Tag: Nora Quoirin

Excerpt from NOT ALL WHO WANDER ARE LOST

September 8, 2019 / crimerocket_pmfrt4 / 0 Comments

Author’s Note: One of the idiosyncrasies of the Quoirin case was the unprecedented length of the autopsy. It dragged on and on for hours, and then into a second day. When the results finally came out confusion persisted. After the marathon autopsy it still seemed hard to tell exactly how the 15-year-old had died. Except it wasn’t.

Marathon Autopsy

At 14:30, the Malaysian police cordoned off the access road to The Dusun Resort with yellow police tape. Initial access to the scene was slow. Getting her body out of the area wasn’t going to be quick, or easy. A local offered an officer a ride closer to where Nora lay on the back of his scooter.

But the message behind the fluttering, bright yellow tape was clear. The authorities had recovered a dead child, bruised and naked from a streambed, and the area was now a crime scene. But was it?

As mentioned earlier, the Quoirin family arrived in the area in a black sedan at 16:07. It’s not clear why they were summoned to the scene, or whether they were taken to where Nora lay in situ, or whether this delayed the transport of Nora’s body to a nearby hospital.

At 18:26 local time [11:26 London-time] and about an hour before sunset, a red, blue and white helicopter buzzed over the scene. Once in position over a densely forested gyhll [or ravine] the chopper lowered a basket down to cops and rescuers workers gathered below.

BBC news crews recorded the chopper winching up a basket with Nora’s body, supported by a police officer. As the dead child and officer spun upward, a warm, impenetrable forest hovered thickly behind it. Finally, the chopper turned and clattered off towards Tuanku Ja’afar Hospital, the biggest hospital in Negeri Sembilan.

The government hospital is just 25 minutes’ drive by car, southwest of The Dusun Resort. By chopper no more than half that time. At 19:07 the chopper drifted down, out of the sunless sky, towards a single traffic controller wearing an orange vest and military fatigues motioning within both arms on the ground. The chopper landed softly on a wide swath of green lawn adjacent to the hospital. Once the rotors had wound down around a dozen personnel in blue fatigues, orange berets and wearing surgical masks [and gloves] stormed the chopper.

An ambulance approached swiftly and parked near the edge of the rotors. A stretcher was hauled out and wheeled to the open doors of the chopper. A large, green canvas bag was pulled out of it. One of the personnel near the front of the stretcher pulled out a phone and snapped a photo. Nora’s body was transferred to the stretcher, while the same individual with the phone snapped more photos, and then lifted into the ambulance.

The rear hatch was closed, and the ambulance quickly headed to the Jabatan Perubatan forensic section of the hospital, a nondescript, somewhat rundown building.

Meanwhile, the Quoirin family who had rushed to the scene, were rushing back to the hospital, trying to catch-up to their daughter’s body. Other family members were alerted. It’s not clear whether the media were instructed not to photograph Nora’s parents and siblings, or whether…

Is THIS where Nora Quoirin slept when she disappeared?

August 15, 2019 / crimerocket_pmfrt4 / 16 Comments

Since following this case, there’s been a frustrating lack of information. Very few photos of the resort were released, and very little information has been made freely available to contextualize the scene. Has this been by accident, or by design?

The images released by the authorities of the window [the imputed exit point when Nora supposedly wandered off] were from such a wide angle, it was difficult to see any artifacts either on the inside or outside of the windows. There was also only a limited view inside the bungalow.

As a result of extensive digging and dogged research it’s been a slow process to start piecing the Quoirin accomodations together.

Having done so, it now appears unlikely that Nora slept upstairs at all. The parents and siblings told police Nora slept close to them, upstairs [see screengrab below]. But is this accurate? If it is, why didn’t they hear her move out of the room? The bungalows upstairs have wooden floors. So if she was sleeping right beside them, how couldn’t they hear her?

We also know the children were later not allowed to communicate any further with investigators as a result of “legal advice”. The family lawyered up as early as Day 2 of Nora’s disappearance. Missing from the British or Irish coverage of the case was this snippet of intelligence published in the Malay Mail on August 7th, and sent to me courtesy of @McCannCaseTweet [who’s also been cautiously studying this case].

These [see below] are the upstairs living quarters. Enough to sleep two or three people. [Nora was on holiday with her parents, and two younger siblings, a brother and a sister as reported in The Mirror on August 7th].

With her spatial difficulties, she would have struggled to navigate the spiral staircase between the upstairs and downstairs level, especially at night.

It was never explicitly stated where Nora slept, if she was upstairs with her parents or with her siblings, but one assumed it was with her siblings. It was clearly implied that she slept upstairs on August 3rd, and that she was the most tired after their long trip.

But the police believed – correctly – that Nora probably didn’t sleep upstairs, despite what the parents and perhaps Nora’s siblings had told the Malaysian authorities. This comes from The Sun, August 9th.

Below is a clear view from the inside towards the kitchen window. It shows a bedroom in the double-story Sora House. If this is accurate, Nora was left to sleep on her own, while the family – the Quoirin couple and her younger siblings – all slept upstairs.

Edit: It appears more likely one or both parents slept downstairs in this room and presumably in this bed.

If Nora woke up at night and went looking for her family, would they have heard her? And isn’t that why she might have wandered off in the first place – because she was in a strange place, in the dark, looking for her mom and dad, brother and sister, couldn’t them and horribly lost in the process?

The Sora House appears to be the biggest of the six units offered by the resort.

Was this vertiginous setup of structures connected by stilts and staircases really the ideal setting for a child with Nora’s developmental difficulties and cognitive vulnerabilities?

Nora Quoirin: Initial forensic results show no injuries or signs of violence

August 14, 2019 / crimerocket_pmfrt4 / 1 Comment

In a scenario where there are no obvious outward injuries, pathologists must look inward. Asphyxia, drowning and poisoning are all associated with invisible injuries. It’s still possible there’s an innocent explanation for Nora’s death. She may have died of a brain aneurysm.