Jack Kevorkian papers, 1911-2017 (majority within 1990-2011)

Summary

Creator:

Kevorkian, Jack.

Abstract:

Papers of Dr. Jack Kevorkian (1928-2011), medical pathologist, social activist, advocate for the terminally ill patient's right to die and physician-assisted suicide (which Kevorkian called "Medicide"), author, artist, and musician. By his own estimation, Dr. Kevorkian assisted in the suicides of more than 100 terminally ill people between 1990 and 1998. Kevorkian was acquitted in three physician-assisted suicide trials, and a mistrial was declared in the fourth. In a fifth trial, he was convicted of second-degree murder after administering a lethal injection and served eight years in prison. The collection includes materials related to the Kevorkian family (personal and business records, correspondence, photographs, and audiovisual recordings); Jack Kevorkian's research files and files related to Medicide (files related to the physician-assisted suicides and recordings of Kevorkian's consultations with the terminally ill); and miscellaneous papers (his personal and professional correspondence, published works and manuscript drafts, records related to his court trials, photographs, recordings of news coverage and interviews, audio recordings of Kevorkian's music, and images of his art).

Extent:

1 archived websites (online)
1 portrait
1 framed photograph
40 laminated placards (36" x 36")
1 oversize box
8 linear feet
Digital files (online)

Call Number:

2014106 Aa 2

Authors:

Finding aid created by Olga Virakhovskaya, 2014-2015

Background

Scope and Content:

The Jack Kevorkian Papers are arranged into five series: Kevorkian Family, Research and Practice, Morganroth & Morganroth, Personal Interests, and Medicide Files.

The Kevorkian Family papers mostly include correspondence, recollections, photographs, and video and audio recordings of family gatherings. The Research and Practice series contains Kevorkian's correspondence on scientific subjects, his research files, and Kevorkian's articles on various medical, ethical, and bioethical topics. Also included are recorded interviews and media segments featuring Kevorkian as well as media reports about his activities and court trials. Materials in the Personal Interests series include sheet music of Kevorkian's musical compositions, recordings of Kevorkian playing music, reproductions of his paintings, publicity regarding exhibits of his art, and a sample of collected books. The Morganroth & Morganroth series includes materials used during the court trials, such as correspondence and Kevorkian's research as well as the script of the HBO film, You Don't Know Jack, annotated by Mayer Morganroth. The Medicide Files series contains the files of the terminally ill patients who had asked him assist in ending their lives and who he helped in doing so. Medicide files include correspondence between Kevorkian and his consulting "patients" and their families, photographs, and forms developed by Kevorkian as well as recordings of consultations.

Biographical / Historical:

Jack Kevorkian was born Murad Kevorkian in Pontiac, Michigan, on May 26, 1928. Kevorkian's parents, Lewis (Levon) (1887-1960) and Satenig Kevorkian (1900-1968), were immigrants from Armenia. Lewis came to the U.S. prior to World War I from Passem, Erzerum (modern Turkey). At first he was employed by an automobile foundry. He soon enrolled in a night school to improve his English and learn mathematics. Lewis built the house where Jack Kevorkian was born. In the early 1930's Lewis lost his job at the automobile foundry but found work with a contractor, and in time became a successful sewer and water main contractor, making a sizeable living as the owner of his own excavating company.

At 15 years of age Satenig witnessed the horrors of the 1915 Armenian genocide. She fled her native Govdun, Sepastia, finding refuge with relatives in Paris, and eventually reuniting with her brother in Pontiac. Lewis and Satenig met through the Armenian community in Pontiac, where they married and started a family. The couple had three children: Margaret, Jack, and Flora. Satenig's tales of the genocide became part of the family legacy, influencing Jack Kevorkian.

