Excuse 15
‘I killed because I loved’
‘Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.’
For eight years, Margaret Maxwell lived out Dylan Thomas’s anguished plea to his dying father. She took the fight up to the breast cancer that attacked her in 1994. Just 51 years old, Mrs Maxwell refused to accept the disease was a death sentence. She researched furiously to find its ‘real cause’ and decided to fight it her way, to heal herself. She told friends that by using natural methods and avoiding traditional operations and chemotherapy, she would not only win out but become ‘a beacon of shining light’ to other sufferers.
Mrs Maxwell pursued a strict alternative-medicine regimen. She wouldn’t brook any argument against her decision. ‘She cut people off that may have opposed her line of thinking,’ one of her friends said. One of her doctors, Dr Ruth Gawler said, ‘She was very afraid of handing over control of her life. She didn’t want to give in to western medicine’.
Despite her determination, by 1998, Mrs Maxwell was struggling to beat her invisible and formidable foe. A surgeon tried, in 1998 and throughout 1999, to persuade the strong-willed woman to have surgery. Mrs Maxwell would have none of it. To her it would mean defeat, losing control of her life. She continued with her herbs, a special diet and other ‘natural’ ways of fighting cancer. Only in November 2001—after fighting her way for seven years—did Mrs Maxwell agree to a mastectomy. She told friends she felt like she was ‘giving in’, but finally had the operation in January 2002.
In the months after the operation, Mrs Maxwell had a persistent cough and chest pains but she refused a doctor’s advice in June 2002 to have a CT scan. Then things deteriorated frighteningly quickly. In August, Mrs Maxwell told a friend she had massive tumours and had been given just months to live. The cancer raging through her body was inoperable. Her coughing increased. Her chest pain was almost constant. She lost a lot of weight.
In early September, Mrs Maxwell left the home she shared with her husband of 19 years—Alexander Gamble Maxwell—and their teenage son, Daniel, in Peel Street, Kew. She went to a caravan in a place called Silverleaves on Phillip Island in Melbourne’s Western Port Bay. She and her husband had bought that plot because that was where she wanted to die.
A few days later one of her friends, Diane Minogue, visited her on the island. She found her usually chirpy, feisty friend deeply depressed, very thin and in agony. Mrs Maxwell told her friend she had given up and was planning to starve herself to death over three days the following week. At Margaret’s request, Ms Minogue drove her to the island’s cemetery and helped her walk around it to choose a gravesite.
Local nurses managed to dissuade Mrs Maxwell from starving herself to death in that week, but two weeks later—on 26 September—Mrs Maxwell made the same starvation vow to her husband. He begged her not to do it. He told her he had found some advice on special nutritional supplements from the United States. He persuaded her to continue her ‘rage against the dying of the light’ a little longer but he paid a heavy price. He had to promise his wife that if her condition did not improve, he would help her to commit suicide.
He had to promise to kill the woman he loved.
On 1 October 2002, a doctor told Mrs Maxwell her condition was terminal and urged her to go into a hospice for palliative care. She refused but, reluctantly, agreed to take some strong tablets to help her to sleep through her pain. The cancer was attacking her so fiercely, friends noticed a distinct worsening of her condition in a week. Margaret looked, they said, ‘as if she had aged 20 years and lost 20 pounds in weight’. She told friends she looked like a concentration camp survivor. Later, Mr Maxwell tearfully remembered his wife fading away.
Mr Maxwell: She was just a skeleton with a bit of skin stretched over her.
On 7 October, struggling to breathe and in constant pain, Margaret again told her husband she could no longer go on. Again he persuaded her to continue living. He repeated his promise to help her commit suicide if the treatment didn’t work.
All through these nightmare weeks and months, Alex Maxwell was frantically searching for herbal remedies for his dying wife. Anything to help her with her pain, to stop her alarming weight loss.
But things just got worse.
Most of the time Alex spent trying to help his wife find the least painful position in bed, where she wouldn’t choke. He cleaned up her vomit, washed her, dressed her and desperately tried to feed her. For a fiercely independently-spirited woman, the dominant partner in the marriage, this complete dependence on her husband was almost as hard for Margaret to endure as her pain.
