Hugh Finn, the 44-year-old news anchor from Louisville, Kentucky, who made national news when his wife Michele successfully sued to remove his feeding tube over the objections of his parents and other family members, died of dehydration and starvation on October 9 at Annaburg Manor in Manassas, Va.

Did this simply allow the 'natural' process of death for a terminal patient as the Supreme Court of Virginia claimed? Or was Hugh Finn legally murdered by order of his wife, with the cooperation of Annaburg Administrator David Tucker, medical director Robin Merlino, Judge Frank Hoss of Prince William Circuit Court, and the Virginia Supreme Court?

March 9, 1995: the tragedy begins

On an icy winter morning as he drove his daughters to the bus stop, Hugh's truck collided head-on with another vehicle. The girls weren't badly hurt, but a ruptured aorta deprived Hugh of oxygen, leaving him seriously brain-damaged. He spent most of the next year at Moss Rehabilitation Hospital in Philadelphia. Although Hugh could take food and water by mouth, a feeding tube guaranteed sufficient nourishment.

Upon Hugh's release in February 1996, Moss documented that he had developed communication techniques and was a 'good' candidate for long-term rehabilitation.

He was transferred to Annaburg Manor in Manassas, Va., near his parents. Michele remained in Louisville with their two daughters, visiting occasionally. She was named her husband's legal guardian.

The time at Annaburg

Hugh's dad, Tom Finn, was a daily visitor at Annaburg. He went in the morning to shave him, took him for walks in his wheelchair or to Mass at nearby All Saints Catholic Church, and often visited at night to prepare him for bed. 'He was never clean,' Finn said.

Michele asked once why he was wasting his time. 'I'm 72,' he replied, 'I can do what I want.' The activities director at Annaburg suggested he should 'get a life.' 'Hugh is my life,' he answered.

Another regular visitor was Hugh's best friend from college, Steve Martino. Steve had introduced Michele and Hugh, was best man at their wedding, and was godfather to their daughter, Keely.

Steve came from Annapolis to see Hugh at least once a month. 'We had a good time,' he told me. Hugh's dad said every spring Steve would pick Hugh up in his convertible, strap the wheelchair to the bike rack, and take him into Washington to see the cherry blossoms. According to Steve, Hugh could speak, laugh, sing, and answer questions using eye signals.

June, 1998: Michele's decision

Michele called for a meeting in June at the nursing home, where the medical director, Dr. Robin Merlino, announced they were going to 'terminate' Hugh's feeding the next day.

The announcement, a bombshell, sparked immediate objections from the family. Michele was determined. According to Tom Finn, a few days later she 'chewed my head off and wanted to know why I wouldn't do what she wanted.'

Doctors had told her Hugh was in a persistent vegetative state (PVS) and would never recover. He wouldn't want to live like that, Michele insisted. Finn was so angry over the exchange he told Hugh Michele was going to kill him, an act he immediately regretted. '[Hugh's] face turned red. He pinched his lips in. His hands were on his chest grabbing [at his clothing]. He shivered and shivered for 45 minutes. I had begun to believe what the doctors said [about PVS], but then I knew. 'You do understand!''

Hugh's parents and siblings weren't the only ones who disagreed. Michele's own mother and sister opposed her. Mary Margaret Keely, Michele's mom, didn't believe the PVS diagnosis, which describes a patient as unaware of his surroundings and unresponsive. At Christmas Hugh had thanked her for a gift and asked for Elaine, Michele's sister.

When she heard what Michele was going to do, she said, she immediately went to see her. 'I told Michele I love her unconditionally, but I couldn't support her in what she was doing.'

As things heated up, John Finn, Hugh's brother, representing the family, challenged Michele for guardianship. At the July hearing before Judge Hoss in Prince William Circuit Court he lost. Hoss gave Michele permission to remove the tube after 30 days and assessed John Finn $13,300 of her legal fees plus other expenses. The Finns planned to appeal.

