When he was five years old, Dr Florian Willet used to walk around the neighbourhood where he lived in Heidelberg, Germany, looking up.
It’s a picturesque city, fringed by the lush Black Forest, where the warm weather breeds fig and almond trees and rainbow-coloured parakeets swoop overhead.
But young Florian wasn’t admiring the landscape, nor was he spotting birds. He was looking for a place to jump – somewhere high enough that, if he fell, he would ensure certain death.
‘I always thought if I compare the upsides with the downsides in my life, there should clearly be a surplus – otherwise life makes no sense,’ he explained, in a previously unseen interview from last year.
‘I searched for a place high enough to jump down with absolute knowledge I would die, just in case at any point in my life I should be so desperate.’
That suicide should enter the consciousness of a five-year-old boy, let alone be something so constantly on his mind, is a chilling prospect.
Dr Philip Nitschke, an Australian euthanasia activist dubbed ‘Dr Death’, inside the pod he invented
But perhaps, given the course of Florian’s life, it is no surprise. For this was the man who would go on to work for the euthanasia clinic Dignitas, the right-to-die advocacy group Exit International and, ultimately, become founding president of The Last Resort, the Swiss assisted suicide group which masterminded the controversial Sarco suicide pod.
On September 23 last year, just a few days after giving this interview about his childhood obsession with suicide, Florian, 47, would witness the first – and, to date, only – death inside the Sarco pod, when an American woman ended her own life.
The woman, a 64-year-old mother-of-two with a severe, crippling immune disorder, who has never been identified, climbed inside the futuristic pod – whose name, ‘Sarco’, is short for ‘sarcophagus’ – and pressed a button to flood the sealed chamber with nitrogen gas.
Dr Willet was the only witness to her death, in a remote Swiss forest, although Dr Philip Nitschke – the Australian euthanasia activist dubbed ‘Dr Death’, who invented the pod – was watching remotely via satellite. What followed – after Dr Willet called the authorities to report the woman’s suicide – was an unsettling chain of events that continues to ripple to this day, culminating in the shocking news last week that Dr Willet took his own life on May 5.
That one highly-contentious suicide should be followed by another, this one driven by the private torment of a man at the forefront of the global euthanasia movement, is a tragic turn of events.
In an exclusive interview with the Mail last week, his first with a British newspaper since his friend and colleague’s death, Dr Nitschke insists the blame lies solely with the authorities in Switzerland, whose treatment of Dr Willet, he claims, was both shocking and disproportionate.
While Dr Willet, a photographer for Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant and two lawyers for The Last Resort were all arrested following the woman’s death, the latter three were subsequently released, leaving Dr Willet in custody.
He was held for ten weeks pending charges of homicide, amid allegations that the woman’s death hadn’t been as peaceful as it seemed.
Although assisted dying is legal in Switzerland, the police initially claimed there were ‘strangulation’ marks around her neck.
There were questions raised over the reliability of camera footage from inside the pod, and the time it apparently took the woman – whose death, Dr Willet insisted, should have felt like drifting off to sleep – to lose consciousness.
The charges were dropped in December, and Dr Willet released, but the investigation continued, with police looking into whether there was ‘external assistance’ or a ‘self-serving motive’ involved – both of which would contravene Swiss law.
But so affected was Dr Willet by the accusations that he spiralled first into depression, then psychosis, which friends say left this highly-intelligent man a mere shadow of his former self.
Dr Florian Willet and his partner Laura Schiesser. He was held for ten weeks pending charges of homicide following the death of a woman in the Sarco pod
‘When Florian was finally released he had changed completely,’ Philip Nitschke, 77, says, speaking to me from his home in the Netherlands, where he lives with his wife, Fiona Stewart, a lawyer, near Haarlem.
‘He was seriously traumatised by the event. He came here to the Netherlands and I found him paranoid and delusional and very unwell. Gone was his warm smile and self-confidence. In its place was a man who seemed deeply traumatised by the experience of incarceration and the wrongful accusation of strangulation. Florian’s spirit was broken.’
It’s far from what Dr Willet and Dr Nitschke had hoped for in the much-heralded debut of their machine, dubbed the ‘Tesla of assisted suicide’.
According to De Volkskrant, even before the police were involved events didn’t go quite as planned that fateful Monday afternoon. After the woman – whose short, grey hair, woolly cardigan and flip-flops were pictured from behind – climbed into the pod and pressed the button to activate the gas, she appeared to lose consciousness in just a few minutes.
Dr Nitschke said he spoke to Dr Willet the day before he died. ‘He told me he was going to have a break and rest from the issue,’ he says
After 11 minutes, however, the pod sounded a shrill alarm, activated by the heart rate monitor. ‘She’s still alive,’ Dr Willet told Dr Nitschke via video link.
In total, it was 30 minutes before he declared her dead and called the police. Dr Willet then waited several hours for the authorities to arrive.
Dr Nitschke says: ‘We had been advised by our lawyers that Florian would be interviewed and probably allowed to return to his Zurich apartment.’ In reality, Dr Willet endured 70 long days in a prison in Schaffhausen, near the Swiss border with Germany, where he spent 23 hours a day in solitary confinement and was denied visits from his partner, Laura.
After his release he claimed the police had ransacked his flat during his detention, so ‘home’ didn’t feel familiar any more.
He became fearful and suspicious, even of close friends, and paranoid that he was being monitored by the authorities.
Dr Willet spent Christmas at the Zurich Psychiatric Clinic undergoing treatment and then, after discharging himself early this year, suffered a ‘fall’ from the third floor of his apartment. ‘I know his Zurich apartment, and that this could not be an accident,’ Dr Nitschke insists.
