Glenn Stratton: Son sentenced over aiding suicide of his father, Colin Stratton, at Castlemaine

A devoted son who has been “haunted” after he helped his terminally ill father die deserved mercy, a judge said, as the Castlemaine man was sentenced.

The devoted Castlemaine man who helped his terminally ill father die deserved “mercy”, having pulled the trigger of a rifle in an “act of love”, a judge has said.

The dusty gun, which Glenn Stratton used to help his father, Colin, take his own life at Castlemaine in May this year, was a fourteenth birthday present that sat unused in the back shed for decades until the elderly man decided “today’s my day”.

Stratton, 54, faced the Victorian Supreme Court for the final time on Thursday morning, where he was sentenced for aiding and abetting Colin’s suicide.

Colin Stratton.

Justice Elizabeth Hollingworth said Stratton’s was a case where “justice should be tempered by mercy”, and handed him an adjourned undertaking, with conviction, including an order that he be of good behaviour for the two years.

She said Stratton had been put in an “invidious and unenviable position”, the day Colin decided he wanted to die in his beloved garden, rather than continue to live in pain with terminal cancer.

The details of Colin’s “fraught” final days show he sent a note to his children, updating his medical wishes, which said, “I do this not because I am depressive or anything, but because I feel now is the right time”.

Colin’s doctors said the former State Electricity Commission linesman and father-of-three was lucid and showed no sign of depression in the lead-up to his death.

Glenn Stratton has pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting his father’s suicide. Picture: Supplied

But he did not want to wait weeks to find out whether he met the strict criteria for Victoria’s voluntary assisted dying program, which investigators later determined he was likely not eligible for.

In the waiting room at the Lyttleton St medical clinic the morning he died, Colin said to Stratton, “Today is my day, I want to kill myself today”.

Police would later that day find a note, addressed to Colin’s other son, Searle, who lives interstate, telling him to contact Thompson Family Funerals in town, a few kilometres down the hill from the family home.

Colin Stratton’s Castlemaine home, where he ended his own life with the help of his son, Glenn.

In an interview with police, Colin’s daughter, Donna, said her father had first asked her to load a gun and help him die, but she refused.

Justice Hollingworth said Stratton’s immediate family members not only understood why he helped his father to die, but supported him.

“They all miss him greatly,” she said.

Stratton is haunted by his actions, and the father-of-five has begun drinking heavily to cope with reliving his father’s death in his mind each day.

Stratton first tried to talk his father out of taking his own life but relented when Colin said he was determined to do it, with or without his son’s help.

In an interview with police at the Castlemaine police station in the hours after his father’s death, Stratton said: “He wanted the pill, but the red tape around it drove him to do it himself”.

He said he pulled the trigger because Colin was “begging him” and that, since his dad had always been there for the family, he would do anything for him in return.