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

Inquest hears details of how three women spent their final 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.

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.

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.

“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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.