A lake pilgrimage and a quiet car ride to the beach: last hours of sisters who took own lives in Brighton

. UK edition

The three sisters as young women sitting with their father.
Jane Adetoro (left), Christina Walters and Rebecca Walters (right) with their father, Joseph Jacobson. Photograph: PA

Inquest hears details of how three women spent their last days but why they ended their lives may never be known

Jane Adetoro and her younger sisters, Christina and Rebecca Walters, were “the closest sisters and the best friends”, according to their family. Devoted to their father, Joseph, whom they messaged every day, the adult siblings lived quiet lives in the flat they shared in west London and would do everything together.

When they died in May this year, it was no different. Early in the morning of 13 May, the sisters’ bodies were recovered from the sea in Brighton, hours after a taxi had dropped the three women at the beachfront.

On Thursday, an inquest in the city found that the women, who all drowned, died by suicide a day after making a pilgrimage together to the lake in Birmingham where their mother died by drowning 16 years earlier.

In a statement, Joseph Jacobson told the inquest that the scale of his loss was indescribable. “There are no words that can adequately express the pain of losing a child. To lose all three of my precious daughters, Jane, Christina and Rebecca, is a heartbreak beyond anything I could ever have imagined.”

Jacobson, who attended the inquest by video link, said he could not understand why their lives had ended so suddenly. “You were my daughters, you will always be my daughters and I will love you for the rest of my life. May your beautiful souls rest in perfect peace,” he said.

Precisely why Jane, 36, Christina, known as Tina, 32, and 31-year-old Rebecca, or Becky, decided to end their lives may never be known, the senior coroner Penelope Schofield told the hearing at Woodvale coroner’s court in Brighton.

“These three sisters lived very secluded lives. They were incredibly private. We don’t know why they took this course of action or indeed why they chose to do it in Brighton,” Schofield said.

What police were able to establish, after initial public bafflement over the circumstances of the tragedy, is how the women spent the day before they died. On the night of 11 May, the sisters travelled by Uber from their home in Greenford, west London, to Birmingham, where they were dropped off at 11.36pm in Linton Walk, in the north of the city.

This was the address where Jane and Rebecca, then 20 and 15, were living with their mother, Janice Adetoro, when she disappeared on 5 January 2010, prompting an anguished public appeal by family members. (Christina, then 16, was reportedly living with her father at the time.) Janice’s body was recovered a month later from Brookvale Park Lake, which runs to the end of Linton Walk. She was 43.

Described as a doting mother, Janice had been suffering from “paranoid delusions”, the inquest into her death heard. She was sectioned and admitted to a psychiatric unit, the Sunday Times reported, but was discharged from a home treatment team weeks before her death.

The tragedy of the sisters’ deaths “wasn’t a story that started in May”, their cousin Natalie Walters-Daniel told the newspaper last month. “It was a story that started long before.”

DCI Mark Cullimore, of Sussex police, told the inquest there was no CCTV to show what the three sisters did in the time they were 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.

The inquest heard that Christina, who had recently graduated from Brunel University of London and worked as an accountant, had experienced anxiety and depression since her mother’s death and made “extensive searches” about suicide in the days before her own death.

Jane, who was also an accountant, had paid off a loan in full on 11 May. Described as “extremely intelligent”, Jane was said by family members to have taken on a maternal role after the death of her own mother.

Rebecca, “the baby” to relatives, worked in HR. She was previously described as “mischievous” and “the lively one who was always cracking jokes”.

The two younger sisters had changed their names to their mother’s maiden name after her death. “Their mother’s death was a hard thing to carry and bear,” their cousin said. “They held a certain level of their feelings to themselves … I believe it was their own coping mechanism.”

On the evening on 12 May, the inquest heard, 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, he later told police.

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 picked up periodically in snatches of footage, last being seen at 2.42am. It was a windy night and the sea was particularly rough, Cullimore told the inquest.

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 where it appeared to have been washed to shore. 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 he was now satisfied there had not been. There was no evidence that any of the sisters had used drugs or alcohol, and no indication of any violence.

The coroner found that all three had intended to die. “I will record in respect for each of them that on 12 May they entered the sea at West Beach, Brighton, to end their lives,” she said. “They could not swim and the conditions were adverse.”