Africa - Seychelles Police Probe Deaths of Sisters Annie and Robin Korkki Sept 2016

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www.nbcnews.com/news/world/seychelles-police-probe-deaths-sisters-annie-robin-korkki-n656651
An American family was looking for answers Thursday after two sisters were found dead in their hotel room on a paradise island in the Indian Ocean.
"There were no marks on them whatsoever," Seychelles Tourism Minister Alain St Ange told NBC News. "They had a good time in the day and then they went to their room."


www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-3813633/Sisters-dead-villa-African-island.html

A Minnesota man says his family has been given little information on how his two sisters died while vacationing on a tropical African island.

Since there were no marks on their bodies ,nor signs of foul play -- my mind went to some dark places -- like the possible use of banned pesticides or carbon monoxide poisoning ? Imo.

Very tragic for their loved ones.

www.foxnews.com/world/2016/09/29/fa...can-sisters-found-dead-on-african-island.html
Hotel staff had observed the pair drinking alcohol throughout the day and had to be helped to their room last Wednesday by a butler at around 8:15 p.m., according to the Seychelles Nation. Police said the butler returned to the room at around 8:30 a.m. the next day to find the door left the same as it was the night before. By 11 a.m., there was still no sign of them and that’s when hotel staff entered the room.

Above link has a small graphic about Seychelles.

If they'd died from alcohol poisoning that would have been evident by now.
 
My first thought was pesticide poisoning too. I remember the family of four in the past year or so that suffered pesticide poisoning at a high class resort. The dad and two sons were all left paralyzed - horrible thing to happen.
 
This is indeed a sad story. I'll be it was carbon monoxide or a pesticide, but I wonder if the family will ever find out for sure?

Didn't something similar happen to some western tourists at a lower-rent place in Thailand or Cambodia? Two girls, I think.

ETA: Aha! Yes, two sisters from Canada. Years later an independent coroner believes they were poisoned by a pesticide used to kill bedbugs: http://news.nationalpost.com/news/c...likely-intoxicated-by-pesticides-coroner-says
 
This is indeed a sad story. I'll be it was carbon monoxide or a pesticide, but I wonder if the family will ever find out for sure?

Didn't something similar happen to some western tourists at a lower-rent place in Thailand or Cambodia? Two girls, I think.

ETA: Aha! Yes, two sisters from Canada. Years later an independent coroner believes they were poisoned by a pesticide used to kill bedbugs: http://news.nationalpost.com/news/c...likely-intoxicated-by-pesticides-coroner-says

WS: Thailand - Noemi, 26, & Audrey Belanger, 20, found dead, Phi Phi, 15 June 2012
 
If they'd died from alcohol poisoning that would have been evident by now.

If they haven't done an autopsy, I'm not sure how they could rule out alcohol poisoning. Sounds like they were both highly intoxicated...couldn't make it to their room unassisted after a day of drinking...but for both of them to die by alcohol poisoning sounds quite suspicious. I'd start with the butler!!
 
This is indeed a sad story. I'll be it was carbon monoxide or a pesticide, but I wonder if the family will ever find out for sure?

Didn't something similar happen to some western tourists at a lower-rent place in Thailand or Cambodia? Two girls, I think.

ETA: Aha! Yes, two sisters from Canada. Years later an independent coroner believes they were poisoned by a pesticide used to kill bedbugs: http://news.nationalpost.com/news/c...likely-intoxicated-by-pesticides-coroner-says

And Chica, this is scary! We are in the middle of a bedbug outbreak as we speak. Think of all the poisons that are being used to eradicate them? We're danged if we do, and we're danged if we don't. This story is so sad. :( About the epidemic.

Today the number of bed bugs is absolutely exploding. I remember when I was young my mother would tell me to “sleep tight and don’t let the bed bugs bite”, but I didn’t even know what bed bugs were because I had never seen any. But today, CBS News says that more than 250 million dollars a year (and rising) is spent fighting bed bugs.

Things have gotten so bad that a “National Bed Bug Summit” was held earlier this year in Washington D.C.

Will we soon have a “war on bed bugs”?

I can just see it now: “You are either with us or you are with the bed bugs”.

So exactly what are bed bugs?

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/tag/bed-bug-epidemic
 
I do not think there is sn inexpensive place to stsy on the Seychelles. This would be major bucks.

Could they have taken some drugs? Very well to do people get away with bringing drugs to places where they are not allowed. I don't mean the sisters, but someone like a film star.
 
This is such a strange tragedy. I do wonder why they're crowdfunding funeral costs for two women who could afford to stay at a $2k/night resort hotel. Surely their estates (as the news story says, they were both "successful," which tends to mean $$$) or families have those funds? I mean, obviously people can do whatever they want with their money but it just seems like maybe donating in their names to a more pressing cause might be prudent...
 
Drugs. Definitely drugs since carbon monoxide hasn't been mentioned.

I'm going to go with some research chemicals they got off the darknet and believed were MDMA.
 
What about the prospect of a suicide pact? Is that even a remote possibility?
 
what about them doing some local spirit/vision quest and accidentally poisoning themselves?
 
