Nora Quoirin

Nora Quoirin: Can we rule out accidental death?

/ nickvdl / 6 Comments

On the face of it, accidental death can be ruled out. Nora Quoirin clearly didn’t fall from the top of the ravine into it. When volunteers saw her body, they originally assumed that she was sleeping, which suggests they saw no obvious injuries or bleeding.

Fullscreen capture 20190814 203358

The fact that the volunteers who found her assumed Nora was elsewhere “and walked to the stream” also addresses the possibility that Nora was initially elsewhere, and that someone else had control or custody or knowledge of her corpse, and when the coast was clear, this person possibly walked to the stream with her body, and left her there.

Besides this, the body didn’t look at though it dropped or landed where it lay, but rather that either Nora herself purposefully and intentionally lay down there herself, or someone lay her down.

The way the body was laid out may indicate that Nora died in her sleep, either where she was found or somewhere else. The fact that she was naked may be due to environmental factors, or this was done intentionally by a third party to suggest something – for example a pedophile abduction.

We can also assume, from the way the body was presented, that either Nora wanted to be found [naked] or didn’t care if she was found in this way, or whoever left her there wanted her to be found [perhaps after a prescribed period of not wanting her to be found]. If the latter, who might experience such a change of heart and why after ten days, why not sooner, or later?3648

Now to address the question on its own merits: irrespective of where the body was found, it’s possible and even likely something happened to Nora somewhere else. It’s possible she fell inside the resort bungalow, or that some other accident occurred, relating to sedatives, or a medical reaction of some sort. So an accidental death is still possible, but the likelihood of some sort of cover up has also increased.

If this is true, and if we assume the potential involvement of family members, then the media attention was a deliberate smokescreen designed not to attract attention to Nora, or to the resort, but effectively to distract away from it, and to – effectively – the media.

Each time the police are giving press conferences it’s also a way to delay and divert the actual search. This isn’t the first time PR has been used to distort or disrupt an investigation. 0_MALAYSIA-BRITAIN-IRELAND-FRANCE-POLICE-MISSING

 

These are the volunteers who found Nora’s body and this is the Quoirin Family Lawyer [PICTURES]

/ nickvdl / 1 Comment

Sean Yeap [below] his wife Shirley  Yeap and Mary lou were part of a small group of civilian volunteers who found the body. It’s significant that this random, untrained civilian crew were able to find what hundreds of trained searchers [and sniffer dogs] could not.

The trio also said they smelled the remains from a distance.

17261138-7355383-image-a-30_1565768552397

Below: Shirley Yeap [left] and Mary Lou [right]. 17261136-7355383-Kenny_Chan_left_Shirley_Yap_centre_and_May_Lou_right_who_were_al-a-24_1565776447002

Sankara N. Nair is the lawyer representing the family. So far he’s been saying the family is traumatized.

17261146-7355383-Sankara_N_Nair_lawyer_representing_Nora_s_family_tells_the_press-a-26_1565776447065

https://twitter.com/CritThink3/status/1161657538896629765

BREAKING: Why French prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into Nora Quoirin’s death

/ nickvdl / 1 Comment

There’s a simple reason to classify a case criminal or not. The circumstances around a disappearance or death are either suspicious or they aren’t. If they meet the standard to be reasonably suspicious, then it becomes a criminal investigation.

One of the most suspicious aspects of this case is the imputed “scene” where the body was found. This has been the most mysterious part all along – why was it so difficult to find Nora Quoirin’s body. How did it take ten days?

Fullscreen capture 20190814 170023

It turns out the area where she was found had already been searched. It’s possible someone close to the events knew this, and moved the body there after the fact.

If so, who?

Why?

More: Nora Quoirin: autopsy yet to determine cause of death, say police

Was Nora moved? Volunteer who found Nora Quoirin’s naked body believes she could NOT have been there when search teams first checked the area – Daily Mail

Nora Qoirin: Is the plot thickening?

/ nickvdl / 1 Comment

Typically, autopsies take two to four hours, and preliminary results are usually available within 24 hours. A full report might take 6 weeks to compile. The fact that Nora Quoirin’s autopsy has taken three to four times longer than a standard autopsy, suggests a complicated crime scene in terms of the victimology.

If Nora did wander the woods for a long time, she may have suffered extensive bruising, cuts and other injuries. Her remains may also have been interfered with by wild animals – a factor that cannot be excluded in a rural, tropical setting over a period of 10 days.

What may make the autopsy difficult is if the remains had been washed several times by successive downpours, or if it fell into water and was put through intermittent cycles of rushing groundwater. This scenario would need to be separated from a cause of death by drowning, for example.