His injuries required surgery and extensive rehab, spanning three months, during which time he was diagnosed with ‘an episode of acute psychosis that had been precipitated by his unexpected and indeterminate incarceration’.
‘I spoke to him on the day before he died,’ says Dr Nitschke. ‘He told me he was going to have a break and rest from the issue. The psychiatric report had said that they expected him to improve with anti-psychotic medication and time.’ Sadly, it was not to be. While the details are not known, it’s been reported that he died by assisted suicide in Cologne, Germany, where this is legal.
Last week, a tribute page dedicated to the late activist surfaced online, with friends and colleagues sharing poignant memories and photographs.
Also among them is Laura Schiesser, Dr Willet’s partner, whom Dr Nitschke says is ‘very distressed’ by his loss.
‘She is blaming herself for his death,’ he told the Mail.
‘I returned to Basel [last] weekend to talk to her.
‘She told me that, since his release, he was a different – and difficult – person and that she had to distance herself.’
For although his day job meant immersing himself in the macabre subject of death, before the events of last year Dr Willet had been a generally happy man.
A dog-lover, lifelong football fan and convivial colleague who enjoyed a glass of red wine, he was popular and renowned for his optimistic outlook on life.
‘Anyone who knew Flo knows that he always went through life with a smile,’ wrote Laura, in an online tribute this week.
‘He was an extremely cheerful, humorous person.
‘I don’t know how many times we spontaneously sat down on the balcony and had a beer while talking about God and the world.’ Dr Willet once told an interviewer he had a ‘happy childhood’, despite his early fixation on suicide. But death came knocking at the family home when he was just 14, when his father, a talented architect, took his own life.
Although devastated, he tried hard to understand the reasons.
‘I just knew immediately: my father wanted to do this,’ Dr Willet explained.
‘He was a rational person, which means that expecting him to remain alive just because I needed a father… would have been extending his suffering, so this would have been very selfish.’
His reaction revealed a wisdom beyond his years, and the logical thinking that would shape his personal and professional life.
After school, he went into the family real estate business, before moving to the UK to study law at the University of Bedfordshire. From there, he undertook
various legal, psychology and business degrees across Europe, eventually becoming an expert in behavioural economics and legal philosophy. He had a higher-than-average IQ and was a member of Mensa International.
Later in life, he moved into the assisted dying sphere, becoming a spokesman for Dignitas, the euthanasia clinic, in 2020.
In 2023, he reached out to Dr Nitschke, having read extensively about the Sarco pod, and expressed an interest in getting involved. Once Switzerland
was identified as the best location to pilot the machine, Dr Willet was integral in setting up the Swiss organisation and became president of The Last Resort in early 2024.
‘I found the forest location in Schaffhausen, but Florian organised the logistics so the device could be used there,’ Dr Nitschke explains. ‘He made the project possible.’
It seems unjust that a man who only came onboard nine months before the Sarco pod’s maiden voyage should have borne the brunt of the furore surrounding it.
His only misdeed, according to his defence team, was being there when it was used.
Dr Nitschke happened to be elsewhere at the time; having spent two days installing the pod, he left before it was used, and was in Germany en route to a conference he was speaking at in Budapest. He insists his departure had nothing to do with legal risk.
His Dutch offices were subsequently searched by police, who confiscated a Sarco pod he had in-situ. Such was the threat of further police action that neither he nor his wife, 58, a director of The Last Resort, dared to return to Switzerland until last month.
Today, the police investigation continues. Sources say it could take years to complete.
Peter Sticher, chief prosecutor at the public prosecution office in Schaffhausen, extended his ‘sincere condolences to the bereaved’.
‘The criminal proceedings against this person have been discontinued and the criminal proceedings against the other accused persons are continuing,’ he told the Mail this week.
‘The investigation is proving to be very complex.’
Dr Nitschke remains undeterred. ‘Sooner or later they are going to have to say whether any Swiss law was broken when Sarco was first used,’ he says.
‘I think they will have to admit that there was no crime committed. If, however, they do proceed to prosecution, it will be a show trial of international interest.’
‘I have not changed my views on the Swiss assisted suicide legislation,’ he adds. ‘It is the most progressive law in the world. But I am very critical of the predatory nature of the Swiss legal system.’
For now, his work continues. Dr Nitschke says he has not changed his views on euthanasia – nor his desire to continue with the Sarco project.
He invented the pod – which critics have likened to a ‘glorified gas chamber’ – in 2017 and developed it at a cost of €1 million (£840,000).
He aims to roll out plans to enable the machine to be 3D printed worldwide – including in the UK – and a recent development involved the hatch being widened to make it easier to remove the body once a person has died inside.
There are also plans for a double pod, so two people could take their own lives at the same time. And there has been discussion about using artificial intelligence to certify a candidate’s mental capacity to use the machine (currently, this requires a psychiatrist’s sign-off).
And Dr Nitschke’s eye is always on expansion, not least to the UK, where the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill continues its progress through Parliament.
More than 20 Britons have signed up to use the pod, which he hopes will one day be available in this country.
‘It’s entirely up to you if you want to sit looking at [a] lake or whether you want to be in your own little bedsit in south London,’ he has said.
‘For people who have got that choice of picking the day and the time… it is the most important day of your life, presumably – the day you die.’
His description is not dissimilar to the way you might pick a holiday destination, and yet Dr Willet’s death tragically highlights the troubling issues at play here.
Is society truly ready for a ‘euthanasia machine’ like the Sarco pod? Or is the burden of playing God – and the complex moral and ethical dilemmas it entails – simply too much to bear?
Additional reporting by Rob Hyde in Germany
For support for anyone at risk of suicide, contact Samaritans free on 116 123 or go to samaritans.org
