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.