Teen Vogue
Wednesday October 31, 2018
Police are investigating what happened to the duo and haven't ruled out suicide or murder.
olice are investigating the cause of death of two sisters whose bodies were recently discovered in Riverside Park in Manhattan in New York City.
Among rocks, Pix 11 reports, sisters Tala Farea, 16, and Rotana Farea, 22, were found fully clothed and duct-taped together at the feet and waist. Police told the local station the bodies had no obvious signs of trauma.
According to The New York Times, the sisters were from Saudi Arabia and had lived in Fairfax, Virginia. The Times reports they had a “history of going missing and they had recently requested asylum in the United States.”
A cause of death hasn’t been determined. The Times reports police are looking into the possibility that the sisters might have committed suicide by taping themselves together and throwing themselves into the river, but detectives haven’t ruled out murder. According to the publication, no one has claimed the sisters’ bodies.
“We do not know that a crime took place,” Dermot F. Shea, the chief of detectives, told the Times on Thursday. “We have a terrible tragedy for sure.”
The Times cites the Arab News, an English paper in Saudi Arabia, which reported that Rotana was recently living in New York, while her mother and younger sister were living in Virginia.
The Richmond, Virginia, CBS affiliate WTVR, reported that in a post on the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which has now been removed, the teen had been missing since August 24 and that she might be with her sister.
Following the news reports of the sisters' deaths, several people including The New Yorker staff writer Lauren Collins took to Twitter to express their thoughts, including skepticism over the idea that the sisters committed suicide.