"Consensual Homicide"- One person agreeing to be killed by another- a post by LostCatWantedDeadAndAlive UPDATED

Armin Meiwes the Internet Cannibal

"If my body is never retrieved don't worry, know that I am at peace."

-The final words in a note from Sharon Lopatka to her husband Victor Lopatka. Sharon Lopatka was born and raised orthodox Jewish and worked as an internet entrepreneur, yet no one, not even her husband, knew that her most desperate sexual desire was to be tortured for days upon days until ultimately being strangled to death...

In this post, I'm going to discuss the surprisingly wide concept of "consensual homicide". There are dozens of different definitions for this particular term, so I'll begin by saying the definition I'll be using is "the informed consent of one human being agreeing to be killed by another human being for psychological, financial, or sexual reasons, as well as an alternative to dying from natural causes in the case of terminal illness". This is certainly a very broad definition, but I've chosen to use this broad definition on purpose, because it illustrates some of the main rationales behind homicides where the 'victim' is the party with motive; not the perpetrator.

But before we get into all that, we'll start with the regular LCWDAA intro:

Alright, for those of you who aren't familiar with my posts they tend to be a rather specific and acquired taste. therefore I always begin by giving the same generic warning first, followed by a more post-specific one. So, warning part 1: "This is a LostCatWantedDeadAndAlive post, and as such, it will contain some provocative material. And as always, if you see any information that is incorrect, please either leave a comment or send me a PM and I will correct it and tag you in an edit."

Warning part 2: several of the cases I'll be covering drew international attention and headlines when they first came to light, so chances are very high you've probably read about them before. Despite the fact that these cases have been featured heavily on imgur before, that doesn't mean I won't inform you now that the subject matter is disturbing. Finally, the section on Sharon Lopatka (who I mentioned at the very beginning of this post) has the text from her internet advertisements. There's nothing overwhelmingly explicit, but it can, at least sometimes, hit hard when you're looking at the exact words. Paraphrasing can sometimes be a blessing, as strange as that may sound, because at least then you're not viewing the exact product of a person's mind.

Those words... Those words are the words she chose when she was telling the world that she wanted to be tortured and killed....

Jack Kevorkian and physician assisted suicide/euthanasia.

This is easily the most hotly-debated and passionately divided example of consensual homicide, and Jack Kevorkian was/is easily the most recognizable person championing the movement. There are a lot of different terms for this version of consensual homicide, such as "physician-assisted suicide", "euthanasia", "voluntary euthanasia". Now, there are some important distinctions to be made here that, despite seeming like they're almost identical definitions, the legal implications are tremendous. Even though I would absolutely love to, laying out all of the definitions across not only individual countries, but each state in the United States as well, would take days to write and hours to read, so I will just use the broadest accurate definitions I can.

In most cases, there is a remarkably thin yet incredibly important line between what constitutes "physician-assisted suicide" and "consensual homicide". If the physician who is aiding the patient in taking their own life carries out the procedure himself, this is considered homicide and not suicide.

So, let me clarify.

There are numerous ways in which doctors have been able to help patients take their own lives, but for the purposes of this explanation, I'm going to use Kevorkian's "Thanatron"; a device which administers a lethal dose of several different medications intravenously.

If the patient him/herself is the one who presses the button, so to speak, this is considered suicide.

If, on the other hand, the physician is the one who presses the button, this is considered homicide.

When you think about it, this actually makes a lot of sense. Let's think of it this way: pretend that, instead of a machine which administers lethal drugs, the "death device" is actually a revolver. In many cases, the physicians role would be to teach the patient how to use the revolver, instruct him/her as to where on the body a gunshot would be most effective in taking their own life, purchase the ammunition, load the revolver, and be in the room when the patient has determined for certain that they are going to take their own life. The patient would then use the revolver on his/herself as instructed, and the physician would observe as well as calling time of death. The patient is the one who had control of the "procedure", and thus would've been the responsible party for the act itself, making it a suicide, technically and legally.