Health risks in the Seychelles

* Chikungunya, which causes ailments resembling flu like joint pain. The virus can cause death and symptoms can last for months.

* Leptospirosis, a bacterial infection caused by contaminated water.

* Cercarial dermatitis can infect ocean swimmers. Yellow fever is also possible.

* Palm spiders are visible by their huge nests, and ants, sand fleas and roaches also hang out on the islands. <-- Can people be allergic to spiders? Though I guess it's unlikely they would both have an allergy.

IMO it would be really weird for both of them to get one of the above at the same time, but carbon monoxide poisoning or some kind of intentional poisoning or bad drug/OD could do that.

It looks like they were staying at a fancy-schmancy place and I think they would have had to have all the necessary vaccinations up to date.

Hmmmm.
 
Couldn't be pesticide poisoning. I think this was their last night on the island and they definitely would have been seeing some symptoms by then.
A bad batch of drugs sounds most likely. One last hoorah before heading home. Otherwise a random carbon monoxide leak.
So sad and confusing! I feel for their families being in limbo.
 
I feel it was something they both ingested. I doubt it was food, as others would have experienced the same fate.

IMHO
 
If this were a case of pesticide poisoning they likely wouldn't be the only ones affected.

I also doubt spider bite... both of them, at the same time?

This has to be something they both ingested or were exposed to. I'm betting it was something they ingested.
 
Could be pool chemicals. There was that case of a mom and son staying in a hotel and something with chlorine pipe leaking into their room. Though I wonder if that's more of an indoor pool thing and I doubt this resort would have an indoor pool. But I'd think there'd be signs of vomiting. Wonder if there were signs of vomiting?
 
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/seychelles-police-release-cause-death-annie-robin-korkki-n657306

Autopsy results were released Friday for two American sisters found dead in their luxury hotel room in the Seychelles &#8212; but a pending toxicology report appears to be key to finding out how they died.

Robin Korkki, 42, died of "acute pulmonary edema" and Anne Korkki, 37, from "acute pulmonary and cerebral edema," police spokesman Jean Toussaint told NBC News.

On their own these causes of death &#8212; accumulation of fluid on the lungs and brain &#8212; do not reveal much about how the sisters died.

It doesn't appear to be altitude-related edema as far as the resort location is concerned because the resort elevation is way below where hypoxia would be an issue. Regarding flying, how long was their flight(s)? Was Seychelles their first and only destination? How could hypoxia occur within a pressurized cabin?

If it were an algae or bacteria in an infinity pool, on a beach or in the waters off the coast why was no one else affected (AFAWK)?

Were the sisters already 'ill' when they arrived to the resort and it simply took time for the fluid build-up? Why both?

Is it typical for the sisters to vacation together?
 
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/seychelles-police-release-cause-death-annie-robin-korkki-n657306



It doesn't appear to be altitude-related edema as far as the resort location is concerned because the resort elevation is way below where hypoxia would be an issue. Regarding flying, how long was their flight(s)? Was Seychelles their first and only destination? How could hypoxia occur within a pressurized cabin?

If it were an algae or bacteria in an infinity pool, on a beach or in the waters off the coast why was no one else affected (AFAWK)?

Were the sisters already 'ill' when they arrived to the resort and it simply took time for the fluid build-up? Why both?

Is it typical for the sisters to vacation together?

Considering they were both coming from the American Midwest, their flights (a quick Google search tells me there are 0 direct routes from anywhere in the US to Seychelles) must have routed through Doha or Dubai (on Etihad/Emirates) or else somewhere like Addis Ababa, although the fact that they're going to as expensive a country as Seychelles as tourists suggests they would have flown on one of the first two and not on Ethiopian Airlines. But in any of these cases, the flights to get to their stops also must have been quite long, and depending on how many stops they ended up having to make, they might have gone up and down a few times and definitely spent a lot of time in the air.

It's not as if people don't drink while on vacation, but it's hard for me to believe that the Korkki sisters would have wanted to drink so much alcohol that they needed to be helped back to their room at only 8:15 PM; a night cut so short two days before they're going home would mean they had terrible hangovers (in a very sunny country) on their penultimate day there. The toxicology report is currently being prepared in Mauritius, so we can't know what it'll show yet, but IMO, that state of drunkenness under those circumstances points to someone putting something into their drinks, causing them to appear much more drunk than they might have been otherwise. Perhaps a worker or a fellow guest intended to knock them unconscious to then assault or rob them, but put too much of whatever it was into the drinks.

The autopsy says they both had pulmonary edema and one had cerebral edema. Could anyone with a medical background tell us if it's unusual, assuming the same cause of death (drug, poison, etc.) that two people's bodies would react in different ways (that is, no cerebral edema in one person) to the same toxin?

Also, I was just curious about what can cause edema and came across heavy metal poisoning (specifically mercury). A 1998 study conducted in Seychelles by the University of Rochester showed that people there have 10-20 times as much mercury in their bodies because many of them eat fish meals a dozen times a week. If the sisters didn't eat a ton of fish at home but decided to do as the Seychellois do once they'd arrived--and maybe they were already immunocompromised in some way, like from flying, etc.--perhaps a quick buildup proved fatal?
 

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