The day Ludwig Minelli died, November 29, 2025, he was in the same sterile blue room where he had approved the deaths of over 4,200 men and women.
The founder and main profiteer of Dignitas ingested the poison his organization had perfected, calling it a final victory. It was a chilling climax to a lifetime spent convincing desperate people that the world is better off without them.
Minelli grew up the eldest child of a Swiss house painter, with no signs of personal trauma or a tragic loss pushing him toward advocating for assisted death. He didn’t care for a dying spouse. He didn’t lose a child. No major tragedy molded him. What shaped him was cold ideology, cloaked in the noble language of rights, autonomy, and mercy, but beneath every polished phrase lurked an old, murderous lie: some lives aren’t worth living.
In 1998, Minelli turned his deadly lie into a thriving business, setting up in a quiet residential area on Gloria Street in Zurich. From the start, the bodies started to pile up. He welcomed people with treatable depression, disabled individuals who had spent decades proving their worth, terrified elderly men and women, and even healthy people feeling weary; he asked almost no questions, took their fees, and handed them death in a plastic cup.