England cricket icon Graham Thorpe pleaded with his wife to help him end his life in a Swiss clinic just days before being hit by a train, an inquest has heard. Thorpe was found dead in August 2024 after an agonising battle with mental health issues.
Speaking at an inquest into his death, his wife Amanda said: “The weeks leading up to his death, he told me he doesn’t want to be here any more. He asked me to help him end his life. He said he wants to go to Switzerland. I was in turmoil.”
She went on to explain that Thorpe had found lockdown “difficult” and “stressful”. His father, Geoff, backed the statement up, saying: “Everything was fine until Covid,” adding his son wasn’t a “fella who likes to be cooped up.”
On his battles with mental health, Amanda said: “He never really recovered from [his first suicide] attempt. He came back from the tour of Australia in a terrible state – lots of things, the video, the environment, the set-up. To be sacked after that I think it was foreseeable that it would be really really hard on him.”
Assistant coroner Jonathan Stevens told the court: “Things continued to go downhill, he was really struggling, had anxiety and insomnia and it was all really dark.” Adding that by June 2024 Thorpe had made repeated threats to kill himself and had lost interest in food.
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