A great-grandmother who sold suicide kits from her home in California pleaded guilty on Friday to a misdemeanor tax-related offence stemming from an investigation of her mail-order business.
Sharlotte Hydorn, 93, a retired public school science teacher, admitted she failed to file federal income tax returns from 2007 to 2010, years in which investigators said at least seven customers used her asphyxiation kits to kill themselves.
Hydorn, whose San Diego area house was raided by federal agents in May, has said her “exit kits” were to help terminally ill people end their lives with dignity.
Prosecutors said she sold about 1 300 of the kits during the four years in question but agreed to stop making or selling them as part of her plea deal.
The kits, sold for $60 (R523) including instructions and shipping, consisted of a plastic hood that closed around the neck and tubing from the hood to a tank of helium or other inert gas that users would supply themselves.
The San Diego County district attorney, a party to the settlement, agreed not to prosecute Hydorn over any of the six known deaths in that county.
Hydorn acknowledged selling the kits for 20 years under the brand name Gladd, which stands for Glorious Life And Dignified Death, without screening people who ordered them.
She insisted she made little money from the enterprise.
Leslie DeMarco, a special agent in charge of the Internal Revenue Service office in Los Angeles, said Hydorn “was operating a for-profit business without regard to the identity of her clients, their current medical condition or the federal tax laws.”
Hydorn’s lawyer Charles Goldberg said she never deposited payments from her customers and that FBI agents found hundreds of uncashed cheques and envelopes of cash in her home.
“She was a committed person with strong beliefs that a person had a right to determine the quality of their life, particularly in the last days,” Goldberg said.
Income she failed to report was mostly from her pension, Social Security and rent from two small apartments, he said.
Hydorn made headlines after one of her mail-order customers in Oregon, Nicholas Klonoski, 29, used one of her kits to kill himself in December 2010. His family said he was suffering from depression but was otherwise healthy.
Outrage over that case led Oregon lawmakers to pass legislation in June to ban sales of such devices, even though Oregon is one of two US states to have legalised doctor-assisted suicide for people with incurable, fatal illnesses.
The misdemeanor carries a maximum penalty of a year in jail and a $100 000 fine. Prosecutors said they would recommend five years of supervised probation and a fine at the “low end”.
The IRS estimates Hydorn owes $15 000 to $30 000 in back taxes, which she has agreed to pay. She remains free on $10 000 bond.
A sentencing hearing was set for February. – Reuters