Police are working through “a number of hypotheses” in the disappearance of two missing sisters, who vanished in Aberdeen.
Today, Superintendent David Howieson held a press conference to update the public on their enquiries into missing sisters, Eliza and Henrietta Huszti, who were last seen on CCTV on the city’s Market Street at Victoria Bridge at about 2.12am on Tuesday, January 7.
The two women, originally from Hungary, are part of a set of triplets who are understood to have moved to Scotland seven years ago. The 32-year-old pair crossed the bridge and turned right onto a footpath next to the River Dee, heading in the direction of Aberdeen Boat Club.
Police say there is no evidence of the missing women leaving the immediate area as they focus their search on the River Dee, close to the Queen Elizabeth Bridge. The police helicopter, dog branch and the marine unit were among the specialist resources involved in the extensive searches carried out since.
Here is everything that we learned today:
Was there any criminality involved?
The police currently have no evidence of criminality in the disappearance of the sisters and through speaking with friends and family, the pair being out in the early hours of the morning is very out of character for them.
Superintendent David Howieson said: “I can say that all our inquiries to date don’t provide any evidence that there’s not been criminality involved in the disappearance of the sisters. There’s obviously significant concern when people are unaccounted for for such a significant period of time, but extensive police inquiries to date have not identified any suspicious circumstances.
“There are no suspects. This is not a criminal inquiry. This a missing person inquiry.”
Who reported them missing?
It was revealed that it was Eliza and Henrietta’s landlord who first raised the alarm. Howieson continued: “The person raising the alarm was the person from whom they rent their flat, and that person had been in contact with the sisters in the days prior in the context of the relationship of landlord and tenant.
“The alarm was raised by that person, and the police inquiry stood up immediately thereafter. We know that the last sighting of them was in the early hours of the morning, and by lunchtime that day, we’d received a call from the landlord.
“What we do know is that in the days preceding, the sisters had indicated to the landlord that they intended to leave their tenancy, and the landlords carried out inquiries at the address, which has led them to be concerned about the whereabouts of the sisters. Specifically due to some materials, personal possessions, etc, that had been left within the address.”
What personal possessions were left at their home?
The force found mobile phones at the home and are trying to establish if they are “relevant“. Howieson added: “There’s nothing specific within the properties to suggest that they had either an intention to disappear or an intention to do themselves harm.
“There were some personal possessions in the flat, including mobile phones. We are working to interrogate the information on them, to understand how recent and relevant they are.
“What I can say with a degree of certainty is that they were in possession of a mobile phone and that there were mobile phones in the flat. What we will have to work to try and understand is whether the phones in the flat are recent and relevant.”
What do their phones say?
Police Scotland are working with specialists to understand what use has been on the phones.
“There is nothing that we have found that either causes us concern in that regard or anything that brings our inquiries beyond the point last seen here,” revealed Howieson. “What I can say is we don’t have detail of either text or telephone contact with people in the run-up to their disappearance that provides any further context or information as to what’s happened.”
Why are they searching the River Dee?
The Superintendent revealed Police Scotland’s working theory that the women have ended up in the river while walking along an adjacent footpath. Howieson revealed: “We have a number of hypotheses, and we’re remaining really open-minded in terms of what may have happened, but one of the main theories is that for some reason, the sisters have entered the water here, and that’s why a lot of the search activity that you’ll have seen over the last few days has been focused in and around the river.
“What we do know is that, at the moment, CCTV provides that they entered a footpath adjacent to the River Dee, and we have no trace of them leaving that footpath yet, but inquiries continue to see if we can extend that timeline further.
“Our working assumption is that we are very concerned about their whereabouts, and we are, now a week on, we’re not ruling anything out. We’re still carrying out a wider CCTV trail to understand if they may have escaped the area, by some means that we are so far unaware of.
“But at the moment, our best hypothesis is that they’ve gone into the footpath at the side of the river here, and that they haven’t emerged, and we’re trying to understand exactly what has happened once they’ve entered that area. There’s nothing in either their demeanour or their interaction with each other or their interaction with anyone else, that suggests that they were in distress, or to give us any sort of concern for their health at that time.
“We haven’t found anything to indicate that they’ve been within the water, but that remains one of our working theories.”
Had they taken this route before?
The Superintendent told reporters that they don’t believe the pair frequently walked the route. He said: “That’s a focus of the inquiry that’s being developed at the moment as we stand here. No, certainly in the days immediately prior, there’s nothing from interaction with friends or interaction with family that would suggest that being on foot in this area or out in Aberdeen at that time in the morning at all is normal behaviour for them.”
Police have urged anyone with any information to contact them. Anyone with information is asked to contact 101 quoting incident number 0735 of Tuesday, January 7 2025.
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