The final moments of the first person to use the Sarco suicide pod have been revealed – amid claims she was found by police in a Swiss woodland with strangulation marks on her neck.
The 64-year-old American woman died from hypoxia inside the capsule set up in Merishausen, northern Switzerland, after pushing a button that injects nitrogen gas into the chamber, according to the firm behind the device.
At 3.47pm on September 23, she approached the capsule along with Dr Florian Willet – the president of Sarco operator The Last Resort – who removed a green tarpaulin from the device as she prepared to climb in.
‘If you’re ready…?’ Willet reportedly asked her. ‘Do I leave my shoes on?’ responded the woman, who was wearing loose black trousers, a woolly white cardigan and sandals.
He said she could keep them on, and she proceeded to step into the futuristic pod, lie down and adjust the purple travel pillow placed inside behind her head.
What happened next would see Willet arrested, put in jail, and investigated on suspicion of various crimes, including ‘intentional homicide’, according to Dutch newspaper de Volksrant, which claims to have seen footage of the deadly process.
The first use of Sarco capsule took place in the middle of the forest in northern Switzerland
Sarco inventor Dr Philip Nitschke (right) was on a video call from Germany to Willet (left) to monitor the launch on September 23
President of The Last Resort, Florian Willet (left), is seen with board member Fiona Stewart at a press conference in July
Before pushing the button, Willet asked the woman whether she would like to speak to Sarco inventor Dr Philip Nitschke, who was on a video call from Germany to monitor the long-awaited launch of his device.
‘No. I’m okay,’ she reportedly replied. Willet, who was the only person present at the woman’s death, took this as an indication that the process could begin, Volksrant reports, telling Nitschke: ‘It seems that […] is ready to go.’
The blonde woman, who said she had wished to die for ‘at least two years’ while suffering with a ‘very serious illness that involves severe pain’, is then said to have closed the lid of the pod without hesitation.
A blue button indicating the pressure inside the capsule then lit up, while an internal camera showed parts of her hair as she lay waiting, according to Volksrant.
‘Ready?’ she then said to Willet, according to the newspaper, in what would be her final words. He reportedly confirmed that he was, before she responded ‘okay.’
Almost immediately afterwards, at around 3.54pm, she is said to have pressed the button to trigger her death.
Under instruction from Nitschke the mother-of-two then began breathing deeply and calmly – a process he informed her would hasten her death as nitrogen filled the capsule.
Holding an iPad on which he monitored her heart rate, saturation, and oxygen levels, Willet told the woman to ‘keep on breathing’.
Her oxygen levels – 20 per cent in normal air – plummeted to 0.6, Willet told Nitschke after a minute, and then to 0.3 percent after almost two and a half minutes.
At around this time, her body began severely cramping up, Willet said, a common symptom in nitrogen deaths.
While little was visible on the internal camera, footage taken externally appeared to show a dark spot appear on the inside of the fogged up window, around where the woman’s knees were.
A general view of a forest cabin near where the first use of the death capsule Sarco was carried out in Merishausen, Switzerland, September 25, 2024
A police cordon lies on the forest floor in connection with the first use of the death capsule Sarco by assisted dying group The Last Resort, in Merishausen, Switzerland, September 25, 2024
At 4.01 pm, an alarm blared from the iPad, thought to be the heart rate monitor, with a seemingly confused Willet reportedly telling his associate: ‘She’s still alive, Philip.’
He leaned over and peered into the Sarco, and after a while, the alarm stopped.
At 4.04pm, he reported that the woman had not moved for about two minutes.
It is unclear at what point it happened, but around half an hour after she pressed the button, Willet described to Nitschke how the woman died.
‘She had her eyes closed’, he said. ‘And she was breathing very deeply. Then the breathing slowed down. And then it stopped.’
‘She really looks dead,’ he added.
Willet was among several people arrested at the scene and still remains in custody.
