A man named in a 30-felony indictment for allegedly doing underground abortions has been found dead in his jail cell, according to a team of pro-life advocates.
Rick Van Thiel, 54, was found hanged in an apparent suicide, Operation Rescue said.
He was being held at the Clark County Detention Center in Las Vegas at the time.
“Van Thiel was arrested and jailed in September, 2015, for conducting abortions and other quack medical treatments out of a grimy trailer in his junk-cluttered back yard. A local news reporter dubbed it the ‘Trailer of Terror,'” Operation Rescue said.
The organization that monitors the abortion industry and advocates for strict limits, explained Van Thiel “was never formally educated, trained, or licensed in the field of medicine.”
“His background was instead that of a pornographic movie star/maker and inventor of sex toys.”
But he bragged during a jailhouse interview he found out how to do abortions by watching videos.
The Clark County grand jury indicted him in 2016 on one count of child abuse, two counts of doing health procedures resulting in substantial bodily harm, two counts of sexual assault, six counts of sexual assault resulting in substantial bodily harm and 19 counts of engaging as a physician without a license.
“Van Thiel was an opportunist. Like many charlatans before him, he saw that offering cut-rate abortions and quack ‘holistic’ cures to hookers and other vulnerable women was a viable means to quick cash. He lured customers through several seedy ‘adult’ websites and by word of mouth,” OR reported.
“It is a shame that Van Thiel took his own life. As long as he was living, there was hope for his redemption,” said Troy Newman, president of Operation Rescue. “However, he will never hurt another person again, and that is something to be grateful for, however tragic the circumstances might be.”
Newman’s organization said Van Thiel’s arrest came within just weeks of the arrests of other abortionists allegedly doing work outside the law, in Michigan and Florida.
“Before anyone thinks that a lack of access to abortion facilities had anything to do with this, all three of these men conducted illegal abortions in areas where there were several abortion facilities,” Newman said. “his illegal abortion trend is all about exploiting the vulnerable to satisfy greed. It is a thousand wonders that no mother was killed during these dangerous, unsanitary abortions.”
