The death of Nora Quoirin, a French-Irish teenager whose body was found near a Malaysian jungle resort after she vanished while on holiday, was most likely due to misadventure, a coroner has found.
Coroner Maimoonah Aid ruled out homicide, natural death and suicide and said the 15-year-old likely got lost after leaving her family's cottage on her own.
She disappeared at the Dusun eco-resort in southern Negeri Sembilan state on August 4, 2019, a day after her family arrived for a holiday.
After an extensive search, her body was found on August 13 beside a stream on a palm oil estate about 1.6 miles from the resort.
Police believed she climbed out of the cottage window on her own, with no evidence of any foul play.
But Nora's parents said she was likely kidnapped because she had mental and physical disabilities and would not have wandered off on her own.
The coroner described that possibility as a theory and said it would be a breach of her duty to speculate on third-party involvement without any evidence.
Nora was only wearing underwear when she went missing, but her body was found naked.
The coroner noted the family's contention this lent credence to the possibility of sexual assault but said an extensive autopsy could find no such proof, nor evidence of struggle marks or smothering.
Ms Aid also said there were no suspicious circumstances prior to the teenager's disappearance, no ransom request and no signs of intrusion into the family cottage.
"I ruled that there was no-one involved in the death of Nora Anne. It is more probable than not that she died by misadventure, i.e. that she had gone out of the (cottage) on her own and subsequently got lost in the abundant palm oil plantation," the coroner said.
Nora Anne's parents were listening to the online verdict from their home in London, but gave no immediate statement.
A total of 49 witnesses testified over 24 days at the inquest, which began last August, using video-conferencing due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here