Police investigate BBC broadcaster's claims that he killed his partner

I once heard someone from Hospice discuss this issue...basically he said that they have the ability to keep someone pain free until natural death so the claims that assisted suicide is necessary is bogus...as a Christian we accept that God decides when death comes and we are not to interfere. This is another example of someone who knows better than God but judging from his comments he is not a believer. 

 

 

Ray Gosling says he is not worried about answering charges over killing lover who had Aids as he did it 'from his heart'

• guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 16 February 2010 10.26 GMT 

Photograph: David Sillitoe

Ray Gosling, a BBC broadcaster, told Inside Out that he had smothered his lover in hospital

Police are to investigate claims made by a BBC broadcaster that he killed a former partner who was terminally ill.

Ray Gosling told the East Midlands' Inside Out programme, broadcast last night, that he had agreed to smother his lover, who was living with Aids, if his suffering became too intense.

Gosling said that his partner had been in hospital in "terrible pain" when a doctor told him there was nothing more that could be done.
He said that he asked the doctor to leave them alone and then, "I picked up the pillow and smothered him until he was dead".

A spokeswoman for Nottinghamshire police said the force had not been aware of the issue until the broadcaster made his revelation on television last night.
"We are now liaising with the BBC and will investigate the matter," she said.

In an interview on BBC Radio 4's Today programme this morning, the broadcaster said he was not worried by the prospect of a police investigation. "I don't do worry," he said. "I did what I did from my heart."

He said the incident happened in "the early period of Aids" and he had come to an agreement with his partner, who he described as "my bit on the side", that Gosling would end his life if the pain became too much.
"That's what I did and if there's a heaven he would look down and be proud of me," he said.
Gosling said he had chosen now to reveal his actions because he was filming a documentary on dying and had met other people facing a similar dilemma. He insisted he was "not making a case" and asked whether the law on mercy killing should change, he told the Today programme: "I don't know."
Gosling explained: "Everyone else had revealed themselves to me and I felt I had to reveal myself to them and say I was once there."
He added: "If it happens to a lover or friend of yours, a husband, a wife, and I hope it doesn't, but when it does sometimes you have to do brave things and you have to say – to use Nottingham language – bugger the law."
Gosling had devised a 12-minute programme, which was described on the BBC's website as "Ray Gosling contemplates mortality – his own and everyone else's. Just how does he want to die and be remembered?"
Walking through a graveyard as he delivered a piece to camera, Gosling said: "Maybe this is the time to share a secret that I've kept for quite a long time. I killed someone once," he said.
"He'd been my lover and he got Aids."
Asked by Inside Out presenter Marie Ashby if he had any regrets, he said: "Absolutely none. He was in terrible pain – I was there and I saw it. It breaks you into pieces."
Of the deceased's family, he said "some know and some don't", adding: "It's best that way."
Gosling did not give any information on who the man was, or when or where the incident occurred.
The 70-year-old hosted a weekly north-west regional programme on Granada TV in the 1960s and 70s called On Site. More recently he made a short film called Ray Gosling OAP, which was broadcast on BBC4, and documented his move into a flat in an old people's home.
A spokeswoman said the BBC had not been contacted by members of the public concerned that the deceased man could be a relative. She said Gosling was a freelance guest reporter on the programme, and that the BBC had only found out about the confession during filming.
She said Gosling had originally set out to make a "quirky piece" about different coffins and funeral ceremonies.
"He met with a lady who had contemplated assisting her husband's suicide," she said. "It was at that stage of the programme that he basically revealed his own secret and obviously decided that he wanted to do it in the programme."
"Ray was made fully aware of the potential consequences of him making that confession," she added. "As part of our journalistic integrity we felt we needed to keep that revelation in the report."
She said producers had neither tried to "dissuade or persuade" Gosling from revealing the euthanasia, and that the BBC would co-operate fully with any investigation. She said the programme was filmed towards the end of 2009.
Asked if the BBC should have contacted police when Gosling initially confessed to the killing last year, a Nottinghamshire police spokesman said: "You would hope that anyone with information about a crime like that would certainly refer it to us in the first instance so police can investigate."
The BBC spokeswoman said the organisation was under "no legal obligation to refer the matter to the police".