Woman Jailed For Convincing Man To Commit Suicide

A woman has been sentenced to 4 years in jail for entering a suicide agreement with a man and then leaving him to die alone.

The 44-year-old Natasha Gordon backed out of the agreement with 31-year-old Matthew Birkinshaw on 17 December 2015, getting out of his car just before he killed himself. During the trial, the former model was described as being an “enthusiastic advocate” of suicide who attempted to arrange other pacts within hours of Birkinshaw’s death.

As the sentence was read out on Friday, Justice Cheema-Grubb said: “This was a serious case because Matthew Birkinshaw actually took his own life after your encouragement. I have found you misled him into believing you were genuine and firmly intent on committing suicide with him, although you were not fully committed.”

“You were gripped by your self-centredness. I have concluded you did not have a settled intention to commit suicide. He was a stranger to you. You took no trouble to find out anything about him. You introduced the method that he used and advised him on how it was to be deployed. He may not have gone through with it if you had not accompanied him.”

Gordon however, denied a single charge of encouraging Birkinshaw to take his own life but was convicted by a jury at Leicester crown court in December.