WARNING: DISTRESSING CONTENT – Wendy Duffy, 56, a former care worker from the West Midlands, has paid £10,000 to end her life at Pegasos, a Swiss assisted dying clinic, after losing her son Marcus, 23, four years ago
A British woman with no terminal illness is travelling to Switzerland to end her life at an assisted dying clinic following the death of her only son – making her the first person to speak openly about making the trip before it takes place.
Wendy Duffy, 56, a former care worker from the West Midlands, has paid £10,000 to end her life at Pegasos, a Swiss assisted dying clinic, after losing her son Marcus, 23, four years ago. Despite years of therapy and antidepressants, she has been unable to come to terms with his passing, reports the Express.
Speaking just days before her death, Wendy said: “I won’t change my mind. I know it’s hard for you, sweetheart. It will be hard for everyone. But I want to die, and that’s what I’m going to do. And I’ll have a smile on my face when I do, so please be happy for me. My life; my choice.”
She added: “I can’t wait.”
Why is Wendy choosing to end her life?
In an interview with Daily Mail journalist Jenny Johnson, Wendy recounted the devastating circumstances surrounding Marcus’s death four years ago. He had nodded off on the sofa while eating a sandwich, hungover after a heavy night out. Wendy had been preparing her own lunch at the time – cheese and onion – when Marcus asked her to make him one too.
“Throw a couple of those cherry tomatoes on mine,” he said.
She obliged, halving them as she always did. When she walked back into the living room, she was confronted with every parent’s worst nightmare.
“He was purple,” she said. “I thought, ‘It’s his heart.’” Wendy, who has medical training, immediately got Marcus onto the floor and started CPR, crying out desperately for assistance. Paramedics arrived and raced him to hospital, where the devastating news emerged: half a cherry tomato had been discovered blocking his windpipe. Specialist equipment had been required to extract it.
“They think he must have fallen asleep when he still had food in his mouth. That’s the only comfort, that there was no struggle,” she said.
Deprived of oxygen for an extended period, Marcus was brain dead. Wendy remained by his side for five days before his life support was turned off. His organs were donated for transplant.
“Afterwards, I got a letter from the man who got his heart. He said that thanks to Marcus he was able to play with his kids again,” she said. Another recipient was a four year old child. “That was a comfort, but it also ripped at me.”
She visited the funeral home daily to be with her son, listening to his Spotify playlist.
“In the funeral home, I went in every day, and just sat with him, playing through his Spotify list. I broke when I saw him in there. My boy, on a metal table. You can’t come back from that, you know.
“That’s when I died too, inside,” she said. “I’m not the same person now as I was. I used to feel things. I don’t care about anything any more. I exist. I don’t live.”
Who was Marcus?
Marcus had been the centre of Wendy’s world from the moment she learnt she was expecting. Born into a large Irish family, Wendy never wed and spent a decade trying to conceive. Following years of fertility tests that showed damage to her fallopian tubes, she turned to specialist treatment.
“I told the consultant that I wasn’t greedy. If I could have one child, I would be the happiest woman in the world,” she said.
In 1998, she got her miracle. “The day I discovered I was pregnant with Marcus was the happiest of my life.”
After parting ways with Marcus’s father when the lad was about four, mother and son became inseparable. Wendy grafted hard and put money aside for his future. Marcus developed a love for music – hip-hop and grime – and was pursuing a career in recording.
“I’d give anything to be shouting at him to turn the music down today,” she said.
Did Wendy try to get help?
After Marcus’s death, Wendy received extensive NHS and private counselling and was given antidepressants. Nine months after his loss, she tried to take her own life with an overdose, planning it meticulously – “like a wedding” – getting her affairs in order. A friend sounded the alarm after she didn’t reply to messages.
Officers forced entry into her property to discover a note carefully fixed to the bedroom door. She endured a fortnight on a ventilator, temporarily lost function in her right arm, and continues to have no sensation in her little finger. She was told she risked locked-in syndrome – left dangerously close, in her own words, to being “a cabbage in a persistent vegetative state.
“I remember coming round and thinking, ‘I’ve f***ed this up’, and I don’t want to go through that again. That’s why I’ve gone for Pegasos,” she said.
Following her hospital discharge, she voluntarily admitted herself to a psychiatric ward but departed after a single night, likening the environment to a prison – a bed, a wardrobe minus its door, no toothbrush, a grimy beaker of tea.
“I did try to get better,” she said. “But you can take all the pills, you can go to all the counselling in the world – and I did. Ultimately, they can’t help you. They don’t have to live your life, and my life is agony. Even though I’ve got family, I’ve got friends, I’ve got my routines. I go to the park. I’m not lonely, but I still sit at night and I talk to Marcus, and I kiss the box I had made for his ashes and I say ‘goodnight, sunshine’ and I think ‘I don’t want to be in this world without you, Markie’. And I don’t. It’s as simple as that.”
