Apparently while doing a show about death he broke down and said how a long time ago there was this “young chap” who was his lover, and he caught aids and was in the hospital dying in terrible pain. The doctor said nothing could be done so Ray asked the doctor to leave, and then smothered his lover with a pillow to end his suffering. He claims that they had an agreement and his former lover wanted it that way. He’s been arrested now because of the confession and is being questioned by police.
Wow. All I have to say is, regardless of whether it was right or wrong, all I know is, if my wife, or mother, or any friend or loved one was suffering terribly, there’s no way I could bring myself to do something like that. I think the nightmares would haunt me for the rest of my life.
I saw this on CNN. He was arrested for “suspicion of murder” today.
Since I wasn’t familiar with him I looked up his wiki. It said that after a fairly successful career he was as of 2002 living in poverty. Admittedly things may have turned around since then, but it can explain his reason to come forward: not a lot to lose, a chance to become a symbol, etc… I would guess there’s probably also some speculation as to if he’s telling the truth, because after all I never heard of him and yet today I know who he is so, is or isn’t, it’s a good career move.
As for the alleged murder, I wonder how difficult something like that would be to prosecute. I’m only at all familiar with U.S. criminal justice procedure and I have only lay/cursory knowledge of that, but it’s an interesting case. On the one hand:
1- He did not reveal the name of the alleged victim
2- Per him, it was consentual and the man’s condition was terminal*
3- There is no hard evidence he did it
On the other hand, there’s a confession.
Presumably he’ll share the person’s name with police (he says he plans to cooperate fully), and if he doesn’t it should be fairly easy to find out who his lovers have been and which one died of AIDS related complications in 1990. No idea if his lover was cremated or buried, but even if it was the latter the remains would possibly be completely useless for any kind of forensic examination. So is “no body/no conviction” still the rule when there’s a confession?
I never heard of him either, but then being an American, there are a lot of people who are famous in Britain who are unknown in the US. Although after this, some of us Americans now know his name, so maybe you have a point.
Well, what I’ve been hearing is that assisted suicide is a crime in the UK, so if the police can gather enough evidence that it happened he could be convicted. Although my feeling is, and it’s based on nothing but gut instinct, is that if he is tried and convicted, he’ll probably get the bare minimum punishment allowed by law. His age and circumstances of the killing will probably gain him sympathy.
The asterix by terminal in my post above was supposed to have a footnote: terminal and hopeless in 1990 (I’m not sure when the alleged killing occurs but I think he said around 20 years ago) would not necessarily be so now, and even some who were dismissed as terminal and hopeless then pulled through. Jerry Herman (composer of Hello Dolly and Mame among other shows) comes to mind- he developed “full blown AIDS” in the late 1980s, at one point his friends and family were called in and asked about DNR orders should it come to the point and he was expected to die that day, and more than 20 years later he’s alive and reasonably healthy last time I saw him interviewed. He’s the exception admittedly; most people who have survived that long haven’t ever been to that stage but more like Robert K. Massie or Magic Johnson (HIV+ but asymptomatic), but Herman isn’t alone in long surviving a presumed terminal episode with the disease.
I wonder if this would play into Gosling’s trial if it’s proven he killed a boyfriend- the fact that it can’t be known with absolute certainty the AIDS symptoms would have been fatal.
For those who weren’t on the scene in 1990 I can testify that HIV killed a lot of people in that era.
I carepartnered my best friend through his time with HIV, the last 18 months of his life. Tony Thoman died in December of 1989, at the height of the crisis.
Back then people mostly weren’t diagnosed until they had full-blown AIDS and were often so sick and debilitated that when they had a crisis they couldn’t be saved.
The list is endlessly, horrifically long. Famous people and just plain folks and rich and poor and old and so terribly young and they got sick and they died. I attended so many funerals . . . played too many memorial services for friends and colleagues.
