Turkey is fixated on the case of 8-year-old Narin Güran, who went missing in the rural Tavşantepe Neighborhood of the Bağlar district of Diyarbakır and has not been heard from. There is no body of the missing Narin or herself, but there is an uncle who has been arrested on the charge of “suspicion of premeditated murder.” Everyone is wondering what will happen next. There is no confession? No dead body found. Despite this, there is also a lot of curiosity about whether the uncle who may be considered a suspect and the names that will be included in the investigation later will be punished? Although the majority of people think that “if there is no body, there is no crime,” the results of an investigation conducted towards the end of 2012 say the exact opposite. There is no body, but there is a punishment. This interesting murder that entered the history of the police department took place in Istanbul. (Note: While this news was being published, sad news came from Diyarbakır and it was announced that the lifeless body of 8-year-old Narin Güran had been found)
IT HAPPENED 13 YEARS AGO
The date was April 1, 2011. The K. family went to a police station in Küçükçekmece and reported that they had not heard from their son for a day and filed a missing person report. An investigation was launched for the young man whose missing person report was received. The only point all missing person reports go to is the Missing Persons Bureau. This unit was also located in the Public Security Branch Directorate, also known as the second branch, which is a famous place in Gayrettepe.
NO RESULTS FOUND
The missing person reports that came in were distributed to the teams in the unit. The team assigned to the young man who was missing in Küçükçekmece did their work but could not find any information.
15 MONTHS LATER
In mid-2012, there were changes in the units. Oktay Kapsız was appointed as the chief of the Missing Persons Bureau. With Kapsız’s appointment, the Missing Persons Bureau began to gain a reputation as the KŞB police with its abbreviated name and emblem. The slogan “FBI in America, KŞB in Turkey” emerged that year. The Missing Persons Unit is an important unit. Each investigation is a story for a movie. Therefore, in order to strengthen the unit, a few experienced homicide experts were transferred from the Homicide Bureau to the Missing Persons Unit. Old files began to be reviewed. One of these was the case of a young man in Küçükçekmece who had not been solved for 15 months and no news had been received from him. The file was given to homicide expert Hüseyin Demir and his team.
WHO WAS THE MISSING YOUNG MAN?
Detective Hüseyin Demir, who solved important cases in the homicide squad for years, started to examine the file with his team. Demir explained: “Old files that had been missing for a long time and had not been heard from were pulled out one by one. One of these was the Küçükçekmece incident. Of course, we first looked at what had been done in the file up until that point. And of course, we had to first reveal the profile of the missing person. Who was the missing person? Who did he have relationships with? Did he have any enemies? Was he single or married? What did he do? We will reveal all of these and see the picture in front of us.”
THERE MIGHT BE A RELATIONSHIP
Responding to the question of why do missing people disappear? Demir continued as follows: “A person may have a debt to the market and disappear when they don’t pay. Or they may get overwhelmed by the pressure at home and leave the house. It doesn’t take long to find such missing people. If they don’t return home or don’t contact acquaintances, we should start worrying about their life. Our loss was like that. When we created their profile, they were men’s hairdressers, they were doing well, they didn’t have any debts with anyone. Of course, in the meantime, we wrote our article to look at this person’s phone records. Our missing person was a divorced person. We started looking into whether they were in a relationship or not.”
RELATIONSHIP DETECTED
Homicide expert Demir stated that they determined that the missing person was involved in aid work for disabled children and said, “We learned that this person was friends with a woman who had a disabled child. We identified his friends one by one before he disappeared. And we learned that he was having an affair with a woman. According to our information, the woman he was having an affair with was married. We started to look into this woman.”
PHONE CALLS WITH A WOMAN ARE OUT
According to the phone records that emerged, it was determined that the missing young man had been in contact with the identified woman. The information that emerged had begun to lead to an illicit relationship. Had the young man fallen victim to an illicit relationship? If he had been killed, how was he killed and where was he buried? All of these had to be proven. Murder expert Hüseyin Demir and his team would solve these developments that would lead to the hair-raising murder.