What I would like to know is whether the crime scene where the body was recovered was not covered previously by search teams, earlier in the week. Which is to say, was the area initially excluded, and the body later discovered there by a volunteer, or had the particular area never been searched? The latter is difficult to imagine since it was just 1.6 miles from the resort, with hundreds of trained searchers combing the area, day and night for ten consecutive days.

Search for Nora Quoirin from London, who is currently missing in Malaysiamalaysia

Post-mortem on Nora Quoirin’s remains continues, statement tomorrow – Straits Times

SEREMBAN: The post-mortem examination of the remains of Irish teen Nora Anne Quoirin has turned into a marathon of sorts. The examination, by a team of senior pathologists led by Dr Siew Sheue Feng from Kuala Lumpur Hospital, is still going on, nine hours after it began at 11.45am.

A press conference scheduled for 5pm to announce the initial results of the examination was postponed to 8pm, but as that hour came and went, there was still no sign of senior police officers to update the media.

When deputy state police chief Senior Assistant Commissioner Che Zakaria Othman finally appeared, he said the post-mortem examination was still on-going. He said police could not release any details as yet because of this. “I made a decision based on the instruction of state police chief (Datuk Mohamad Mat Yusop) that a statement will only be issued at a time to be advised tomorrow. There is also no new development at the scene (where Nora Anne’s body was found) that I have to report,” he told a horde of reporters who had been stationed outside the Tuanku Ja’afar Hospital mortuary, some from as early as 6.30am.

Che Zakaria declined to answer any questions. While post-mortem examinations generally take a long time, the fact that this one has taken so long has left many questions lingering in the minds of all following the case.

At 2:45 in the clip below, the former spindoctor for the McCanns [who were once prime suspects in the disappearance and possible death of their daughter] Clarence Mitchell explains why it’s good practice to alert the media when a child abduction happens.

There’s also another issue to address, which was the speed at which the family got a media apparatus up and running. I won’t deal with that aspect just yet, except to point out what this achieves.

At 2:45 in the clip below, Clarence Mitchell, the McCanns’ ex-spin doctor explains why it’s essential to keep a missing persons case alive in the media, especially when these incidents occur in foreign countries.

Mitchell’s spiel is that by alerting international media, pressure is brought to bear on law enforcement, especially external pressure. The suggestion is that without this pressure, the police wouldn’t do their job.

But one could clearly also make the argument that in a scenario where one or both parents are involved in the death of their child, it would theoretically suit them to have some outside entity exerting enormous pressure on the authorities, while leveraging public sympathy to their own benefit. This is a subtle but powerful way to manipulate an investigation, and from the beginning, this was one – the Nora Quoirin disappearance – did experience precisely that kind of external buffeting.

In the McCann case massive external pressure and some of the most high-profile media exposure in the history of true crime was brought to bear. What this did was it pressurized the investigation all right, ultimately leading to a number of court cases, almost all to do with defamation, book deals, and the defense of book deals. No one was charged in the Madeleine McCann case, and the lead investigator soon lost his job because of something he said to the media.

Within the idiosyncracies of the McCann case, Portuguese law has certain privacy constraints as a matter of course when conducting a criminal investigation. The British media and flouted these. Soon investigators were in effect bullied into towing the line and paying homage to the narrative as set out in the media. Much of the tone of this line was orchestrated by the parents themselves, using public fundraising money to pay for PR folks like Clarence Mitchell.

Mitchell has also worked for the disgraced data mining company Cambridge Analytica. Why, when there is a missing child case like this one, is he still being called as a credible spokesman to pontificate on how these cases should be handled? If anything, investigation via PR is how it should not be handled.

THE CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA CRISIS : COMMENT

Cambridge Analytica finally speak to Channel 4 News

Cambridge Analytica approached “tens” of PR agencies for crisis comms support during the Facebook data breach scandal, and every agency refused, says a former senior executive at the firm.

Not So Bright ‘Titanic of a PR’ Clarence Mitchell moves on from a series of toxic clients and becomes spokesman for Cambridge Analytica

Nora Quoirin: TCRS Assessment

/ nickvdl / 3 Comments

After a 10 day search, sadly – but predictably – 15-year-old Nora Quoirin’s body has been found. It’s the ambit of this site to find answers, and while we are compassionate to what happened to poor Nora, it also matters what happened and who was involved. There are a few things that stood out from the very beginning, and a few aspects that are abundantly clear now. Let’s go through them.

MADELEINE MCCANN PART 2

The speed at which the parents – both parents – were absolutely convinced there was an abduction, without any evidence, and without any confirmation or reinforcement from the police, was the first red flag.  Now it’s one thing if the police are convinced [and have good reason] to speculate in one direction or another, it’s a different kettle of fish when those closest to the victim are making unsubstantiated claims.

