Coroner Finds Three Sisters Planned Their Deaths Off Brighton
Senior coroner Penelope Schofield ruled that Jane Adetoro, Christina Walters and Rebecca Walters decided together to end their own lives before drowning in the sea off Brighton in the early hours of 13 May. She recorded drowning as the medical cause of death for all three and returned conclusions of suicide. The inquest, a formal process to establish the facts around a death rather than assign criminal blame, was held at Woodvale coroner's court in Brighton. The Guardian
The women were sisters aged 36, 32 and 31. Jane Adetoro was 36. Christina Walters was 32. Rebecca Walters was 31. They lived together in a flat in Greenford, west London.
The court heard a detailed account of their movements in the two days before they died. On 11 May the sisters travelled by taxi to Birmingham and were dropped off at 11.36pm at Linton Walk. Linton Walk is close to Brookvale Park Lake, where their mother Janice Adetoro died by drowning in 2010. The sisters were picked up to return to Greenford at 1.28am on 12 May.
On the evening of 12 May they took a pre-booked taxi to Brighton, arriving near the seafront at 10.21pm. They were last seen alive on beach CCTV at 2.42am on 13 May. The bodies of Jane Adetoro and Christina Walters were later located by an RNLI lifeboat crew, the volunteer service that handles rescue at sea. Rebecca Walters' body was recovered from the shoreline on Brighton beach.
Police had earlier reported the bodies were recovered from the water near Black Rock, and that the women were found dead at Brighton beach at 5.45am on 13 May. BBC Sussex Police found no criminality involved in the deaths. Formal identification as sisters Jane Adetoro, Christina Walters and Rebecca Walters was confirmed on 20 May. People
Postmortem examinations, the medical checks carried out after death, found no evidence of drugs or alcohol and no evidence the women had been subjected to violence. The coroner said the sisters entered the sea at Brighton in hours of darkness, could not swim and sea conditions were adverse. The court also heard Christina Walters had suffered from anxiety and depression since her mother's death. No third-party violence was found.
The broader context here is what this type of coronial outcome settles and what it leaves open. A conclusion of suicide, combined with findings on planning, toxicology and absence of violence, closes the question of third-party involvement and establishes collective intent on the evidence heard. The recorded sequence of pre-booked travel, first to Linton Walk and then to the seafront, provides the evidential basis for planning. For practitioners, the remaining questions concern family bereavement after a maternal drowning, continuity of care for surviving relatives, and how repeated place-based visits are understood in risk assessment, matters the inquest record notes but does not itself resolve.
