After qualifying as a specialist in 1960, Kevorkian bounced around the country from hospital to hospital, publishing more than 30 professional journal articles and booklets about his philosophy on death, before setting up his own clinic near Detroit, Michigan. The business ultimately failed, and Kevorkian headed to California to commute between two part-time pathology jobs in Long Beach. These jobs also ended quickly when Kevorkian quit in another dispute with a chief pathologist; Jack claimed that his career was doomed by physicians who feared his radical ideas. Kevorkian “retired” to devote his time to a film project about Handel’s Messiah as well as research for his reinvigorated death-row campaign. By 1970, however, Kevorkian was still jobless and had also lost his fiancee; he broke off the relationship after finding his bride-to-be lacking in self-discipline. By 1982, Kevorkian was living alone, occasionally sleeping in his car, living off of canned food and social security.

In 1985, he returned to Michigan to write a comprehensive history of experiments on executed humans which was published in the obscure Journal of the National Medical Association after more prestigious journals rejected it. In 1986, Kevorkian discovered a way to expand his death row proposal when he learned that doctors in the Netherlands were helping people die by lethal injection. His new crusade for assisted suicide, or euthanasia, became an extension of his campaign for medical experiments on the dying. Kevorkian began writing new articles, this time about the benefits of euthanasia. He followed up his papers with the creation of a suicide machine he called the “Thanatron” (Greek for “Instrument of Death”) which he assembled out of $45 worth of materials. The Thanatron consisted of three bottles that delivered successive doses of fluids: first a saline solution, followed by a painkiller and, finally, a fatal dose of the poison potassium chloride. Using Kevorkian’s design, patients who were ill could even administer the lethal dose of poison themselves. After years of rejection from national medical journals and media outlets, Kevorkian would finally become the focus of national attention for his machine and his proposal to set up a franchise of “obitoriums,” where doctors could help the terminally ill end their lives.

But Jack Kevorkian would become infamous in 1990, when he assisted in the suicide of Janet Adkins, a 45-year-old Alzheimer’s patient from Michigan. Adkins was a member of the Hemlock Society - an organization that advocates voluntary euthanasia for terminally ill patients - before she became ill. After she was diagnosed with Alzheimers, Adkins began searching for someone to end her life before the degenerative disease took full effect. She had heard through the media about Kevorkian’s invention of a “suicide machine”, and contacted Kevorkian about using the invention on her. Kevorkian agreed to assist her in a public park, inside his Volkswagen van. Kevorkian attached the IV, and Adkins administered her own painkiller and then the poison. Within five minutes, Adkins died of heart failure. When the news hit media outlets, Kevorkian became a national celebrity - and criminal. The State of Michigan immediately charged Kevorkian with Adkins’ murder. The case was later dismissed, however, due to Michigan’s indecisive stance on assisted suicide.

In early 1991, a Michigan judge issued an injunction barring Kevorkian’s use of the suicide machine. That same year, Michigan suspended Jack Kevorkian’s medical license, but this didn’t stop the doctor from continuing to assist with suicides. Unable to gather the medications needed to use the Thanatron, Kevorkian assembled a new machine, called the Mercitron, which delivered carbon monoxide through a gas mask. The next year, the Michigan Legislature passed a bill outlawing assisted suicide, designed specifically to stop Kevorkian’s assisted suicide campaign. As a result, Kevorkian was jailed twice that year. He was bailed out by lawyer Geoffrey Fieger, who helped Kevorkian escape conviction by successfully arguing that a person may not be found guilty of criminally assisting a suicide if they administered medication with the “intent to relieve pain and suffering,” even it if did increase the risk of death. Kevorkian was prosecuted a total of four times in Michigan for assisted suicides—he was acquitted in three of the cases, and a mistrial was declared in the fourth. Kevorkian was disappointed, telling reporters that he wanted to be imprisoned in order to shed light on the hypocrisy and corruption of society.

In 1998, the Michigan legislature enacted a law making assisted suicide a felony punishable by a maximum five year prison sentence or a $10,000 fine. They also closed the loophole that allowed for Kevorkian’s previous acquittals. Yet Kevorkian continued to assist patients. Meanwhile, the courts continued to pursue Kevorkian on criminal charges.

Not one to stand down from a challenge, Kevorkian pursued his crusade with even greater passion in 1998. That year, he allowed the CBS television news program 60 Minutes to air a tape he’d made of the lethal injection of Thomas Youk. Youk suffered from Lou Gehrig’s disease, and had requested Kevorkian’s help. On the recording, Kevorkian helped administer the drugs for his patient. Following the broadcast footage, Kevorkian spoke to 60 Minutes reporters, and dared the courts to pursue him legally. Prosecutors took notice, this time bringing a second-degree murder charge against Kevorkian. Kevorkian also decided to serve as his own legal counsel.

On March 26, 1999, a jury in Oakland County convicted Jack Kevorkian of second-degree murder and the illegal delivery of a controlled substance. That April, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison with the possibility of parole. During the next three years, the Kevorkian attempted to pursue the conviction in appeals court. His request was refused. Lawyers representing Kevorkian sought to bring the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, but that request was also declined.

On June 1, 2007, after serving a little more than eight years of his sentence, Kevorkian was released from prison on good behavior. The former doctor also promised not to assist in any more suicides. Suffering from liver damage due to the advanced stages of Hepatitis C, doctors suspected Kevorkian had little time left to live. But Kevorkian soon mended, and he began touring the lecture circuit, speaking out about assisted suicide. On March 12, 2008, Kevorkian announced plans to run as an independent candidate for United States Congress in the state of Michigan. He didn’t win the election, but he did earn 2.6 percent of the vote.

In 2010, HBO announced that a film about Kevorkian’s life, called You Don’t Know Jack would premiere in April. The movie starred film legend Al Pacino as Kevorkian, and also featured Susan Sarandon and John Goodman.

On June 3, 2011, at the age of 83, Jack Kevorkian died at Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Michigan. He had been hospitalized for about two weeks with kidney and heart problems before his death. He is survived by his sister, Flora Holzheimer.

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