Kevorkian's older sister Margaret (Margo) was born in 1926. An avid reader and learner, Margaret travelled with her mother in the Near East and Europe, later enrolling in art courses at the Cranbrook Institute of Science in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. She variously worked for the Michigan Children's Aid Society, General Motors, and for the MacManus, John, and Adams International Advertising Agency in Bloomfield Hills. Jack and Margaret Kevorkian, who died in 1994, were very close. It was Margaret's daughter, Ava Janus, who donated Jack Kevorkian's papers to the Bentley Historical Library. Kevorkian's younger sister Flora married Hermann Holzheimer, a German diplomat. Both sisters helped him in the 1990's with his first physician-assisted suicide.

As children, the three Kevorkian siblings were encouraged to perform well in school, and all demonstrated high academic performance. Jack was able to enter Eastern Junior High School when he was in the 6th grade, and by the time he was in high school he had taught himself German and Japanese in preparation for military service, but World War II ended before he came of military age. His interest in languages, specifically, the origin and complexities of words, continued throughout his life. The young Jack Kevorkian was described by his friends as an able student interested in art and music. He graduated with honors from Pontiac High School in 1945 at the age of 17.

Kevorkian attended the University of Michigan School of Engineering between 1946 and 1948. He planned to be a civil engineer, but in the middle of his freshman year he began focusing on botany and biology. He also took classes in chemistry, mathematics, engineering drawing, rhetoric, history, psychology, German, and Japanese. By mid-year, he had set his sights on medical school, often taking 20 credit-hours in a semester to meet the 90-hour medical school requirement. He graduated with a degree in Clinical Pathology in 1952 and completed his internship at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit (1952/1953).

From 1953 to 1955, Kevorkian served for 15 months as First Lieutenant General Medical Officer in preventive medicine in Korea. While in Korea, he put his Japanese language skills to use in medical intelligence.

Upon his return to the U.S., Kevorkian entered a medical residency in Pathologic Anatomy at the University of Michigan Hospital. While serving his residency, Kevorkian became fascinated by death and the act of dying. He made regular visits to terminally ill patients, photographing their eyes in an attempt to pinpoint the exact moment of death. Kevorkian believed that doctors could use the information to distinguish death from fainting, shock, or coma, to determine a point at which resuscitation was useless.

Dr. Kevorkian's first scientific article was published in the American Journal of Pathology in 1956. In addition to medical articles, he began writing on the subjects of the death penalty and the participation of prisoners in clinical research. He caused a stir with colleagues by proposing that death-row prison inmates could be used as the subjects of medical experiments while they were still alive. Inspired by research that described medical experiments the ancient Greeks conducted on Egyptian criminals, Kevorkian formulated the idea that similar modern experiments could not only save valuable research dollars but also provide a glimpse into the anatomy of the criminal mind. In 1958, he advocated his view in a paper presented to the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His ideas earned him the nickname "Dr. Death" and some minor media attention and resulted in his ejection from the University of Michigan medical residency program. Dr. Kevorkian finished his residency at Pontiac General Hospital (1959-1960).

While still in Pontiac, Kevorkian heard about experiments transfusing blood from corpses into living patients, performed by a team of Soviet researchers, and he enlisted the help of medical technologist Neal Nicol to simulate these same experiments. The results were highly successful, and Kevorkian believed the procedure could help save lives on the battlefield; if blood from a bank was unavailable, doctors might transfuse the blood of a corpse into an injured soldier. Kevorkian pitched his idea to the Pentagon, figuring it could be used in Vietnam, but he was denied a federal grant to continue his research. Instead, the research only confirmed his reputation as an outsider and jolted his colleagues. Also during this time, as a result of his experimentations, Kevorkian became infected with Hepatitis C.

During the 1960's Kevorkian held appointments as Associate Pathologist at St. Joseph Hospital in Ann Arbor (December 1960-July 1961), Associate Pathologist at Pontiac General Hospital (1961-1966), and Medical Director at the Medical Diagnostic Center in Southfield (1967-1969). Also in the 1960's Kevorkian enrolled in an adult education oil painting class in Pontiac. In his art he combined his understanding of the human anatomy with his fascination with death. Kevorkian continued to paint throughout his lifetime. He was also a skilled jazz musician and a composer.

