78-year-old man charged with assisting in wife’s suicide changes plea

YELLOW SPRINGS — A Yellow Springs man facing charges in connection to the death of his wife has changed his plea.

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78-year-old Thomas Macaulay has decided not to go to trial over his assisted suicide charges and plead guilty.

As News Center 7 reported at 6:00, his wife, 75-year-old Ardis Macauley, died in their home in a Yellow Springs retirement community last March.

A police department investigation took weeks and did not detail Ardis Macauley’s health problems. Their report did confirm Thomas Macauley was in the home and that he told them it was a nitrogen-induced suicide.

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Officers discovered Ardis on a lazy-boy type recliner with an inflated, translucent clothing bag over her head, connected to an air tank.

Greene County Prosecutor David Hayes told News Center 7 that his office is sensitive to end-of-life situations but had to follow the law.

Jon Paul Rion is Macauley’s lawyer. He said that prosecutors dismissed one count against Macauley as part of the plea deal. Macauley agreed to plead guilty to one charge of assisting suicide and both sets of lawyers recommended community control, not time behind bars.

“Mr. Macauley didn’t want to use this as an example to take a political position, that’s not what this was about. This was about something between him and his wife and really nothing more,” Rion said.

Three years is the maximum prison time for this conviction, and while it is not 100 percent certain that Macauley will avoid prison time, it would be very unusual for the judge to send him behind bars when even prosecutors recommended community control.

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