Jun 28 2007
The Reverend George David Exoo
Dear Mary:
Yes, by all means publish the whole thing.
The timing of this thing has been frustrating, as I must leave for an 11-day trip to South America in just a few hours,. I’ll have email contact from there, but can only check mail once a day.
God bless you and your work. The newslist will be posting all my updates, as well as what I put on the main website, www.compassionate-chaplaincy.com.
Please spread the word to all other pro-euthanasia websites worldwide to publish the URL www.compassionate-chaplaincy.com, so they can keep up on things, too.
This is a real tragedy.
Thanks again –
Dick
Choice Comments:
And what I sought permission to copy is a follows: Of special interest to me of course is that the subject of the FBI’s unwelcomed attention is a Man of God no less!
The Reverend George David Exoo
And the Death With Dignity Movement
Copyright (c) 2007 by By Richard N. Côté.
Contact the author at dickcote@earthlink.net or (843) 881-6080 for further information.
Revised June 27, 2007, 8:40 p.m.
On Monday morning, June 25, 2007, The Reverend George David Exoo, a Unitarian minister and euthanasia (literal meaning: “good death”) advocate living in Beckley, West Virginia, was arrested by FBI agents and taken to the Southern Regional Jail, near Beckley. There he was booked and jailed, pending a hearing on Friday, June 29, at 2:30 at the Federal Building in Beckley. At that time it will be determined if he is eligible for bond while awaiting legal proceedings to determine if there are any legal grounds for his extradition to Ireland.
Irish police want to prosecute Exoo for his role in the suicide death of Rosemary Toole (formally known as Rosemary Elizabeth Toole Gilhooly), a 48-year-old Irish woman who suffered from the debilitating effects of Cushing’s Syndrome and profound depression. Toole ended her life by taking a massive overdose of sleeping pills mixed with alcohol and by inhaling helium gas. This method of suicide, which Ms. Toole chose to employ, is explained in the international best-selling book, Final Exit, by Derek Humphry, founder of The Hemlock Society USA.
Exoo denies that he took any active role in Toole’s suicide, stating that he broke no laws by providing her with suicide counseling, observing her death, and providing a compassionate presence as she carried out her last wishes by her own hand. He will contest any attempts to extradite him.
Many people are faced with a beloved friend or family member who is in unending, unendurable pain; trapped in a ruined body; terminally ill; or just old, fragile, and tired of life and wants to make a swift, painless departure from this earth by their own hand, while they still have the ability to control the last days of their life. If you were the person with such a friend or family member, would you help them if they begged for your help? The information presented here will give journalists and others who are interested in The Reverend Exoo and this euthanasia case reliable information about both topics.
George Exoo biographical sketch
At various stages of his career, The Reverend George David Exoo has led the life of a Harvard Divinity School religious scholar, a college sociology professor, a Unitarian-Universalist parish minister, a vocal and energetically involved social activist, and an insightful reviewer of religious congregations nationwide. As the director of The Compassionate Chaplaincy Foundation, a non-profit, charitable organization headquartered in Beckley, West Virginia, he has advised and given spiritual counseling to more than one hundred people who chose to end their own lives in dignity at the time and place of their choosing. As a result, he has become one of the most active, high-profile members of the U.S. and international right-to-die movement.
Childhood
George David Exoo, the only child of George Exoo, Sr., and his wife, Gertrude Sarah (Snyder) Exoo, was born in Lakewood Hospital, Lakewood, Ohio, on August 22, 1942. His father’s ancestors emigrated from Holland; his mother’s, from Germany. The family attended the Brecksville (Ohio) United Methodist Church. A bright, talented boy with a big grin, Exoo excelled in his studies, got along well with his classmates, and quickly learned to play the violin.
Education
Exoo graduated magna cum laude from Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1964, where he majored in English and social science. In 1966-1967, he was named a Hopkins Fellow, and in 1967 he received his S.T.B. (Bachelor of Sacred Theology) degree from Harvard Divinity School. At the Graduate Theological Union of the University of California at Berkeley, he pursued a Ph.D. in religion and society, with emphasis on the works of Ernst Troelltsch; Max Weber; religious experience; and law, morals, and the legal process. His doctoral dissertation was titled “Music as a Language of Spirituality in the War Years: Compositions of Ralph Vaughan Williams.”
Career
After leaving Berkeley, Exoo became a professor of sociology on the sociology faculty at Raymond College of the University of the Pacific, Stockton, California (1962-63), and later filled the same role at Washington and Jefferson College, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (1973-1976). Exoo found academic life stimulating, but he felt a deeper need to become involved directly with the community. Exoo was ordained as a minister by the Unitarian-Universalist Association in 1973, and his interests in social action soon surfaced.