In the 1970's Kevorkian worked as a pathologist at Saratoga General Hospital in Detroit (1970-1976). During this period he published more than 30 journal articles and booklets about his philosophy on death. In 1976 he moved to California, where he held two part-time pathology jobs in Long Beach. In 1984, prompted by the growing number of executions in the U.S., Kevorkian advocated the idea of giving death-row inmates a choice--to donate their organs and die by anesthesia rather than poison gas or the electric chair. He was invited to brief members of the California Legislature on a bill that would enable prisoners to have this choice. His actions received the attention of the media, and he became involved in the growing national debate on dying with dignity.

Following a dispute with a chief pathologist, Kevorkian claimed that his career was doomed by physicians who feared his radical ideas. He "retired" to devote his time to painting, music, and a documentary project on Handel's Messiah as well as to continue his research for his death-row campaign. Before Kevorkian left California, in 1984, his artwork, musical instruments, compositions, videos, master films, research papers, library, and all of his personal belongings were stolen from a storage facility. Kevorkian did not paint again until 1993, when he recreated some of the 18 pieces of his stolen art.

I Kevorkian returned to Michigan in 1985. He moved to a small apartment in Royal Oak and wrote a comprehensive history of experiments on executed humans, which was published in the Journal of the National Medical Association. In 1986 he discovered a way to expand his death-row proposal when he learned that doctors in the Netherlands were helping people die by lethal injection. In 1987 Kevorkian visited the Netherlands, where he studied techniques that allowed Dutch physicians to assist in the suicides of terminally ill patients without interference from the legal authorities.

Kevorkian began writing new articles, this time about self-administered euthanasia, or Medicide, as he called physician-assisted suicide. He created a machine he called the "Thanatron" (Greek for "instrument of death"), which he assembled out of $45 worth of materials. The Thanatron consisted of three bottles that delivered successive doses of fluids: first a saline solution, followed by a painkiller and, finally, the poison potassium chloride. The Thanatron enabled self-administration of a lethal dose of the fluids. After years of rejection from national medical journals and media outlets, Kevorkian became the focus of national attention for his machine and his proposal to set up "obitoriums," where doctors could help the terminally ill end their lives. He began to advertise in Detroit-area newspapers for an obitorium that would offer "death counseling" for the terminally ill and their families. Kevorkian intended to personally bear all the expenses of Medicide.

Due to media interest, Kevorkian's ideas became known to the general public. In 1990 he was contacted by Janet Adkins, a 54-year-old Oregon woman who suffered from Alzheimer's, an incurable condition that causes progressive loss of memory, insight, and other mental functions. Adkins was a member of the Hemlock Society, a national right-to-die organization that she had joined before she became ill--and asked Kevorkian to help her in ending her life. Janet and her husband, Ron Adkins, traveled to Detroit. On June 4, 1990, Kevorkian assisted her in ending her life, on a bed inside his 1968 Volkswagen van, parked in a campground near his home in Michigan. Immediately after Adkin's passing, Kevorkian called the police, who arrested and briefly detained him. Ron Adkins and two of his sons held a news conference in Portland and read the suicide note Mrs. Adkins had prepared. Janet Adkins was the first person to be assisted by Kevorkian in Medicide.

After the Adkins story reached the media, Kevorkian became a national celebrity. The State of Michigan immediately charged Kevorkian with Adkins' murder, but in December 1990 District Court Judge Gerald McNally dismissed murder charge against Kevorkian due to Michigan's indecisive stance on physician-assisted suicide.

In October 1991 Kevorkian attended the deaths of Marjorie Wantz, a 58-year-old woman from Sodus, Michigan, who suffered from pelvic pain, and Sherry Miller, a 43-year-old woman from Roseville, Michigan, who suffered from multiple sclerosis. Both deaths occurred at a rented state park cabin near Lake Orion, Michigan.