Delegate Bob Marshall enters the fray

In September, with the family in total turmoil, Elaine Glazier, Michele's sister, horrified by the decision to starve her brother-in-law, called Va. State Delegate Bob Marshall for help. She said Hugh was able to speak until March, when a medication was discontinued.

Marshall documented other troubling aspects of the case. A shunt put in to drain fluid from the brain hadn't been checked for over a year. If blocked, it could affect Hugh's ability to speak. Hugh showed many behaviors inconsistent with PVS:

tracking people with his eyes, following directions, nodding yes and no to questions, kissing, singing, and using eye signals.

On Father's Day of 1997 he lifted his leg at daughter Keely's request. During the summer of 1998 he twice told nurse's aide Aubrey Elliott, 'You can go now!'

Because Hugh sometimes didn't swallow, a sign was posted over the bed reading 'nothing by mouth.' When a layman from All Saints who brought Holy Communion told Hugh he couldn't give it to him, Hugh cried.

Marshall questioned the PVS diagnosis and called for a state investigation. Euthanasia is illegal in Virginia, but the Health Care Decisions Act permits dehydration and starvation of PVS patients who show 'loss of consciousness, with no behavioral evidence of self-awareness of surroundings in a learned manner.' More and more states around the country are passing this type of legislation, which many believe is 1990s doublespeak for 'useless eater,' an excuse to eliminate the helpless.

Doubt about the PVS diagnosis was heightened when state nurse Marie Saul visited Hugh on September 18 and reported he said 'Hi' to her and smoothed his hair. 'I was surprised at how normal he looked . . . If it had not been for lack of responses . . . I would not have thought that he would be diagnosed as chronic vegetative.'

Despite her report, Judge Hoss denied a new hearing to reevaluate High's condition. He did not order a PET scan test, which can more accurately determine PVS, even though research shows patients are routinely misdiagnosed (43 percent, according to the British Medical Journal of July and October, 1996).

Meanwhile, the media described Hugh as 'comatose' and 'vegetative' and implied he was terminal and being kept alive by artificial means. In a letter to the Washington Post after Hugh's death, his brother, Ed Finn, put that lie to rest. 'Up until shortly before he died, my brother was unconscious only during regular sleep cycles. He was conscious at other times.'

The media battle and dehumanization of Hugh

Disagreement within the Finn family turned what could have been a quiet killing into a media event. Michele and her lawyer, Greg Murphy, held news conferences and appeared on TV talk shows defending her choice. 'He wouldn't have wanted me to suffer,' she said. Michele denied Hugh could communicate. She refused, however, to allow a Washington Post reporter into his room and banned video cameras. Why? Was she afraid the world would see that he was awake and aware?

A few days before the appeal deadline, Michele called another meeting and asked the Finns to withdraw the suit. They capitulated, the beginning of the end for Hugh. John Finn spoke for the family, saying, 'We have all decided that Hugh would not wish to remain in the physical condition he was in and have agreed to have artificial hydration and nutrition withdrawn.'

Despite his words, the family did not agree with the decision. They were apparently just tired of fighting. 'We wanted the turmoil to calm down,' John told reporters, 'we wanted family peace.' Hugh's mom, Joan Finn, said later they felt they had no other options.

Meanwhile, Michele set up an 'approved list' of visitors, excluding her own mother and sister and Hugh's good friend, Steve Martino, as well as Hugh's priests from All Saints Catholic Church. Steve visited on October 3 anyway and asked Hugh if he wanted to eat. Hugh blinked yes. The duty nurse and David Tucker ordered Steve to leave. He refused. 'I thought my being left off the list was an oversight. If Michele really wanted what was best for Hugh, she would have let me stay.'

Hugh's mother and brother, who were in the room at the time, agreed. But the police were called, Steve was handcuffed, led away, charged with trespassing and released on $750 bond.

On Friday evening, October 2, Michele berated a priest from All Saints who came to see Hugh and refused to allow him in the room. She was absent two days later when another priest, formerly from the parish, visited and administered last rites.

