It was a tragic Tuesday in Charlotte County. 
 
 A man and wife in their 80s were found dead just after midnight from gunshot wounds at a Solaris Healthcare facility in Port Charlotte, leaving sheriff's deputies to believe it was a murder-suicide. 
 
 Friends and neighbors said Barbara Kavanaugh, 88, was a patient at the home and was suffering from dementia. Her husband, Frank, 81, was a part of the Final Exit Network, a right-to-die organization. 
 
 Nevertheless, the scenario startled those who knew the couple, who'd last lived on Antigua Drive in Punta Gorda. 
 
 "He was in good shape, good health. I can't imagine why this horrible thing happened," said Gale Petrillo. "I'm stunned. It's horrific. Sometimes we could hear him say, 'Barbara, but I'm only trying to help. I'm only trying to help.'" 
 
 Another friend, Ted Goodwin, said the organization's mission may have played a role in the couple's demise. He said Frank Kavanaugh was also beginning to heave health issues, which may have led to a mutual decision. 
 
 "They were with each other constantly over a lifetime. My guess is they had determined to go together," Goodwin said. "While my heart is breaking on one hand, I have to honor the fact they went on their terms." 
 
 A statement from F. Stan Weye, an administrator for Solaris Healthcare, said, "We would like to express our sincere condolences to the family of the husband and wife involved in a tragic event that occurred at our facility last night." ||||| A Florida right-to-die advocate fatally shot his wife and himself in her nursing home room in a murder-suicide early Tuesday, police said. 
 
 Medical staff found Frank Kavanaugh, 88, and his wife Barbara Kavanaugh, 81, dead at 1:17 a.m. at Solaris HealthCare in Port Charlotte, about 100 miles south of Tampa on Florida's western coast, said Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Skip Conroy. 
 
 Frank Kavanaugh, a retired George Washington University public policy professor, served on the national advisory board of the Final Exit Network. Leaders of the group, devoted to “supporting the human right to a death with dignity,” said the Kavanaughs' deaths demonstrate need for widespread reforms to end-of-life care. 
 
 CANADA INTRODUCES NEW ASSISTED SUICIDE LAW FOR ADULTS 
 
 “It’s shocking to everyone that he felt compelled to use a gun, but apparently that was necessary because he didn’t know how to get her out of the nursing home,” said Robert Rivas, the group’s general counsel. “Frank may have felt there was no other way to help his wife and didn’t want to live with the consequences of what he felt he had to do.” 
 
 Police said Frank Kavanaugh, 88, killed his wife Barbara and himself in her nursing home room early Tuesday. (Final Exit Network) 
 
 Barbara Kavanaugh had been living in the facility after being diagnosed with a degenerative brain disease, Rivas said. Conroy declined to discuss any details about the investigation ahead of pending autopsy results, and Solaris administrator F. Stan Weyer also said in a statement to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune that he could not release details. 
 
 “We would like to express our sincere condolences to the family of the husband and wife involved in a tragic event that occurred at our facility,” Weyer said. 
 
 Rivas and Final Exit Network President Janis Landis described Frank Kavanaugh as a gentleman who had scaled back his efforts on behalf of the organization while caring for his wife. He had recently written an essay about the importance of family discussions and research about the end of life. 
 
 “He was very interested in how public policies are dealt with. This was one that particularly resonated with him because of the mismatch in our society between what people want and what people get,” Landis said. “In retrospect, he must have been speaking from his heart about what he felt he needed to do.” 
 
 Members of the Final Exit Network said the couple's deaths show the need for reforms around end-of-life issues. (WINK) 
 
 Four states — Oregon, Washington, Vermont and California — allow for a right to die, and advocates don’t use the term “physician-assisted suicide,” according to Rivas, a Tallahassee attorney. He estimated at least one older Florida couple dies each year in a murder-suicide. 
 
 Friends who had spoken to Barbara Kavanaugh in recent weeks noted she was still able to think and talk competently despite her condition, he said. 
 
 “Barbara Kavanaugh would have clearly qualified for physician aid in dying,” Rivas said. “He wouldn’t have had to commit a felony.” 
 
 No information was immediately available about any public memorial for the Kavanaughs. A neighbor of the couple in nearby Punta Gorda, Gale Petrillo, told WINK-TV that Frank Kavanaugh had provided “absolutely phenomenal care for her” before their deaths. 
 
 Staff at Solaris HealthCare in Port Charlotte, Fla., found the couple dead in her room at 1:17 a.m. Tuesday, police said. (WINK) 
 
 “He was there for her all the time, did everything, held her hand, and when we did see them walking, she would be a little stooped,” Petrillo said. “And you know, you could just see he did really care.” 
 
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 ON A MOBILE DEVICE? WATCH THE VIDEO HERE. ||||| Right-to-die advocate, wife found dead at Port Charlotte healthcare facility in murder-suicide 
 
 PORT CHARLOTTE, Fla. – A right-to-die advocate and his wife were found dead inside a healthcare facility early Tuesday morning in what investigators believe is a murder-suicide, the Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office said. 
 
 Frank D. Kavanaugh, 81, and Barbara A. Kavanaugh, 88, both of 3306 Antigua Dr. in Punta Gorda, were found dead at about 1:17 a.m. inside a patient room at the Solaris Healthcare facility on Kings Highway in Port Charlotte, authorities said. They were found dead on the floor as someone was checking on a patient, investigators said. 
 
 Both died from gunshot wounds, authorities said. 
 
 Barbara Kavanaugh, who suffered from dementia, was admitted to Solaris earlier this year, said Gale Petrillo, who lived near the couple and admired how Frank Kavanaugh looked after his wife. 
 
