A year after the death of the young Nóra, a new investigation in Malaysia

The day will not yet be up, this Monday, August 24, when Sébastien and Maebh Quoirin open their computer to follow, as best they can, the investigation into the death of their daughter which will begin 10,000 km from their London home. , in a Malaysian court. Because in these times of pandemic, the country's borders are still closed to foreigners. In addition to the distance and the time difference, the language barrier will be added: in order to question some sixty witnesses, this legal procedure, which does not exist in French law, will take place mainly in Malaysian. But none of these obstacles will hinder the ultimate will of these bereaved parents who want "all light to be shed on the circumstances of Nóra's death."

Light, he has sorely lacked since the beginnings of this affair, which begins in total darkness, the night of August 3 to 4, 2019. The Quoirin family has just arrived in Malaysia and has put down their bags at the Dusun Resort, a hotel complex made up of bungalows on the hillside facing the Negeri Sembilan jungle, 70 km from the capital Kuala Lumpur. Near the equator, night falls quickly and suddenly. When the lights of the Dusun go out, it becomes impossible to see even with your own hands on this moonless night. In this darkness, Nóra Quoirin, a 15-year-old teenager, disappears from the bed she shares with her younger sister on the mezzanine of the bungalow where her family sleeps.

Many gray areas

It is in the semi-darkness of the dense surrounding jungle that, in the ten days that follow, up to 300 police officers, firefighters, rescue dogs, helicopters and volunteers try to find Nóra. A craggy environment made up of gigantic trees, lianas, streams and ravines, muffled by the sounds of chirping, creaking branches and distant waterfalls. Even in broad daylight, trying to fix your eye more than ten meters in front of you in the Malaysian jungle is often impossible and it is not uncommon to get lost: in 2019, before Nóra, more than 250 people missing had already wanted by the authorities.

Nóra was born with a brain pathology called holoprosencephaly. / DR  

But when, after ten days of searching, Nóra's lifeless body is finally found, the Quoirin family still cannot see clearly, quite the contrary. The discovery and identification of the deceased only increase the gray areas.

The parents count exactly 35 of them: “How is it that Nóra's body was found 2.5 km from the bungalow, in a place that had already been searched in the previous days? Do we know the people behind the traces of the camps found not far from Nóra's body? How to explain that the window closed the day before on the ground floor of the bungalow was found open on the morning of August 4? Where did the panties Nora was wearing when she went to bed? How to explain the state of Nóra's body revealed at the autopsy, which mentions only superficial scratches, no mosquito bites, or a general condition incompatible with that of someone who wanders barefoot in the jungle for seven days? .. "

"Absolutely convinced that Nóra has been kidnapped"

So many questions which only reinforce the certainty of those close to Nóra, acquired at the very moment when Sébastien Quoirin discovered his daughter's empty bed: "We are absolutely convinced that Nóra has been kidnapped", repeats the bereaved father. To support this criminal track, it is the singularity of the adolescent that he tries to explain in detail: born with a cerebral pathology called holoprosencephaly, his daughter, he says, “did not have the physical capacities of a teenager her age, and her cognitive development was that of a 5-7 year old. She still needed us to tie her shoelaces, or spread her toothpaste on the toothbrush. "

“It's absolutely absurd for us to imagine her leaving the bungalow in the middle of the night,” he continues, “because even with us, she never went out on her own. If she had stood up and was disoriented, I don't even know how she could have ended up outside with the door closed. Nóra could not physically have opened such a window, especially in the dark. And if, I don't really know how, she had been outside, she would not have gone very far: in front of the stranger, her reaction was always to freeze, and, when she was afraid, to cry in silence. . "

“Nóra still needed us to tie his laces, or spread his toothpaste on the toothbrush”, emphasizes Sébastien Quoirin, here with his wife Maebh./DR  

But while the Quoirin family put all their energy and resources to impose their conviction, as soon as Nóra disappeared in Malaysia, a whole different scenario took shape around them, remembers his mother, Maebh: “Two members of the staff du Dusun quickly asked me if they could call on their shaman. One also asked for Nóra's clothes to put them in the water and perform a ritual. "Her husband continues:" During the ten days of research, we had daily visits from shamans. In the despair we were in, we accepted that they would enter the bungalow, practice their incantations, and on the last day, it was even members of the police who encouraged us to participate ourselves. to one of these rituals. "

"We lived through hell"

An attitude that has something to confuse French mentalities but rather usual in Malaysia, where each news item can mobilize bomoh (sorcerer or healer in Malaysian), and where majority Islam does not prevent the subsistence of pre-Islamic animist beliefs , explains the anthropologist Geoffrey Benjamin: “The Koran mentions spirits under the name of jinn. Thus most Malaysians do not consider as incompatible animist beliefs evoking ghosts or spirits and Muslim identity, on the contrary. "

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But if the mysteries surrounding Nóra's death seem conducive to the evocation of the supernatural spirit in Malaysia, they add up to the pain of mourning for parents. An entire year haunted by unanswered questions that Sébastien Quoirin summed up in a few words: “We lived through hell. These are now specific elements that Nóra's parents want.