[Right_to_die] Couple married 25 years take their lives. Wife had MS.

[World right-to-die news list (nonprofit)]

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9NEWS.com in Colorado reported  20 Jan10:


Family believes deaths were result of assisted suicide

ADAMS COUNTY - Raymond and Carol Morris were, according to their family, 
deeply in love. Even after 25 years of marriage, they still considered 
themselves soul mates.

But the multiple sclerosis was taking its toll on Carol's body. She had 
been to hospice. She was nearing the end. She knew it. Raymond knew it 
as well.

Raymond started talking openly about doing something about it.

"[Carol] had asked him not to let her live like that. At first I really 
didn't think much of it," the couple's son-in-law Troy Mehrer said. 
"Then he said he was going to go with her."

Mehrer called the police. He says the couple denied the questions the 
responding investigators asked of them.

Not long after, Adams County investigators were once again called to the 
couple's home near 77th Avenue and Brighton Boulevard. It was Jan. 8. 
This time, Carol Morris was dead. Her family believes she had taken a 
lethal amount of a powerful narcotic.

The next day, they say, county investigators found Raymond Morris's body 
inside his white Plymouth about 15 miles away. Family members say a gun 
was by his side.

"Both of them, gone, in a matter of hours," Mehrer said. "My wife 
(Carol's daughter), she's not sleeping. She's jumpy. I feel so bad for her."

Adams County investigators will not comment on the specifics of the 
case, and will only say the case remains open. Family members say at 
least one other member of the family was present at the time of Carol 
Morris's death. The Adams County Coroner's Office says it has yet to 
rule on a specific cause of death. Toxicology tests take weeks, if not 
months, to complete.

"She had MS for 20 years," Geogina Norton, Mehrer's wife and Carol 
Morris's daughter, said. "It finally took over her body in March of last 
year. She was in the hospital for awhile. She was in hospice for about 
four months. My stepdad retired so he could take care of her."

It's clearly an emotional topic.

"They loved each other so much they couldn't live without each other. So 
they committed suicide," Norton said.

The family is not intent on glorifying how they died. It's clearly been 
a very difficult week and a half.

Experts in the field of suicide prevention are quick to point out that 
the root cause of suicide is often times incredibly complex. Not one 
thing, not even something like a quickly deteriorating physical 
condition, can fully explain it.

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