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- [00:03]
Michael Schiavo
Huge savings on all new 2005 Chevys.
- [00:06]
George Filos
It's sunny all across West Florida with the beach boys.
- [00:18]
Lynn Vincent
Florida, the Sunshine State, beaches, theme parks, and snipers.
- [00:25]
Bob Schindler
There were threats coming in from the protesters and she said that they had snipers in the trees around the elementary schools to protect the kids.
- [00:32]
Michael Schiavo
Shooters that are designed to literally take people out. Really, the only way to describe it would be like a war torn nation.
- [00:40]
Lynn Vincent
Those are just two eyewitnesses to the scene that erupted in Pinellas Park, Florida in March 2005. That spring, Florida Hospice of the sun coast was the epicenter of the biggest news story in the world.
- [00:53]
Mary Schindler
As we turn now to a domestic issue that has gotten international attention. The Terri Schiavo case.
- [01:00]
Lynn Vincent
It started as a fight between her parents and her husband over ending her life.
- [01:04]
Michael Schiavo
It was to a point where Terry wasn't going to function. There was nothing more they could do for Terry.
- [01:10]
Bobby Schindler
Please, please, please save my little girl.
- [01:16]
Lynn Vincent
Outside the hospice, police barricades, a crush of media tents and satellite trucks.
- [01:23]
Bob Schindler
Since the beginning, there have been close to 40 people arrested outside that hospice facility.
- [01:27]
Lynn Vincent
Hundreds of protesters singing and praying, jabbing signs in the air, some even dressed like prisoners in a Nazi conc.
- [01:36]
Bob Schindler
There's forces here today who are manipulating Terri Schiavo's case to make a big power grab for, you know, to the imposition of the so called rule of God instead of the rule of law.
- [01:49]
Lynn Vincent
And inside the hospice, in a dark, tiny room, a severely disabled woman is having a great day. Terri Schiavo is sitting up in a chair. She isn't hooked to machines of any kind. Her aunt and sister are visiting as they chat with her. Terry smiles. She has no idea that the state of Florida is about to dehydrate her to death. From world radio and the creative team that brings you the world and everything in it, this is Lawless.
- [02:30]
Michael Schiavo
I see a wicked man walking down a broken. I see ransomed man in the stone Trying not to fall for gold Devil's.
- [02:44]
Bob Schindler
At the door trying to take control.
- [02:48]
Michael Schiavo
But the Lord's gonna scatter his bones.
- [02:52]
Lynn Vincent
I'm New York Times bestselling author and World Magazine senior writer, Lynn Vinson. Lawless is a new true crime podcast that examines a frightening fact of American life. That not every crime is against the law. In today's America, the essential value of being human has eroded to the point that what once would have been prosecuted as a crime is now unexceptional, even celebrated.
- [03:19]
George Filos
It seems that the opponents to Mrs. Schiavo's freedom of choice will stop at just about nothing to frustrate her wishes.
- [03:28]
Lynn Vincent
How injured do you have to be before society won't let you live? In season one of Lawless, we'll investigate the Terri Schiavo story, a case that, in 2005, shocked the world. This is episode one, prologue. Terri Schiava was only 26 years old when she suffered a severe brain injury that happened on February 25, 1990. Just before dawn, Terry's husband, Michael, says he found her lying in the hallway of their tiny St. Petersburg apartment. He called 911. Then he dialed Terry's parents. After that, Michael says he called Terry's brother Bobby, who arrived to find his sister unresponsive and gasping for breath. Paramedics tried everything to revive her. Paddles, narcan, adrenaline, over 30 minutes of CPR.
- [04:28]
Dan Greco
I got to the hospital, and my parents had already been there. And I remember. No, I just remember walking in. I'm like. I'm, like, frantic. And I said, she's dead, isn't she? She's dead.
- [04:46]
Lynn Vincent
Terry wasn't dead, but she had suffered prolonged anoxia, oxygen deprivation. The injury left her profoundly brain damaged. The cause, it was a mystery until a doctor suggested the possibility that Terri had a secret eating disorder. Here's attorney and Schiavo family friend Dan Greco.
- [05:06]
Nat Hentoff
It was that early on when we knew that there was an issue with her potassium levels, and that's what caused it. It was the eating disorder, and it was bulimia.
