The chain of events which led to a 49-year-old woman's assisted death in an inner suburb of Dublin is traced by Joe Humphreys
The sequence of events which led to what gardaí believe was the first case of assisted suicide in the Republic began 10 days ago.
That was when the 49-year-old former office worker moved into a rented townhouse at Donnybrook Manor in Dublin, where her body would be found four days later.
She had told a doctor in Glasgow, with whom she had been in contact for the past three months, of her intention to carry out an assisted suicide away from her family home.
"She said she didn't want to die at home. She wanted to do it in a more impersonal environment," said retired GP Dr Libby Wilson, who runs a support group for people close to death, Friends At The End (FATE).
"She also said she had a very good relationship with the person she lived with (her father), and she wanted to spare him the trauma of discovering her body."
The woman first contacted Dr Wilson by email on November 28th last year, saying she had been given the doctor's name by an unnamed contact on the Internet. The woman asked Dr Wilson if she could help organise an assisted suicide. Dr Wilson said it was apparent to her the woman had been planning such a death for some time.
The woman, who was twice married but had no children, had no terminal physical illness. She did, however, suffer from severe depression and had undergone numerous courses of treatment. She was once hospitalised for six months after an attempted suicide.
Dr Wilson said the woman, who only identified herself by her first name, had expressed fears that she might end up permanently in a mental hospital if a further suicide attempt proved unsuccessful.
The woman is believed to have contacted, through the Internet, the two men who assisted in her suicide last week. The two are believed to have come from a radical euthanasia support group based in Michigan in the American Midwest.
A fee was negotiated through email communications, which were subsequently recovered by gardaí. It is understood the two were promised around €6,500 each. These payments were to include travel and accommodation expenses, and were also to cover the cost of equipment used in the assisted suicide.
Dr Wilson did not hear from the woman until after the New Year, when she phoned twice to talk about her depression and discuss her plans. A week before she died, the woman phoned Dr Wilson a third time and said she wished to send her a letter about her situation in the hope that the doctor might publish it in an electronic newsletter sent to supporters of FATE.
Two days later, she phoned Dr Wilson in what the doctor described as "a terrible state". The woman expressed fears she might have identified people in the letter, and was having second thoughts about having it published.
Dr Wilson phoned the house in Donnybrook 10 days ago - the day she had been told the woman was moving in - and left a message to say she was holding onto the letter pending further instructions.
The woman is understood to have met the two men at Dublin Airport and to have brought them back to the house. There, on Friday evening, they are believed to have arranged for the assisted suicide to take place by using a combination of drugs and a means of cutting off her oxygen supply.
Gardaí have yet to establish whether the woman was alone at the point of death. Dr Wilson said she thought it was unlikely as the woman had expressed a desire to have somebody present.
The two men are believed to have left the jurisdiction the following day when the alarm was raised by the woman's father who had become suspicious after finding the address of the house.