Family & Life

Mother “Helped Kill ME Daughter” with Help of EXIT Group, Jury Hears : 4th Feb 10

A mother helped her bedridden daughter kill herself in December, 2008, by giving her morphine and a cocktail of drugs, a UK court has heard. Lynn Gilderdale, 31, a victim of the chronic fatigue disease ME, had already taken an overdose, but begged her mother Kay “to end her pain” because it didn’t work.

Mrs Gilderdale, 55, tried to “finish the job” in a various ways over the next 30 hours, the jury was told. She injected Lynn with morphine and crushed a variety of pills in a pestle and mortar and fed them to her through a nasal tube. She also injected three syringes of air into her daughter in the hope of stopping her heart with an air bubble.

Lynn eventually died from morphine poisoning, Lewes Crown Court in East Sussex heard. Mrs Gilderdale denies one charge of attempted murder, but admits assisting suicide. Jurors were told she couldn’t be tried for murder because it was unclear whether her daughter died from the overdose she gave herself, or the one her mother gave her.

Mrs Gilderdale had phoned the group Exit, which advocates a “right” to suicide, “to receive further advice from that organisation”. After that, she gave Lynn a further eight tablets of an anti-depressant, Sertraline.

The court heard that “It is the prosecutions case very simply that when Mrs Gilderdale realised that these two large doses of morphine that she provided to Lynn, that Lynn self-administered wanting to end her life, had not done the job...instead of summoning assistance, she then set about these next 30 hours performing actions designed with no intention other than terminating her daughter’s life”. The hearing continues. The Daily Mail. January 19.

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Family & Life

Mother “Helped Kill ME Daughter” with Help of EXIT Group, Jury Hears : 4th Feb 10

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