Suicide pod activist Florian Willet takes his own life after arrest over woman’s death
A man questioned for murder after the death of a woman using a ‘suicide pod’ has taken his own life.
Dr Florian Willet was arrested last September over the death of a 64-year-old woman who died in a Sarco pod in a forest near Merishausen, Switzerland.
She was allegedly found inside with strangulation marks on her neck. Willet, 47, was the only person present for the woman’s death.
The woman was the first person to use the ‘suicide pod’, which kills its inhabitants with nitrogen gas.
Willet, who was a strong advocate for euthanasia, is the president of The Last Resort, which operates Sarco – but despite voluntary assisted suicide being legal in Switzerland, prosecutors have said the pod could be banned.
He was arrested when police arrived at the scene of the woman’s death and was kept in custody while officers investigated. The public prosecutor said there was a ‘strong suspicion’ that ‘intentional homicide’ was involved.
But Sarco pod inventor Dr Philip Nitschke said the murder arrest had a serious effect on Willet, and he was admitted to psychiatric hospital twice before his death on May 5.
‘When Florian was released suddenly and unexpectedly from pre-trial detention in early December 2024, he was a changed man,’ Dr Nitschke said yesterday when announcing Willet’s death.
‘Gone was his warm smile and self-confidence. In its place was a man who seemed deeply traumatised by the experience of incarceration and the wrongful accusation of strangulation.’
Dr Nitschke said Willet died last month ‘with the help of a specialised organisation’, having ‘fallen’ from the third floor of his home in Zurich earlier this year which caused ‘serious damage’.
He claimed Willet had developed ‘an acute polymorphic psychotic disorder’ brought on ‘following the stress of pre-trial detention and the associated processes’, adding: ‘No one was surprised.
‘Florian’s spirit was broken. He knew that he did nothing illegal or wrong, but his belief in the rule of law in Switzerland was in tatters.
‘In the final months of his life, Dr Florian Willet shouldered more than any man should.’
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Willet called the police after the woman died in the Sarco pod, and when officers arrived they arrested him alongside two lawyers and a photographer who had been taking pictures of the pod and the woman arriving in the woodland.
‘We warned them in writing,’ Schaffhausen prosecutor Peter Sticher said in September. ‘We said that if they came to Schaffhausen and used Sarco, they would face criminal consequences.’
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