Death of an Artist

“I wrestle with: Was it courage, or was it cowardice?”
This question animates a memorial service for Michael and Petra, held several months after their death. Alice and Leon want to understand it as well: Was Michael and Petra’s suicide a move toward something, or away from something else? To figure it out, they reach out to Michael and Petra’s families, to find out what examples they had from their own parents’ end-of-life experiences that might have led them to this choice.
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“It brought up all the things I've never done. All the risks I haven't taken. It was always about trying to be free, you know?”
According to Michael Mathers’s first true love, he was always a romantic. Was the death orchestrated with Petra the ending of a love story he’d been trying to craft all along?
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“I have never regretted my decision, only the amount of unhappiness it caused you. Still, unforgivingness is the product of those who feel it.”
When Petra and Michael died, they left everyone in their lives behind. But it wasn’t the first time: When Petra first fell in love with Michael, she left her son Tillmann to be with him. In an interview with Alice and Leon, Tillmann reckons with his mother's choices and the marks they left on his own life.
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“I would've screamed. I would've shouted. I would've cried out. I would've protested. I would've given a million reasons to not leave this world.”
Michael and Petra left their house and the logistics of their afterlife to their friend Patty—unbeknownst to Patty’s sister Virginia, who considered herself one of Michael and Petra’s best friends. Patty and Virginia have different perspectives on what Michael and Petra did, but they agree on what it was like to be around them as a couple: awestruck and a bit excluded, something even Alice and Leon pick up on while looking at their dozens of photo albums.
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DISCLAIMER:  This podcast is about suicide. Listener discretion is advised
"When Michael and I got together some 40 plus years ago, we’d always planned on checking out together."
In February of 2024, a letter arrived at the pharmacy in Astoria, Oregon. It was from local residents Petra and Michael Mathers, and they wanted to let the pharmacists know that they had died—by suicide. Petra was a celebrated children’s book author and illustrator. Michael was a photographer. And as police investigated their deaths, they discovered a whole network of people around the country who had received similar letters.
Journalists Leon Neyfakh and Alice Gregory, who have themselves been married for more than 10 years, visit Oregon to begin putting together the pieces of Petra and Michael’s shared life: the start of their love story, and the end. And they set out to interview everyone who received a letter from Michael and Petra, to try to understand why a couple who was seemingly so happy and in love would want to end their lives.
Get early, ad-free access to the entire season of Death of an Artist by subscribing to Pushkin+ on the Apple Podcasts show page or at pushkin.fm/plus.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.