‘Obitorium’ Site’s Owner Tells Kevorkian To Get Out

Jack Kevorkian has begun a new chapter in his quest to put doctors in the suicide business with the opening of an “obitorium,” a clinic for helping people end their lives.

However, the first suicide at the new Margo Janus Mercy Clinic - named for Kevorkian’s sister, who died of a heart attack - apparently will be its last. The building’s owner said Tuesday he has given Kevorkian a month to get out.

“I’m looking at the pressure from authorities, from the media,” said Jody Rothermel.

Kevorkian had signed a $500 month-to-month lease on the weathered building, a former hardware store in suburban Oakland County.

On Monday, Erika Garcellano, a 60-year-old victim of Lou Gehrig’s disease who had been living in a Kansas City, Mo., nursing home, died at the “obitorium” in the 24th suicide that Kevorkian has aided or witnessed since 1990.

An autopsy Tuesday found she died of carbon monoxide poisoning, and the county medical examiner’s office classified the death as a homicide. That has no direct bearing on whether charges are filed, and the Oakland County prosecutor’s office said it was awaiting sheriff’s reports before acting.

Because the U.S. Supreme Court recently refused to shield him from prosecution, Kevorkian faces possible murder charges in two earlier deaths and assisted-suicide charges in three others.

Kevorkian’s lawyer Geoffrey Fieger has not disclosed details of the woman’s death or how the “obitorium” operates, but in most of the suicides in which Kevorkian has taken part, people breathed carbon monoxide from a canister.

Kevorkian, a 67-year-old retired pathologist who lost his medical license over his assisted suicides, has long envisioned the establishment of “obitoriums” across the country.

“I coined the word ‘obitorium’ … for the center,” Kevorkian wrote in his 1991 book “Prescription Medicide.” He called for “suicide centers created specifically for the good of moribund subjects” that offer them “a serene, dignified death.”

Such centers would be affiliated with hospices and would provide for the removal of organs for transplant, Kevorkian said.

Kevorkian used his rusted Volkswagen van for his first assisted suicide in 1990 and has used many sites since.