Meeting leads to suicide for one, arrest of another

McALLEN, Texas -- Jeff George Ostfeld and Jennifer Malone were drawn together in search of death.

Ostfeld was a 33-year-old unemployed, friendless loner living with his mother in Las Vegas, who had considered suicide himself, according to court testimony.

Malone was a 29-year-old real estate broker from Oregon who loved the outdoors and who had recently moved to Florida. Her bubbly, outgoing personality masked manic depression, according to court testimony.

They met earlier this month in an online forum for discussing tranquilizers and then began communicating directly. A week ago, they flew separately to South Texas.

By Monday, Malone was dead in a motel room in Nuevo Progreso, Mexico, and Ostfeld was in U.S. federal custody after trying to smuggle potent animal tranquilizers into the country.

Malone's mother, Tamara Hamilton, sat shaking with emotion in a courtroom Friday as a federal magistrate ordered that Ostfeld be held without bond. "Without this individual, Jennifer Malone would be alive today," Assistant U.S. Attorney Leo J. Leo said, although there is no evidence Ostfeld forced Malone to end her life.

Malone had struggled with depression and had made at least one previous attempt to end her life with a handful of Tylenol and a couple shots of liquor, according to testimony Friday from Robert Haberkamp, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement special agent. Haberkamp investigated the case and gave the court details of the pair's journey.

This time she sought more expertise and found Ostfeld, who after consulting the Peaceful Pill Handbook, a detailed guide to ending one's life, suggested a rendezvous in the northern Mexico border town where a potent animal tranquilizer is easily obtained.

Malone responded to that e-mail with a "wink wink," indicating she was game, Ostfeld told federal investigators.

Ostfeld on May 15 checked into a hotel in McAllen, Texas, five miles north of the Rio Grande, and returned in a taxi a couple hours later with Malone, who hotel workers described as "distraught."

On Saturday, the pair took a taxi about 20 miles to the Progreso International Bridge. They walked down the bustling main street clogged with pharmacies, dentists and bars and near the end found the Las Flores Inn.

Dr. Philip Nitschke, author of the Peaceful Pill Handbook, said Malone's death was a tragedy, but said his book wasn't to blame. "Here it may well have fallen into the wrong hands," he said. His book provides information on what to look for and specific veterinary stores in Nuevo Progreso to find the drug.

Ostfeld's mother was charged with child endangerment Wednesday in Las Vegas when ICE agents, investigating Ostfeld's smuggling case, found two young children living in poor conditions.