Could someone nickname Dr. Death actually have been a good guy?

It's a name of fitting a serial killer or maybe a pro wrestling villain.

We've even talked about a serial killer here on Time Suck that had that nickname Harold Shipman.

Today, we'll be talking about another Dr. Death Jack Kavorkin.

And Jack Kavorkin would end up dedicating his life's most important work to killing people, sort of.

Born 1928 as a child of two Armenian immigrants fleeing the Armenian genocide.

Kavorkin would soar past the common realm of being your average doctor and squarely into the territory of being a man on the cutting edge of

something that was either depending on your right to die perspective great or terrible.

Fastening with death from a young age, Kavorkin would become best known for his staunch advocacy of a patient's right to die when they wanted to, especially for patients with incurable terminal illnesses.

Out of less than $50 worth of supplies, Kavorkin fashioned a death machine.

He called the Thanatron an injection contraption that with the push of a button administered a heart-stopping dose of the chemical potassium chloride.

Kavorkin insisted in the deaths of 130 terminally ill people between 1990 and 1998 as an ardent believer in doctor assisted suicide.

Sometimes called euthanasia.

He believed that the Hippocratic oath to do no harm in the case of someone who was severely severely ill and in agony was not to prolong their suffering.

But to help them find a peaceful way out of it.

The state of Michigan did not agree with his viewpoint.

After Kavorkin helped a woman with Alzheimer's die in the summer of 1990, he was quickly charged with murder.

But then the case was dropped due to the fact that Michigan didn't have a law explicitly against physician assisted suicide.

They quickly pass a law against it and as Kavorkin kept offering his services authorities kept arresting him.

Kavorkin was tried four times for assisting suicides between May 1994 and June 1997.

Over and over.

When the cases went to trial, the jury would be shocked to hear the families of the dead testifying four Dr. Kavorkin's defense.

...