American preacher: How I helped Irish woman commit suicide

An American preacher who admitted assisting a Dublin woman commit suicide has described how he helped take her own life by giving her drugs and putting a bag over her head.

Rev George Exoo, who was freed last year from an American jail after Irish authorities tried to extradite him, said on last night’s ‘Prime Time’ that Rosemary Toole (49) took “meds” before she put a bag over her head while she lay in bed in a rented property in Dublin.

Irish authorities unsuccessfully tried to extradite Exoo so he could face charges relating to Ms Toole’s death and gardai are expected to examine this latest interview.

Ms Toole came into contact with him over the internet in 2002 and he travelled to Ireland to assist her death, one of 102 assisted suicides he admits carrying out.

“She went up a lay down in a bed and we talked and she took meds and she already had put the bag on her head,” he said in the interview. “Pushed down — empty.

“And at some point, I said ‘Alright Rosemary’, it’s time to fill the bag and then to pull the bag down and that was it.”

The bag contained enough helium to kill 20 people.

Also on ‘Prime Time’, journalist Nell McCafferty, former partner of writer Nuala O’Faolain, who died last week from cancer, said that she and Nuala believed that euthanasia “should be legalised”.

“We have euthanasia in this country,” she said. “It’s called hospice care”.

She said that hospices were “licensed to kill” using double effect, a reference to morphine treatment.

She also said that 12 hours before Nuala O’Faolain’s death, “the thing she feared happened — she started choking”.

She said that the writer had been taken into a hospital and “got the fearless death that she wanted.”

Ms McCafferty also said she had come to call O’Faolain her “bean cheile”, taking a lead from Taoiseach Brian Cowen’s use of Irish, since both her and Nuala disliked the term “partner”.

“She was my bean cheile,” she told Miriam O’Callaghan tearfully.

Debate

McCafferty appeared on the show to participate in a debate on euthanasia, which was sparked by George Exoo’s interview.

Exoo, labelled ‘Dr Death’ by his critics, also described how Rosemary Toole’s smoking got in the way of what he called a “standard peaceful death”.

“There was a little bit of a complication of the cigarette in there because it’s only the second time I had a smoker like her and smoking and this process do not work.

“After Rosemary’s case, I had a new rule — no smoking,” he laughed.

“She was chain smoking at the very end and obviously you can’t pull down a bag over your head and have a cigarette in your mouth.

“Holding her hand and then I said the 23rd Psalm and the Lord’s Prayer. I said those things and then she passed out. It was a standard peaceful death.

“I am there to help them if they want — just like the doctor.”

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