- [05:19]
Lynn Vincent
Terry's parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, accepted that explanation at first, Mary especially worked closely with Michael to take care of Terry.
- [05:30]
Bobby Schindler
We took classes together to how to transfer her from bed to wheelchair, from wheelchair to chair. And they just wanted us to be cohesive to, you know, to do it all together.
- [05:43]
Lynn Vincent
This harmony lasted exactly three years. Then money entered the picture. But as we'll see, the desire for money, $20 million to be exact, had actually been there all along. In 1992, Michael Schiavo won a malpractice suit on Terri's behalf. About a third of the money went directly to Michael. The other two thirds went into a medical trust fund to care for Terri. But just a few weeks after Michael got the money, he had a major falling out with the Schindlers. In fact, he and Terry's father, Bob, almost came to blows. Accusations flew about. Greed, broken promises, even adultery. Soon after that, the Schindlers began to wonder, had Michael had something to do with Terry's brain injury? Years later, investigators would examine Michael's story of what happened that night.
- [06:54]
George Filos
There were time inconsistencies.
- [06:57]
Nat Hentoff
He would articulate different times that he arrived home and that he woke up there. Again, inconsistencies all throughout the whole storyline. He says he scooped her up and he cradled her and tried to revive her, whatever it was that he was doing. The biggest problem I have with that is the paramedics found her face down.
- [07:20]
Lynn Vincent
In 1998, eight years after Terri's injury, Michael went to court again. This time, Michael said Terry was in kind of a waking coma and that she wouldn't have wanted to live that way.
- [07:31]
Michael Schiavo
She told me what she wanted, and the courts heard it over and over.
- [07:37]
Lynn Vincent
And over again over the next seven years. Michael would argue that the Schindlers wanted to force Terry to live a meaningless and humiliating existence against her wishes. But the Schindlers, along with Terry's friends and caregivers, said her existence wasn't meaningless at all.
- [07:55]
Mary Schindler
Terry was everybody's favorite.
- [07:57]
Lynn Vincent
That's registered nurse Carla Sauer Iyer, who cared for terri in the mid-1990s.
- [08:02]
Mary Schindler
When I first came on board, they had her at the front of the nursing station. When visitors would enter, she would just smile. She would actually react.
- [08:12]
Michael Schiavo
She.
- [08:12]
Mary Schindler
She reacted to her environment. She reacted to people. She reacted to her name. She would just light up.
- [08:21]
Lynn Vincent
Tom Broderson is an attorney who assisted on the Schiavo case. He visited with Terri at hospice often in 2002, he played music for her, everything from John Denver to Gregorian chants.
- [08:34]
Michael Schiavo
And you could see her face kind of open up as if in surprise and wonderment. And as she was listening to it, she. She. She raised her arms. All the while, she was looking up with her face filled with wonder.
- [09:02]
Lynn Vincent
Several witnesses said Terry could even talk.
- [09:05]
Mary Schindler
She would say mommy all the time, and then she would say the word pain, which came like, pay.
- [09:12]
Bobby Schindler
And Barbara said, terry, do you want to live? And Terry goes like this, and put. Like she was trying to pull herself up, her head went up, and she.
- [09:22]
Mary Schindler
Goes, ah.
- [09:27]
Bobby Schindler
I'm not kidding you.
- [09:28]
Mary Schindler
I saw it with my own eyes.
