Man Arrested for Encouraging and Assisting Suicide over the Internet

A Minnesota man was charged last week for helping two people commit suicide – via the internet. William Melchert-Dinkel, 47, a former nurse, is facing two felony counts of aiding suicide under a rarely used state law that could prove difficult to prosecute.

Police say Melchert-Dinkel logged into suicide chat rooms posing as a female nurse for the purpose of assisting people to commit suicide. However, the accused did not physically harm his alleged victims, but instead encouraged them and offered instructions as to how to end their lives. In fact the two victims did not live in the United States; one was from Canada and the other was from the United Kingdom.

Should a person who encouraged and offered instructions to commit suicide be held responsible for the deaths of those he assisted?

Jeff Weiss
I absolutely believe that a person who encourages and gives directions to a suicidal person that leads to that person's death should be held accountable for their actions. First and foremost, rational people are not suicidal – and if someone encounters an unstable person who wishes to harm his or herself, they should try to seek help in preventing the person from committing suicide – not to offer assistance in ending their life.

Another thing that I find shocking is how easy it is for unstable people who wish to harm themselves to find other people with the same tendencies in chat rooms. A simple Google search of “suicide chat” will bring up several chat rooms – not for talking people out of harming themselves, but for people to get together to chat about ways to off themselves. We live in a society that is already violent enough due to outside influences. We as a society need to do more to get help for misguided people who want to hurt themselves.

David Loftus
Wow. This presents a quandary. On the one hand, it’s more amazing evidence of how awful people can behave, based on the promptings of their amoral curiosity; but on the other, it’s hard to find a solid legal basis on which to punish this man for his wretched actions, without eroding the freedom of speech.

It’s not just that Mr. Melchert-Dinkel posed as a young female nurse, sometimes calling himself Li Dao, sometimes Falcon Girl or Carni D; it’s that he pretended to be contemplating suicide himself, and made pacts with other people in which both pledged to hang themselves in front of webcams and watch each other die. Of course, Li Dao’s webcam always seemed to malfunction, leaving Melchert-Dinkel free to watch the other person do away with him- or herself. He might never have been caught if a 64-year-old British woman named Celia Bray hadn’t become concerned about a teenage friend who told her about an online suicide pact with a female nurse. Bray and another friend, Kat Lowe, secretly gathered information and tracked Melchert-Dinkel down to his home in St. Paul, Minnesota. Neither British police nor the FBI showed any interest in the matter, but Minnesota police finally followed it up and arrested the man, who prosecutors say may have encouraged at least five people to kill themselves.

I’m not sure he can be held responsible for these deaths. The deceased persons might well have ended up killing themselves anyway, one way or another. I’m not sure there’s a firm legal basis to charge or convict him of anything, particularly since he acted across national borders via the Internet. He should be prosecuted anyway, even if it’s a losing proposition, because bringing what he’s done out into the light of day might be enough to shame him into stopping. People will certainly be more aware of him in the future. The solution here seems to be to deny him any further access to the Web. It seems to me that ISPs and other Web-based services, being private companies, can refuse service to anyone; maybe they can keep him from poking his despicable mind into other people’s tender psyches.