkins said. One day in French class, she fainted, and soon found out she was pregnant.

The father, with whom she'd had a brief sexual relationship, "responded in a very unconcerned manner." She told him she would get an abortion. Soon after, she drank 13 ounces of vodka and "one or two beers," Watkins said.

She passed out; paramedics could not immediately revive her. She was taken to a hospital and had a miscarriage.

Kajouji's friends and family noticed that she was extremely depressed and becoming more withdrawn.

She tried to reach out to the boyfriend, expressing her deep feelings for him, but he did not respond.

Around the same time, she saw the movie "Juno," which depicts a teenage girl who becomes pregnant and decides to give the baby up for adoption. The movie, which ends on a decidedly upbeat note, sent Kajouji into further turmoil, Watkins said.

She and Drybrough both posted messages on online suicide chat sites. Melchert-Dinkel trolled those sites, offering advice and giving people "permission" to kill themselves.

Rice County Attorney G. Paul Beaumaster, who is prosecuting the case, said in his argument that it was irrelevant whether Melchert-Dinkel's actions were the straw that broke the camel's back.

"There's no handprint on the back showing a push," he said. "There's no fingerprints on the rope."

Yet in the eyes of the law, it's the intent that matters, he said.

"It's clear this was a well-tailored, well-rehearsed fraud to obtain," as he said, the "thrill of the chase." Beaumaster said Melchert-Dinkel deliberately set out to "hunt down" his victims — the vulnerable, the suffering.

"That's the point. That's who he looked for," he said. "This was not just somebody on a soapbox in a park. He targeted individuals he knew he could have an influence on. Were they predisposed? Absolutely!"

St. Paul police Sgt. Bill Haider, assigned to the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, was originally tipped off to Melchert-Dinkel's activities in March 2008 by Celia Blay, an English woman who told him that an online predator was stalking suicide chat rooms.

Blay had heard from Drybrough's mother, who said Mark died after corresponding with someone online who had encouraged him to hang himself.

Drybrough's sister found him dead at his apartment. There was a note on the door: "Call police. Don't come in."

Using the screen names "cami," "falcon_girl" and "Li dao," Melchert-Dinkel posed as a young woman, a sympathetic emergency room nurse who had seen the results of botched suicides and recommended hanging as the most dependable method.

Haider traced the Internet accounts to Melchert-Dinkel's Faribault home.

Melchert-Dinkel told police that he was obsessed with suicide and hanging, and had viewed thousands of suicide photos online.

He also admitted that he entered into suicide pacts with 10 people; he believed five took their lives. "Only about half go through with it ... the rest chicken out," Beaumaster quoted the defendant as saying.

While he asked 15 to 20 people to let him watch their suicides on a webcam, no one agreed, he told police.

Eventually, people caught wind of what he was doing. Melchert-Dinkel told police that about four times over two years there were warnings posted to suicide message boards to steer clear of Li Dao.

Melchert-Dinkel's nursing license has been revoked.