An 82-year-old mother in the United Kingdom (UK) is demanding answers after discovering that her son, who she thought had been missing, was actually killed at Pegasos, an assisted suicide and euthanasia business in Switzerland.
Judith Hamilton told ITV News that her son, 47-year-old Alastair Hamilton, told her he was visiting Paris in August of last year. “He put his arms around me, looked me straight in the eyes and he was smiling,” she said. “And he said ‘love you, mum, love you lots, always have, always will no matter what.'”
In reality, Alastair was traveling to Pegasos to die. He had been complaining of stomach problems, but hadn’t been given a specific diagnosis. He told Pegasos that the illness was causing him “pain, fatigue and discomfort” which had “devastated my life.” He also admitted that “there is no current, definitive medical explanation” for his illness, and that his family didn’t know he was planning to die — but that didn’t matter. It took just days after Alastair filed his application for Pegasos to collect its money — £11,000, or nearly $14,000 — and for Alastair to die.
Meanwhile, Hamilton became concerned after Alastair did not return from his supposed Paris trip, and so she reported him missing. After some investigation, she found the payment to Pegasos in his bank records, but Pegasos refused to give the grieving mother any information, until the British embassy and police got involved. Only then did it admit Alastair had been given and had taken a lethal dose of drugs, and finally give Hamilton her son’s ashes.
ITV News was able to trace Alastair’s death to an office building next to an asphalt factory, and at their request, took the Hamilton family to see where their brother and son had died. “It’s not the best place to be for your last view of earth,” Alastair’s brother, Bradley said. “It’s even more heart-breaking that someone could have been with him, but they didn’t tell us and he didn’t feel that [he could].”
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Sean Davison was the last person to speak with Alastair before he died. He works for Exit International, a pro-death organization founded by Philip Nitschke, nicknamed “Dr. Death.” In a statement, Davison claimed he didn’t know Alastair’s family was unaware of his intentions to be killed. “He said he had told [his family] but they didn’t want to talk about it,” Davison said. “He said they didn’t support him. I didn’t know they weren’t coming until the very end. I had nothing to do with it, I was only his friend. He even phoned me from his death bed and said ‘Sean I’m just so grateful to have had a friend to talk to.’ I tried [to dissuade him] every time I spoke to him. I said you’re a handsome man, you’ve got such a life ahead of you. I really pleaded with him, I would never encourage anybody to end their life.”
Swiss law allows anyone to be killed through assisted suicide or euthanasia for any reason, and Pegasos has been happy to kill perfectly healthy people. In 2022, for example, musician Anton Fier was killed because he was depressed, had financial problems, and didn’t want to become an old man. A pair of healthy sisters from the United States were also killed at Pegasos without their family’s knowledge, likewise leading the panicked family to search frantically for the two women before discovering they had been killed.
In 2022, the Swiss Medical Association issued guidelines saying that families should be informed before a person undergoes assisted suicide or euthanasia, but Pegasos has clearly not adhered to that. Following an ITV News investigation, however, Pegasos claimed it plans to change its procedures to ensure that relatives are always informed in the future.
“I was robbed of the chance of going there and cuddling him whilst he did it, giving him a kiss goodbye all because these checks and balances weren’t in place at Pegasos,” Bradley said.
Hamilton added, “We weren’t given that chance to either be with him or in my case, drag him home, tooth and nail if I had to.”
