Teen's mom: Daughter, found dead in Malaysia, was abducted

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — The mother of an Irish-French teen whose body was found last year near a Malaysian jungle resort where she vanished while on vacation said Wednesday that evidence may have been lost because police were slow to act on the possibility that her daughter could have been abducted.

Meabh Quoirin told an inquest into her 15-year-old daughter's death that she believed she heard “muffled and whispering” sounds of two people inside the family's cottage the morning Nora Anne Quoirin disappeared, but that she took no action because she was asleep and not fully conscious at the time.

The mother, who is Irish, said police were more focused on search and rescue, and only started looking for fingerprints and interviewing resort staff several days later, by which time many people had passed through the property. She said that the police officer sent to take her statement also struggled to communicate effectively in English and that she had to explain herself repeatedly.

Some senior police officials who later approached her were also “quite rude and arrogant," telling her to be calm and let police do their job, she said.

“My own understanding was that the dominant commitment was in search and rescue, and it took a long time to mobilize and explore any criminal route," Quoirin told the inquest via video conferencing from her London home. “I believe that criminal evidence, if it existed, would have been lost during that time."

Nora's disappearance from her family’s cottage at the Dusun eco-resort in southern Negeri Sembilan state on Aug. 4 last year, a day after her family arrived for their vacation, sparked a massive search. Her naked body was found on Aug. 13 beside a stream in a palm oil estate about 2.5 kilometers (1.6 miles) from the resort.

Police have told the inquest that an...