A coroner has concluded that Gaynor Lord, a 55-year-old woman who went missing after leaving work in Norwich and whose body was recovered from a river a week later, died by misadventure.
Lord disappeared after she left her shift at a department store gin counter in Norwich at 2.45pm on 8 December 2023. CCTV footage showed her hurrying through the city before her clothes and belongings were found in a park near the River Wensum.
Her body was recovered from the river after a week-long police search during which they consulted officers from Lancashire constabulary who had worked on the search for Nicola Bulley earlier that year.
Norfolk’s senior coroner Jacqueline Lake recorded a conclusion of death by misadventure and said she was satisfied Lord had “intended to enter the water but I do find she didn’t intend to die by her actions”.
The coroner said Lord’s mental health had been noted as “stable” in January 2023, but “there was some evidence in the more recent past that she was acting out of character”.
Analysis of Lord’s phone showed that on the afternoon of her disappearance, she sent a message saying “help” to a contact in her phone who had died some time previously.
In other messages, Lord wrote that she was “going crazy” and “can feel the fear”, with the coroner saying that in a “string of messages she said she didn’t know what she was doing”.
The coroner said Lord had suffered a large epileptic seizure four days before her disappearance, “her first large seizure for some time”, the inquest heard. She had start hormone replacement therapy for menopause in March 2023.
Lord had a previous mental health episode in 2011 when she was taken to hospital after being found in a pub “waiting for aliens to pick her up or take her away”, her husband, Clive Lord, said.
He said that at the time “doctors were considering sectioning her but they allowed her to come home”, adding: “We think she screwed up her tablets and had a reaction.”
The coroner also cited evidence provided to the inquest that Lord, a mother of three, had recently watched a TV programme about cold water swimming, and talked about it with her husband and a friend.
Clive Lord said: “She’s never done [cold water swimming] herself but I don’t know if in her confused state she may have been thinking about this. I don’t know this for sure – it’s just me thinking about why she would enter the water.”
He added: “There’s no reason for her to be at Wensum Park. It’s not a park we’ve ever been to before. The only reason I can think she went there is so we couldn’t find her.”
He added there had been no “arguments” or “disagreements” between the couple, and on the morning of her disappearance they had spoken about planning a holiday to Japan the following year.
DS Mike Cox said in a report that when found, Lord’s body was “not clothed” and was 2.5 metres underwater. No alcohol or “drugs of abuse” were detected in her blood and there was no evidence she had been assaulted, Cox said.
Lord’s medical causes of death were recorded as immersion and drowning.
• In the UK, the charity Mind is available on 0300 123 3393 and Childline on 0800 1111. In the US, call or text Mental Health America at 988 or chat 988lifeline.org. In Australia, support is available at Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636, Lifeline on 13 11 14, and at MensLine on 1300 789 978
