A VIRTUAL PATH TO SUICIDE / Depressed student killed herself with help from online discussion group

SUICIDE601a_6/8_COLOR_3star_A-Section_a1_full_burr, 8437 SUICIDE601a_6/8_COLOR_3star_A-Section_a1_full_burr, 8437 Photo: HANDOUT Photo: HANDOUT Image 1 of / 8 Caption Close A VIRTUAL PATH TO SUICIDE / Depressed student killed herself with help from online discussion group 1 / 8 Back to Gallery

2003-06-08 04:00:00 PDT Red Bluff -- Suzy Gonzales zipped around this small ranching town on a red scooter, wearing a fuchsia wig and carrying a stuffed two-headed cat that she'd stitched together from scratch.

She favored plaid skirts with green sneakers, came from a tight-knit family and earned a full scholarship to Florida State University. She had a radiant smile.

She was also depressed and wanted to kill herself.

Unbeknownst to her friends and loved ones, the 19-year-old logged onto an obscure Internet site to confide her darkest thoughts to strangers.

There, Gonzales found people who told her that suicide was an acceptable way to end her despair, and who gave her instructions on how to obtain a lethal dose of potassium cyanide and mix it into a deadly cocktail.

During the early hours of March 23, after she cleaned her apartment and fed her kittens, Gonzales checked into a Tallahassee motel, where she stirred the poison into a glass of tap water, checked its acidity with a pH meter, and drank it.

Her family, best friend, and the Tallahassee police were notified of her death by time-delayed e-mails that she had prepared with the help of another member of the online community.

and Jennifer" -- she wrote her parents and 21-year-old sister in an e-mail entitled "One last note" -- "I will make this short, as I know it will be hard to deal with. If you haven't heard by now, I have passed away.

"I know I should have told you, but I have been depressed and suicidal for a long, long time -- it is all right to be sad and it is all right to cry. These types of things tend to happen, and it really isn't that big of a deal. Death is just another part of life."

Gonzales' death is the 14th confirmed suicide associated with the online discussion group (which The Chronicle is not identifying). An additional 14 suicides are listed by the group as "success stories" but cannot be verified because the individuals used anonymous screen names, and the group has refused to disclose their true identities.

The number of deaths may be higher. Evidence suggests that at least one person who never actually communicated with the group killed herself after downloading instructions on how to commit suicide by inhaling carbon monoxide.

Founded in 1990, the discussion group defines its philosophy as being "pro- choice" suicide. Participants view suicide as a civil right that anyone should be able to exercise, for whatever reason.

On any given day, the Internet site is filled with hopeless rants about life's miseries, advertisements for suicide partners, and requests for feedback on self-murder plans. Among the hottest items is a "methods file," a step-by-step guide on how to commit suicide -- from asphyxiation to rat poison.

The group vigorously defends itself, citing what it sees as a need for people to express suicidal thoughts without fear of being hospitalized by their therapists or alarming their families. But mental health experts and the relatives of group members who have died charge that the group actually encourages depressed people to kill themselves.

The suicide group that Gonzales found has made a few headlines internationally. In one case, a 20-year-old Norwegian man placed an ad for a suicide partner -- which was answered by a 17-year-old Austrian girl. The pair flung themselves off Norway's 1,900-foot Pulpit Rock in February 2000.

A year later, a German man and a Californian woman, both in their 40s, made a similar pact and shot themselves to death in a Monterey hotel.

In another case, a 30-year-old unemployed salesman drove to a campsite overlooking a scenic Colorado river, lit the two charcoal grills he'd stowed in his car, and rolled up the windows.

Then there's the 17-year-old English boy who hung himself. Just before doing so, he created a Web site that opened with the message: "Hi, and welcome to the homepage of my death."

Suzy Gonzales sent her first message to the group on Jan. 12, when she started a survey titled, "Why Do You Want To Die?" She answered her own question first.

"I'm bored. I am bored with life," she wrote. "I cannot possibly think of anything I want to do that is worth doing. I just want to sleep all day."

Furthermore, she added, she was tired, sad and didn't enjoy anything.

Over the next two months, she posted more than 100 messages to the group. She described taking antidepressants that didn't improve her mood, dropping out of Florida State, where she majored in math and meteorology, and calling a suicide hot line about "a friend" before losing her nerve and hanging up to cry.

"I have a wonderful family who will support me in all that I do," she wrote.

"I make enough money to get by. I have a few close, excellent friends. I'm not hideous nor morbidly obese. I'm no toothpick supermodel, though.

"I am just your average Joan who has everything to lose and is willing to lose it for absolutely no reason. I am tired. I want to sleep."

Like the relatives of other members of the online group who have killed themselves, Mike and Mary Gonzales had no idea of their daughter's involvement with it until after her death.

