Malaysian coroner rules Nora Quoirin’s death was ‘misadventure’

Nora Quoirin, 15, died in a Malaysian jungle

Credit: Family Handout/AFP

A Malaysian coroner decided on Monday that the death of French-Irish teenager Nora Quoirin was most likely a “misadventure” that was not caused by a third party, ruling against the claims of her family that she must have been abducted. 

Coroner Maimoonah Aid told a Malaysian court that “there was no one involved” in Nora’s death at a resort outside the capital, Kuala Lumpur, in August 2019.

The 15-year-old, who lived in London, went missing in dense rainforest while she and her family recovered from jet lag after arriving at the Dusun resort near the foothills of a mountain range.  

The local police insisted there was no foul play when her unclothed body was found ten days later, after a search involving hundreds of people, helicopters and sniffer dogs. An autopsy found Nora likely starved and died of internal bleeding. 

But the parents of the teenager, who was born with holoprosencephaly, a disorder which affects brain development and causes learning disabilities and balance problems, maintained that she would never have climbed out of the window of their holiday chalet in the middle of the night and wandered off. 

Meabh and Sebastien Quoirin maintained that their daughter had been kidnapped

Credit: AFP

After the Malaysian authorities classified the case as "requiring no further action,” Nora’s family pushed for a public inquest, which took place from August to December, with testimonies from more than 40 witnesses streamed online because of pandemic restrictions. 

The police stuck to their line that there was no evidence of criminal activity. Mohamad Mat Yusop, a senior police official closely involved in the investigation, testified that “there was no indication the victim was kidnapped” and defended his force’s thorough search for her. 

But Nora’s parents accused the authorities of being slow to respond and of not taking their concerns about a possible criminal element seriously enough.

They argued that their daughter would have been unable to push open the window, which had a broken latch, and climb out herself. 

"I have a number of very precise reasons to believe that my daughter was kidnapped. How or why, I’m not qualified to say," Meabh Quoirin, her mother, told the coroner.

The inquest had to be streamed online because of the coronavirus pandemic

Credit: HOGP/AFP

Her father, Sebastien, said that he had heard “muffled noises” coming from the chalet on the night of Nora’s disappearance, adding to the family’s fears of foul play. 

The teenager’s body was eventually found by a local villager in a ravine in a patch of thick jungle near the resort. 

Nathaniel Cary, a British forensic pathologist, agreed that Nora had died from intestinal bleeding due to stress and starvation but said that while there was no positive evidence of sexual assault that he could not fully exclude the possibility due to the severe body decomposition.

On Monday, Coroner Maimoonah Aid ruled as there was no sign the teen had been murdered or sexually assaulted, that she died by "misadventure".

The teen likely left the family accommodation "on her own and subsequently got lost in the abandoned palm oil plantation," she said.