 “He took absolutely phenomenal care for her,” she said. “He was there for her all the time, did everything, held her hand, and when we did see them walking, she would be a little stooped..and you know, you could just see he did really care.” 
 
 In a statement, the facility expressed their condolences and said there is no safety risk to residents or visitors to the nursing home. 
 
 Frank Kavanaugh is listed as an advisory board member for the Final Exit Network, a national organization that supports “the human right to a death with dignity.” 
 
 “We prefer to talk about aid to dying, rather than suicide,” he said in a 2011 article in Florida Weekly about the right-to-die. “Suicide implies something psychotic, a psychiatric condition. We are not here to help depressed people end their lives. We would be glad to help them to get treatment for their depression, but that is not what we are all about.” 
 
 Final Exit Network President Janis Landis described Frank Kavanaugh as someone who was committed to the right-to-die cause. 
 
 “We know nothing about the circumstances of his death but we have the highest regard and admiration for Frank,” she said. “He was a true gentlemen and devoted to causes to enhance human dignity and end needless suffering.” ||||| PUNTA GORDA - An articulate and dedicated advocate for choice in dying appears to have ended his own life, and taken his wife’s, in a violent act that people who know him say may have felt like his only recourse. 
 
 Frank Kavanaugh, who served on the national advisory board of Final Exit Network and gave public talks about end-of-life issues, was found dead with his wife early Tuesday at the Charlotte County nursing home where she was a resident. 
 
 According to a release from the Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office, officers responded at 1:17 a.m. to the Solaris HealthCare Charlotte Harbor center in Port Charlotte, where Kavanaugh, 81, and his wife Barbara, 88, had died as a result of gunshot wounds. Autopsy results are pending, a spokesman said, but the deaths are under investigation as a murder-suicide. 
 
 Solaris administrator F. Stan Weyer said in a statement that he could not disclose details. “We would like to express our sincere condolences to the family of the husband and wife involved in a tragic event that occurred at our facility,” the statement said. 
 
 Kavanaugh was a former professor of health care information science at George Washington University School of Medicine, and taught online in his retirement. His most recent appearance on behalf of Final Exit — a national group of volunteers who support people seeking a peaceful death instead of a medically extended life — was in December at Temple Beth Israel on Longboat Key. 
 
 He had given up all public commitments recently to care for his wife, who suffered from a degenerative brain disease, said Janis Landis, president of Final Exit. She described Kavanaugh as “a true gentleman” and the news of their deaths as “devastating.” 
 
 “I know that Frank was completely devoted to her, and really disengaged from everything to be with her over the last few months,” Landis said. “Most people in our organization did not know exactly what was going on. His interest was always in helping others, and he very rarely talked about the pain going on in his own life.” 
 
 While Landis emphasized that she knew nothing about the manner of their deaths, she acknowledged that a murder-suicide by gunfire is in dramatic contrast to the quiet and efficient methods endorsed by Final Exit. 
 
 “For people who wish to end their lives together, society does not give many choices if one of those partners is under the care of a third party,” she said. “In cases like this, the means become very limited. Most people would choose a peaceful death if they could.” 
 
 Jim Chastain of Sarasota, another nationally active Final Exit member who worked with Kavanaugh for the last decade, was even more blunt about the lack of end-of-life options for elders in a long-term care facility. 
 
 “It’s not surprising that he did what he felt he had to do,” Chastain said. “It’s sad that the law leaves it that way. I’m sure he would have preferred the inert gas or helium method, but that would be almost impossible in a nursing home.” 
 
 Final Exit, an outgrowth of the former Hemlock Society, educates and assists people who have decided to terminate their own lives. This is in contrast to Compassion & Choices, another spinoff from the original group, which works mainly through courts and legislatures to change the law. 
 
 Chastain said he last spoke with Kavanaugh about two weeks ago. He remembered his colleague as “a highly ethical person” who moved his wife to a facility when her dementia worsened, after years of home care. 
 
 “He was spending all of his time with Barbara,” Chastain said. “He could never be away from home for a speech overnight. Probably for the last three or four years, he hasn’t spent a night away from her.” 
 
 Kavanaugh also served as a commodore in the Punta Gorda division of the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary in the 1990s, and was active in civic issues. But helping others try to avoid a lingering death was a central focus of his later retirement years. 
 
 “It’s really about thinking through what it is you do or do not want at the end of your life,” he said in a Herald-Tribune interview a year ago. “Tell your family, ‘I want you to know what I want, and I want you to honor my wishes,’ and be as clear as you can.”
– An 81-year-old man who had long fought for people's right to die a dignified, peaceful death died violently along with his wife early Tuesday, police say. Frank Kavanaugh, a member of the Final Exit Network's national advisory board, was found dead from gunshot wounds along with his 88-year-old wife, Barbara, at a Florida nursing home she had been admitted to earlier this year, reports the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. Police in Charlotte County believe it was a murder-suicide. Neighbors and fellow members of the right-to-die organization say Kavanaugh was completely devoted to his wife, who had dementia, and may have felt that this was the only way out, WINK reports. "It's shocking to everyone that he felt compelled to use a gun, but apparently that was necessary because he didn't know how to get her out of the nursing home," Robert Rivas, the group's general counsel, tells the New York Daily News. "Frank may have felt there was no other way to help his wife and didn't want to live with the consequences of what he felt he had to do." A friend tells ABC7 that a mutual decision may have been made after Kavanaugh began to have health issues of his own. "They were with each other constantly over a lifetime. My guess is they had determined to go together," he says. "While my heart is breaking on one hand, I have to honor the fact they went on their terms." (An advocacy group says it has found an inexpensive drug cocktail for suicide.)