She fought her instincts to call an ambulance after he took an overdose, only calling the doctor once she knew he was dead
WHEN Jill Anderson found her husband Paul surrounded by empty pill packets after taking an overdose, she fought her instincts to call an ambulance.
Instead, she stroked his face and whispered soothing words as life slowly ebbed out of him, only calling the doctor once she knew he was dead.
Jill was not motivated by callousness or a desire to see her best friend and lover die.
Instead, she insists she was allowing him the escape from the never-ending debilitating pain he so desperately craved.
But police viewed it differently. Jill, then 46, was arrested and charged with manslaughter, only to be acquitted.
Speaking at her home in Exeter, Devon, Jill says: “During the court case someone suggested I should have walked out after seeing Paul had taken the overdose so I couldn’t be blamed for it.
But I wouldn’t have left him by himself. I couldn’t have walked out. If Paul was going to die I didn’t want it to be alone. No way.
“I didn’t think about myself, I put him first. It was the best I could give him.”
Jill has written a powerful book, Unbroken Trust, about her decade-long ordeal, first with Paul’s illness, and then the fight to clear her name.
Today she can look back on their time together and revel in the happy memories. But it has taken a long time to let go of the anger of being accused of killing him.
The couple met in September 1992 after mutual pals set up a blind-date.
Smiling at the memory, Jill, now 57, said: “It was like he was the missing piece of the jigsaw.
“We weren’t dependent on each other, we both had our independence within the marriage but he made my life complete.”
Within three years they married in a small ceremony, surrounded by their closest friends and family.
It was around the same time, in July 1995, that Paul started to feel ill with flu-like symptoms.
Jill asked if he wanted to cancel the ceremony but he refused, hoping antibiotics prescribed by the doctor would kick in. But they never did.
Gradually Paul’s symptoms worsened. Some days he’d be forced to spend the day in bed, exhausted and in excruciating pain.
He saw countless doctors and specialists, and had spells in hospital but to no avail.
The couple scoured the internet, finally settling on a diagnosis of ME or chronic fatigue syndrome.
Desperate, Paul made several attempts to end his life. Twice he attempted to overdose on pills and once Jill was forced to pull a hosepipe from their car as he attempted to suffocate himself with exhaust fumes.
“It was the pain,” explains Jill, “it was relentless and excruciating. He couldn’t bear it.”
In July 2003, Jill had popped out to buy a pizza and chicken for their dinner. She recalls: “Something was different on this day.”
When she returned, Paul was sitting on the edge of the bed clutching the mattress with his back towards her.
She asked if he was OK and he turned towards her, apologising. “I’m sorry, I’ve taken enough this time,” he said, before rolling back and revealing a piece of paper – his suicide note – stuck to him.
It read: “I’m sorry. I can’t stand the pain anymore. I love you. Your darling bear, Paul.”
As he drifted into a deep sleep, Jill scanned the empty packets of morphine beside him on the bedside cabinet.
Previously, she’d always intervened to stop Paul killing himself, but this time she did not stop him.
“We’d reached the end and we were at the point where it was impossible for him. He was in constant, constant pain and the last six months were a rapid decline,” she says.
“It was like watching someone slide down a very deep cliff and I was leaning over trying to grab him as his hand slipped out of mine.
“What was different about that day? I really don’t know, just that it was ‘the’ day.
“There was just too much suffering. He’d been in and out of hospital. We’d explored every avenue and there was nothing left.”
Jill says Paul’s dying hours were the most peaceful he’d been in a long time. She stayed awake all night next to Paul, stroking his hair as he snored – a welcome sound as sleep had evaded him for so long because of the pain.
The following morning, he opened his eyes for the last time before taking his final breath. Jill spent her last few moments with him before calling for the doctor.
“I didn’t feel abandoned by Paul, I just wish he had some other options but he didn’t. He was in terminal decline and the illness was going to kill him.
“He killed himself before he had to ask me. He’d worked out all the possible equations and looked at anything that could help him improve his life – there were none.”
She pauses. “Could I have administered the fatal dose if he couldn’t? No. I couldn’t have killed him.”
The hours and days that followed went by in a blur although Jill, could feel the police’s line of questioning becoming more accusatory.
And two weeks later, she was arrested on suspicion of assisting suicide and manslaughter, and was later charged with manslaughter.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Jill says quietly. “I was in shock. It hadn’t crossed my mind that I had done anything that could be seen as wrong in the eyes of the law because it was an act of love.”
In April 2005, she appeared at Leeds crown court.
The prosecution argued Jill had failed in her duty of care to Paul – a morphine overdose is easily treated and they argued if she had acted, he would have survived.
But the jury acquitted her after just two hours, mouthing “good luck” to her as she left the court room.
She says: “I’d been terrified of going to prison and being found not guilty felt like a victory for both of us.
“But it was as though my grief had been on hold up to that point and then I had to deal with it.”
Seven years on the pain is still raw, on anniversaries his birthday, their wedding, the day he died.
Yet as much as she has suffered, and has watched Paul suffer, she has some comfort knowing he died the best death he could, surrounded by love.
“He had the perfect death. He gently slipped away,” she says.