What is Pegasos and how does it work?
Pegasos is a Swiss assisted dying facility that accepts cases based solely on psychiatric conditions – where no physical illness is present – as long as they satisfy stringent requirements. The condition must be serious, enduring and resistant to treatment. Numerous Swiss clinics, including the more well-known Dignitas, turn away such cases altogether.
Wendy first learned about Pegasos in 2024 when it was featured in an ITV investigation into the death of Alastair Hamilton, whose mother publicly branded the clinic a “cowboy clinic.” Despite the scathing coverage, Wendy’s response was instant.
“Wow. This is what I need,” she thought. She fired off an email requesting information and lodged a formal application in early 2025.
The procedure involved more than a year of correspondence – interviews, paperwork and the submission of her complete medical records and therapy history – carried out almost exclusively remotely via email and WhatsApp. A panel of specialists including psychiatrists examined her case and gave it the green light.
Under Swiss law, Wendy must administer the fatal medication herself.
“They put the line in but you’ve got to turn the doobra yourself to get it flowing. Then – ding, ding, ding – within a minute, you are in a coma, and a minute after that, you are gone,” she explained.
She opted to go out listening to Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars singing Die With A Smile.
“You’ll never be able to hear that song now without thinking of me, will you?” she said. Wendy refused to end her own life in a manner that would leave others traumatised.
“I could step off a motorway bridge or a tower block but that would leave anyone finding me dealing with that for the rest of their lives,” she said. “I don’t want to put anyone through that.”
She held off until her two dogs had passed away from old age before booking a date at Pegasos. When the journalist suggested buying her a dog and leaving it on her doorstep to give her something to live for, she remained resolute.
“You could give me a house full of dogs. I’m doing this,” she said.
Her background working in the care sector, she explained, has given her a comfort around death that others might lack.
“Oh, I’ve seen death a million times. I’ve sat with so many people as they’ve gone. I’ve seen nice deaths, horrible deaths. I want a nice, gentle one.”
What does the clinic say?
Pegasos founder Ruedi Habegger confirmed Wendy had cleared her final psychiatric assessment, conducted earlier this week.
“Wendy is very decided. I saw her at her hotel today, I had a long talk with her and with the psychiatrist that is going to see her a second time before the VAD [voluntary assisted death]. He is very confident that we are doing the right thing letting her go, that we should not stand in her way. She is absolutely not in a depressive state. I’m very experienced in this field. There are no worries with Wendy, none at all,” he said.
He confirmed four of her siblings had been notified and given their approval. “Her family knew this was coming at one point or another. She is happy that she has their blessing. She feels content now, like a weight has been lifted,” Habegger said.
Wendy said: “I have told them all and they support me. They are sad, but they know what this has done to me.”
What has Wendy planned for her death?
Wendy has organised every single aspect. She has penned letters to those closest to her, picked out what she’ll wear and decided on the music to be played. She’ll be dressed in a t-shirt that belonged to Marcus – “it still smells of him” – and has requested the clinic’s large windows remain open so her spirit can escape freely. Her possessions, including her suitcase, will be given to an animal charity.
She’s unable to donate her organs and will be cremated in Switzerland. Her ashes will be sent back to relatives in the UK and scattered next to Marcus’s at a park bench dedicated to him.
“I hate funerals anyway and don’t want one. It’s all planned,” she said.
Wendy’s siblings – four sisters and two brothers – reportedly understood she’d applied to Pegasos but weren’t informed of the precise timing of her appointment, to shield them from potential legal consequences. Under UK law, anyone who helped her – even something as simple as giving her a lift to the airport – could face scrutiny or criminal charges.
Pegasos reached out to her family themselves. Wendy intends to ring them from Switzerland to say her final farewell.
“They will get it. They know. Honestly, 100 per cent, they know that I’m not happy, that I don’t want to be here,” she said.
Why is she speaking out? Journalist Jenny Johnson spent time with Wendy in the days leading up to her departure, finding a warm and funny woman who spoke about her approaching death with the calm composure of someone preparing for a holiday – bags packed, house vacuumed, already at peace.
Wendy said she chose to go public to contribute to the assisted dying debate, the latest stage of which is due to take place in the House of Lords imminently.
“I’m not breaking the law. I don’t feel I’m doing anything wrong. Yet for them, it’s a mess,” she said of her family’s position.
She is fully aware that her story will serve as “a grenade lobbed into the assisted dying debate” – yet remains utterly steadfast.
“My life; my choice,” she repeated. “I wish this was available in the UK, then I wouldn’t have to go to Switzerland at all.”
Her voluntary assisted death procedure is scheduled to take place on Friday.
If you are affected by issues discussed within this article, you may contact Samaritans on 116 123 or visit samaritans.org
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