US woman meant to be first to use Sarco suicide pod accused company of exploiting her for publicity and money: report
An American woman who was meant to be the first person to use the controversial new Sarco “suicide pod” in Switzerland backed out while accusing the company behind it of being “heartless” in exploiting her for publicity and trying to get her life savings, according to a report.The 55-year-old, identified under the alias Jessica Campbell, leveled the accusations against the group behind the capsule — Exit International’s Swiss affiliate, The Last Resort — in a letter written at some point before her assisted suicide with another company in July, Swiss outlet Neue Zürcher Zeitung reported.
Her allegations re-surfaced after Swiss police on Tuesday arrested four people when news broke that the the Sarco capsule had been used for the first time, helping a 64-year-old American woman die.Months earlier, Campbell — a wheelchair-bound Alabama native — had revealed she was supposed to be the first to use the controversial futuristic-looking capsule, but claimed she was taken advantage of by The Last Resort and two of its executives, Florian Willet and Fiona Stewart, according to the report.“If I had known that the deeply heartless people who held my fate in their hands were mainly driven by their own media presence and marketing, I would never have subjected myself to this ordeal,” Campbell wrote, according to the outlet.Campbell, who suffered from kidney disease and a debilitating nervous system illness called polyneuropathy, said she cashed in her $40,000 life savings to travel to Zermatt in May to end her life with the help of the organization, the report said.Once she arrived, Campbell claimed she was inundated by a “media circus” and was allegedly made to conduct “embarrassing” interviews as publicity for the organization ahead of her scheduled suicide date.
Campbell also accused Willet and Stewart of pressuring her to pay for some of their personal expenses, including groceries and restaurant bills, during their media tours.She alle...