topic Two Saudi Sisters Who Lived in Virginia Found Dead in NYC in Community Chat

Two Saudi Sisters Who Lived in Virginia Found Dead in NYC

golding76 — Fri, 02 Nov 2018 14:50:47 GMT

https://abcnews.go.com/US/detectives-investigating-activity-saudi-sisters-nyc-found-dead/story?id=58910245

Has anyone been reading this sorrowful news about two sisters originally from Saudi Arabia who lived in Fairfax County, Va., and were found washed ashore in NYC?

If you read several accounts, the story is harrowing in what might be the possibilites for their death. Somehow, I am in agreement with those who think this might have been an "honor killing" by males in their own family or reps from Saudi Arabia.

Horrible, no matter who did the killing. I doubt if this was a suicide, as some have speculated; something is very fishy about the entire story. The account I provided in the link does not tell the full story and possible explanations.

Re: Two Saudi Sisters Who Lived in Virginia Found Dead in NYC

dex — Fri, 02 Nov 2018 14:52:59 GMT

@golding76@I think it is an honor killing....very sad deaths.

Re: Two Saudi Sisters Who Lived in Virginia Found Dead in NYC

JaneMarple — Fri, 02 Nov 2018 14:54:59 GMT

I've been reading about this sad case since the girls were first discovered and hadn't been identified yet.

Re: Two Saudi Sisters Who Lived in Virginia Found Dead in NYC

cherry — Fri, 02 Nov 2018 14:56:05 GMT

They were fearful for their lives. I don't have any idea what happened, but I am not leaning toward suicide

They were lovely girls bright, and pretty. It is such a pity. God rest their souls

Re: Two Saudi Sisters Who Lived in Virginia Found Dead in NYC

golding76 — Fri, 02 Nov 2018 14:59:49 GMT

What is odd is that the father lives and works in Saudi Arabia, and we have not heard from him yet. Supposedly, the girls were the "apples of his eye," as I have read.

I have read that the younger had run away but once it was discovered she was with her older sister, the pursuit for her was dropped. Shockingly, it has been conjectured that the girls were "done away with" by a squad from Saudi Arabia (much like what happened to Adnan Khashoggi in Turkey) or even -- get this -- that the Saudis hired the Mafia to do the girls in.

Too much to take in...

(Yes, the first thing out of my mouth when I saw their photos was "What pretty girls.")

Re: Two Saudi Sisters Who Lived in Virginia Found Dead in NYC

cherry — Fri, 02 Nov 2018 15:01:01 GMT

That killing was so horrific. I hope they find who is behind all of this...Did they ever locate the body of A. K. ?

Re: Two Saudi Sisters Who Lived in Virginia Found Dead in NYC

golding76 — Fri, 02 Nov 2018 15:05:06 GMT

Not that I know of, Cherry. Dismembered pieces are hard to find, I would think, and Turkey is a very large country.

The poor Turks. They are always being chastised for certain rough behaviors, but in this A.K. tragedy, they are beyond reproach. To my way of thinking, the Turks have been very civilized and sensitive during the A.K. horror.

Re: Two Saudi Sisters Who Lived in Virginia Found Dead in NYC

goldensrbest — Fri, 02 Nov 2018 16:06:07 GMT

I saw this on the news a few days ago, this just does not sound like suicide to me ,they said it was possible.

Re: Two Saudi Sisters Who Lived in Virginia Found Dead in NYC

goldensrbest — Fri, 02 Nov 2018 16:08:16 GMT

@cherry wrote:
That killing was so horrific. I hope they find who is behind all of this...Did they ever locate the body of A. K. ?

They said acid might had been used, i wish harsh punishment would be used for that country.

Re: Two Saudi Sisters Who Lived in Virginia Found Dead in NYC

cherry — Fri, 02 Nov 2018 16:23:52 GMT

Without a corpse can you even prove he was murdered? I think he was , but you must be able to prove it

Re: Two Saudi Sisters Who Lived in Virginia Found Dead in NYC

Johnnyeager — Fri, 02 Nov 2018 16:26:47 GMT

Murder convictions have been achieved without a body (in the United States) using forensic and circumstantial evidence. Of course, the prosecution has to convince the jury that the evidence is sufficient.

Re: Two Saudi Sisters Who Lived in Virginia Found Dead in NYC

golding76 — Fri, 02 Nov 2018 16:41:00 GMT

Their snuffed-out lives touch me on several levels. They lived in my Virginia county, were evicted from an apartment that is near my church and attended schools that I drive by in my life. Also, the mosque they most likely attended is near my church.

