Kevorkian Is Costly To Detroit's Hotels

DETROIT - Detroit-area hoteliers cringe when they think about Jack Kevorkian.

Kevorkian has assisted with suicides at at least 14 Detroit-area hotels and motels, with an estimated cost to each business of $1,000 per incident, hoteliers say.

And if the room wasn't prepaid, settling the bill often is next to impossible.

"Our costs are significant, and Kevorkian isn't going to pay for this," said Dennis Tap, general manager of the Comfort Inn in Romulus, Mich.

"Never mind if the victim put the room on a credit card. Try and get reimbursement for that."

An analysis of suicides in which Kevorkian has assisted since 1990 shows that he seems to favor inns with rooms that have exterior entrances and those near Detroit Metropolitan Airport or in Oakland County, where he and his attorney, Geofrey Fieger, live.

Fieger dismissed the suggestion by hoteliers that Kevorkian targets certain hotels and motels. "I'm convinced that after seven years, nothing he does is OK. No matter what he does, people won't be OK with it. The answer is to let Dr. Kevorkian reopen his clinic. But he'll be harassed there, so he can't do that."

But since Janet Adkins became Kevorkian's first client in 1990, the former pathologist moved his practice from his 1968 Volkswagen van and homes of supporters to area motels and hotels.

Each time a person dies in a motel or hotel, the innkeeper replaces the mattress and bed linen and has the carpet cleaned - at

an average cost of $570. There also is loss of the room for at least two days at $60-100 a night.

Add to that police costs for the investigation, plus a $4,000 to $10,000 tab for an autopsy, and each of Kevorkian's 64 known clients - most from outside Michigan - brought a tab in excess of $12,000. His three trials cost between $500,000 and $1 million, prosecutors said.

Kevorkian's clients "are imports into Michigan, and this is an excessive burden on the taxpayers," said Dr. Ljubisa Dragovic, who is Oakland County's medical examiner.

Fieger and the hoteliers agree motels are not ideal suicide settings, but they disagree on the impact of them. "A call is made well before any housekeeper could find a body," the lawyer said. Hotel managers dispute that.

"Fieger claims they call before every suicide and that's not true," Tap said. "If we had received a call we would have taken that very seriously. We wouldn't send an unknowing employee into that kind of situation."

A housekeeper at his inn was on her regular rounds last July 2 when she found Lynn Lennox's body in a room, Tap said.