Parish ministry
In 1977, he was called to the historic pulpit of the Unitarian Church of Charleston, South Carolina, founded in 1772, and the oldest Unitarian congregation in the South. The church was an anachronism: a bastion of liberal, inclusive theology in a state known for its rock-ribbed Christian orthodoxy. In Charleston, Exoo gained considerable attention on several fronts. His love for musicology greatly enhanced the sophistication of the congregation’s choir and organ repertoires.
The aging congregation he inherited had not experienced any significant growth in many years, and Exoo undertook a number of successful (and, to some, controversial) efforts to expand and broaden the membership base. These included organizing Charleston’s first church-supported singles’ group, known as “New Wine”; encouraged the development of a support group for gays and lesbians; and of actively supporting of civil and religious liberties. He also served as chaplain/advisor to On Our Own, a union of formerly hospitalized mental patients in Charleston. At the denominational level, he was a member of the Unitarian-Universalist Gay/Lesbian Task Force.
In addition, Exoo performed an active role in expanding interfaith ties between Charleston’s Unitarian, Jewish, and African-American congregations. This work led to his being elected to two terms as president of The Charleston Ministerial Association, an organization whose membership consisted chiefly of ministers of black congregations. He served the greater Charleston community as an unpaid chaplain for the Charleston Police Department for many years, counseling victims of tragedy who were suffering trauma and personal loss. Exoo also actively lobbied for the 1985 passage in South Carolina of Living Will legislation and infant auto seat legislation.
AIDS activism
One of Exoo’s most energetic campaigns was a lifelong fight for AIDS education and prevention, in which he was an early, active, and highly vocal leader. He served as a media advocate for the AIDS Interfaith Ministry in South Carolina from 1989 to 1990; served as chair of The AIDS Response Task Force Action Council in Columbia, South Carolina from 1988-1990; and worked with The AIDS Education Network and The South Carolina Christian Action Council’s AIDS Taskforce. His fight to eliminate AIDS transmission at South Carolina’s Interstate rest stops and at a notorious Charleston pornography bookstore became a feature story on Connie Chung’s “Face to Face” television program. In 1990, Exoo served as a delegate to The Presidential Advisory Commission on AIDS to the Medical Association of the People’s Republic of China in Beijing, Wuhan, and Guangzhou. In the early 1990s, he was as the chief organizer, director of development, and chaplain of the Burning Bush AIDS Hospice and Retreat Center at New Vrindaban, West Virginia.
Putting his intellectual, theological, and musicological skills together, he became America’s first and, to date, only “church connoisseur,” making unannounced visits to dozens of churches and synagogues in the greater Pittsburgh area. Dubbed “The Church Man,” he rated the congregations for the architecture of their buildings,, the content of their sermons, the quality of their music, their social outreach, and their hospitality to strangers. The insightful, often funny, and occasionally pointed reviews, aired on National Public Radio’s WQED-FM and brought him national and international attention. The reviews resulted in guest appearances on “Good Morning America,” and profiles in The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the BBC, and numerous other networks.
Euthanasia activism
Always an animal lover, Exoo served as a member and vice president of the Charleston Spay Not Slay League from 1977 to 1992. In the 1980s, he led the fight in Charleston to end the barbaric practice used by local animal “shelters” of killing unwanted stray dogs and cats by throwing them into 55-gallon drums and then piping in hot automobile exhaust gases until they died. It was his first step in becoming a euthanasia (literal meaning: “good death”) activist. Soon thereafter, he became a life member of The Hemlock Society USA, formed in 1980 by Derek Humphry, an American euthanasia pioneer. In 2003, the group changed its name to The Euthanasia Research & Guidance Organization (ERGO). It holds that “voluntary euthanasia, physician-assisted suicide, and self-deliverance are all appropriate life endings depending on the individual medical and ethical circumstances.”
One of Exoo’s first encounters with self-deliverance came in 1995, when he and the wife of a close friend comforted the woman’s husband as he took his own life. The man was in the final stages of Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), commonly known as “Lou Gehrig’s disease.” The disease kills the nerve cells that control the muscles, but the slow and certain death does not rob the victims of their mental facilities, making the progressive and irreversible losses tragically more horrifying every day. The man’s wife bought him the best-selling book by Derek Humphry titled Final Exit. It is a how-to book on killing yourself using medicines commonly found around the house or devices available legally at any big-box department store. With his wife and Exoo at his side, the man rapidly consumed a handful of crushed sedative pills mixed into applesauce, and washed the mixture down with a stiff Screwdriver (vodka and orange juice), knowing that alcohol would accelerate the effect of the sleeping pills. As short time later, he died.
