Man Drank Cyanide to Avoid the 'American Way of Dying'

Allan Banks watched his dad die in 2005. Then his wife in 2007. And his mom in 2008.

But it was while watching his grandmother die when he was younger that the Fairfield resident decided he would not go out that way. And with the 69-year-old showing signs of his age, and feeling like he had already lived through the greatest times of his life, he took his own life — on his own terms.

Banks drank poisonous potassium cyanide inside the bedroom of his house on Clinton Street. The discovery on April 14 of his body and the poisonous material triggered an intense emergency response that included a HazMat team and led to the temporary closure of the road in the coastal Connecticut town. 
 
It turns out Banks had been planning his suicide for weeks. He reportedly left signs in the home that alerted emergency responders — who had responded to the house to conduct a welfare check — to the presence of the poisonous material. He had set up a conservator of his estate.

And he penned a four-page handwritten letter explaining his action. He also attached a small piece of paper to it with a paperclip, noting his time of death: shortly after 9:45 p.m. on Friday, April 11, 2014.

The letter was found near his body. The Fairfield Police Department shared it with Patch and other local media outlets — Banks had requested that it be shown to anyone who may want to read it.

"This is a suicide, pure and simple," he began.

Banks wrote of his happiness with his family and went on to state that he felt he had been living in a "paradise" for many years.

"I am contented, and grateful for the life that I have had," he wrote.

Banks also referenced the "gambler's fallacy" — that bad luck can change — and wrote that the medical version of it is that you can get better at the end of life. "You don't," he wrote.

"I am one fall or failed capillary away from the American way of death: ambulance, hospital, nursing home, progressive decline, drooling, vegging, dying," he went on. "I'm declining."

"My judgment is that the American Way of Death is neither the way to live nor the way to die."