In the early hours of Tuesday, January 7, shrill noises pierced the freezing night air in Aberdeen. They seemed to have been coming from the river Dee. Were they screams? Cries for help?
A month on, this brief, discordant chorus would likely be forgotten were it not for the fact the city now knows it coincided with the disappearance of two Hungarian sisters.
They were part of a set of triplets and, as every photograph reveals, almost mirror images of each other.
Eliza and Henrietta Huszti, 32, lived together, thought alike and, by all accounts, formed a mutual support system in this Scottish city by the sea which contrasted so sharply with the village in landlocked Hungary where they grew up.
Since arriving in Scotland, all looked to be going to plan.
They had both found work and, to anyone who met them, they appeared settled, level-headed and conscientious – if, perhaps, a little insular.
There was no indication of health or money problems.
They kept in regular contact with most of their family back home and gave the impression, at least, that they had no regrets about their new life in their adoptive city.
Eliza and Henrietta Huszti vanished in Aberdeen last month. Their bodies were recently found
The sisters’ father, Miklos Huszti, 63, is convinced someone lured them to the waterfront and killed them
All of which makes the events of January 6 and 7 – and the bleak discovery of two female bodies in the river Dee a few days ago – the more baffling.
Was this a suicide pact between the siblings or the upshot of some horrific misadventure? Or, as their tearful father now suggests, was a third party directly involved in their deaths?
Although Police Scotland continue to insist there is no evidence of suspicious circumstances, all three theories remain possibilities.
The sisters’ final 12 hours alive raise perhaps the most puzzling questions of all. In that time, they visited the south bank of the river Dee twice.
On the first occasion, they walked back through the city centre to the flat they rented around a mile from the river in Charlotte Street.
On the second visit, there was no return journey. The two were never seen alive again.
Aberdeen’s network of CCTV cameras has them crossing the Dee via the Victoria Bridge at 2.12am on January 7.
It was also at 2.12am that a text message was sent from Henrietta’s phone to their landlady. It said they would not be returning to the flat.
When this text was read, the landlady went to the flat and found many of the sisters’ possessions still there, including Eliza’s phone.
So they had not moved out – and, it appeared, the mobile used to send the text message, was no longer connected from the network. The landlady’s next call was to the police.
A month on, Police Scotland know the sisters are dead. What they do not know is the answer to the question a whole city is asking: why?
At his home in Mezőladány in eastern Hungary, a few miles from the Ukrainian border, the sisters’ father Miklós is asking the same question and, based on the information he has, forming conclusions.
‘I have no idea what happened to my daughters, but I am sure they did not commit suicide,’ the 63-year-old told Hungarian reporters.
‘I believe that they did not send the SMS to their landlord, but someone else or others who cheated and kidnapped my children.’
He added: ‘I am sure that someone lured them to the waterfront and cruelly killed them.’
Eliza and Henrietta were last seen on CCTV in Market Street, Aberdeen
A Police dive boat on the River Dee at Aberdeen harbour during the search for missing sisters
Mr Huszti also told the Hungarian news site SZON: ‘My son called me to say that they had probably found Henrietta.
She has a tattoo of an angel, and they’d identified her based on that. I have never felt such pain before. Edit, my third daughter, also completely collapsed.’
For all his grief, there is little to suggest any detailed insight on his part into the case. He had been out of contact with his daughters since he and his wife divorced 12 years ago.
The girls grew up in Tornyospálca, a few miles from where their father now lives, but after the divorce they moved to Budapest with their mother and brother Jozsef.
The third triplet, Edit, remained in the area and married a local man in Vásárosnamény.
A relative of the family, who still lives in Tornyospálca, said: ‘I don’t want to go into it in depth, I’ll just say that perhaps the circumstances at home were not suitable.’
After two or three years, the sisters moved abroad, landing in Aberdeen somewhere between seven and 10 years ago.
There, it seems, they maintained regular contact with their other triplet – the three had spoken on a video call on New Year’s Eve – and were on the phone almost daily to their mother.
In a 40-minute call with her on Saturday, January 4, both sisters seemed ‘fine’.
Were they, then, hiding something from the rest of the family? What happened to bring them to the river’s edge twice in the days that followed? That is the crux of the mystery.
Outwardly, there was nothing to suggest any major changes in either of their lives. Henrietta, according to some accounts, the more outgoing of the two, worked in Costa Coffee in the city’s Bon Accord Centre.
Eliza had, until last summer, worked for commercial contract cleaning firm Abz Cleaning Solutions. Its boss Scott Bousfield recalled her as a model employee.
‘She never seemed down or sad. And she would always greet you with a smile and say “hello, how you doing?”
‘I think I can probably count on one hand how many times she was actually off in six years.
‘She always did her job to the best of her ability.’
Last August, she texted him to say she had found another job and was giving two weeks’ notice.