- [09:33]
Lynn Vincent
Terry's parents argued that their daughter wasn't on any kind of life support, just a feeding tube that was attached at mealtime. The Schindler said Michael invented Terry's wish to die only after convincing that medical malpractice jury to give him a huge sum of money to care for her. And after falling in love with another woman, Michael filed his petition to remove Terry's feeding tube in 1998. Three years later, in 2001, I became one of the first reporters to write about the fight Over Terry's life for a national audience. I read court transcripts, researched the bioethics of feeding tube removal. I talked to Bob and Mary Schindler, to Michael's attorney, George Filos. That was more than 20 years ago. But Terry's story never left me. There were unanswered questions, unsettling details. Maybe that's why, 20 years after I wrote that first, I found myself driving through a thunderstorm to Visit Terry's grave. August 11, 2021. Clearwater, Florida. I'm driving north on Highway 19 in a rented silver sedan. Lightning splits the sky. It's rapid fire, like paparazzi. Each bright flash startles me a little. We don't have much lightning where I live, but sitting next to me in the passenger seat, Bobby Schindler tells me he loves Florida's summer storms. What he doesn't love is our destination. We're headed for Sylvan Abbey Memorial park, where Bobby's sister Terry is buried. As we leave Highway 19, the storm moves west and the sun comes out. But the closer we get to the cemetery, the more anxious Bobby becomes. A couple of blocks from the freeway, I turn left off a busy commercial street and into the cemetery. It's like entering another world. A long asphalt drive stretches into the shade of hundreds of oak trees. Laurel oaks, scrub oaks, but mostly live oaks, tall and graceful branches draped with Spanish moss. 90 acres of cool green grass spread around us. Sprays of flowers dot the lawn. Sunlight falls through the tree canopy here and there, dappling the shade. We park near a small pond with a pulsing fountain. We circle the pond and come to Terry's bronze grave marker. It's flush with the ground, just a few feet from the water's edge. I read the inscription. Teresa Marie, Beloved wife, born December 3, 1963. Departed this earth February 25, 1990. At peace, March 31, 2005. And then, under a dove carrying an olive branch, I kept my promise for Bobby. Visiting his sister's grave is still she shockingly painful?
- [13:11]
Dan Greco
It took me a long time to want to come visit just because of the inscription and how upsetting it was.
- [13:16]
Lynn Vincent
But Bobby means the part where it says, terry, quote, departed this earth February 25, 1990. Terri Shiloh lived for 15 more years after suffering her brain injury until 2005. So why does her grave marker say she departed earth in 1990?
- [13:35]
Dan Greco
Yeah, I. I don't. I. I think that was just Michael's final way of just. How do I say it? The reasons why. Why Michael was doing what he was doing from the Night of her collapse, she had, you know, she had died. And, you know, it was, it was just a, a body that he was carrying for. I mean, it's not true, obviously.
- [14:05]
Lynn Vincent
Or is it? That's one of the things we'll explore in this podcast. Was Terri Schiabau really in a persistent vegetative state, that waking coma that I mentioned earlier? Many doctors and attorneys said she was, including Richard Pierce, the first guardian ad litem in the case.
- [14:22]
Michael Schiavo
She just had a vacant glare. There's no question my mind, that she was in by that time a persistent vegetative state.
- [14:32]
Lynn Vincent
Or was Terry responsive, as her family, many doctors and other eyewitnesses insisted?
- [14:37]
Michael Schiavo
And I've interviewed neurologists on both sides. I've been on this case for two and a half years.
- [14:42]
Lynn Vincent
That's journalist Nat Hentoff, a writer for the left leaning Village Voice.
- [14:46]
Michael Schiavo
Your position seems to be based on the idea that the panel of doctors who looked at it, who said she was in a persistent vegetative state, and a number of them say she is not.
- [14:55]
Lynn Vincent
Was Michael trying to end his wife's life so he could get the money and the girl? Bobby Schindler says yes, he was living with another woman.
- [15:04]
Dan Greco
There was a lot of money that he would have assumed upon her death. What else do you need to know?
- [15:11]
Lynn Vincent
But Michael Schiavo said the real crime in his wife's case was right wing politicians and activists interfering in a private family matter. That's the thing about the Schiavo case. There's the public part, then there's the private story that happened behind closed doors. For example, you may remember that Terry's feeding tube was removed three times by court order between 2001 and 2005, that last time leading to her death. What you may not know is that Michael tried to end his wife's life at least six times, beginning way back in 1993, not long after the malpractice trial. But Michael's family said it was Terry's father, Bob, who seemed overly concerned with the malpractice money. Here's attorney Dan Greco.
- [15:57]
Nat Hentoff
Bob came in to see me and asked, are Mary and I entitled to any compensation out of this? We've taken care of Terry. I just said, you know, Michael is the only person entitled to receive any money other than Terry in this situation.
- [16:15]
Lynn Vincent
Greco didn't think much about the conversation at the time. Later, though, Michael and others would say Bob Schindler wanted the malpractice money for himself. At its climax in the spring of 2005, the fight over Terry's life would race up and down the federal court system.