Following these deaths a Michigan judge issued an injunction barring Kevorkian's use of the Medicide machine, and in November 1991 Kevorkian's Michigan medical license was revoked by the state Board of Medicine. When a medical examiner ruled that the deaths of the two women were homicides, Kevorkian was charged in February 1992 with two charges of murder and one count of illegally providing a controlled substance. Unable to gather the medications needed to use the Thanatron, Kevorkian assembled a new machine, called the Mercitron, which delivered carbon monoxide through a gas mask.

While on bail awaiting his trial, Kevorkian was frequently contacted by terminally ill patients and members of their families asking for help. To ensure the comfort of those he assisted and to protect himself against criminal charges, Kevorkian began requiring documentation of a person's wish to die. Family physicians, mental health professionals, social workers, and religious leaders were consulted. His patients had at least one month to consider their decisions and possibly change their minds. Kevorkian's sister, Margaret, videotaped his consultations with "Medicide families." He also spoke on the phone and corresponded with a California dentist who sought assistance in constructing a Medicide machine to end his own life.

Oakland County Circuit Court Judge David Breck dismissed charges against Kevorkian in the deaths of Miller and Wantz in July 1992, but the Oakland County Prosecutor, Richard Thompson, appealed this decision.

In December 1992 the State of Michigan passed a bill outlawing assisted suicide, to take effect on March 30, 1993. On February 15, 1993, Kevorkian helped Hugh Gale, a 73-year-old man with emphysema and congestive heart disease, die in the patient's Roseville, Michigan, home. Prosecutors later discovered papers that showed Kevorkian altered his account of Gale's death, deleting a reference to a request by Gale to halt the procedure.

On February 25, 1993, Michigan Governor John Engler signed legislation banning assisted suicide. In April of that same year a California judge suspended Kevorkian's medical license after a request from that state's Medical Board.

On August 9, 1993, Thomas Hyde, a 30-year-old Novi, Michigan, man with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), was found dead in Kevorkian's van on Belle Isle, a Detroit park. On September 9, hours after a judge ordered Kevorkian to stand trial in Hyde's death, Kevorkian was present at the death of cancer patient Donald O'Keefe, 73, in Redford Township, Michigan.

Jailed in Detroit after refusing to post $20,000 bond in the case involving Thomas Hyde's death, Kevorkian fasted from November 5-8, 1993, before being released. Later that same month, Kevorkian was charged in the October 1993 death of 72-year-old Merian Frederick of Ann Arbor, Michigan, who suffered from Lou Gehrig's disease, and was held in an Oakland County jail for refusing to post $50,000 bond. Kevorkian began another fast (November 29-December 17) and left jail after an Oakland County Circuit Court judge reduced his bond to $100 in exchange for Kevorkian's vow not to assist in any more suicides until state courts resolve the legality of his practice.

The first trial of Dr. Kevorkian began in Pontiac on April 19, 1994. The prosecution charged Kevorkian with murder by administering drugs to Thomas Hyde, assisting him to commit suicide. The trial was presided over by Judge Thomas Jackson, and Richard Thompson led the prosecution. Kevorkian was represented by Geoffrey Fieger of Fieger, Fieger, Kenney, Johnson & Giroux of Southfield, Michigan. Fieger helped Kevorkian escape conviction by successfully arguing that a person may not be found guilty of criminally assisting a suicide if they administered medication with the "intent to relieve pain and suffering," even if it did increase the risk of death. Fieger also brought in Mayer "Mike" Morganroth as co-counsel. Morganroth had 40 years of extensive high-profile criminal trial experience (including cases involving Lyndon Larouche, Mayor Coleman Young, the DeLorean Motor Company, Carolyn Warmus, and the Hierarchy of the Teamsters). Fieger counseled Kevorkian for 6.5 years, while Morganroth co-counseled for a good portion of that period. Morganroth represented Jack Kevorkian for 16.5 years (11 years as sole lead counsel) with respect to a wide range of matters, including criminal trials as co-counsel with Geoffrey Fieger, all of which resulted in acquittal or dismissal of charges; the successful petition for early release of Kevorkian from prison; appeals; and entertainment matters, including book deals, lecture deals, and movie and documentary deals. The jury found Kevorkian not guilty of violating the Michigan law that prohibited assisted suicide in the case of Thomas Hyde's death on May 2. On May 10, 1994, Michigan Court of Appeals declared that the state's 1993 ban on assisted suicide was enacted unlawfully. The court voided the assisted-suicide law, saying it violated the state constitution, which required a bill to have a single object.