The Compassionate Chaplaincy
In the following years, Exoo, often with the help of several other volunteers from like-minded euthanasia groups, gave advice, counsel, and a comforting spiritual presence to over one hundred people who wanted to die with dignity, but who were afraid to do so alone. Reverend Exoo and several other euthanasia activists founded The Compassionate Chaplaincy Foundation, now headquartered in Beckley, West Virginia. This 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization provides end-of-life counseling and terminal assistance to those whose lives have become insurmountably, unrelentingly, and endlessly painful and wish to end their lives at their own chosen time.
The Rosemary Toole Affair
Exoo’s work as a “final exit guide,” the name by which he and many of his colleagues world-wide have come to be known, has been deliberately kept low-profile. He assists his clients quietly and in private. The case that brought him into the international limelight was that of Rosemary Toole, a 48-year-old resident of Dublin, Ireland. Toole had many reasons to want to die. Medically, she was suffering from Cushing’s Syndrome (CS), caused by an overproduction of cortisal in the brain. Cortisol is a hormone produced principally in response to physical or psychological stress and is secreted by the adrenal glands. The symptoms of Cushing’s Syndrome usually include fatigue, weakness, depression, mood swings, increased thirst and urination, and lack of menstrual periods in women.
In addition, she had developed a deep depression due to several causes, including abandonment by both her parents as a very young child and by failure of her marriage. By the time she was referred to George Exoo by a member of the Canadian right-to-die network, she had already attempted to commit suicide once before. Indeed, she had spent the previous five years talking about little else, according to her father. She had spent hundreds of hours on the telephone and the Internet, talking to people about how to kill herself, and even the head of the conservative right-to-die organization in Scotland could not talk her out of it. One way or another, Rosemary Toole was committed to end her own life.
After convincing George Exoo and the expert he consulted that she was both of sound mind and absolutely committed to self-deliver, Exoo and his close friend, Thomas McGurrin, agreed to fly to Dublin to make a final assessment of her case, to assure that she had assembled the needed supplies, and to provide a compassionate presence as she made her transition to the Other Side. When they arrived in Dublin, they found that Toole had assembled enough supplies to kill several people. These included a large number of powerful prescription sleeping pills, which, when crushed into powder and mixed into a glass of vodka, would quickly render her unconscious. Her final act, as she felt the sleep overtaking her, would be to pull over her head a specially made plastic “exit bag,” which was connected to a tank of helium — the same tanks used to fill party balloons. Within just a few breaths, the tasteless and odorless gas would render her completely unconscious, and death would follow quickly and without pain.
On Friday night, January 25, 2002, Rosemary Toole took a shower, donned her favorite dress, and went to the bedroom of a Dublin apartment she had rented for her final exit. She had purchased four large helium tanks, each twice the size of those that normally come packaged in a helium party balloon kit. According to Exoo, she had enough helium for four people. Clearly, Toole did not want the lack of anything to jeopardize her death. Rosemary took a large gulp of the vodka and pills, leaving some in the glass to let the police, who would eventually find her, know that the suicide was deliberate.
As Exoo and McGurrin prayed with her, Rosemary started to slip into unconsciousness. Her final act was to turn on the flow of helium into the plastic bag and pull the bag over her head. Her breathing quickly slowed, and after a few minutes, it stopped. After waiting an additional half hour to ensure that she had indeed passed over, Exoo and McGurrin left.
When the Irish police found her body and suicide note the next day in the rented apartment, they went to her house and searched her home computer. There they found numerous emails between Toole and Exoo. The details were all leaked to the Irish and British tabloid press, who turned Rosemary’s suicide into a media frenzy. In Catholic Ireland, assisted suicide was a crime, and the stories that flew into print in the ensuing weeeks — filled with guesses and inaccurate, often deliberately misleading information, galvanized the Irish police to demand that Exoo and McGurrin be extradited back to Ireland to stand trial for murder. In 2002, formal requests were made to the U.S. State Department…and nothing happened. The Irish police grew despondent, believing that their request would not be considered. They even sent two detectives to the United States to attempt to interrogate Exoo and McGurrin, but as they had no jurisdiction here, and because the Americans denied any impropriety or wrongdoing and declined to comment, the Irishmen left empty-handed.
Exoo arrested
Without warning, on the morning of June 25, 2007, FBI agents appeared at Exoo’s door in Beckley, West Virginia, and arrested him. In handcuffs, he was taken to the Southern Regional Jail, near Beckley, where he was booked and jailed, pending a hearing at which it will be determined if there will be any legal grounds for him to be extradited to Ireland. Exoo denies that he took any active role in Toole’s suicide, stating that he broke no laws by observing it and providing a compassionate presence as she carried out her own last wishes. He will contest any attempts to extradite him. The date for his arraignment was not available at the time of this writing.
This page will be updated as further information becomes available.
and a high risk of dementia and possible cancer recurrence.