The tragic and mysterious death of two Saudi Arabian sisters whose bodies were found, taped together, along New York City’s waterfront last October appears to have been a double suicide.

Rotana and Tala Farea both drowned and the cause of death was suicide, New York medical examiner Barbara Sampson said in a brief report on Tuesday evening.

Rotana, 23, and Tala, 16, were found dead in the city around a year after they had ceased living with family members in Fairfax, Virginia. It later emerged there were reports they were victims of alleged abuse, although details have not emerged. They had been seeking asylum in the United States.

“Today, my office determined that the death of the Farea sisters was the result of suicide, in which the young women bound themselves together before descending into the Hudson River,” Sampson said in a short but poignant note released on Tuesday.

The river runs down the west side of Manhattan.

Law enforcement sources in New York indicated last year that the sisters “would rather do harm to themselves” than return to their home country.

The sisters were discovered dead on 24 October 2018, lying on rocks along the river.

New York police department’s chief of detectives, Dermot Shea, had said at the time that there were no signs of trauma on their bodies.

“It is entirely credible that the girls entered the water alive,” Shea also said, later saying that the tape was “not binding them tight together – more like keeping them together.”

Shea had provided some details about the last year of the Farea sisters’ lives.

After leaving family in Fairfax, Virginia, they wound up in a “shelter-like facility due to some abuse allegations that came up”, Shea said. They left Saudi Arabia several years ago.

The sisters were reported missing from the “facility” last August and made their way to New York.

Financial records obtained by police indicate that they stayed at “a number of high-end hotels”, routinely ordering meals.

“The money started to run out,” Shea said.