Now, if everything were EXACTLY the same, except it was the physician who pulled the trigger and not the patient, this would be considered a homicide, again both technically and legally.

Map of the legality of Physician-Assisted Suicide in each US state

Jack Kevorkian was tried and convicted of 2nd degree murder in the United States because, in one of his instances of Physician-Assisted Suicide, he was the person who pushed the button on his "Thanatron", and therefore he was technically and legally responsible for the death of one of his patients. It also didn't help him very much that he had lost his license to practice medicine in the US roughly 8 years before this happened, as well as the fact that he filmed this event and then shared the video with CBS for them to air on "60 Minutes".

Despite the amount of damage Kevorkian did to his career (not to mention his life) by doing this, he was still able to help with US legislation regarding Physician-Assisted Suicide.

So, instead of going through and listing the requirements for each US state regarding Physician-Assisted Suicide (which, again, would take me days to write and you hours to read), I'm going to use the requirements for the state of Oregon to illustrate the typical conditions. From Wikipedia:

"The law states that, in order to participate, a patient must be: 1) 18 years of age or older, 2) a resident of Oregon, 3) capable of making and communicating health care decisions for him/herself, and 4) diagnosed with a terminal illness that will lead to death within six (6) months. It is up to the attending physician to determine whether these criteria have been met. It is required the patient orally request the medication at least twice and contribute at least one (1) written request. The physician must notify the patient of alternatives; such as palliative care, hospice and pain management. Lastly the physician is to request but not require the patient to notify their next of kin that they are requesting a prescription for a lethal dose of medication. Assuming all guidelines are met and the patient is deemed competent and completely sure they wish to end their life, the physician will prescribe the medication."

Lastly I will say this: I know that in the scope of "consensual homicide" as I defined at the beginning of this post, a properly performed case of Physician-Assisted Suicide is exactly that; suicide. Suicide, and not homicide. I included Physician-Assisted Suicide because I wanted to illustrate where the line separating suicide and homicide begins, and I would say that Kevorkian being charged and convicted of homicide as a result of performing the procedure himself, as opposed to the patient performing it, functions remarkably well in the context of our discussion.

Our next example falls pretty much dead center in the scale of consensual homicide.

Jeffrey Locker and financial motivation

Jeffrey Locker was a motivational speaker and father of 3 from the Long Island area in New York who, in an attempt to rid himself of a truly impressive amount of debt, hired an ex-convict named Kenneth Minor to stab him to death so that his wife could collect the $18,000,000 in life insurance.

This case is more sad than it is bizarre. Locker was a motivational speaker that spoke mainly to Wall Street traders, however he got himself in a Ponzi scheme in which he ended up losing a tremendous amount of money. Not seeing any easy way out of it, Locker decided that he would have to die so that his family could collect his life insurance. As is the case with most life insurance policies, if Locker were to commit suicide, his family wouldn't be able to collect the money, so he went looking for alternatives...

His alternative consisting of hiring someone to kill him.

Why Locker didn't attempt some kind of automobile accident (driving off of a bridge or into a wall etc) is something I don't think anyone will ever fully understand.

Instead, Locker drove around New York City until he came across Minor who agreed to do it. Minor claims that he held a knife against the steering wheel, facing Locker, and Locker repeatedly lunged himself onto it. Locker was found dead in his vehicle the following morning, and the police immediately suspected something was amiss, because when they informed his wife later that day, she seemed suspiciously calm about it, and Locker's daughter's response was "I'm going back to bed".

Further investigation showed that Locker had gone so far as to pick out his own coffin and preemptively select other aspects of his own funeral arrangement. Kenneth Minor was arrested a few days later when attempting to use Locker's ATM card. Yes, that's right, the man who was in an incredible amount of debt paid his killer with an ATM card that had less that $100 in the account.

This entire ordeal seemed like is was handled remarkable poorly. By paying his killer in an ATM card, Locker basically guaranteed that the police would arrest Minor, and Minor would immediately inform them that he was paid by Locker to carry out this murder, and once they looked into the arrangements Locker had made for his own funeral, as well as all the instructions he left for his wife, the detectives would piece together why Locker had paid someone to kill him.

