Two American girl tourists from New York were asphyxiated by gas fumes this weekend in the apartment of an acquaintance in Beersheba. The bodies of the girls — Arlene Bazer of Flushing, N.Y., and Virginia Dalessio of Whitestone — were found in the bathroom of a flat belonging to Gustav Shapiro, a Beersheba resident, after Shapiro returned from an errand.
The girls, who had been staying at Kibbutz Mishmar Haemek, were staying at the Shapiro flat overnight while enroute to Eilat, Israel’s southernmost town. Police, who ruled out the possibility of foul play, said that a bird’s nest was found in the exhaust pipe of a gas heater, indicating that the girls had apparently suffocated by carbon monoxide.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
