Seller of Suicide Kits Sentenced

Sharlotte Hydorn was ordered Monday to serve five years of supervised probation

A 92-year-old woman who sold $40 suicide kits has been sentenced in San Diego for failing to file federal tax returns.

Sharlotte Hydorn was ordered Monday to serve five years of supervised probation and pay a fine of $1,000. She could have faced a year in prison.

Hydorn is also unable to make or sell kits during the probation period.

"She provided something like a sun store provides a gun," said her attorney Charles Goldberg.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter J. Mazza told the court that the case was initially investigated because authorities saw a risk to the public because Hydorn wasn't verifying who her customers are.

However, there's no federal law against selling the kits.
The crusade started when her husband died 30 years ago, in the hospital. She said she couldn't stay next to him and hospital personnel wouldn't let her sleep on the floor. Hydron said she had to leave him alone until the last minutes of his life and he ended up dying a painful death in the hospital.

His last words to Hydorn were, "Home, home."

"He wanted to go home," she said. "But I couldn't take him."

Hydorn said after sentencing that all she wanted to do was allow people to die at home, surrounded by family and friends.

"I wanted for people to be able to die at home when their lives are over, with their family," she said. "With people who love them."

Copyright NBC San Diego / Associated Press

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