Teenager believed murdered by twin buried as police work on motive

Shiri’s attorney Gil Friedman denied media reports that the two had confessed to the murder Thursday evening to police, saying that at no point did they confess to any role in the killing.

FEBRUARY 21, 2016 16:54

Updated: FEBRUARY 22, 2016 01:45

Police car at crime scene (photo credit: SHLOMI) — Police car at crime scene

(photo credit: SHLOMI)

Tel Aviv police have yet to determine the motive for an 18-year-old girl who they believe murdered her twin sister in a puzzling and vicious killing outside their family home on Thursday.

A source within the Tel Aviv district said they are focusing on disputes between Hili Sobol and her sister, murder suspect Shiri Sobol. This includes a dispute allegedly involving Shiri’s boyfriend, David Eran, who has been arrested on suspicion of stabbing Hili to death in the stairwell of the family’s apartment building in the Nahalat Yitzhak neighborhood on Thursday afternoon.

Shiri’s attorney, Gil Friedman, told The Jerusalem Post that police have not yet presented them with anything that he thinks would constitute a murder motive. Friedman said they appear to be focusing on Shiri’s alleged jealousy of her sister and a dispute they had over Eran, but nothing more than that.

Friedman also denied media reports that the two had confessed to the murder Thursday evening to police, saying that at no point did they confess to any role in the killing.

Hili Sobol was buried in Yarkon cemetery in Tel Aviv on Sunday afternoon. Shiri had initially wanted to petition the court to attend the funeral, but in the end decided not to, so as to avoid the media circus at the funeral, Friedman said.

Investigators suspect Shiri’s boyfriend Eran was the one who actually stabbed Hili in the stairwell, and it was Shiri who helped him change clothes and stash the knife, which was found in the apartment not long after. Shiri is also the one who called police to report the murder, also took pictures of her sister’s body and the police cruisers parked outside the house, which she then sent to friends on WhatsApp.

She told arriving officers that her sister received a phone call and stepped out into the stairwell, where she was stabbed to death by an unknown assailant who fled the scene. Within minutes police began to suspect Shiri, when they determined that Hili hadn’t received a call, and there were blood stains inside the apartment.

Shiri and Eran appeared at the Tel Aviv Magistrate’s Court on Friday, where they were ordered to be kept in custody for nine days.

During the hearing, she professed her innocence, saying, “I didn’t stab or murder her; I love my sister.”