This photo was taken shortly before Mariam Makhniashvili moved from the Republic of Georgia to Toronto.Gvantsa Abzhandadze
After police canvassed thousands of homes, scoured parts of the city by helicopter and interviewed every student at her school, two civilians finally found Mariam Makhniashvili.
For 2½ years, the search captivated the city while her family pleaded for help to find her alive. But the search ended under a north Toronto highway overpass, where skeletal remains were discovered in February and identified last week as Ms. Makhniashvili's.
There's nothing to suggest her death was in any way suspicious, police say, and her injuries would be consistent with a suicide or accident. Questions linger, however, about the investigation and the events leading up to her death.
In Tbilisi, Georgia, one of Ms. Makhniashvili's closest friends said she has many questions.
"I was shocked as I heard it," said Gvantsa Abzhandadze, who went to school with Ms. Makhniashvili before she moved to Toronto the summer before she disappeared at age 17. Ms. Abzhandadze, 19, said she doesn't understand why it took so long for her friend to be found. "I'm interested in everything," she said.
Police are still searching for answers, too. On Friday, a stretch of Highway 401 was shut down, near where Ms. Makhniashvili was found, as officers continued to probe the death but declined to say what they were looking for.
Is there evidence to suggest it was a suicide?
Police haven't said outright that they believe Ms. Makhniashvili took her own life.
"[We're]continuing to look, to see if there's anything that can help us draw conclusions as to what actually occurred," said Staff Inspector Greg McLane of the homicide squad, which has assisted with the investigation. "Now we know where she was, maybe somebody saw something. …There's all kinds of investigative avenues we're going to take to see if we can help get a better understanding of what actually took place."
Initially, highway cameras that could have shown the teenager's last few moments were thought to be an option. Although there is a camera nearby, footage is only kept for about a month, after which it is overwritten, a Ministry of Transportation spokeswoman said.
A police source previously said there was no suicide note. Officers have said that, speculating in hindsight, there may have been signs of depression that were mistaken for adjusting to Canada. Ms. Makhniashvili went missing on her fifth day of school here, only months after arriving.
But Ms. Abzhandadze said Ms. Makhniashvili was happy to be in Canada and to reunite with her parents, who had been living in the United States apart from their children. "She wanted to go there," said Ms. Abzhandadze, who corresponded with her friend by e-mail. "She wasn't depressed. She was such an optimistic girl and she wanted to study to become a good professional."
Why wasn't she found before?
It would take about an hour and 20 minutes to walk from the teenager's school to where her skeletal remains were found.
Police were close to finding Ms. Makhniashvili when they searched Earl Bales Park, just northwest of the overpass. She had picnicked at the park with her family.
Attempting to find Ms. Makhniashvili or clues in her disappearance, officers went door-to-door in canvassing about 6,000 homes. But they focused on areas with which she and her family were familiar, so they didn't extend their search to the overpass. "Where she was located was just on the outside fringe of where we were," Detective Sergeant Dan Nealon said. He said officers searched nearby ravines and the outskirts of the park, a short walk from the overpass.
When and how did she get there?
Ms. Makhniashvili could have died the same day she disappeared – Sept. 14, 2009. Police say her brother is the last person to have seen her when they arrived at Forest Hill Collegiate Institute, splitting up before entering the school.
But Det. Sgt. Nealon said police don't know the exact day of her death. "It's consistent from the time that she went missing," he said.
About three weeks after Ms. Makhniashvili went missing, the backpack she had carried to school was found in a parking lot near Yonge Street and Eglinton Avenue, about an hour's walk from where her body was found. Asked if the backpack could have been taken from beneath the bridge by someone after Ms. Makhniashvili died, Det. Sgt. Nealon said he couldn't speculate.
Police are also unsure what time of day it was when she fell beneath the busy overpass, or what route she took without attracting enough attention to prompt a 911 call or a tip later when she became a household name. For the teen to get onto the off ramp, it appears she would have had to walk alongside traffic.
There's nothing to suggest that Ms. Makhniashvili was with anyone else in the moments before she fell to her death, police say. But with near-constant traffic on that stretch of highway, as well as nearby roadwork, someone may have noticed something amiss.
Other than a stub of police tape still tied to a fence below the overpass, the area just north of the Don Valley Golf Course's first tee showed few signs earlier this week that someone died there. Not far away, traffic signs and construction equipment were stored against the bridge's graffitied pillars, and broken beer bottles littered the ground.
Det. Sgt. Nealon said police are trying to talk to construction workers and other people who were in the area. "It's quite possible that there are witnesses who don't really realize it, who have forgotten or they didn't think anything of it at the time," he said.