Remember George Exoo?
Check out the link above for a reminder. He’s the founder of the “Compassionate Chaplaincy” and claims to have aided in over 100 suicides. According to the documentary by Jon Ronson, “Reverend Death,” Exoo’s phone number was given out by other so-called “right to die” groups – if the caller was someone who wanted help killing themselves but wasn’t terminally ill – or physically ill at all. Obviously, this was before the establishment of the Final Exit Network (FEN) – an organization that defines “eligibility” for suicide assistance as broadly and “generously” as Exoo did.
There’s no evidence that he requested any payments for his “services,” but – at least in the case of his Irish client, he received ample reimbursement and assistance for European travel that he and his partner were already planning. Hence the poster below:
We’ll have to redo the poster. Ditch the mustache and ditch the travel pitch. Seems Exoo is no longer a travellin’ man.
The story now – breaking first in the Irish press and later in North Carolina – is that Exoo wants to open up a “right to die” facility in Gastonia, a suburb of Charlotte, North Carolina.
The most detailed article from North Carolina so far was written by Diane Turbyfill in the Gaston Gazette:
A West Virginia man hopes to turn a run-down house in the Smyre Mill Village into a center to assist people with suicide.
The Rev. George Exoo, a Unitarian minister, has attended and sometimes assisted with more than 100 suicides.
He bought a Gastonia property three years ago with the intent of renovating and selling it. The quarter-of-an-acre lot has been trouble, according to Exoo. The improvements he planned have not been completed. Exoo still owns the two structures and now thinks they might be the landscape for an idea he’s considered for years — a facility to help people end their lives.
“It just seems to me that there’s a real need, particularly for people in states where this is outlawed, where people can die with dignity,” said Exoo.
The property in Gastonia would be ideal for Exoo’s vision because of its close proximity to the airport in Charlotte, he said. His primary customers would be the sick and hopeless from areas like Florida, New York and Maryland, Exoo said.
If you read the whole article, one gets the feeling this is probably just one of Exoo’s flights of fancy. He’s got a picture in his head of what this little death house would look like that bears no resemblance to the small piece of property with a small house and adjoining shack. A dream that would turn this little suburb into the “Suicide Tourist” mecca that Dignitas has made out of Switzerland. I doubt that even supporters of assisted suicide would want any death house run by Exoo in their neighborhood. In Switzerland – Dignitas gets booted from one building/location to another.
Who knows? Maybe Exoo just finished rewatching “Field of Dreams” and thought “If I build it, they will come” (which might not be a bad caption for the new poster caption).
Stay tuned, though. Where Exoo goes, death or serious weirdness follow. Sometimes both. And it’s not a good kind of weirdness. –Stephen Drake
George Exoo has died. (Colo – rectal cancer, and probably somewhat severe episodes of depression in the last years of his life.) My incomplete and somewhat speculative understanding is that the last he had very little companionship during his illness up until the last weeks of his life.