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An investigation into the death of Nora Anne Quoirin, the London teenager whose body was found in a Malaysian jungle, ruled that no third parties were involved and that she likely died by accident.
Coroner Maimoonah Aid ruled out homicide, natural death and suicide on Monday and said the 15-year-old French-Irish girl was likely lost after leaving her family’s cabin alone.
“After hearing all the relevant evidence, I ruled that no one was involved in Nora Anne’s death,” he told a Seremban city court.
“It is more likely that he died by accident.”
Maimoonah said there were no suspicious circumstances prior to the disappearance, no ransom request or signs of intrusion into the family home. The teenager likely left the family accommodation “on her own and subsequently got lost in the abandoned palm oil plantation,” she said.
“For me to speculate and boast about his actions and the involvement of a third party without any proof, that would be a breach of my duty, so the investigation is closed.”
Nora’s parents, who were awaiting an open verdict, were listening from their home in London but did not give an immediate statement.
Nora, from Balham, disappeared overnight while on a family vacation at a resort in Seremban, south of Kuala Lumpur, in August 2019. She had been sleeping in a bedroom with her brother and sister, but when the family woke up one tomorrow, they discovered that she was missing. She was barefoot and wearing only underwear. A large window in the The family chalet was found open.
After a 10-day search, Nora’s body was discovered naked next to a stream in the dense jungle, 2 kilometers from the compound where she had stayed.
An autopsy concluded that Nora likely died of hunger and stress after spending seven days in the jungle.
Police said their investigations found no evidence that Nora had been abducted, and Malaysian authorities later classified the case as “requiring no further action”. However, Nora’s parents lobbied for an investigation, stating that many questions about her disappearance remained unanswered.
During the investigation, which began in August, senior police official Mohamad Mat Yusop said he did not see anything suspicious when inspecting the chalet where Nora had been staying and that he believed she had slipped out of the window.
Nora’s parents, who spoke through a video link, questioned those findings and criticized aspects of the police response. Meabh and Sebastien Quoirin repeatedly emphasized that it would have been completely out of line for her to have left alone.
Her parents talked about how Nora had a neurological condition that meant she would have had a hard time venturing that far. Nora, who was 15 years old, was born with holoprosencephaly, which affected both her balance and mobility, and her family described her as vulnerable.
During the search operation, a recording of Meabh calling her daughter’s nickname, Nora Bean, was played through the jungle, because her parents feared that she would not respond to a call from a stranger.
Her mother told the forensic court that she doubted that Nora, who weighed 4 10 pounds (30 kg), would have been strong enough to swing open and climb out of the chalet window. Nora had never been out the front door of her house, the court heard.
At the time of Nora’s disappearance, her parents had repeatedly warned her that they believed she had been abducted, but the police continued to treat the incident as a missing person case.
Meabh said she feared crucial evidence had been lost because police were too slow to investigate the possibility of a criminal element, and described problems with the response. The officer sent to take a statement from him had trouble communicating in English, he said, while some police officers were “quite rude and arrogant.”
Both parents said they heard muffled whispers inside the family chalet the night their daughter disappeared. They had been half asleep at the time and therefore did not act.
The owner of the complex, Haanim Bamadhaj, said in the investigation that a window in the chalet was broken and could be opened from the outside.
Nearly 50 witnesses testified in the investigation, including a British pathologist who performed a second autopsy on Nora’s body. He did not question the findings of the autopsy conducted in Malaysia, but said the possibility of sexual assault could not be completely ruled out due to the condition of his remains.
During his ruling, Maimoonah focused on the fact that the family was probably exhausted after a long journey from Britain.
“The family (was) tired and jet lagged,” he said. “Nora Anne had also shown an increase in her level of tiredness.”
This made it likely that the teenager, in a “strange and new place,” had left the family accommodation of her own free will on her first night at the resort, she said.
