Maja OBrien

Maja O’Brien was found floating face-down in Hinksey stream off Kennington Road in Oxford on 22 April 2019.

She had gone missing four weeks earlier and was reported missing on 28 March 2019.

She had been due to play at an orchestral concert after which she was expected to have flown out to Croatia, however, she never made the concert and didn't go to Croatia.

She was found by a Oxfordshire Lowland Search and Rescue volunteer that had been out searching for her.

Her post mortem showed that she had a fracture to her left superior thyroid cartilage which was said to have often been associated with strangulation.

Maja O’Brien had been a keen flute player and was a retired Oxford University lecturer. She had a PhD in Psychology from University College, London.

The police found that she had Googled 'death by drowning' on 15 October 2019, but said that they could not rule out the possibility that she had been murdered.

The police said that they thought that there were four possibilities as to how she had come to die:

1. That she had left home with the intention of harming herself.
2. That she left home with an unknown intention but came to have a medical episode causing her to fall into the river.
3. She was harmed by someone known to her.
4. She was harmed by an unknown third party.

She had lived in Wytham Street, Oxford.

She was last known to have gone to the Oxford Academy to practice with the Cowley Orchestra where she told other musicians that she would not be coming in the following  weeks as she was off to Croatia for a holiday.

At her inquest, the Coroner said, 'The evidence does not fully take us in one direction or the other. Maja O’Brien left her home address on March 28, 2019. She was reported missing later that day and her body was discovered on April 22, 2019. The cause of her death following a post mortem examination, was unascertained'.