On December 13, 1994, the state legislature failed to reach agreement on a bill that would make the ban on assisted suicide indefinite. On the same day, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that assisting in a suicide, while not specifically prohibited by statute, was a common-law felony and that there was no protected right to suicide assistance under the state constitution. This ruling reinstated cases against Kevorkian.

Kevorkian opened a Medicide clinic in Springfield Township, Michigan, in June 1995. He named the clinic after his sister Margaret, who had died in 1994. Kevorkian referred to physician-assisted suicide by euthanasia as "Medicide" and to the people he assisted with such as his "consulting patients" or "Medicide patients." He reasoned that his role was of a "consulting doctor" because he did not provide treatment as would a traditional doctor--by helping patients overcome or control a disease in order to live. The first and only Medicide clinic patient was a 60-year-old Kansas City, Missouri, woman with ALS, Erika Garcellano. A few days later the clinic was evicted by the building's owner.

The second trial of Dr. Kevorkian began on February 20, 1996 in Pontiac, Michigan. Kevorkian was charged in the deaths of Merian Frederick and Dr. Ali Khalili, 61, of Oak Brook, Illinois, who suffered from bone cancer and who died in November 1993. Both deaths occurred in Kevorkian's apartment. The trial was assigned to Judge David Breck, Thompson led the prosecution, and Fieger led the defense team. Thompson argued that Kevorkian had acted recklessly and failed to discuss other options with the deceased's family physicians. Frederick and Khalil family members testified for the defense by expressing their appreciation that Kevorkian ended the suffering experienced by their loved ones. The jury acquitted Kevorkian on March 8, 1996. In 1997, a group calling themselves Merian's Friends formed with the intention of placing the issue of physician-assisted suicide on the ballot in hopes of legalizing the practice.

The third trial began almost immediately after Kevorkian's second acquittal, on April 16, 1996. He was charged in assisting in the deaths of Marjorie Wantz and Sherry Miller in 1991. The prosecution challenged Kevorkian's subjective judgment in determining whether Marjorie Wantz was mentally competent to make the decision to end her own life, as three psychiatrists had diagnosed Wantz as mentally ill and recommended that she receive counseling. Kevorkian faced a maximum of five years in prison and a $10,000 fine if convicted in the Wantz and Miller deaths. For the start of the trial, Kevorkian wore colonial costume--tights, a white powdered wig, and big buckle shoes--meant to protest the fact that he was being tried under centuries-old common law. Once again, defense presented family testimonies. He was acquitted by the jury on May 14, 1996.

During the trials, Kevorkian received support from the professional medical community. In October 1995 a group of doctors and other medical experts in Michigan announced its support of Kevorkian, saying they would draw up a set of guiding principles for the "merciful, dignified, medically-assisted termination of life." In February 1996, the New England Journal of Medicine published results of a massive study of physicians' attitudes towards doctor-assisted suicide in Oregon and Michigan. The study demonstrated that a large number of the physicians surveyed supported doctor-assisted suicide under some conditions. Oregon was the first state to legalize assisted suicide when voters passed a tightly restricted Death with Dignity Act in October 1994. Oregon enacted the Death with Dignity Act in October 27, 1997, allowing terminally-ill Oregonians to end their lives through the voluntary self-administration of lethal medications, expressly prescribed by a physician for that purpose.