For Alex it was an excruciating time. Not only was he watching his wife fading away, not only was he watching her suffer, but he was seeing her crushing disappointment at losing her bold war against cancer.
Still he soldiered on. On 18 October, he collected some herbs from a traditional Chinese doctor who said they could reduce his wife’s symptoms and enhance the immune system. The next morning Alex picked up some easily digestible formula hoping it would help with his wife’s weight loss, but when he got back home, for the third time his wife told him she wanted to die. She called in his promise. It was the day after their son’s 19th birthday.
Friends had, some time before, given their suffering friend a copy of a book on euthanasia. Margaret had chosen one of the ways the book suggested as a peaceful way to die. It involved crushing up various tablets, putting a plastic bag over the person’s head and filling the bag with helium. When Margaret realised that she was no longer able to do what was required by herself, she burst into tears. She reminded her husband of his promise to help her die. Finally and reluctantly he agreed.
Mr Maxwell: Basically she was calling on the promise that I had made…two or three weeks ago…She had had enough.
…
She hadn’t been eating or drinking basically for the last couple of weeks. There was virtually nothing left of her. There was nothing of her left. And I said that I wouldn’t try to talk her out of it again.
A promise is a promise.
…
I was feeling guilty or selfish in trying to keep her alive.
I knew I had to do it because I promised to do it.
For Mr Maxwell, agreeing to help his wife to die was particularly difficult because he was not a supporter of euthanasia.
Mr Maxwell: I am a Bible believer and it’s quite clear you don’t kill people. It’s quite clear you will not take a life. End of discussion.
…
I have wronged man’s law and I have wronged my beliefs spiritually in a huge, huge manner [but] I had made a promise to my wife that I would do it and I take my word pretty seriously.
To fulfil his promise to his wife, Alex went out to buy the necessary equipment for his wife’s suicide, including a bottle of helium gas.
Mr Maxwell: She wanted to make sure…there was no chance that she was going to drop into a coma and wake up somewhere along the line in hospital.
While he was doing that, Margaret filled out some housekeeping forms. She might have been weak, in pain and dying, but there was nothing wrong with the mind of the former bookkeeper and tutorial services manager.
About 1 pm on 19 October 2002—a few weeks shy of their 20th wedding anniversary—51-year-old Alex carried his wife, who now weighed just 40 kilograms, to their van and laid her across the back seat. He drove her to their caravan on Phillip Island, arriving about 3 pm at the place she had chosen to die. He carried Margaret into the caravan and changed her into nice clean pyjamas—just the way she liked them—and made her as comfortable as possible on the bed.
Mr Maxwell: I checked one last time whether this was what she wanted to do. She answered, ‘Yes’. Then she asked me to break up the tablets. I did that, put them in water, swirled them around and then she drank it.
…
She had previously picked a CD that we both enjoyed so I put it on.
The CD was The Swoon Collection 3, which includes the heart-tugging prayer Ave Maria and the soaring but soothing and hymnlike Deep Peace.
Mr Maxwell: I made her comfortable and I just sat with her. It took about a minute and a half for her to fall asleep, maybe a couple of minutes—at about the fourth song in, or the fourth piece of music [Deep Peace] which is a particularly nice piece of music.
I went out to the van…and brought in the helium and whatever else was needed. Making sure she was comfortable I put the bag over the top of her and just put a sash or something around the bag and put the hose into the bag and just turned the helium on slowly and she just went deeper into sleep.
I just sat there with her. She just stopped breathing eventually. Didn’t really move just went deeper to sleep.
…
She said to make sure that I left it running for some time. Just to make sure. She wanted no mistakes. So I just let it run for a while.
Just sat there listening to the music.
…
Her very last wish was that she wanted to lay down in nice clean pyjamas in a nice clean bed and cuddle up under the doona. So I did that and I stayed with her for a little while longer and then I packed everything away and then the idea was that I would ring the funeral home and they were supposed to ring the doctor that Margaret was down here and the death certificate would be written and then I could bury her.
