Couple's Swiss clinic suicide pact

An "attention seeking" couple fulfilled a suicide pact at a Swiss euthanasia clinic after suffering decades of ill health, an inquest was told yesterday.
Robert Stokes, 59, and his wife Jennifer, 53, died in Zurich on April 1 last year after taking lethal doses of a barbiturate. 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, had both suffered mental and physical illnesses throughout the past 30 years - but were not suffering terminal illness which would make their assisted suicide legal in Switzerland, the inquest in Bedford heard.

Recording verdicts of suicide, the Bedfordshire coroner David Morris said: "They planned and intended to bring about the end of their lives in Switzerland. They were meticulous in the way they arranged their affairs."

The couple had failed in several attempts to kill themselves but repeatedly declined offers of psychiatric help from doctors.

The inquest was read a statement from David Stokes, Mrs Stokes's son from her first marriage. He described the couple as highly religious and said their mental illnesses led them to seek pity from people they met for their medical conditions.

Their thoughts of being terminally ill were all in their heads, he added.