- [16:36]
George Filos
Florida's Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional a law passed to keep a comatose woman, Terri Schiavo, alive, making it to.
- [16:43]
Lynn Vincent
The US Supreme Court and back twice in 10 days. The case would draw in the Florida governor, Congress, the American president, and even the Pope. Tonight, this Congress is about to commit a travesty. It says if we don't act, there's a good chance that a living human being would be starved to death in.
- [17:03]
Nat Hentoff
A matter of days.
- [17:04]
George Filos
In extraordinary circumstances like this, it is wise to always err on the side of life.
- [17:11]
Lynn Vincent
Michael Schiavo's attorney, George Filos, called this government intervention an abuse of power.
- [17:17]
George Filos
Now, what you had happen here is that somebody on their deathbed had the police come to their door, forcibly remove them from their bed, and then have had her force fed against her will since that period of time, which side.
- [17:32]
Lynn Vincent
Is telling the truth? For more than a year, I've been on the case again, reading court transcripts and depositions, examining new evidence, interviewing people who've never before spoken publicly. By March 2005, protests outside Terri Schiavo's hospice had reached a fever pitch.
- [17:56]
Michael Schiavo
Why did you come down here?
- [17:57]
Bob Schindler
Because I don't want to live in a Christian fascist theocracy. Demonstrators who have remained camped out in front of Terri Scheibel's hospital in Pinellas park showed frustration and desperation. Yesterday, a half dozen got out of their wheelchair. They laid out in the road and started.
- [18:11]
Lynn Vincent
Meanwhile, the Schindler family was running out of time.
- [18:15]
Mary Schindler
Her parents legal options are virtually gone. They faced another setback when the U.S. supreme Court for the sixth time denied their request for an emergency order allowing her feeding tube to be reinserted.
- [18:26]
Michael Schiavo
And as Mary was there and she was kissing her daughter and. And hugging her daughter and talking in her ear, I saw some of Mary's tears hit Teri's cheek.
- [18:39]
Bobby Schindler
I was on the bed with my face down in the blanket, and I was crying. They let me stay there for a little bit, but then he just picked me up on my shoulders and told them to take me out.
- [18:56]
Lynn Vincent
Hubert Humphrey said, the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy, and the handicapped. In the Schiavo case, did America meet Humphrey's moral test on that question? Terry's story divided the nation and riveted the world.
- [19:18]
Michael Schiavo
Hi, baby.
- [19:20]
Bob Schindler
How are you?
- [19:21]
Nat Hentoff
And we're talking to her about like she's a viable person. She's not a viable person.
- [19:26]
Michael Schiavo
You wouldn't believe my email. Some of the most coarse, callous, hateful. She's a vegetable. What does she know? She's sitting there drooling all over herself. Let her go. I'm gonna do what it takes for Terry.
- [19:41]
Lynn Vincent
Save us from the fires of hell. And it was really the Christian right.
- [19:44]
Bob Schindler
That made it this rallying cry.
- [19:46]
Lynn Vincent
And then politicians who picked up the baton with a slow motion judicial murder.
- [19:50]
Michael Schiavo
How was this innocent disabled woman not getting the constitutional protections that we give to killers? And we've never had to deal with.
- [19:58]
Nat Hentoff
The idea that because you withdraw a.
- [20:00]
Michael Schiavo
Medical intervention, you were doing anything bad to anybody. All week I have been telling you that this thing is euthanasia. We're murdering her.
- [20:12]
Lynn Vincent
Many world changing stories emerge from the smallest beginnings. This one began with a pre dawn phone call from a small apartment in St. Petersburg, Florida. Next time on Lawless.
- [20:28]
Dan Greco
I was just, I was in total shock, complete shock. What. What was going on? And that's when I called my dad. I said, dad, you better get to the hospital. It's, it's, it's serious.
- [20:48]
Lynn Vincent
Lawless is a production of World Radio. Our executive producer is Paul Butler. Our production assistant is Lillian Hammond. Music by Will Sheehan. Lawless is reported and written by Anna Johansen Brown, Bonnie Pritchett and me, Lynn Vincent. For a list of additional audio sources is in this episode, visit lawlesspodcast. Com. Thank you for joining us.