Minor was initially sentenced to 20 years in prison, and quite frankly, if your options were A., accept the 20 year sentence for which you were payed less than $100; knowing that his family could potentially inherit $18,000,000, or B., inform the police that you were hired by Locker to kill him, something for which strong evidence could be gathered, and reduce your sentence to 12 years, I don't think there'd be a single person reading this who would say "Yeah, you know, I really don't have plans for the next 20 years, and I could use some free time to work out, so let's go with option A."

Holy fuckballs that was a really long sentence.

So, we started with euthanasia, the most common and most hotly debated.

Next we did financially-motivated which is pretty straight-forward, and somewhat understandable.

Now we get into the sexually-motivated, which is anything but straight-forward, and inspires one to think of stronger words than "lurid" to describe the next one.

Sharon Lopatka and sexual motivation

Sharon Lopatka was born and raised orthodox Jewish, and in 1991 she married a catholic construction worker named Victor Lopatka.

To everyone around her, she was "normal", and this is something that, over my time researching and reading about these topics, I've discovered that this is far more common than one might think. It's sad, but true. Being in my very early 30's, I was in highschool when the "goth" fad/lifestyle/personality was really at its peak, and there was a lot of very negative attitudes and treatments toward the goths. I remember overhearing people in my classes suspecting that the goths were anything from pedophiles to serial killers. Of course, none of this was ever even remotely true, yet somehow the outward appearance caused people to make these kinds of assumptions.

The serial killers that I've studied, on the other hand, can often appear quite normal. John Wayne Gacy was married twice. Dennis Rader (or "BTK" for "Bind Torture Kill") was married, has 2 children, and was the president of the local church council.

This particular behavior is quite often likened to camouflage, or staying "under the radar".

Sharon Lopatka was doing exactly this right up until the moment she was killed.
She began doing some generic internet advertising in early 1995, offering to do psychic readings, and so on. This is one of her earlier advertisement texts: "Home decorating secrets seen in the posh homes from the New England states to the Hollywood homes can now be yours. Never published before! Quick easy ways to decorate your home."

From that point on things got darker and darker.

Sharon Lopatka

It was after this that Sharon started creating a series of different online personas, and she eventually settled on "Nancy Carlson". Once she did, her advertisements were slowly getting a bit more unsettling.

"I am 25 have Blonde hair, green eyes am 5'6 and weigh 121. Is anyone out there interested in buying ... my worn ... panties ... or pantihose..???? This is not a joke or a wacky internet scam. I am very serious about this. If you are serious too you can e-mail me ..."

And then:

"Hi! My name is Nancy. I just made a VHS video of actual women ... willing and unwilling to be ... knocked out ... drugged... under hypnosis and chloroformed. Never before has a film like this been made that shows the real beauty of the sleeping victim ..."

And then:

"Let me customize your most exciting Bondage fantasy for you ... on VHS ... to watch and enjoy privately in the comfort of your own home ... Prices start at $100."

And, most disturbingly, then:

"Let me customize your most exciting TORTURE fantasy for you ... on VHS ... to watch and enjoy privately in the comfort of your own home. A film designed by you ... with scenarios of your choice. Films are shipped in plain envelopes to protect your ... privacy."

Frederick "Bobby" Glass, Sharon's torturer/killer

Through the internet, Sharon eventually found Frederick "Bobby" Glass who agreed to be her torturer/murderer. Sharon's ultimate fantasy was to be tied up, force-fed and eventually strangled right as she was coming to orgasm.

Bobby Glass was more than willing to do this for her.

It's often very difficult for me to process how this arrangement came about, simply because I know it wasn't a spur of the moment thing. When the prosecutors and detectives obtained warrants to search both Glass and Lopatka's computers, they discovered over 900 pages of emails shared between the two in a period that was less than a year.

