Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Nora family bid to bring her home...
...as family hit out at ‘unhelpful’ comments over mystery death
THE devastated family of Nora Quoirin yesterday hit out at “unhelpful” comments about her death as the tragic teenager’s body was collected from a Malaysian hospital.
The unclothed body of the 15-yearold, who had special needs, was discovered on Tuesday 2km from a jungle holiday resort where the family had been staying.
In a statement issued yesterday the family asked people only to rely on comments issued on their behalf by the Lucie Blackman Trust.
They said: “Any other comments and views are those of the speaker and do not necessarily reflect the views of the immediate family or an accurate portrayal of the facts.
“Nora’s family are concerned that continued reports of comments such as those recently reported are unhelpful and may hinder any investigations, as well as causing confusion and distress for them.
REPATRIATION
“The Lucie Blackman Trust is arranging repatriation of Nora’s body and no further information concerning this, including dates or destinations, will be released at this point.”
Nora’s remains were taken from the Tuanku Ja’afar mortuary under police escort shortly after noon local time, according to reports, although her parents Sebastien and Meabh were not present.
Police chief Mohamad Mat Yusop said: “I was told by hospital officials that the body has just been claimed – the body has been taken to Kuala Lumpur International Airport.”
Malaysian police said following a postmortem
Nora starved after her disappearance and there was no evidence of abduction or kidnapping “for the time being”.
The family confirmed in yesterday’s statement that no reward payments were made prior to the discovery of
Nora’s body, and noted a police hotline remains open for those with information.
After meeting Malaysia’s deputy prime minister on Friday, her family said they are “struggling to understand the events of the last 10 days”.
The statement, issued on their behalf by LBT, added: “The initial postmortem results have given some information that helps us to understand
Nora’s cause of death.
“But our beautiful innocent girl died in extremely complex circumstances and we are hoping that soon we will have more answers to our many questions.”
Malaysian police said Nora is likely to have spent a week in the jungle on her own. The teenager, who was born with the brain defect holoprosencephaly and was described by her family as “vulnerable”, went missing from the resort of Dusun on Sunday, August 4.
The 15-year-old had died between two and four days before her body was discovered beside a waterfall, a postmortem examination revealed. Leading detective in the Madeleine McCann case has been advising the Quoirin family, demanding Malaysia police address “dark unanswered questions”.
In a TV interview on Friday ex-policeman Jim Gamble claimed the window where the teen was staying “could have been opened from outside”.
Mr Gamble, who is former chief executive of the UK Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, said the aluminium glass window was faulty and could not be locked from inside.
He added: “In the villa we do know the downstairs window was broken, so it couldn’t have been locked by the family and could have been opened from outside.
“I understand why in the aftermath of the interim results of the postmortem, there are still questions. We don’t know how she got from the villa to the location where she was found.
We need to understand, why over a period of six or seven days while she was alive, with intense, well-resourced searching going on in the area, she wasn’t seen or located.”
A postmortem indicated Nora died from internal bleeding, likely from prolonged hunger and stress “two to three days” before her body was found 2km from where she was last seen.
It remains unclear whether her Belfast-born mum Meabh, 45 and 47-year-old French dad Sebastien will ask for a second postmortem.
The family said they will be bringing Nora’s remains home “where she will finally be laid to rest, close to her loving families in France and Ireland”.
They also thanked Malaysian authorities and search parties for their efforts.
Mohamad Mat Yusop, Negeri Sembilan state police chief, said on Thursday the postmortem had found no evidence the teenager had been abducted or raped.
He said she had died from intestinal bleeding, most likely due to starvation and stress.
Mr Yusop added: “The cause of death was upper gastrointestinal bleeding due to duodenal ulcer, complicated with perforation – it could be due to a lack of food for a long period of time and due to prolonged stress.”
He said there was bruises on her legs but these would not have caused her death.
The LBT said yesterday ongoing investigations would continue in France as is standard practice for overseas cases involving its citizens.