Some final observations. For today:
1. The apartment building and surrounding areas have security cameras and there has been reports that police have, unsurprisingly, seized footage. That may yield information - either person's of interest or the lack (in which case, no external involvement in the deaths).
2. One might also infer police will also be scouring cell and internet metadata to determine activity (and narrow the date of death) and also whether any other numbers were geo-located nearby (suggesting interactions with others) around the estimated date of death.
3. Police would check the heater, if there was one, as carbon-monoxide poisoning has been linked to deaths in
Melbourne. Deaths of people from un-flued heaters has led to such heaters being
phased out.
4. Toxicology tests, so far, have proved inconclusive and police seem to be keeping an open mind and exploring all possibilities.
5. The sisters' bodies were badly decomposed. As a result, much evidence, including as to cause of death, will have been lost. There may be little evidence left of their last meal and how long before they died. Some poisons disappear following death, while others remain, but are easily detectable (heavy metals, arsenic, for instance). One poison that can disappear is insulin.
In 2016, a Sydney doctor was found guilty of murdering his wife by injecting her with a fatal dose of insulin. The police and scientific investigation is remarkable. Another suspicious death in Australia is very famous: the so called
Bogle-Chandler mystery. This is mysterious deaths of Gilbert Bogle and Margaret Chandler on the banks of the Lane Cove River in Sydney, Australia on 1 January 1963. The case became famous because of the circumstances in which the bodies were found and because the cause of death could not be established. In 2006 a filmmaker discovered evidence to suggest the cause of death was hydrogen sulphide gas.
6. Apart from drug like insulin and poisoning by carbon monoxide or hydrogen sulphide gas (a method of suicide in Japan, apparently), police would be investigating any possibility. As noted in an earlier post, the Alsehli sisters were found naked. I remember that some suicides bath and dress themselves, in a type of ritual, before attempting, others do not and it can be very "spur of the moment".
7. As for naked suicide. The psychiatric and forensic literature is mostly silent on the topic of naked suicide. See
Naked Suicide. [IMHO: Worth reading.] It does happen, but is associated, anecdotally, with jumping of a bridge or defenestration or such like.
Marilyn Monroe was found lying nude, face down, with a sheet pulled over her dead body. After much publicity and controversy, the coroner ruled that she had died of acute barbiturate poisoning by overdose. Whether her death was murder, suicide or misadventure is still a matter of debate. The naked body of Robert Maxwell, billionaire British tycoon, was found floating some distance from his yacht. Whether his death was murder, suicide or misadventure is still a matter of debate but the Coroner ruled it was an accident.
People may disrobe if they are suffering hypothermia. This is known as “paradoxical undressing.” In such cases, there is no suicidal intent. This may have occurred in the
Dyatlov Pass incident, in which some of the victims were found naked. In the case of the Alsehli sisters, an hypothesis might be that they ingested or injected some substance that led to them disrobing and ultimately, dying. That toxicology has so far found nothing of note, suggests this theory is not likely to be true. However further tests could change this.
My conjecture, at this stage, is that the Alsehli sisters' deaths are unlikely to be honour killings. Such killings tend to be very violent and brutal and although some are concealed, often they are not. The methods are awful: stabbing, cutting, burning, strangulation and less commonly, gunshot. They tend ot be committed by relations, so a line of enquiry is whether any of the Alsehli sisters' relations were in the country at the time of their deaths? Police have said the sisters' immediate family are not suspects.
At present, it seems their deaths are more likely to be suicide or death by misadventure of some type.
There is intense public interest in this case and I hope the Coroner will make public findings. Unfortunately, in Australia, much of the supporting information relied upon by coroners, such as statements from police, acquaintances or scientific reports, are not released publicly and the public has to rely on the famous and ever present "informed sources, with knowledge of the matter who are not authorised to speak".