Police searched the banks of the River Dee for the missing sisters
Eliza and Henrietta with their brother József Huszti
‘It wasn’t an “I’m not coming back” text, which we’ve had from cleaners,’ said Mr Bousfield. ‘It was properly laid out, saying “this is the day I’m starting my two weeks’ notice and I’ll be leaving after that”.’
Few others seem to have known the sisters well. A Hungarian television journalist Krisztina Vermes, who arrived in Aberdeen to report on the mystery for her channel TV2 was shocked to discover almost none of the city’s Hungarian residents had even heard of the sisters.
Even at the city’s Goulash restaurant – a hub for the local Hungarian community – the owners had known nothing of the Huszti sisters until they were in the news.
‘Nobody had heard of them, so absolutely no one knew them,’ she reported. ‘That was very strange to me.’
They were, however, occasional customers at the Authentic Romanian Shop not far from where they lived. An assistant there said they came in to buy Hungarian ingredients, such as sausages and goulash paste.
‘They weren’t regular customers, but I recognised the photograph. The last time I saw them was before Christmas,’ she said.
Another neighbour recalled sometimes seeing them smoking on the street outside the apartment they rented. She said: ‘I used to see them smoking there on the corner. They always stood there. When one of them stood that way, the other one always looked towards them. It was very strange that they were so in synch with each other.’
It is believed the sisters returned to their homeland just twice during their time in Aberdeen – in 2019 and 2022 – but not known whether relatives visited them.
Their brother Jozsef has suggested they were saving to buy their own property in the city but, contrary to some reports, Police Scotland say they had given no indication prior to that text to their landlady on January 7 that they planned to move out.
What is known of their final hours is that, in the afternoon of Monday, January 6, they crossed the Victoria Bridge over the Dee towards the Torry area of the city.
Once across, they turned right down a snow-covered footpath which runs alongside the river.
A CCTV image released by Police Scotland shows the two wearing rucksacks about to cross the bridge at 2.50pm. They spent five minutes on the other side and, apparently, engaged with no one.
From there, they made their way back to their Charlotte Street flat, at one stage passing through the Union Square shopping centre.
There is nothing to indicate either one left the flat again before they did so for the final time just before 2am.
It is around then that they are pictured passing a doorway on Charlotte Street as they made their way back towards the river – this time without rucksacks.
They arrived at Victoria Bridge at 2.12am, which was exactly when the text message about quitting the flat was sent. They were last seen turning right onto the footpath they had visited hours before, which is not covered by CCTV.
Did they enter the water from there? While it may remain the most likely explanation, it raises questions.
If suicide was their plan, why not jump from the bridge rather than wade in from the bank?
Could they have been meeting somewhere there? Police say there are no indications either that they did or intended to do so.
Within hours of that text arriving, the landlady visited the Charlotte Street flat and later that day called the police.
When they arrived at the property they pinned a notice to the door saying officers had ‘tried to reach you’.
But the hours of CCTV footage studied in the days that followed gave the clearest indication they were likely never coming back – that their story ended at the river, just as the CCTV trail did.
Police shared daily updates with the sisters’ family as marine divers searched the river – partially covered in ice – around Aberdeen Boat Club, police dogs combed the banks and a helicopter hovered overhead.
The search went on for weeks but it was not until days after it was called off that the first body, believed to be Henrietta’s, was spotted in the river on January 31. A second body was recovered some 13 hours later.
While formal identification has still to be confirmed, police sources indicate that family members do not need to travel to Aberdeen for that.
This week they remained in Hungary, shattered and confused. Speaking from Budapest to the Press and Journal this week, Jozsef Huszti said: ‘We want to find out the reason they died. It’s hard, but we would like to know the answers.’
He added: ‘I don’t think there will be many answers given in the coming days – but the story isn’t quite over yet.
‘I truly believe the local police will do their best to do a full investigation and give answers about what happened exactly. My family and I are religious people. We believe that with the help of God, we will learn what happened.’
He said he and his sister used to catch up with Eliza and Henrietta ‘maybe every three weeks or monthly’. With their mother, it was different.
‘Eliza and Henrietta had a deeper connection with their mum. No matter what, they would always be in touch with her, whether they had any problems or good news to share.
‘They would call her to get advice and opinions – no matter what the issue.’
And yet nothing, it seems, was shared on any problem which may have led to the loss of their lives.
Police Scotland Superintendent David Howieson said: ‘Our thoughts very much remain with the family of Henrietta and Eliza Huszti at this extremely difficult time. Officers are supporting them and ensuring they are fully updated as we continue to carry out inquiries.
‘This has had a significant impact on the Aberdeen community and much further afield.’
In time, the sisters are expected to be cremated in Scotland and their ashes thereafter repatriated to Hungary.
A JustGiving appeal by Hungarian national and Aberdeen resident Anita Vida to raise £1500 towards the cost of that has now secured almost £7,000.
Clearly, the city mourns the sisters it never truly knew. Its heart goes out to them and wishes their story here could have been much happier.
For now, its ending is as opaque as it is bleak. There will be, for some time yet, a haunting quality to those still-icy Dee waters.
