Police have been searching for twins Eliza and Henrietta Huszti, who were last seen walking along the River Dee in Aberdeen on January 7. A body has now been recovered from a river
Police have issued a tragic update in the search for sisters Eliza and Henrietta Huszti, who were last seen near the River Dee in Aberdeen on January 7.
The disappearance of the twins, part of a set of triplets, sparked a major search operation after they vanished. Worrying details have since emerged over the past few weeks and today with an update from Police Scotland.
The force said it was alerted to a body seen in the river, near Queen Elizabeth Bridge, at around 07:55am on Friday. It added that enquiries are ongoing and there has been significant activity at the scene of River Dee this morning.
The 32-year-old women, originally from Hungary, were last spotted on CCTV on the city’s Victoria Bridge, which crosses the River Dee, in the early hours of the morning. One police theory is that Eliza and Henrietta entered the water that day, but their searches failed to find them.
The hunt for the twins had been intensive, involving police helicopters, dogs and marine specialist units, with Police Scotland confirming they had ended their searches of the River Dee and harbour area earlier this week but were still trying to trace the twins. As several questions remain unanswered, we take a look at what we know of their lives…
The women arrived in the UK six years ago and have been working in Aberdeen since then. The family say Henrietta worked in a branch of Costa in the city.
Their brother Jozsef Huszti told BBC News that their mother spoke to her daughters in a 40-minute conversation four days earlier, during which nothing seemed out of the ordinary. The third triplet, Edit, spoke to them on a video call on New Year’s Eve, saying they appeared happy and cheerful.
Eliza and Henrietta are said to have been very close, doing most things together and saving up to buy their own home. Being out on the streets in the early hours of the morning was unusual behaviour for them, their family believe.
On January 6 at 2.50pm, police revealed the women were caught on CCTV crossing Victoria Bridge, where they spent five minutes on the river footpath nearby, not engaging with anyone else. This was the same bridge where they would return in the early hours the next morning to be sighted for the last time.
“After visiting the bridge, the sisters are then seen on CCTV making their way through the city centre, via the Union Square shopping centre, back to their flat in the Charlotte Street area of Aberdeen,” said Police Scotland. “There is nothing to indicate Eliza or Henrietta left their flat again until shortly before they were last seen at the River Dee in the early hours.”
Worryingly, the twins’ landlady received a message at 2.12am saying they would not be returning to their flat, prompting her to call the police. She found the twins’ possessions at the property, with only one of their mobile phones taken with them. This mobile was switched off after the landlady was contacted.
“A text message was sent from Henrietta’s mobile phone to their landlady at 2.12am on Tuesday, 7 January, 2025, from the area of Victoria Bridge, indicating they would not be returning to the flat,” said Police Scotland. “The phone was then disconnected from the network and has not been active since.”
“We don’t understand this whole thing,” brother Jozsef told the BBC. “That they wrote a message to their landlady, that they wanted to immediately end their tenancy agreement. We didn’t have any information about that. So that’s the strange thing, that the girls didn’t tell us anything about that.”
Detectives are not treating the disappearance of the twins as suspicious and had been keeping an open mind about their fate. “One of our theories has to be that they’ve entered the water for reasons unknown, and that’s why so much of our search activity is focused on the river, the river bank, and the harbour itself, but we’re not ruling out the fact that they may have left this area by means that we haven’t identified yet,” said Supt David Howieson.
On Friday just before 8am, police were alerted to a body seen in the river and it was recovered from the water. A spokesperson for Police Scotland said: “We were made aware of the body of a person seen in the River Dee near Queen Elizabeth Bridge in Aberdeen around 7.55am on Friday.
“The body has been recovered from the water and inquiries are ongoing.”