Ionia County Circuit Judge Charles Miel declared a mistrial in Dr. Kevorkian's fourth assisted suicide trial, in June 1997, only a day after it got under way. By the time of his fourth trial, Kevorkian admitted attending 45 Medicides since 1990.

Between September and October of 1998, the Michigan legislature enacted a law making assisted suicide a felony punishable by a maximum five-year prison sentence or a $10,000 fine. They also closed the loophole that had allowed for Kevorkian's previous acquittals. On November 22, 1998, CBS's show, 60 Minutes, aired a September 17, 1998, video recording of the lethal injection administered to Thomas Youk, 52, an ALS patient who had requested Kevorkian's help. On the recording, Kevorkian helped Youk to administer the drugs, which was significant in that all of his earlier Medicide patients had reportedly completed the process themselves. Kevorkian allowed the tape to be aired and spoke to 60 Minutes, daring the courts to pursue him legally. Following this program, a second-degree murder charge against Kevorkian was filed. This time Kevorkian chose to represent himself in court.

On March 26, 1999, a jury in Oakland County, Michigan, convicted Kevorkian of second-degree murder and the illegal delivery of a controlled substance. In April, Judge Jessica R. Cooper sentenced him to 10-25 years in prison with the possibility of parole. During the next three years, Kevorkian unsuccessfully attempted to pursue the conviction in appeals court. Lawyers representing Kevorkian sought to bring the case before the U.S. Supreme Court, but that request was also declined.

While in prison, Kevorkian continued to write. He prepared essays that accompanied art, music, photographs, books, and poetry, to be included in the exhibit, "The Doctor Is In: The Art of Dr. Jack Kevorkian," which opened in September 1999 at the Armenian Library and Museum of America in Watertown, Massachusetts. In April 2000 he received the Gleitsman Citizen Activist of the Year Award and a sculpture designed by Maya Lin, creator of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C. In 2002 Kevorkian participated, through written questions, in a program on death and dying at Oklahoma City University. Also in 2002 Dr. Kevorkian was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. In August 2003 he was called to give deposition, as an expert witness on medical research on the effect of mercury on human tissue, based on his early writings on the subject. He prepared articles for The New York Times, the William Safire column, "On Language," Forbes ASAP, Popular Mechanics, New York Review of Books, The Nation, and American Journal of Forensics Psychiatry, among others. Kevorkian wrote the books glimmerIQs (2004)--an anthology on previous research and new material on philosophy, medicine, mathematics, religion, history, health, medicine, art, humor, his life, and the future; Amendment IX: Our Cornucopia of Rights (2005)--a book on the subject of the U.S. Bill of Rights; and in 2007 Kevorkian started working on Dear Dr. Jack, using selected letters out of the thousands written to him by supporters during his incarceration.

After eight years in prison, on June 1, 2007, Kevorkian was paroled for good behavior and released from the Lakeland Correctional Facility. He was on parole for two years, under the conditions that he not assist anyone else in dying or provide care for anyone older than 62 or disabled. He was also forbidden by the rules of his parole from commenting about assisted suicide. Kevorkian said he would abstain from assisting any more terminal patients with Medicide and that he would restrict his role to persuading states to change their laws on assisted suicide.

As Kevorkian was suffering from liver damage due to his advanced stages of Hepatitis C, doctors suspected he had little time left to live. However, in 2008, at the age of 79, Kevorkian decided to run as an Independent candidate for the U.S. Congress, against Republican Joe Knollenberg and Democrat Gary Peters. Also in 2008, he began working on his book, When the People Bubble Pops , about the dangers of overpopulation around the world. In 2009 Kevorkian lectured to more than 5,000 students--at the University of Florida, Wayne State University, and other colleges. The following year Kevorkian wrote on the subject of the Ninth Amendment in the form of a Bill of Rights of Natural Rights, prepared another anthology of his early research for World Press, and spoke to the Armenian Association at UCLA.

