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Three sisters pulled from sea off Brighton took their own lives, coroner rules

Senior coroner Penelope Schofield has ruled that Jane Adetoro, Christina Walters and Rebecca Walters deliberately entered the Brighton sea in May and took their own lives.

By Sarah Whitfield · · 2 min read

Waves breaking on Brighton beach with the seafront buildings and promenade behind
Photo: Roger Kidd, via Wikimedia Commons · source

Senior coroner Penelope Schofield ruled at Woodvale Coroner’s Court on Thursday that three sisters — Jane Adetoro, 36, Christina Walters, 32, and Rebecca Walters, 31, from west London — deliberately entered the Brighton sea in May and took their own lives. “On May 13, in hours of darkness, they entered the sea at Brighton, they could not swim and sea conditions were adverse,” she said. Post-mortems found all three had drowned, with no drugs or alcohol in their bodies and no evidence of violence.

The sisters took a taxi to Birmingham on May 11, arriving at Linton Walk at 11.36pm — near where their mother Janice, who died by drowning in 2010, had lived. They returned to Greenford at 1.28am, then took a pre-booked taxi to Brighton, arriving at the seafront at 10.21pm. CCTV last showed them on the beach at 2.42am on May 13; emergency services were called about 5.45am. Police found 179 references to suicide and 227 to water on Christina Walters’s laptop.

“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,” Ms Schofield said. “It is not for the court to speculate, and sadly these reasons may never be known.”

Their father Joseph Jacobson, who attended by videolink, called losing all three daughters “a heartbreak beyond anything I could ever have imagined”.

Samaritans is available free, day or night, on 116 123 or at samaritans.org.

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