The apartment eviction really confuses me. If the father lives and works in Saudi Arabia for that country's government, how was there not enough money to cover the rent? I don't know. I once knew an Iraqi woman who lived here with her two daughters, but her husband worked as an interpreter for the U.S. government in Iraq. They owned their own home and one of the girls of college age attended the same local university that the older Saudi girl attended.

Things just don't make sense. The kids were here for an education, it has been written, but the evidence of steadiness with that is shaky. The older son is studying somewhere, but where? Where has he been with all of this horror?

Re: Two Saudi Sisters Who Lived in Virginia Found Dead in NYC

suzyQ3 — Fri, 02 Nov 2018 17:01:09 GMT

@cherry wrote:
Without a corpse can you even prove he was murdered? I think he was , but you must be able to prove it

@cherry, I may be wrong, but I thought that the Saudis did admit that he was dead. Of course, their story changed many times.

Re: Two Saudi Sisters Who Lived in Virginia Found Dead in NYC

goldensrbest — Fri, 02 Nov 2018 17:04:52 GMT

He went in ,and not seen coming out, body double seen walking around in his clothes, our goverment knows what happened, just not doing anything about it.

Re: Two Saudi Sisters Who Lived in Virginia Found Dead in NYC

golding76 — Fri, 02 Nov 2018 17:15:49 GMT

‘I don’t know where my daughters are’: Odd encounter deepens mystery surrounding disappearance and deaths of Saudi sisters

Undated photos of sisters Rotana, left, and Tala Farea, whose fully clothed bodies, bound together with duct tape, were discovered on a bank of the Hudson River in New York City on Oct. 24, 2018. (New York Police Department/AP)

By Justin Jouvenal

November 1 at 3:20 PM

Everett Johnson said his former neighbor’s face grew stern when he asked how she was doing during a chance encounter around the start of October in Fairfax County, Va. The mother from Saudi Arabia offered a surprising reply.

“I don’t know where my daughters are,” the woman told Johnson. “I haven’t seen them in a long time.”

Johnson said the woman told him that she didn’t know why Rotana Farea, 22, and Tala Farea, 16, had disappeared or where they were, and that she hadn’t communicated with them recently. The distraught mother asked Johnson what to do.

“I told her, ‘Call the police,’ ” Johnson said.

The unusual encounter came roughly a month before the sisters’ bodies were found on a bank of the Hudson River in New York City on Oct. 24 and during a period that detectives are mining for clues, police said.

The bodies, which were bound together with duct tape around the waist and ankles, washed ashore near 68th Street and Riverside Park in Manhattan. A passerby found the bodies lying on rocks beneath a pier. They were fully clothed in black leggings and fur-trimmed jackets and showed no apparent signs of trauma. A photo from the scene shows silvery duct tape tangled up with the girls legs and wrapped around their shoes.

The mystery surrounding what befell the sisters has only deepened over the past week. New York City police said they are trying to piece together a two-month gap in the sisters’ lives after they disappeared in late August, and a medical examiner is still determining the cause and manner of their deaths. CBS News reportedthat the examiner’s office, which has declined to answer questions, has determined that the sisters were alive when they entered the water.

Police have not revealed whether they know how the sisters got to New York City, whether they believe their deaths were homicides or suicide, or why they went missing in the first place. For young women in the social media age, the sisters had little obvious online presence. No photos of the sisters could be found before police released images from the family on Wednesday.

But Chief of Detectives Dermot Shea of the New York Police Department said investigators have begun “unraveling” some questions about the deaths after interviewing family members and other people in Virginia this week.

“There has been what I will call significant progress trying to get the complete picture of what ultimately led to the two young ladies’ being discovered,” Shea said.

For now, the situation remains murky, and some public accounts are contradictory. The sisters were reported missing Sept. 12 but were last heard from Aug. 24, Fairfax County police said. Still unclear is why family members waited nearly three weeks to file a missing-person report, but police said neither sister was believed to be in danger at that time.

The sisters were previously reported missing on Dec. 1, 2017, but were found after a day, Fairfax County police said. Authorities said the sisters were referred to county services but also said privacy rules precluded the release of additional details.

A man who identified himself as a family friend at the Farea home in Virginia said the family was “not in a position to comment” and was unlikely to want to comment in the future.

A woman whose niece attended school with the sisters in Saudi Arabia said the “sisters were very close and never apart.” She said the Fareas had looked forward to going to school in the United States and had encouraged others to do the same.

The New York Post, citing unnamed police sources, reported that detectiv

es learned that the day before the bodies were found, the mother received a call from an official at the Saudi Embassy in Washington saying the family may have to leave the United States because the sisters had applied for political asylum.

A Saudi official said that was inaccurate and that the embassy did not know whether the Farea sisters had applied for asylum.

