The parents of Franco-Irish teenager Nóra Quoirin, who was found dead in a Malaysian jungle during a family holiday last summer, have said they remain convinced that she was abducted.
Meabh and Sebastian Quoirin appeared on RTÉ's Late Late Show on Friday night and told host Ryan Tubridy that they were continuing to seek the truth about what happened to their daughter, who was found dead after a 10-day search around the jungle resort of Dusun in August last.
The couple called on the authorities in Malaysia to reopen the investigation into her death and criticised the manner in which some aspects of the case had been handled in the early stages.
Ms Quoirin said she has still has many questions about the death of the 15-year-old, who had a brain condition called holoprosencephaly which limited her development.
When Nóra disappeared from her hotel room, her parents feared she had been abducted, insisting she would not have wandered off by herself. However, police in Malaysia said they found no evidence of abduction.
The couple described suggestions that Nóra had wandered off by herself as “absurd” and said that she would not have been able to make it down the spiral staircase in the lodge where they were staying or climb out the window.
Had she been able to leave the accommodation they questioned how she would have been able to cross incredibly difficult jungle terrain barefoot in the dark.
Mr Quoirin said that he had travelled over to Malaysia with the couple’s three children and met his wife who had travelled over earlier on business.
They spent one day in the resort and went to bed early. When he woke the following morning and went to check on his children he realised his daughter was not in her bed.
Almost immediately he said he felt she had been “taken”.
Ms Quoirin said a window in the lodge that she knew she had closed the night before was ajar. “That was it, we knew she had been taken.”
A postmortem examination carried out in Malaysia found that Nóra died from internal bleeding probably caused by hunger and stress, however the couple said there were question marks over the findings.
“We believe she was abducted and kept in the jungle for the time she was missing. We don’t feel it is helpful to speculate beyond that,” she said.
“What is important for us is to let the police do their job. We are hoping they will reopen the investigation... and properly examine all the angles of the case and in particular the criminal angles.”