In the early years a lot of people said things like “If I thought I had it I’d just want to die, I’d kill myself.” And a lot of them, when that diagnosis came, that’s exactly what they did, they didn’t fight, they just drifted away. Others took steps – especially after they sat through some deathbed scenes – they couldn’t bear it and they killed themselves. Or they had help.
Gosling no doubt did what he thought was the loving and compassionate thing. It might even have been what his lover said he wanted. We’ll never know for sure. It’s all just so sad.
“Asterix” is a comic-strip character in France, a Gaul of Caesar’s time. The word for the dingbat resembling a six-pointed star is “asterisk”. Th mnemonic for remembering this is this short quatrain:
“Little Susie on thin ice
Upon her skates did frisk.
Wasn’t she a silly girl
Her little *?”
I am so proud to be a member of a board in which it is deemed totally reasonable to have a detour into spelling, grammar and punctuation, even on a murder thread.
Damn, there is no ‘I’m not kidding, I’m serious, smiley’
There’s no rule that there can’t be a conviction without a body. The lack of a body in a murder case is simply part of the evidence, and may count against the Crown in the overall assessment of the evidence. But, if the Crown can demonstrate why there’s no body, but still bring in sufficient proof that the murder occurred, there can be a conviction.
Can’t find a link at the moment, but I thought I’d read about people in the UK being brought up on charges for going with someone to a clinic in another country (Switzerland?) which provides euthanasia, to help that person in dying. So I can’t be surprised that someone would be charged on this.
Having discussed the matter with my wife, I think I couldn’t live with myself if she wanted me to do it and I couldn’t or wouldn’t. Differing perspectives etc.
I’m inclined to doubt the story until further proof shows up.
I was in college in the very early 90’s and I think most of the gay guys I knew just expected to be dead by 30. They were very fatalistic about it and it was terribly sad. They would take precautions and all, but I think often they didn’t bother because they were already convinced that there was nothing they could do to escape it. I still wonder what happened to some of them.
Anyway rest assured it will be practically impossible to prosecute him. And in the very unlikely happenstance that they do, I guarantee a discharge at court.
For a murder charge, I am pretty certain this is legally irrelevant. I know for a fact that you cannot consent to an assault, and therefore it seems highly unlikely that you can consent to be murdered.
Now it is certainly the sort of factor that should come into play in determining whether charges should be pressed, but it often doesn’t, as each stage of the system leaves the leniency decision to another stage, and the person ends up convicted and doing serious time.
I agree that it is likely that you cannot consent to be killed, but you can certainly consent to being assaulted. One example is people taking part in various contact sports, who consent (as part of the game) to being assaulted in ways which would be criminal if they had not given their general consent to the assaults.
I know what you mean, and I am a little hazy on the exact distinction, but the difference as far as I remember is that the actions within an organized sport are not assault - it isn’t that they are assault but that the parties consented to them.
On the other hand, there are multiple cases of individuals being imprisoned for consensual sado-masochistic sex, with the fact that the masochistic partner fully consented to the activity being legally irrelevant to the charges.
I’m not sure if I would (and I’ll be grateful to never have to find out). I do wonder how sweet I could expect my dreams would be if I’d watched my loved one’s suffering for a few extra days/weeks/months.
I’m not completely against assisting in someone’s death if they are bad enough off, but I couldn’t do it in that manner. Having “the plug pulled” for example would be one thing, but me physically smothering my wife with a pillow…there’s no way in hell I could do it.
When my mother was a nurse over 25 years ago, she and other nurses would sometimes give terminal patients way more pain medicine than was safe because the patients were going to die anyway, so why should they die in agony. I wouldn’t mind seeing this become common practice.
Wouldn’t the partner have to have been close enough to death that A- He was too weak to at least make a noise or break something in a struggle (not exactly air tight, I know. He could have been on meds), and B- His death immediately after the doctor’s diagnosis and the private visit wasn’t considered suspicious?