“The mother’s immigration status was expired,” the official said. “Immigration asked her to leave, and we asked for an extension for her and that is what the conversation was about, not the alleged asylum.”

The Department of Homeland Security said that for privacy reasons it could not comment on whether the sisters had sought asylum.

Earlier this week, the Saudi Consulate in New York City issued a statement saying that it had retained an attorney to “follow the case closely” and that the embassy had offered assistance to the Farea family.

New York police on Wednesday appealed to the public for information about the sisters, who police said may have been staying in the New York City area. Shea said authorities do know some of what the sisters had been doing.

Media outlets in New York initially reported that police were investigating the case as a suicide pact, with the young women possibly leaping from the George Washington Bridge, but investigators backed off that theory because such a long fall would have produced trauma to the bodies and motorists would have been likely to see the pair on the bridge.

The Arab News, citing unnamed family members in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, reported that the family has rejected the idea that the sisters committed suicide.

The Arab News said family members said Tala missed her sister and had run away from home to be with her in New York City, where the family members said Rotana was attending college.

The family members told the Arab News that relatives were concerned about Tala Farea’s disappearance but called off their search after discovering that the teen was with her sister. The veracity of those reports could not be confirmed.

Johnson, the former neighbor, said the younger sister lived in a Fairfax, Va., apartment with her mother and a brother, who was around 12, and possibly an older second brother. He said he thought Rotana was living elsewhere.

He said the sisters’ father lived in Saudi Arabia and may have worked for the government there. He would visit periodically.

He said that the family moved out over the summer and that he had seen no obvious problems in the household.

“They were always pleasant,” Johnson said.

Johnson said a succession of Saudi exchange students had lived in the apartment before the Fareas. George Mason University spokesman Michael Sandler said Rotana had attended the school but left in the spring

“The news of her death is tragic,” Sandler wrote in an email. “University officials are cooperating with police and will assist in any way we can.”

Tala attended Fairfax High School for part of the 2017-2018 school year, but a spokesman for Fairfax County Public Schools said he could offer no other details because of student privacy restrictions.

“On behalf of all members of the Fairfax High School family, we extend our deepest condolences to family, friends, and all those impacted by this event,” Principal Erin B. Lenart wrote in a message to school families this week.

Fairfax County court records show the Farea family may have been in financial distress. In 2016, family members were evicted from an apartment in Falls Church’s Skyline Towers after failing to pay nearly $1,700 in rent, according to court records. After the family moved to the apartment in Fairfax, another management company initiated eviction proceedings over a failure to pay rent, but the case was ultimately dropped.

Police said the family came to the United States in 2015.

Re: Two Saudi Sisters Who Lived in Virginia Found Dead in NYC

dex — Fri, 02 Nov 2018 18:14:53 GMT

@golding76@Maybe the father wouldn’t pay the rent because he thought the girls dishonored their family.

Re: Two Saudi Sisters Who Lived in Virginia Found Dead in NYC

sidsmom — Fri, 02 Nov 2018 18:38:02 GMT

@Johnnyeager wrote:
Murder convictions have been achieved without a body (in the United States) using forensic and circumstantial evidence. Of course, the prosecution has to convince the jury that the evidence is sufficient.

Curious, I Wiki’d the famous ‘no-body’ convictions.

First one listed...Australia...”The dingo ate my baby”.

Lots of cases....

Re: Two Saudi Sisters Who Lived in Virginia Found Dead in NYC

cherry — Fri, 02 Nov 2018 19:14:16 GMT

the woman that said that was telling the truth. She was wrongfully convicted, and later cleared

Re: Two Saudi Sisters Who Lived in Virginia Found Dead in NYC

cherry — Fri, 02 Nov 2018 19:21:38 GMT

If they were faithful Muslims, I don't think they would take their own life. I recall when that pilot of a missing aircraft was accused of suicide, and taking the plane down into the ocean, some people said he would never to that, he was religious..Of course ,I am sure some Muslims have most likely killed themselves,( but I think its rare) However these girls reported they were frightened, and that makes me think they felt someone was after them and they weren't suicidal

Re: Two Saudi Sisters Who Lived in Virginia Found Dead in NYC

QueenDanceALot — Fri, 02 Nov 2018 19:28:08 GMT

@suzyQ3 wrote:
@cherry wrote:
Without a corpse can you even prove he was murdered? I think he was , but you must be able to prove it
@cherry, I may be wrong, but I thought that the Saudis did admit that he was dead. Of course, their story changed many times.

Didn't the Saudis say that he was killed during a fight that broke out between him (a rather paunchy guy in his 60's?) and 15 thugs, one of whom was carrying a bone saw. It was a regrettable incident with a fight gone bad.

Makes sense to me.