Nobody was supposed to know about it and then my idea was that when I got back home and Daniel was finished with his [final year of school] exams, I would write a full report on it and hand it to the senior officer at Kew police station and they could do what they wanted then. It wasn’t going to matter. Daniel would have finished his exams in a couple of weeks and Margaret would be at peace.
Unfortunately, this plan failed because the funeral director could not contact Mrs Maxwell’s treating doctor to get the death certificate and police were called in.
Alex was not perturbed by this hitch in the plan. Police found him lying beside his dead wife. Soon afterwards he was interviewed.
Officer: When did you last see your wife alive?
Maxwell: About 3.30.
Officer: When did you find that she had passed away?
Maxwell: About 4 pm. I waited until I was certain. I laid with her.
Officer: Did she overdose on medication? Is that what you are saying?
Maxwell: Yes.
…
Maxwell: She made me promise to make sure she was gone because she didn’t want to be in a coma. She asked if after she lost consciousness I would cover her head with a plastic bag and introduce helium gas.
Officer: Did you do that?
Maxwell: Yes.
A post-mortem examination found that Mrs Maxwell had widespread cancer in her chest, lymph nodes, both lungs, ribs, lumbar spine and pituitary gland. The cause of her death, however, was plastic bag asphyxia.
Maxwell was charged with the murder of his wife and spent 26 days in jail before being released on bail.
In April 2003, the 55-year-old, who had a business repairing school buildings, pleaded guilty in the Supreme Court to ‘aiding or abetting a suicide’. While suicide and attempted suicide had not been crimes in Victoria for 35 years, helping someone commit suicide still is. Maxwell faced a maximum five years jail for keeping his promise to his wife.
Maxwell’s barrister, Chris Dane, QC, stressed that his client did what he did at the insistence of the strong-willed woman he loved.
Mr Dane: The power of genuine love, when aroused by the circumstances of extreme pain and suffering, may sometimes blind a person to the ultimate sanctity of life and that is what has happened here.
As the court heard details of Margaret Maxwell’s final moments, in the dock Maxwell held his head in his hands and quietly wept. Discreetly, he wiped his tears with his handkerchief. No histrionics. No obvious display of grief. Just quiet grief.
Mr Dane: He [pointing to Maxwell in the dock] comes before this court as a man who puts as his excuse an intense love. We say it doesn’t excuse his crime but we say it makes a substantial explanation.
A month later, Justice John Coldrey said there was a wide range of moral blame for those who helped someone commit suicide. The ones who most deserved to be punished were those who helped someone commit suicide for an ulterior motive—such as inheriting property. The least culpable were those who helped someone commit suicide out of a genuine desire to end their loved one’s extreme pain.
Justice Coldrey: There is no doubt that your situation places you at the latter end of the spectrum. I accept that you loved your wife intensely. You were desperately hopeful that a cure for her illness could be found.
…
You were faced with the spectacle of her ever-increasing suffering and ultimately, when faced with her clearly expressed wish to die, you felt obliged to assist and support her despite your own misgivings and distress.
In fact, you are not a supporter of euthanasia. You regard what you did as wrong and you have experienced considerable remorse.
The judge said a psychologist had found that Maxwell was a ‘distressed and confused man who is struggling to come to terms with what he has done’, that he was seriously depressed. In a very rare scene for a judge sentencing a killer, Justice Coldrey’s voice momentarily broke with emotion. He had to pause to compose himself before continuing.
Justice Coldrey: None of us would wish to face the dilemma with which you were confronted.
…
Since the law continues to regard what you did as an offence, the denunciation of it and the deterrence of others remain elements of any sentence to be imposed. However, I do not believe that thoughtful members of the community, knowing all the facts relating to you personally and the unique circumstances of this tragic case, would regard your immediate imprisonment as necessary.
In my view this is a case where justice may be tempered with mercy…
Accordingly, I impose a sentence of 18 months but that period is to be wholly suspended.
Mr Maxwell, I hope you will be able to put this sad episode behind you and will be able to reconstruct your life.
Unlike all the other killers in this book, with their myriad excuses for killing, Alex Maxwell had not only encouraged his ‘victim’ to ‘rage against the dying of the light’ but, in the end, he helped her ‘go gentle into that good night’.