A woman’s body has been found near where two missing sisters were last seen in Aberdeen.
Eliza and Henrietta Huszti, both 32 and part of a set of triplets, were reported missing by their landlady on 7 January after telling her they planned to end their tenancy.
Extensive searches were carried out and Police Scotland said on Friday that a woman’s body has been recovered from the water.
Officers had been made aware that a body had been seen in the River Dee, near Queen Elizabeth Bridge, shortly before 8am on Friday.
A Police Scotland spokesperson 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, 31 January, 2025.
“The body has been recovered from the water and enquiries are ongoing.”
Police said formal identification has not yet taken place, but the family of Henrietta have been informed. Officers are continuing to search for Eliza.
Extensive searches of the River Dee and the Harbour area, including a dive and marine unit, police dogs and air support, ended on Monday.
However, superintendent David Howieson said: “Our thoughts are with the Huszti family today. We are keeping them fully updated following this recovery and the further search activity which is ongoing.
“Our priority remains finding both of the sisters and search has focused on the River Dee and will do so in the coming days.
“Nothing from our extensive enquiries so far suggest either sister left the immediate area after they were last seen on Tuesday, 7 January. There is also nothing to suggest any suspicious circumstances or criminality.
“We are carrying out further searches of the river in the area where the body was recovered this morning. The river in this area is tidal and conditions are challenging but we will continue to search and make every effort to locate both of the sisters.
“We have sought guidance from a number of experts and this will continue to inform our search activity.”
The pair – who are originally from Hungary – were last seen on a bridge over the River Dee on 7 January. They were seen at the same bridge at around 2.50pm on Monday 6 January.
CCTV shows the sisters spent five minutes at the footpath and Victoria Bridge but did not engage with anyone else.
The siblings are then seen making their way through the city centre, via the Union Square shopping centre, back to their flat in the Charlotte Street area of Aberdeen.
They crossed the bridge and turned right onto a footpath next to the River Dee, heading in the direction of Aberdeen Boat Club.
It emerged a text message was sent from Henrietta’s mobile phone to the sisters’ landlady at 2.12am on 7 January, from the area of Victoria Bridge, indicating they would not be returning to the flat.
The phone was then disconnected from the network and has not been active since, police said.
The following day, the sisters’ personal belongings were found inside the flat and the landlady reported her concerns to police.
Police treated the investigation as a missing persons inquiry rather than a criminal probe. Superintendent David Howieson said a theory was they had “entered the water for reasons unknown”.
Eliza and Henrietta’s family have issued desperate appeals in the past few weeks. Their brother Joszef Huszti told the BBC that relatives do not understand their disappearance, adding their mother had a phone call with the sisters just days beforehand when everything appeared normal.
“We don't understand this whole thing,” he said. “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. They never mentioned any such plan.”
The third sister in the set of triplets, Edit Huszti, confirmed she had spoken to the pair on New Year’s Eve, describing them as happy and cheerful on a video call.
Anyone with information is asked to contact Police Scotland on 101, quoting incident number 0735 of Tuesday 7 January.
