In a serious complaint against the Last Resort company that undertook the assisted suicide of a 64-year-old American woman in Switzerland using the Sarco chamber, had been advanced by a 55-year-old woman, also from the US, who was scheduled to be the first to take her own life in this way.

In a letter to the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, the 55-year-old had accused the managers of the Last Resort of being “heartless”, of wanting to exploit her for publicity and of wanting to take her savings.

The 55-year-old woman, a native of Alabama, named company vice president Florian Willetta and legal representative Fiona Stewart in her letter, claiming they wanted to take advantage of her.

“Had I known how deeply heartless the people who held my fate in their hands were and that their only motivation was their media and marketing presence, I would never have subjected myself to this torture,” wrote the 55-year-old, who chose another similar company to commit suicide last July.

The 55-year-old, who had a liver health problem and a nervous system condition, said she had cashed out $40,000 of her life savings to travel to Zermatt in May to commit suicide with the help of Last Resort.

According to her letter, as soon as she arrived in Switzerland she was at the centre of a “publicity circus”, suggesting she had been forced into “embarrassing” interviews as part of the publicity the company was seeking.

In her complaint, the 55-year-old American woman also said that Willett, who was present at the 64-year-old’s suicide, and Stewart pressured her to pay some of their expenses, including grocery and restaurant bills.

At one point, Stewart allegedly even told her “you’re going to die soon anyway, so you don’t need your money.”

And when she decided to cancel her assisted suicide, the 55-year-old complained that she was left alone in Zermatt.

“I sacrificed everything, used every available resource and cut all my ties believing they would offer me a peaceful end,” the 55-year-old wrote.

For its part, the company responded through Willett, who said that “to mock someone who is about to die would be completely rude and completely alien to us.”