When Mike Gonzales, a robust 43-year-old retired firefighter, speaks of the online group, rage simmers beneath his controlled exterior.

"She went to that group, and it was like throwing gasoline on a fire," said Gonzales, whose father died from a long-term illness a week before his daughter killed herself. "I'm all for free speech, but once you start telling young impressionable kids how to kill themselves, that's crossing the line. Someone should be held accountable."

Mike Gonzales was particularly close to his daughter. They frequently chatted online and by telephone. Such was his devotion to his daughter that when she became distressed after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, he flew across the country and drove her back home to be with family.

Mary Gonzales, a 50-year-old hospital administrator, believes that if her youngest girl could have held on a little longer, she would have learned to navigate the ebbs and flows of human existence and blossomed into a strong, soulful woman. Instead, she stumbled across an online group that told her that life was not worth living.

"They never told her that people do work through depression and get better and go on to live happy lives," said Mary Gonzales, whose voice often dissolves into silence when she tries to put into words what happened. "They never gave her hope."

It took several attempts, Suzy wrote the group, but she was able to order potassium cyanide online as well as a pH meter, "so I can be sure that the . . . concoction isn't too basic/acidic for my throat."

To get the materials, Gonzales used a trick recommended by other group members.

Posing as a jeweler, she ordered the cyanide online, ostensibly to polish metal. She also requested several other chemicals to make her order look genuine.

Gonzales' order, billed to "Winston Jewelers," didn't raise a red flag at the Massachusetts chemical manufacturer, which in turn sold her the poison.

"All the materials she ordered points to a legitimate jewelry operation," said Darrell Sanders, who oversees chemical sales at Alfa Aesar. "She fooled me -- and it hurts, emotionally."

Gonzales patterned her suicide after another member of the group, Dave Conibear, who killed himself in 1992. The 28-year-old Canadian software engineer detailed online the exact proportions of his cyanide concoction. He timed a message to be delivered to the group after his death, and even programmed his computer to dial 911.

Two weeks before she died, Gonzales cryptically signed her message "2 weeks"; seven days before, she signed off "one week."

On March 21, she wrote: "Today, I feel great. Besides feeling a bit light- headed, I feel good. The sun is shining, the air is warm. It feels like such a nice day to just lie in the sun. To quote Richie Tenenbaum, 'I am going to kill myself tomorrow.'

"I've stopped taking my meds so I'm not happy and decide that life is worth living. I will just get down again someday . . . I am preventing that."

Suzy Gonzales last talked to her parents on the evening of March 22. She told them she was looking for airplane tickets to return to California for her grandfather's funeral.

The last thing she said to her father was: "I love you, Dad. I'll see you soon."

In December, a Kansas woman named Joanne Hossack filed a wrongful death suit against a member who posted a message to the group that she had been on the phone with Hossack's 17-year-old son and "kept him company" as he intentionally overdosed on drugs.

Hossack dropped the case after learning that her son's online friend was also a troubled minor.

In May 2002, two Englishmen in their mid-30s -- Michael Gooden and Louis Gillies -- met through the suicide group and made a pact to jump off a cliff together in East Sussex. But while Gooden plunged to his death, Gillies changed his mind at the last minute and narrated the episode in a posting online.

Investigators found Gillies' posting and arrested him for violating the country's Suicide Act, which makes it illegal to aid, abet or counsel another person to commit suicide and carries a jail sentence of up to 14 years.

When Gillies failed to appear in court last month, police went to his flat. He had hanged himself.

Until 12:01 a.m. March 23, Suzy was conversing online about her deadly itinerary with a suicide group member named "River." But River did nothing to stop her.

"Suzy had me proofread her notes, and we went over all the details of her exit just to be safe," River wrote the group after her suicide, which he referred to as a passage into "transition."

The only information that the Gonzaleses have about River are a few biographical scraps embedded in his posts, where he mentions living in central Florida with a wife and an 18-year-old son.

In an e-mail interview, River refused to reveal his real name. He said that he never met Gonzales or even talked to her on the phone, but that he respected her decision to kill herself.

"I consider suicide to be an acceptable solution to problems in life that people consider to be answerable by suicide," he wrote.

River also said that alerting police would have been a betrayal.

"I don't betray my friends ever," he wrote in the e-mail. "Even in death. And yes, Suzy was and is my friend."

A few minutes past midnight on March 23, Suzy Gonzales composed her final note to the group. The subject line was "Goodnight."

"Bye everyone, see you on the other side," she wrote, ending the note with her characteristic "! Suzy."

"Smooth sailing," one person online responded. "I'll be following soon," replied another.

Shortly after sending the message, Gonzales tucked the can of cyanide into her purse, got into her car, and drove to the Red Roof Inn.

