Not enough evidence to decide cause of estate agent’s death – coroner

A coroner has said there is not enough evidence to determine the cause of death of a 23-year-old estate agent who was found on a Suffolk beach.

Chelsie Dack was reported missing from her home in the seaside town of Gorleston in Norfolk at 3am on April 20 2020, and found dead on Sizewell beach in Suffolk nearly a month later on May 11.

Assistant Norfolk coroner Johanna Thompson told an inquest in Norwich on Thursday that “there’s simply insufficient evidence for me to reach a conclusion,” adding that conclusions of death by suicide or accident would be “inappropriate” in Ms Dack’s case.

In her narrative conclusion she said the “medical cause of death” was “immersion in water”.

The inquest was told that Ms Dack had seen an ex-boyfriend, Kallem Howard, in the hours before she was reported missing, and that she had sent messages to her best friend late at night reporting that she felt sick.

Ms Halls asked the hearing: “Had she got something in her system that was making her think differently to how she usually would?”

Mr Howard told the inquest that he went to Ms Dack’s flat at around 9.30pm on the evening of April 19 and left at 11.30pm when he was picked up by a friend.

Forensic toxicologist Mark Tyler said Ms Dack’s body did not have high levels of alcohol or other substances.

He said that her blood alcohol levels were “well below the drink-driving limit” and that at these levels “you might expect some mild signs of intoxication but no significant drunkenness”.

There were low levels of GHB or Gamma Hydroxybutyrate in her blood and urine samples but Mr Tyler said it was “quite possible” that these had been generated naturally by the body after her death.

He said the science was not advanced enough for him to say whether a low level of GHB had been given to Ms Dack or if this level had occurred naturally.

Mr Howard was questioned by police on suspicion of administering a noxious substance following her death but no further action was taken because of a lack of evidence, the inquest was told.

The inquest heard that police were shown messages on Mr Howard’s phone where Ms Dack called him “boring” for leaving her flat, although his phone was not collected as evidence by police, and disappeared the day after Ms Dack went missing.

The coroner said that Ms Dack had been exhibiting “unusual” behaviour on the night before her death, “following which she had expressed an intention to take her own life”.

A message from Ms Dack to Ms Halls at around 1.30am on the morning she was reported missing said: “I am going to go for a walk, I am going to die…”

The coroner said that she was “a young woman with no recent history of mental health issues” and noted that her death occurred “in the early days of the Covid pandemic when the country was in lockdown”.

Her father Matthew Dack told the inquest that his daughter has “always been a happy, caring, loving person, beautiful inside and out, and truly the best daughter anyone could ask for”.

He said she was a “highly motivated, driven young woman” with a wide group of friends, who was planning trips abroad to Greece later in the year. She had recently bought a kitten, Shadow, and as well as her own property.

He said that Mr Howard had been “controlling” and that she was “very much not herself” during her relationship with him in her late teens.

Ms Dack’s mother Dawn Howell said her daughter was an “absolute delight to be with” and her manager at work “could only describe her in one word and that was ‘perfect’”.

When she read the messages Ms Dack had sent her friend, she said: “My first thought when reading the message was, ‘Oh my god, he’s drugged her’.”

“Chelsie hates the cold… she always hated walking. So why go out and do things you hate? This just does not make sense to us,” she said.