The battle between good and evil

I went to see David Tucker, the administrator, on September 30 and begged him not to cooperate with evil by removing the feeding tube the next day. To starve and dehydrate Hugh, I said, was to tell every resident at Annaburg, 'If your family wants you dead, we'll kill you too.'

Tucker said they had no choice but to obey the law. Questioning that statement, I called the Attorney General's office. Annaburg was not, in fact, required to carry out the killing. Bob Marshall had sent Tucker an article about a New Jersey nursing home's refusal to starve patients. But Tucker was committed. I learned later that Hugh was at least the fourth patient starved to death at Annaburg Manor.

On October 1 Michele had the feeding tube removed and Hugh's personal agony began. News articles appeared saying Hugh's death would be painless. Michele was quoted in a Kentucky newspaper interview saying, 'All medical evidence points to the fact that the withdrawal of hydration and feeding is not starvation, and it is not painful, and that the person slowly goes into a sleep-like state and the death is actully very peaceful.'

It reminded me of pro-abortionists who claim unborn babies feel no pain during abortion.

Bill and Nancy Supples, parents from [nearby] Seton School, organized dinnertime prayer vigils outside Annaburg Manor to unite the community more closely with Hugh, who was being denied his meals. During the following days, hundreds participated. I picketed and prayed alone at odd hours carrying a sign that read, 'Useless Eater Hugh Finn being starved to death here.'

On one occasion two women exiting the nursing home yelled, 'It's not your choice!' As pro-lifers predicted in 1973, the choice to kill the unborn had become the choice to kill the helpless.

As the state continued to fight for Hugh's life, Michele and her lawyer escalated the attack against Del. Bob Marshall and Gov. Jim Gilmore. Gilmore responded in a news conference of his own on October 2. 'Assuming . . . that Hugh Finn is in a persistent vegetative state, he is nevertheless not dying. On the contrary, the manifest purpose and effect of denying him food and water is to initiate a dying process not previously present . . . I believe my job as governor, my role, is to protect those people who are most frail in society and cannot necessarily protect themselves.'

The state rushed to get a court hearing to reinsert the feeding tube. The Supreme Court of Virginia refused to hear the case. Since Annaburg Manor is licensed by the state, Marshall sought an investigation by the Medicaid oversight committee at Prince William Hospital and petitioned for a review in Federal Court.

Both attempts failed. Hugh was a dead man.

The ordeal

It took High nine days to die of dehydration. I met Joan Finn, his mother, outside the nursing home on October 7. Obviously distraught, she said, 'Don't let anyone ever tell you this isn't a horrible way to die. No law should allow this!'

A few days earlier she told a reporter, 'I just don't think that [Hugh] should be put to death. Tom and I are willing to take care of him.'

Except when sleeping, Hugh remained conscious with eyes open for eight days, as the press reported his mouth drying out and his deteriorating condition. While the media quoted doctors' assurances of a comfortable death, the nursing home administered morphine and Hugh's parents said he seemed to be in pain and was 'moaning and groaning something awful.'

On October 8 Hugh slipped into a coma and died the next morning. Michele had instructed the nursing home not to notify the Finns when Hugh died, so they didn't even receive the courtesy of a phone call.

The betrayal of two bishops

Of all those who should have defended Hugh's right to life, paramount among them was his bishop, Thomas Kelly of Louisville. In a September 23 telephone interview with Jerry Filteau of Catholic News Service, Kelly said he wrote Michele a personal letter because some of the family, particularly Hugh's parents, were opposing her. He told her, 'The responsibility was hers . . . and we, the Catholic family here in Louisville, would support her decision.'

What she was about to do, he wrote, 'is within the Church's realm of acceptable moral decisions,' an opinion in conflict with the U.S. bishops' 1992 document, Nutrition and Hydration, which condemns the 'omission of nutrition and hydration intended to cause a patient's death.'

