What really happened in mysterious Jerusalem woman's death?

The Magen David Adom ambulance crew that was sent to an abandoned house in Jerusalem on a freezing, rainy night - after a report that a young woman had died there - assumed that the deceased was a junkie who had overdosed. But they found the body of a 25-year-old woman who was clean and well dressed. "There were no needle marks or other marks that you find on addicts," paramedic Shalom Galil said. So what was the cause of her death?

The answer will probably never be known. The body of Tsipora Atlan, whose short life ended on February 3, lay in a house on Rabeinu Gershon Street in the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Mea She'arim. Members of the Haredi community aimed to prevent an autopsy, a procedure the ultra-Orthodox object to, for fear it would violate the honor of the dead. Only after long negotiations between the Eda Haredit community and the police was the body returned and buried the next morning - without an autopsy.

Atlan, Canadian-born and from a religiously observant family, came to Israel with her father five years ago. Her mother, Esther, who still lives in Canada, said in a phone call and via e-mail that the family hoped that Atlan, who suffered from manic depression, would be rehabilitated "in a completely Jewish environment." Some time later, Atlan's parents were divorced and she enrolled in a religious college. She then moved in with Danny Dargan, who was 10 years her senior and the father of a son from a previous marriage.

Atlan's mother says that when she visited Israel, her daughter showed signs of improvement but continued with psychiatric treatment. Recently, Atlan's friends say, the psychiatric medication prescribed to her had been changed and she complained she was not feeling well. The police attribute her death to an accidental overdose of pills.

In addition to the riddle of her death, it's not clear how Atlan came to be in the abandoned house where she died. Dargan says the two planned to be married in the coming months. On Sunday, three days before the body was found, she left their home distraught, he says.

"She was very angry at me because we had not yet set a date for the wedding," he says. "She said she was going to visit friends for two days to calm down." Two days later, Dargan says, Atlan called his son. "She told him we had quarreled and said she wasn't feeling so well and would come home the following day. We were supposed to celebrate my birthday that Thursday, and it was clear to me that she would come home by then. But on Thursday morning I was told she had died."

The mystery's missing elements are apparently known to the man who called the rescue forces to the abandoned house. He told the police that he had met Atlan on the street on Tuesday. He said she was overwrought, apparently because she had taken too many pills, and asked for his help, even though he was a complete stranger. She said she had nowhere to go; he took her to the abandoned house to recover. Apparently, the piercing cold and the medication killed her.

When the man got back to the house the next morning, he found her lifeless body and called Magen David Adom. When asked by the police why he had not summoned help when he met Atlan, the man said he thought her condition would improve if he took her to the empty house. The police do not consider him a suspect in the woman's death.

Dargan was not surprised that his partner had asked a total stranger for help; their relationship began in a similar way about four years earlier. "One evening there was a Torah lesson in the synagogue next to my home. Suddenly I saw a young woman with frightened eyes who asked me if she could wash her hands in my place. I saw that she was feeling poorly and gave her my phone number if she needed help," he says.

"A week later she called to say she was very sick and had nowhere to go. I invited her over and gradually a relationship developed between us, which was supposed to lead to a wedding, not a funeral."

Dargan, who is deeply troubled by questions about the circumstances of Atlan's death, is furious over the treatment of the body by members of the Haredi community. "I think it's horrible," he says. "I was told that they dropped the body a few times while running with it and stepped on it accidentally. It's humiliating. Besides the grief over her death and over the fact that she will never be able to do everything she wanted, I'm also crying because she died in a place like that and at the abuse she underwent afterward."

Dargan says that "I have no idea what she died from. Maybe she was poisoned, maybe someone did something to her? I have no way to know. It upsets me very much that they said at first that she was a drug addict."

Atlan's mother, in contrast, is happy that an autopsy was averted. "I thank God and say blessed be the Name that the Haredim did her a true act of mercy. Tsipora was a person who did everything to help others, even at the price of harming herself, just as the Haredim did for her when they protected her body against an autopsy," she said.

The grieving family and friends are still waiting to talk to the last person to see Atlan - the man who took her to the place where she died. According to the family, the Jerusalem police said they would not be able to help them contact the man until the investigation was concluded. Still, amid the mourning and the questions surrounding the young woman's death, the family takes pains to defend her reputation. They reiterate emphatically that their Tsipora was not a drug addict.