Five unanswered questions in case of missing sisters after bodies found

The search for missing sisters appears to have ended in tragedy after the discovery of two bodies in the past 24 hours – but several questions remain unanswered.

Henrietta and Eliza Huszti – both 32 and from a set of triplets – vanished in Aberdeen on January 7.

Search teams used police helicopters, dogs and marine units to try and track them down.

But their family’s worst fears look to have been confirmed after two bodies were pulled from the River Dee on Friday.

Formal identification has yet to take place, but police say the sisters’ relatives have been informed.

While the discoveries bring the search to an end, the hunt for answers goes on.

Here, Metro examines five unanswered questions.

Visit to bridge where they were last seen day before disappearance

Eliza and Henrietta visited the bridge where they were last seen the day before they disappeared.

CCTV shows the sisters, wearing rucksacks, spent five minutes at the footpath and Victoria Bridge but did not engage with anyone else.

After visiting the bridge on January 6, CCTV footage shows the sisters making their way through the city centre, via the Union Square shopping centre, back to their flat in the Charlotte Street area of Aberdeen.

Police said there is nothing to indicate they left it again until shortly before they were last seen at the River Dee.

Telling landlady they were moving out ‘immediately’

A text message was sent from Henrietta’s mobile phone to the sisters’ landlady at 2.12am on January 7, from the area of Victoria Bridge, indicating they would not be returning to the flat.

The phone was then disconnected from the network and has not been active since, police said.

The following day, the sisters’ personal belongings were found inside the flat and the landlady reported her concerns to police.

Police said the sisters did not tell their family about the decision to leave ‘immediately’.

Final phone call with brother

The sisters’ brother Jozsef said they did not inform their relatives of this decision – including during a phone call they had with their mother on the Saturday before their disappearance.

He told the BBC: ‘They wrote a message to their landlady that they wanted to immediately end their tenancy agreement. We didn’t have any information about that.

‘So that’s the strange thing, that the girls didn’t tell us anything about that.

‘They never mentioned any such plan.’

He told the broadcaster the women had no financial difficulties and were saving up to buy their own property.

Sudden disappearance ‘very out of character’

After a week of searching with no success, Superintendent David Howieson said: ‘We’re trying to remain open minded in terms of what the wider circumstances may have been.

‘What we know is that the behaviour of the sisters in the morning on which they disappeared is very out of character.

‘We don’t really understand why they seem to have left their home address and walked to this area in a fairly direct line before the CCTV footage of them is exhausted.

‘One of our theories has to be that they’ve entered the water for reasons unknown, and that’s why so much of our search activity is focused on the river, the riverbank, and the harbour itself, but we’re not ruling out the fact that they may have left this area by means that we haven’t identified yet.’

He said there is nothing to suggest there were mental health concerns or any other concerns in relation to the sisters which might begin to explain what happened.

‘Screaming out in the darkness’

Neighbours living by the river in Aberdeen reported hearing screams there the night the sisters vanished.

It raised the alarming spectre of them possibly coming to harm.

One said: ‘Everyone is talking about this. It was pretty scary stuff.

‘A woman screaming out in the darkness is going to raise some red flags.’

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