In the United States, assisted suicide laws were passed to prevent people from deliberately helping others end their lives by supplying them with a method, such as enough drugs for a fatal overdose, or physically assisting them.

Simply informing someone how to kill themselves is another matter, said euthanasia activist Derek Humphrey, who wrote a suicide manual for the terminally ill called "Final Exit."

"I've been monitoring the U.S. assisted suicide laws for more than 20 years,

and it does not appear that counseling is a crime," said Humphrey.

Group members say that discussing their suicidal inclinations online is much easier than in real life.

"When online, I am calm and collected, but give me a couple of seconds of talking about (suicide) in person and it's the same as with the suicide hotline," Gonzales wrote 10 days before her death. "I get shaky and start crying. And then I just feel silly -- Basically, I just need a friend who will understand me."

These groups "exist because they wanted to be in a space where they wouldn't be controlled," said Lauren Weinstein, co-founder of People For Internet Responsibility, which studies cyberspace issues. "Fundamentally, these groups bring with them all the benefits and all the risks that are present with unfettered communication."

Andrew Beals, a San Jose programmer, launched the group in November 1990 while he was having marital problems. He said he was active in the online community for a couple of years before dropping out when he "got a divorce, got happier and got a dog."

Reached by phone, Beals sounded surprised to hear that the group had led to actual deaths.

"I hope they didn't leave a giant mess for other people to clean up," he said. "It's bad enough to leave a psychic mess, but to leave physical evidence is a great big F--- Y--."

Beals reiterated his belief in suicide as a valid way to end depression and terminal illness, but also said the online group "wasn't intended to be a fly trap for the suicidal."

Indeed, had Gonzales told a therapist that she had both a plan and a means to kill herself, she could have been forcibly hospitalized.

"It could be considered malpractice and we could be sued if we didn't," said Herbert Hendin, medical director for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

Michael Naylor, a psychiatrist at the University of Illinois at Chicago, suggested that Gonzales' cryptic countdown and repeated recounting of her plans could have been a cry for help that was ignored by the online group.

"The only purpose (this group) serves is helping people to kill themselves, " said Naylor. "What a lot of these (people) don't seem to realize is that suicide is the last choice you get to make. Once you're dead, you can't undo that. Life isn't a game that can be played over again."

Suzy sent six time-delayed e-mails to the Tallahassee police, telling them that she'd ingested cyanide and that they could find her at the Red Roof Inn.

When investigators entered her motel room, they discovered her corpse alongside the poison, which she'd carefully repackaged.

In her e-mail to her parents, Gonzales had a request for her memorial service: Please play "Fire and Rain," James Taylor's elegy to a friend who committed suicide.

That friend was named Suzanne, too.

It is a Saturday afternoon in Red Bluff. Banners flutter over the main drag,

advertising the high school's presentation of "A Man For All Seasons." A rodeo is under way at the fairgrounds. And at a chapel, a somber crowd gathers to remember Suzanne Michelle Gonzales.

On a table in front of the room, there are dozens of framed pictures -- one of Gonzales coquettishly pulling up her yellow high school graduation gown to expose knee-high athletic socks; another where she is a bright-eyed toddler gripping her mother's hand. Nearby, the nameless two-headed cat leans against a red scooter. One of the feline's faces is happy -- the other not.

Gonzales' parents walk into the chapel with a beige urn and place it at the center of these mementos of their daughter's life. That same urn had rested between them on the front seat of a U-haul truck as they drove back to California with the contents of Suzy's Florida apartment.

Suzy's high school speech teacher, Nancy Hickson, recalls for the crowd how Suzy gave her a purple wig after Hickson lost her hair to chemotherapy.

"When I met her, I thought, 'Finally, a teen who isn't afraid to be different,' " she says. "Suzy had a creative streak a mile wide."

John Bohrer, the local Southern Baptist pastor, compares Gonzales' quirky humor and zest for life to that of Lucille Ball's.

Her best friend, 19-year-old Desiree Sok, describes Gonzales as a spontaneous fun-lover, someone with whom she'd cruise around Tallahassee in the middle of the night blaring ska music and eating doughnuts. Someone who'd swerve onto the shoulder of a dark road and jump out of the car just to chase fireflies.

"I don't think she realized all the memories would stop," Sok says, her voice trailing off.

As a slide show of Suzy's life plays on a screen, James Taylor's haunting melody provides the soundtrack: "I've seen fire and I've seen rain/I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end/I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend/But I always thought that I'd see you again."

When the music fades and the images go black, the attendees shuffle from the room in silence.

There is nothing left to do but stack the photographs back into cardboard boxes, wheel away the red scooter, and remove the two-headed cat.

After everything else has been taken away, Mike Gonzales gently lifts the urn containing his daughter's ashes, clutches it to his chest, and carries it to the parking lot.