Jack Kevorkian's Volkswagen van

The 1968 Volkswagen van in which Mrs. Adkins died in 1990 using Dr. Jack Kevorkian's suicide device, now shown as a haunted object in Zak Bagans' museum in Las Vegas.

In June 1990 The New York Times reported the first death using Dr. Jack Kevorkian's suicide device. A woman the paper named as Mrs. Adkins died inside an old Volkswagen van parked in a local park; Kevorkian said it took under six minutes. The Times wrote that her death alarmed many medical ethicists and left legal experts unsure what counted as assisted suicide, and it raised the question of whether doctors have any part in helping seriously ill patients die.

In August 2015 the Detroit Free Press reported that Zak Bagans, star of the Travel Channel's Ghost Adventures, had paid $32,500 for the rusty 1968 van. The van had been kept in storage at American Jewelry and Loan, a Detroit pawn shop, according to Seth Gold, vice president of the shop.

Bagans now shows the van in Zak Bagans' The Haunted Museum in Las Vegas, where Wikipedia lists it as the "Death Van" and notes that visitors sign waivers before entering. The museum says many assisted suicides by Kevorkian took place in the van, and that it is a centre of paranormal activity where women in particular have fainted and seen a shadowy dark figure near it. The Times report of 1990 describes Mrs. Adkins's death as the first using the device. Wikipedia notes that some claims attached to the museum's objects have drawn criticism. Kenny Biddle, writing on the museum for Skeptical Inquirer in 2018, noted that the exhibit represents a real, named woman who ended her life in the van.