Investigators are now probing the woman’s death, with chief prosecutor Peter Sticher raising the suspicion of ‘intentional homicide’ after suggesting in court that the woman may have been strangled.
The woman had suffered serious neck injuries, according to a forensic doctor, who spoke to the prosecutor just hours after her death.
But there has been no official autopsy report, with Volkskrant questioning why Sticher has not publicly accused Willet of ‘intentional homicide’ but used his suspicion in order to get a judge to extend Willet’s custody.
The woman had reportedly been diagnosed with skull base osteomyelitis.
The disease could manifest as an infection of the bone marrow, which could have been responsible for the marks on her neck resembling strangulation marks, according to a person close to The Last Resort who spoke to Swiss outlet NZZ.
When MailOnline contacted The Last Resort for comment on the American woman reportedly being found with strangulation marks the Sarco operator only replied with a reference to the Volkskrant article.
She told how she suffered such severe headaches on some days that she was barely able to move or go to the bathroom.
Due to an immune disorder, the woman couldn’t be treated properly for the osteomyelitis, according to The Last Resort.
The creator of the suicide pod claimed she got into the device and ‘almost immediately pressed the button’ to take her own life.
The pod was set up in the woodland so the woman could see the trees and sky above her before she died.
‘It looked exactly as we expected it to look. My guess is that she lost consciousness within two minutes and that she died after five minutes,’ Dr Philip Nitschke, the pod’s inventor who followed the events in the forest via video feed, told Dutch media.
‘We saw sudden, small contractions and movements of the muscles in her arms, but she was probably already unconscious by then.’
After being notified of her death, police swooped on the forest, where they discovered the woman’s lifeless body inside the pod and arrested several people.
Those detained were Willet as well as two lawyers and a Volkskrant photographer who had been taking pictures of the pod and documented the woman arriving in the woodland, before returning after her death.
The Sarco’s inventor Philip Nitschke pictured at a press conference in Zurich on July 17
Philip Nitschke lies down in a ‘suicide pod’ known as ‘The Sarco’ in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, July 8, 2024
The public prosecutor in the Schaffhausen canton said that Sarco’s creators had been warned not to use the device in the region, but that the warning had not been heeded.
‘We warned them in writing,’ prosecutor Peter Sticher said in September. ‘We said that if they came to Schaffhausen and used Sarco, they would face criminal consequences.’
Sticher attended the crime scene with a ‘large contingent’ of police and forensics teams on September 23, revealing that the operation lasted from early evening until around midnight.
‘We found the capsule with the lifeless person inside,’ he told Blick at the time. ‘We took the person out of the capsule and brought them to the Institute of Forensic Medicine. An autopsy will be performed there today.’
He said arrests were made so that those at the ‘were not colluding with each other or covering up evidence.’
It is understood that all four arrested – Willet, two lawyers and the Dutch photographer – were told that they were suspected of inciting suicide and providing suicide assistance. Everyone apart from Willet was released after 48 hours.
It is understood that the two lawyers and the Dutch photographer only arrived at the scene after the woman died.
According to Volksrant, the woman who died in the machine made an oral statement to The Last Resort saying it was her own wish to end her life.
In the four-minute recording, she reportedly said that she had a death wish for ‘at least two years,’ ever since she was diagnosed with a ‘very serious illness’.
The firm said that she was ‘immune compromised’ and had been in ‘severe pain.’
The woman’s two sons ‘completely agree’ that it was her decision to die, according to Volksrant. ‘They are behind me 100 percent,’ she is reported to have said.
Fiona Stewart, member of the Last Resort poses next to the Sarco suicide machine in July
Fiona Stewart, a board member at The Last Resort, said the woman’s sons had confirmed this in written statements to the company.
It is understood that the two sons were not present in Switzerland at the time of their mother’s death on September 23.
Nitschke, announced news of the pod’s premiere on X in September, saying: ‘An idyllic peaceful death in a Swiss forest where The Last Resort used the Sarco device to help a US woman have the death she wanted.’
