A year after Schiavo died at age 41, both sides have distilled their mutual hatred into books - both published this week - that have ignited a new public battle over her life and death.
Schiavo died a year ago Friday of dehydration, 13 days after her feeding tube was removed. Her case gripped the US public and prompted pleas for her life by US President George W. Bush, Pope John Paul II and right-to-life activists.
Michael Schiavo, who said his wife would not have wanted to be kept alive after a 1990 heart attack left her in a persistent vegetative state, fought a seven-year court battle with her parents, who tried to prolong her life.
In his book, Terri: The Truth, Michael Schiavo claims he was demonized with lies and targeted with death threats, 'all because I was doing what Terri - the woman I loved - wanted.'
'A religious zealot offered 250,000 dollars to anyone who would kill me. My two babies were threatened with death,' he says. 'I was condemned by the president, the majority leaders of the House and Senate, the governor of Florida, the pope, and the right-wing media.'
Schiavo this year married the mother of his two children - a woman he dated while Terri was alive - and says he wants to settle scores. He and the family have been making the rounds on television talk shows, claiming the moral high ground.
'For 15 years, people had a lot to say that didn't even know me,' Michael Schiavo said on NBC television. 'Now it's my turn to talk.'
He maintains that relations with Terri Schiavo's family soured after he won a 750,000-dollar malpractice ruling against a doctor who allegedly failed to notice that his wife had an eating disorder, which he blames for her collapse and brief heart stoppage.
The family accuses him of pumping the money into his legal battle with them, not his wife's hospital care. Michael Schiavo also wrote the book to refute allegations that he abused his wife. The autopsy found no evidence of abuse.
Michael Schiavo spelled out his version of his wife's life and death on her tombstone: She 'departed this Earth' on February 25, 1990 - the day she collapsed - and was 'at peace' last March 31. 'I kept my promise,' says the inscription.
Schiavo's Roman Catholic family argued she would never have wanted to be left to die and was responsive.
Terri Schiavo died in her husband's arms, after he had her parents, brother and sister escorted out. That's just one reason the family casts him as the villain, a man with a violent temper whose marriage with Terri was in trouble. They maintain her death was not fully investigated.
Seeking to undermine his credibility, they claim Michael first called Terri Schiavo's parents, not emergency services, in the early morning of February 25, 1990 when he says he found his wife collapsed on the floor of their Florida apartment. Michael Schiavo insists he called the emergency number 'immediately.'
The family's book claims to tell the inside story of Terri Schiavo's 'troubled relationship' and 'growing tension ... with the husband who would later crusade for her premature and unnecessary death,' according to promotional material from Warner Books.
'Our bottom line is, we don't want this to happen again to anybody,' Terri's sister, Suzanne Schindler Vitadamo, told ABC TV.
But an ABC poll this month found 64 per cent of Americans say that removing her feeding tube was the right thing to do. The poll of 1,000 adults had a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points.
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