Two "highly intelligent" UK college students were found slumped in their chairs, dead and facing each other, in a UK Ramada seafront hotel after management became concerned when they did not show up to check out. The grisly scene revealed that a laptop was used to administer lethal injections similar to the way Philip "Dr. Death" Nitschke terminated patients using his "Deliverance Machine" back in the late 1990s.
Twenty-year-old Robert Miller and nineteen-year-old James "Jim" Robertson both studied for joint math and physics degrees at Edinburgh University. Both traveled eighty miles north to the £65-a-night Ramada Jarvis Hotel in Ayr, and were reportedly "happy and chatty" with the staff when they checked in the day before. But upon discovery of their seated bodies, police inspected the laptop and determined that their deaths were intentional, ruling out any possible inclinations of foul play.
The university, parents, and friends are shocked. Currently there is an investigation underway to determine the motives behind their apparent suicide. Based on the laptop, many are worried that the two students were influenced by the Australian doctor. His "Deliverance Machine" consisted of a notebook and software called "Deliverance." The program asks the "patient" a series of questions--if they are answered correctly, the laptop will administer a lethal injection of barbiturates.
But was this an intentional suicide? Or a game of Russian roulette? No additional details were disclosed (as in possible alcohol levels, pictures of the laptop), and everyone associated with the students are clueless. "Nobody has any idea what is behind this and we are absolutely shattered," said councilor Ian Johnston. "I knew Jim. He was in the same year at school as my own son, so it has hit my family hard as well."