The day that she was leaving, Sharon told her husband she was visiting acquantancies in Georgia, when she was really driving to a train station 45 minutes away where she boarded a train to North Carolina to meet Glass.

Later, Sharon's husband found a note she had written to him stating that she would not be returning, and asking him not to track down Glass, and ended with the line "If my body is never retrieved, don't worry: know that I'm at peace."

Glass fulfilled Sharon's wishes over the course of a couple days, and even up until the day he died, he insisted that her strangulation (which was ultimately the cause of death) was an accident. He had not intended to pull on the rope so tightly, according to him.

Armin Meiwes w/ his victim Bernd Jurgen Brandes and Sexual Motivation pt. 2

This particular case is probably the most famous among the examples of consensual homicide that had no other intent but to fulfill the sexual desires of two people. It's also one of the most hotly debated because Brandes stated, in his will, that he this is what he expressly desired, and that he wished for Meiwes not to be prosecuted in any way.

Armin Meiwes was/is a convicted murderer and cannibal who advertised on a website called Cannibal Cafe that he was looking for a victim (my words, not his) to be killed and eaten. He had multiple people agree to this during his time advertising for a participant, but never at any point did he force his subjects to do anything against their will.

Naturally, all but the last one backed out at the last minute.

As I've discussed a little bit, these types of cases do not come around often, but they do happen, and they often result from chat rooms dedicated to these types of fantasies. This was a perfect example of this particular phenomenon.

At the time, it was a budding chapter in criminology, particularly the effect that the internet has on people's desires to fulfill these types of fantasies. My feelings would be that there is a lack of direct intimacy between the two parties, and to have an actual person in front of you, face-to-face, likely made things all too real for any of the respondees who showed up having agreed to this treatment by Meiwes.

Eventually Brandes agreed to be killed and consumed by Meiwes.

From Wikipedia:

"Brandes had insisted that Meiwes attempt to bite his penis off. This did not work, and ultimately, Meiwes used a knife to remove Brandes' appendage. Brandes apparently tried to eat some of his own penis raw but could not, because it was too tough and, as he put it, "chewy". Meiwes then fried the penis in a pan with salt, pepper, wine, and garlic; he then fried it with some of Brandes' fat, but by then it was too burned to be consumed. He then chopped it up into chunks and fed it to his dog."
...
"Meiwes gave him large quantities of alcohol and pain killers, 20 sleeping pills, and a bottle of schnapps, kissed him, and finally killed him in a room he had built in his house for this purpose, the Slaughter Room."

Eventually Meiwes was captured and charged with the Murder of Brandes, despite Brandes' wishes otherwise, and ever since has been incarcerated in a German prison. Interestingly, ever since then, Meiwes has been working with the German government to talk with individuals who have the same fetishes/fantasies that he has, ultimately urging them not to follow in his footsteps, and is helping many of them get into some kind of therapy to discuss these desires.

One of the most interesting things about this investigation and trial, from the point of view of this particular post, is that Meiwes was actually charged with manslaughter, and not murder, resulting in part from Brandes' will, which stated that he desired to be killed by Meiwes, and did not wish for Meiwes to be prosecuted for it.

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What we've seen in this post is that there are a wide variety of motivations/rationales behind electing to have someone end your life.

There are many, many different topics in this LCWDAA realm of "morbid curiosity", and I try to do my best to keep it about the bigger picture, rather than look only at itty-bitty details. This topic is one that I have found interesting for a long time, however every time I try to write an article or a post on it, I have to take a step back.

The big question that I was hoping we'd cover a little bit in the comments is what you guys think or how you feel about these examples?

If you're in the United States, do you agree with how your state views euthanasia?

Should people with terminal diseases be allowed the option to end their life; the "right to die"?

Thanks for reading guys. Please let me know if you have any subjects you'd like me to discuss. I'd be more than happy to do a little digging around and reading to write up something controversial, informative, provocative, and insightful, if I can. -LCWDAA

#Ethics #LCWDAA #Euthanasia