One of the first unsubstantiated claims was that Nora was implied to have exited the bungalow through her own bedroom window. But this is what the upstairs bedroom looks like:

17016816-7339617-Nora_s_bedroom_inside_the_Sora_apartment_at_the_Dusun_Resort_in_-a-7_1565319010705Fullscreen capture 20190813 164453

Curiously, this “clue” didn’t come from the parents, but was apparently “leaked” by one of the siblings.

Fullscreen capture 20190813 163431

We see early on that the local law enforcement was quickly pressured by the views of the family that an abduction had taken place. The police were adamant that it wasn’t, but later deferred to the family, and to pressure from international media, that an abduction or kidnapping was possible. As a result, core search teams were split into a local contingent [searching the forests and jungles] and another group to check the nearby towns and settlements for any suspicious leads. We can see how this external pressure was already twisting the focus of the investigation away from the potential crime scene.

Fullscreen capture 20190813 163936

Further familiarity with the inside of the bungalow seemed to confirm the idea of both an abduction and the child wandering off as unlikely. Firstly because the imputed abductor left no clues whatsoever, and secondly because with Nora’s limited faculties, it’s unlikely she would be able to negotiate a foreign spiral staircase at night. Bear in mind Nora was unable to do up her own buttons, and had spatial difficulty. Her particular condition is as a result of the two hemispheres of her brain not separating properly.

It took a while before the family provided details on exactly what Nora’s developmental difficulties were. It turned out to be holoprosencephaly, a rare congenital brain malformation.

The family and the Malaysian authorities were immediately at cross-purposes, which was highlighted in the media. The speed at which the case gained attention was also due to the Quoirin family having spokespeople reading statements prepared by the girl’s mother, and others fundraising abroad, on their behalf.

When Nora’s parents did speak it was to thank the police for their investigation, even though the police hadn’t completed the investigation. Nora’s mother also said right at the end, “We hope you find Nora” not “we hope we find Nora”. In terms of the optics of the video below, Nora’s father initially appears out of site of the camera, peeks round, then stands showing support, but does so a little stiffly. His wife doesn’t acknowledge him and he doesn’t say anything to the media.

Although this is by no means a scientific comment to make, although the parents say the right things, there’s no obvious sign of being overwhelmed by emotion, as one might expect. There are no tears, and of the parents, the husband seems partically emotionless. In light of the fact that he was shouting emotionally at the resort manager earlier, this mismatch is a potential flag.

The video below presents the same press conference as above, but this time showing the father as well. Notice how hyper-vigilant he is, eyes darting around, but once again not needing to say or express anything. There also seems to be very little rapport between husband and wife.

Fullscreen capture 20190813 163913

Fullscreen capture 20190808 170912

There are other similarities to the McCann case, such as the early anger directed at the Malaysian authorities for taking too long to respond.

Fullscreen capture 20190813 155107

More here: Malaysia – Nora Quoirin, 15, from UK

ABUNDANTLY CLEAR NOW

These are the undisputed facts according to The Telegraph:

Her naked body was found in a ravine in the forest surrounding the resort, following a 350-person search involving police, volunteer hikers and even shamans. National deputy police chief Mazlan Mansor told reporters at a press conference that a body that “resembles Nora” had been found beside a small stream about 1.6 miles from the resort. He said the body was unclothed but declined to comment on whether it had any injuries.  The body was taken to hospital by helicopter where it was identified.

We know that Nora’s body was 1) in an inaccessible area 2) 1.6 miles from the resort. Both of these disqualify an innocent explanation, ie that Nora “wandered off”. Her parents have been firm that Nora would never have wandered off, and this assertion may well come back to haunt them.

The fact that the area was inaccessible even to search crews, and took 10 days of searching to find, is indicative that Nora herself probably didn’t get there on her own. The fact that it required a helicopter and winch to recover her remains, reinforces the notion that someone may have gone to some trouble to hide her body.

The scenario that Nora wandered off and got into trouble isn’t impossible at this point, just unlikely. Over a period of time obviously she could have wandered further and further and got more and more lost, but one imagines had she been in distress she would have cried out, and had she been alive for even one day, she would have been found.

As the details of her condition and her dependence on her parents becomes clearer we ought to move closer to addressing “why” and what happened. The operant family dynamics will play a crucial role in illuminating this case.

More: Nora Quoirin: Body found in Malaysia is missing girl – BBC

Nora Quoirin cops fly body out of jungle which was found a mile from where missing 15-year-old Brit girl vanished from Malaysia hotel room – The Sun