In 2010 Kevorkian attempted to travel to Armenia but was not allowed on the plane from Berlin, Germany. Also that year he met with the executive team of the HBO film, You Don't Know Jack. Production had begun in 2005, while Kevorkian was still imprisoned. The film is based in part on the book, Between the Dying and the Dead: Dr. Jack Kevorkian's Life and the Battle to Legalize Euthanasia by Neal Nicol and Harry Wylie (University of Wisconsin Press, 2006). The film featured Al Pacino as Jack Kevorkian, Brenda Vaccaro as Margaret Janus, Susan Sarandon as Janet Good (a longtime civil rights worker who cooperated with Kevorkian), Danny Huston as Geoffrey Fieger, and John Goodman as Neal Nicol. The film was released later in 2010 and was nominated for 16 Emmys. Kevorkian attended the 2010 Emmy Awards in Los Angeles, where Al Pacino asked him to "stand before the world." In addition to You Don't Know Jack, he was the subject of the documentaries Right to Exit (2004) and Kevorkian (2010).

Kevorkian's art has received critical acclaim. Many of his paintings created after 1993 are preserved in a permanent collection of Dr. Jack Kevorkian's materials at the Armenian Library and Museum of America in Watertown, Massachusetts. Kevorkian referred to his paintings as social, political, and medical commentaries that should provoke thought and discussion on aspects of life that may be disagreeable but are universal. Several of the paintings are part of a series on medical signs and symptoms, in which Kevorkian shows the conditions of human suffering that he witnessed on a daily basis.

His musical art depicts the lighter side of mankind. An active musician and composer, he played and composed pieces for flute, organ, piano, and keyboard. His personal idol was Johann Sebastian Bach, whose works were played in Kevorkian's hospital room before he died. Kevorkian's own musical compositions are strongly influenced by Bach, and some of his 1999 paintings are celebrations of Bach's music.

In 2010 Kevorkian's website, The Kevorkian Papers, was launched www.thekevorkianpapers.com.

Dr. Jack Kevorkian died on Friday, June 3, 2011, at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Michigan. With him were his niece, Ava Janus, and his attorney and friend, Mayer Morganroth. Kevorkian was 83.

Acquisition Information:

Donated by Ava Janus (Donor no. 11,111 ) in May 2014.

Processing information:

In preparing digital material for long-term preservation and access, the Bentley Historical Library adheres to professional best practices and standards to ensure that content will retain its authenticity and integrity. For more information on procedures for the ingest and processing of digital materials, please see Bentley Historical Library Digital Processing Note.

Arrangement:

The Jack Kevorkian papers are arranged into five series: Kevorkian Family; Research and Practice, Morganroth & Morganroth; Personal Interests, and Medicide Files.

Accruals:

No further additions to the collection are expected.

Rules or Conventions:

Finding aid prepared using Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS)

Subjects

Click on terms below to find any related finding aids on this site.

Subjects:

Armenian Americans -- Michigan.
Assisted suicide -- Law and legislation -- United States.
Assisted suicide -- Moral and ethic aspects.
Constitutional amendments -- United States.
Death row inmates.
Donation of organs, tissues, etc.
Euthanasia.
Right to die.
Terminally ill.
Transplantation of organs, etc.
Medical equipment & supplies.
Sick persons.

Formats:

Digital file formats.
Interviews.
Photographs.
Paintings (visual works).
Photographs.
Placards (information artifacts).
Postcards.
Sheet music.
Sound recordings.
Video recordings.

Names:

Kevorkian, Jack.
family, Kevorkian.
Morganroth, Mayer.

Places:

Armenia.