WOMAN’S CALL TO 155 DRAWS ATTENTION
A month had passed. The possibility that the young man who had disappeared approximately 16 months ago had been murdered had become increasingly more likely. Demir, who explained that they had started investigating all the clues, continued as follows: “We investigated the woman. And we found an interesting phone call on the night the man disappeared. We learned that this woman had called the police on 155 the night our man disappeared. The woman who called the police from a schoolyard said that she was being subjected to violence by her husband. We started investigating this report. We saw that the police teams had gone to the woman on the evening of the report, but the woman had dropped her complaint. Her father came to her and left.”
HE WAS THE VICTIM OF A WILD MURDER
Thinking that this tip could not be a coincidence, KŞB detectives began following the woman, her husband, her father and her brother. According to the phone records obtained, the last person the missing young man spoke to was this woman. In the intelligence work, it was learned that the young woman’s husband told a friend, “I killed someone and tied stones to his feet and buried him in the lake.” This was very important information. And in the work that was done, traces of the terrible murder began to emerge.
HE WAS A VICTIM OF MURDER
Exactly 19 months had passed. Detectives had obtained very important information after the woman called 155. The suspects were the woman the missing man had an illicit affair with and the woman’s family. Demir, who stated that they had important work on their hands, explained as follows; “We have completed our work. Now it is time for the operation. We have detained the woman, her husband, father and siblings. As a result of our work, we learned from the interrogations and statements that the missing young man had been murdered.”
HORRIBLE DETAILS
According to the studies, hair-raising details have emerged. According to the allegations, the incident happened as follows; The friendship between a young man named M., a hairdresser, and a young woman with a disabled child turned into a relationship. On the evening of the incident, the woman called M. home because her husband was going fishing. However, the husband, who returned home early from fishing, caught the couple at home. The husband caught M. and beat him to neutralize him. In the meantime, the woman ran away from home and called the police, saying she was being abused.
THEY TIE HIS HANDS AND ARMS AND THROW HIM INTO THE POND
The husband called his wife’s father and brothers to the house. The hairdresser named M. was beaten until he was unconscious. Then they threw the young man, whose hands and arms were tied, into the pond. When the husband forgave the mother for her disabled child, the father intervened and prevented his daughter from complaining to the police. The hairdresser, whose arms and legs were tied, was carried away by truck and thrown into the pond. The woman wiped away the blood stains in the house.
THIS TIME THEY TIED WEIGHTS AND THREW THEM
According to the horrifying details, the suspects returned home and went back to the pond 2 hours later to make sure the hairdresser was dead. This time, a terrible plan was made for the hairdresser who was stuck in the mud in the pond but was not seen to be dead. This time, the suspects tied weights to the hairdresser’s feet so that he would sink into the pond. The young man who sank into the pond could not get out again.
BODY NOT FOUND
Following the information obtained, action was taken to find the body. Detective Demir described that day as follows: “We had a body search carried out in the identified pond. The divers searched extensively but no body was found. 19 months had passed. No human bones were found either.”
HE SAID IN COURT “I DIDN’T DO IT”
This chilling incident was a murder case rarely seen in the history of the police. No body was found, but the suspects were arrested. As a result of the trial, the husband said in court, “My wife and M. were naked on the ground. We came to blows. He hit his head and fell. A month passed. My father-in-law asked what happened. I said I took care of that. I told my wife I would kill you too. I did not tie a stone to the victim’s foot and throw him into the pond. There is no body of the victim. The lake should be drained. I did not throw him into that lake. I do not know whether he is dead or not. I told my father-in-law that I threw M. into the lake in order to scare my wife.”
NO BODY, THERE IS PUNISHMENT
After a two-year trial at the Istanbul High Criminal Court, the husband who allegedly drowned the victim alive in a pond was sentenced to 15 years and 10 months in prison. Her father-in-law and brother-in-law who assisted in the murder were sentenced to 10 years in prison, and the young woman was sentenced to 1 year and 8 months in prison for destroying evidence.
THE COURT OF APPEALS APPROVED THE SENTENCE
The Court of Cassation upheld the approximately 16-year sentence of the husband of the arrested defendant, stating that the crime of murder was proven despite the absence of a body as evidence of the crime. The Court of Cassation overturned the decision of the local court, stating that the father-in-law and brother-in-law, who were said to have assisted in the murder, were given insufficient sentences.
