Kym Allen Parsons: SA authorities tight-lipped over former bank robber’s approved voluntary assisted dying

A ticking timebomb ethical issue has arisen in South Australia over voluntary assisted dying.

The community is rightly asking if a self-confessed criminal, who terrorised bank staff in small outlying branches on 10 occasions, should be allowed to die peacefully at his own hand in custody.

Bank robber, former police officer and firefighter Kym Allen Parsons eventually pleaded guilty to a string of aggravated armed robberies from 2004-2014 and is now officially SA’s worst serial hold-up crim.

He has terminal cancer and has been approved by SA Health for voluntary assisted dying, which comes under relatively new laws in this state.

Under the 2022 legislation, two accredited medical professionals must sign off on the applicant’s terminal condition before they’re given a prescribed kit containing a lethal chemical dose.

Media has long dubbed Parsons the ‘bicycle bandit’ as that was his preferred transport method for fleeing each crime scene.

That term might sound flippant, but let’s not forget he brandished a firearm during his evil deeds and stole hundreds of thousands of dollars which he poured into a real estate purchase and his other mounting debts.

His eventual arrest and confession followed a DNA match linking him to one of the crime scenes.

But even coughing up his guilt came just hours before he was to face trial.

Until then, the bailed 73-year-old had enjoyed the comparative freedom of home detention.

So, let’s face the brutal facts.

This guy is a horrible person.

He’s a former copper who should have been trusted to keep people safe and secure rather than leave them mentally scarred for life, after they faced the wrong end of his gun barrel.

He may be entitled to VAD as a diagnosed patient, but what takes precedence: serving a jail sentence yet to be determined by a judge, or dying with some form of dignity?

Personally, I consider he’s forfeited his right to the comfort of taking his own life, possibly with family by his side.

SA authorities are keeping tight-lipped on all possibilities.

Where will he undertake his self-inflicted action and who’ll be present?

If in prison, authorities say it’s not considered a death in custody.

If it’s in a public hospital, is he technically in custody and is his family allowed to be there?

Can it be in his own home?

That will be out of the question.

Victim impact statements read in court have detailed the ongoing trauma bank staff have suffered at the hands of Parsons to this day.

From their viewpoint, anyone can sympathise with the notion of Parsons doing the time for his crimes, however painful, short, or protracted that might be.

If he had been disallowed his VAD right, is it akin to government-sanctioned torture?

Maybe, but for decades that’s been the standard practice in prisons and elsewhere, with many before Parsons undergoing similar terminal cancer pain and suffering.

No one is suggesting, that however sick he is, Parsons be denied appropriate medication.

Another hardline economic argument is that ending his life immediately would save the state’s overcrowded corrections system about $100,000 per year.

Where does it leave even more hardened criminals?

If the state’s longest-serving and most notorious murderer Bevan Spencer Von Einem, was diagnosed with a terminal condition, would he also be given an easy way out?

He’s currently on the ‘never to be released’ list.

A former premier once said the only way Von Einem would ever leave prison “is in a wooden box”.

He’s never confessed to murdering Richard Kelvin, the son of former television newsreader Rob Kelvin, back in the early 80s.

He went to trial and was convicted of that murder in 1984.

He’s also been allegedly linked a string of other teenage killings known as the ‘family murders’.

Those young male victims died terrible, tortured and prolonged deaths in their killer’s captivity.

The sister of victim Alan Barnes now says the killer, whoever it may be, has no right to die a peaceful VAD death, when these young men died slowly, painfully and no doubt scared beyond belief.

But at what point is a criminal considered evil enough to forego the right to a swift self-administered end, however ill they are?

I would contend that Parsons has foregone that right but (fortunately) it’s not my decision.

I also readily concede there are multiple and compelling points of view on all sides.

By the time you read this, Parsons may already be dead, but we’re just not being told.

Mike Smithson is chief reporter and presenter for 7NEWS Adelaide.

He also covered the bank robberies during Parsons’ reign of terror over a decade.