An inquest has found that three sisters who drowned in Brighton in May died by suicide, a day after making a pilgrimage to the lake where their mother died by drowning 16 years earlier.
Jane Adetoro, 36, Christina Walters, 32, and Rebecca Walters, 31, were described by their family as “the closest sisters and the best friends”. They lived together in a flat in west London and were devoted to their father, Joseph Jacobson, whom they messaged every day.
Their bodies were recovered from the sea in Brighton early on 13 May, hours after a taxi dropped them at the beachfront. The senior coroner, Penelope Schofield, told the hearing at Woodvale coroner’s court in Brighton that precisely why they ended their lives may never be known.
Final days traced
Police established that on the night of 11 May, the sisters travelled by Uber from Greenford to Birmingham, where they were dropped off at Linton Walk at 11.36pm. This was the address where Jane and Rebecca lived with their mother, Janice Adetoro, when she disappeared on 5 January 2010. Janice’s body was recovered a month later from Brookvale Park lake, which runs to the end of Linton Walk. She was 43.
Janice had been suffering from “paranoid delusions”, the inquest into her death heard. She was sectioned and admitted to a psychiatric unit, but was discharged weeks before her death.
DCI Mark Cullimore, of Sussex police, told the inquest there was no CCTV showing what the sisters did in Birmingham, but less than two hours after arriving, at 1.28am on 12 May, they were picked up by taxi and driven back to their London flat.
Background and final hours
Christina, who had recently graduated from Brunel University and worked as an accountant, had suffered from anxiety and depression since her mother’s death and made “extensive searches” about suicide in the days before her own death. Jane, also an accountant, had paid off a loan in full on 11 May. Rebecca worked in HR.
The two younger sisters had changed their names to their mother’s maiden name after her death. Their cousin, Natalie Walters-Daniel, said: “Their mother’s death was a hard thing to carry and bear. They held a certain level of their feelings to themselves … I believe it was their own coping mechanism.”
On the evening of 12 May, the three women caught a train to Brighton, arriving at 10.20pm, and then took a car to the beachfront near the marina. The Uber driver was struck by the lack of conversation between them. Sussex police reviewed hundreds of hours of CCTV to establish that for at least four hours the women paced the seafront in the darkness. They were last seen at 2.42am. The sea was particularly rough that night.
Coroner’s conclusion
Emergency services were called after a cyclist reported seeing a body on the beach shortly before 5.45am. Jane was brought to shore by an RNLI crew and declared dead at the scene. Christina’s body was also located by the lifeboat crew. Rebecca’s body was recovered from Brighton beach. None of the women had been able to swim.
Cullimore told the inquest he had “remained open-minded throughout and always considered whether there was third-party involvement” but was now satisfied there had not been. There was no evidence of drug or alcohol use, and no indication of violence.
The coroner recorded that all three had intended to die. “I will record in respect for each of them that on May 12 they entered the sea at West Beach, Brighton, to end their lives,” she said. “They could not swim and the conditions were adverse.”
