Sidney woman pleads no contest in assisted suicide case

A Sidney woman was found guilty of facilitating her husband's suicide on Thursday.

Deann Kimble, 53, pled no contest in Cheyenne County district court to one count of assisting suicide, a class four felony.

Kimble waited outside the storage unit in which her husband, Russell Kimble shot himself in the face on March 22. Afterward she attempted to dispose of his body.

Law enforcement reportedly found Russell Kimble's body at the igloo storage units at the old Sioux Army Depot on March 26, after receiving a tip from a citizen informant. Deann Kimble was questioned and subsequently arrested on the same day. Kimble allegedly informed investigators that on the previous Saturday her husband shot himself with her child sized shotgun inside the igloo where they lived, while she sat outside in her van.

After she discovered her husband was dead, Deann Kimble told law enforcement that she hooked his body to her van with a cargo strap and towed it down the road a short distance from the igloo. She then hid the body using gravel, dirt and firewood. The body was located a couple of hundred yards from the storage unit, said Cheyenne County Sheriff John Jenson.

Deann and Russell Kimble had entered into an agreement before their marriage with some unusual terms, according to Kimble's arrest affidavit. This agreement forbade Deann Kimble from intervening when her husband decided to kill himself or to hold any sort of service or burial after his death. Deann Kimble also reportedly agreed to deal with any legal backlash that Russell Kimble's suicide and unreported death might cause.

Even though Russell Kimble never saw a doctor, both he and his wife believed him to be very ill with emphysema and failing kidneys at the time of his death.

The defendant and the state entered into a plea agreement in which the state dropped an additional charge of concealing human remains, also a class four felony in return for Kimble's plea of no contest to the assisted suicide charge.

On Thursday, Cheyenne County district court ordered Kimble to complete a 90 day evaluation at the Diagnostic and Evaluation Center in Lincoln, a maximum security facility operated by the department of corrections.

Sentencing is scheduled for June 12 at 9:30 a.m Kimble could face up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. There is no mandatory minimum sentence for the assisting suicide charge.

The defendant and the state have no agreements regarding sentencing.