Couple died in assisted suicide

A “pity-seeking” couple fulfilled a suicide pact by taking a lethal poison at a Swiss euthanasia clinic after suffering decades of ill-health, an inquest was told yesterday.

Robert Stokes, 59, and his wheelchair-bound wife Jennifer, 53, died in Zurich on April 1 last year after taking lethal doses of the barbiturate pentobarbitone.

They died in the "death room" of a flat owned and operated by the euthanasia organisation Dignitas, which helps so-called "suicide tourists" to end their lives peacefully.

The couple, from Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, in England had both suffered a range of mental and physical illness throughout the past 30 years but were not suffering terminal illnesses which would make their assisted suicide legal in Switzerland, the inquest in Bedford heard.

Recording verdicts of suicide, Bedfordshire coroner David Morris said: "No evidence has been put to me that either of them were in any terminal state or expected imminent death.

"They planned and intended to bring about the end of their lives in Switzerland with the organisation known as Dignitas.

"I am satisfied that the medical cause of death was respiratory arrest due to ingestion of pentobarbitone."

Mr Stokes had suffered severe epilepsy which was made worse by courses of electric shock therapy and two brain operations he underwent to control the condition in Australia in the 1970s.

Mrs Stokes, who had diabetes and multiple sclerosis, was confined to a wheelchair by a permanent spinal injury caused by a fall in the 1980s. She was unable to wash and dress herself and was cared for full-time by her husband.