Jack Kevorkian Won’t Kill Again, Would Have Killed Terri Schiavo 
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
September 30, 2005
Lapeer, MI (LifeNews.com) — In a new interview broadcast on national television last night, assisted suicide crusader Jack Kevorkian again said he would not kill patients if released from prison on parole. He also indicated he would have helped kill Terri Schiavo if her family had come to him.
Kevorkian told MSNBC in the interview that he wouldn’t commit assisted suicides, but would instead try to use legal and legislative means to change the law to have other states join Oregon, the only one where it’s legal.
"I have said publicly and officially that I will not perform that act again when I get out," he said. "What I’ll do is what I should have done earlier, is pursue this from a legal standpoint by campaigning to get the laws changed."
Kevorkian was convicted in April 1999 of killing Thomas Youk, a Detroit-area man with Lou Gehrig’s disease whose death was shown on the CBS television show "60 Minutes." He argued the murder was a euthanasia or mercy killing, but was sentenced for 10 to 25 years in prison.
He is not eligible for parole until 2007 and both a state parole board and Michigan Governor. Jennifer Granholm both declined to release him earlier.
Kevorkian told MSNBC he would travel and visit family if granted parole, but he insisted he would not practice assisted suicide or encourages others to do so.
Reporters Rita Cosby asked him if he regretted the assisted suicide deaths of more than 130 people, Kevorkian replied, "Well, I do a little."
Kevorkian also tol Cosby that, had Terri Schiavo been presented to him 10 years ago, he would have taken her on as another assisted suicide case.
Michigan authors and Kevorkian friends Neal Nicol and Harry Wylie say they have been helping Kevorkian to prepare a 300-page manuscript, tentatively titled "The Life of Dr. Death." Kevorkian has been shopping it around to publishers.
Oscar-winning director Barbara Kopple and producer Steve Jones plan to begin filming a movie version in Michigan later this year.
Jones says Oscar winner Ben Kingsley would head the short list of people he would like to play the imprisoned coroner. Kingsley is a three time Oscar nominee who won the award for best actor in 1982 for his role in the film Gandhi.