Bishop Walter Sullivan of Richmond, Va., in an interview with Liz Szabo of the Virginia Pilot, showed his ignorance of the case when he described Hugh as in a 'coma' for three years. He nevertheless justified High's starvation, calling the feeding tube 'extraordinary means' not required by Catholic moral theology. 'My own conviction,' he said, 'is that if a person is in a persistent vegetative state, you certainly can withdraw treatment and this is not an act of euthanasia.'

With the bishop's chair empy in the Arlington diocese where Hugh lived, there was no local cleric of equal rank to challenge the two bishops.

In an October 2 statement obviously timed to the Finn case, which was receiving world-wide coverage, Pope John Paul II entered the fray to defend the helpless. Addressing a group of U.S. bishops, the Pope said, 'A great teaching effort is needed to clarify the substantive moral difference between discontinuing medical procedures that may be burdensome, dangerous or disproportionate to the expected outcome--what the Catechism of the Catholic Church calls 'the refusal of 'overzealous' treatment'--and taking away the ordinary means of preserving life, such as feeding, hydration and normal medical care.'

The Pope praised the bishops' 1992 document and stated the 'presumption would be in favor of providing medically assisted nutrition and hydration to all patients who need them.' Would Michele listen to the pope?

She had an extraordinary opportunity to do so. A senior physician at Georgetown Medical Center arranged for Hugh's care at a local hospice run by a well-known order of sisters. They would reinsert the feeding tube and care for Hugh with dignity and respect as long as he lived at no cost to the family. A letter making the offer was hand-delivered to the Finn family at their auto body shop in Woodbridge. When they tried to give it to Michele, she refused to take it.

God opened every door possible to save Hugh, but, like mothers determined to kill their unborn children, Michele's choice allowed for only one outcome--a dead husband.

The betrayal by the shepherds of the entire Finn family, especially Hugh's young daughters, who can't help but be damaged by the knowledge that mummy killed daddy, continued after his death.

At Hugh's funeral in Louisville October 12, which one witness described as a tribute to Michele, Fr. Martin Linebach told her, 'I'm proud of you, I admire you, I respect you.'

Starving a helpless man to death had become reason for adulation! The family members who fought to save Hugh, who loved him 'for better or worse, in sickness and in health,' received no such praise.

Would Hugh's death restore peace?

The peace desired by the family when they withdrew the legal challenge was not to be. Michele continued to oppose them even after Hugh's death. At the funeral home in Kentucky, when they asked to view the body, she initially refused.

Later, the funeral director gave them an hour with their son and brother, another source of pain. 'Hugh always wore a suit. He liked to look nice,' Tom Finn said. In the casket he was dressed in an old sweater and a pair of sweat pants. Ed Finn, Hugh's younger brother, asked to give a eulogy to Hugh at the funeral. Michele refused.

Is history repeating itself?

In 1920 a German judge, Karl Binding, and a psychiatrist, Alfred Hoche, wrote a book called The Release of the Destruction of Life Devoid of Value. It justified euthanasia of 'absolutely worthless human beings,' those 'mentally completely dead,' with lives not worth living.

That philosophy became the basis of the German euthanasia program proposed by the Nazi Ministry of Justice on October 7, 1933, and implemented six years later. The program was planned and carried out by psychiatrists and medical doctors who systematically murdered over a million people: the mentally ill, World War I amputees, emotionally disturbed children, the elderly and others considered unfit to live.

Who will be next?

Hugh Finn depended completely on the love and compassion of others. Despite his diminished 'quality of life,' he was in good health. Hugh wasn't hooked up to any machines. The feeding tube wasn't 'burdensome' or 'dangerous.'

Like penicillin, which has become an ordinary means to fight infection, feeding tubes are now ordinary means to provide hydration and nutrition, often put in for the convenience of caregivers rather than out of necessity.

But we live in what Pope John Paul II has called the 'culture of death.' If unborn babies with vast potential can be murdered by the millions, why not 'useless eaters' with no potential at all?

No one knows how many patients are silently murdered in American today under laws similar to Virginia's Health Care Decisions Act. As Tom Finn told me shortly after Hugh's death, 'It's so easy with that law. If someone wants to get the insurance, they can kill you. It scares you!'