He added of the arrests in the aftermath: ‘What Swiss police didn’t mention was that those arrested included the Director of The Last Resort, two lawyers providing legal assistance to TLR, and a Dutch journalist!!’
Volkskrant reported that police detained one of its photographers who wanted to take pictures of the use of the Sarco.
According to Last Resort, Willet said the woman’s death had been ‘peaceful, fast and dignified’, taking place ‘under a canopy of trees, at a private forest retreat in the Canton of Schaffhausen close to the Swiss-German border.’
Nitschke said that the woman’s dying process went ‘well’ and that ‘as soon as she lay down in the Sarco, she almost immediately pressed the button.
‘She really wanted to die. She didn’t say anything any more,’ he said.
He added in a statement that his device ‘had performed exactly as it had been designed to do,’ saying it had provided a ‘non-drug, peaceful death at the time of the person’s choosing’.
The Sarco suicide capsule is designed to allow a person inside to push a button that injects nitrogen gas into the sealed chamber, according to its creators. The person is then supposed to fall asleep and die by suffocation in a few minutes.
Police, including forensics teams, arrived at the scene after being notified by a legal firm that an assisted suicide with the device had taken place.
The Last Resort, who had anticipated that there would need to be an investigation after the launch of the device, said it had informed the police that it had been used.
Nitschke and Stewart said that the company was acting at all times on the advice of their lawyers.
The pods work by replacing air, which is 21 per cent oxygen and 79 per cent nitrogen, with 100 per cent nitrogen.
This renders the occupant unconscious and they then stop breathing in a process that its creators expected to take less than ten minutes.
Philip Nitschke, front, stands next to a ‘suicide pod’ known as ‘The Sarco’ in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, July 8, 2024
A view shows the login screen and release button for pure nitrogen in the Sarco suicide machine
A view of O2 detector and the release button for pure nitrogen in the Sarco suicide machine
A camera inside the pod records their final moments and the footage is handed to a coroner.
Nitschke and his associates designed Sarco, which is made using a 3D printer, to be free, with people just paying for their body to be removed by funeral directors.
The woman who used the device only paid the costs for the nitrogen: 18 Swiss francs, according to the Last Resort.
The firm aims to make assisted dying almost completely free of charge, with the cost, which is equal to around £16, contrasting with the fees of most Swiss clinics, which usually charge around £10,000.
‘The use of the Sarco is free,’ Stewart said. ‘We don’t want to make any money from this.’ The woman did have to pay additional costs, such as her cremation, she added.
The device was used on the same day as Swiss Interior Minister Elisabeth Baume-Schneider told the National Council that she considers the use of the Sarco in Switzerland to be illegal.
‘The Sarco suicide capsule is not legal in two respects,’ Baume-Schneider reportedly said.
She added: ‘On one hand, it does not fulfill the demands of the product safety law, and as such, must not be brought into circulation. On the other hand, the corresponding use of nitrogen is not compatible with the article on purpose in the chemicals law.’
Swiss law allows assisted suicide so long as the person takes his or her life with no ‘external assistance’ and those who help the person die do not do so for ‘any self-serving motive,’ according to a government website.
Switzerland is among the few countries in the world where foreigners can travel to legally end their lives, and is home to a number of organizations that are dedicated to helping people kill themselves.
Some lawmakers in Switzerland have argued that the law is unclear and have sought to close what they call legal loopholes.
Nitschke and Stewart, who are married and have long campaigned for the right to die, have said that they want Sarco to become an established and accessible option for euthanasia.
Some 120 applicants hoping to use the machine to end their lives, according to The Last Resort, with around a quarter of those on the waiting list said to be British people.
- UK: For help and support, call the Samaritans for free from a UK phone, completely anonymously, on 116 123 or go to samaritans.org.
- US: If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988. There is also an online chat at 988lifeline.org.