GUILTY Turkey - Sarai Sierra, 33, NY woman murdered, Istanbul, 21 Jan 2013 - #1

[Snoopster]

It seems like Sarai went to Amsterdam in the middle of her trip. On one of her Instagram posts from about a week ago she says that she had just left Amsterdam and went back to Turkey for a few days before she would be heading home. I wonder if Amsterdam was originally in her plans. Seems odd to go to Turkey, backtrack to Amsterdam and then back to Turkey.

http://pinsta.me/p/371769914873467570_20533443

This stood out to me because I saw someone comment on her brother's IG post something to the effect of ...'what the guy from Amsterdam said doesn't sit well with me'. (wildly paraphrasing as that was earlier today and I don't have time to go back to look right now. Sorry!)

 

[belimom]

It seems like Sarai went to Amsterdam in the middle of her trip. On one of her Instagram posts from about a week ago she says that she had just left Amsterdam and went back to Turkey for a few days before she would be heading home. I wonder if Amsterdam was originally in her plans. Seems odd to go to Turkey, backtrack to Amsterdam and then back to Turkey.

http://pinsta.me/p/371769914873467570_20533443

This stood out to me because I saw someone comment on her brother's IG post something to the effect of ...'what the guy from Amsterdam said doesn't sit well with me'. (wildly paraphrasing as that was earlier today and I don't have time to go back to look right now. Sorry!)

bbm

I know you don't have time to go look, but can you remember what the picture looked like? I'd like to see the comment. Thanks.

 

[lucky181]

There seems to be conflicting reports on what was found in her room. If her phone was in her room, she must have been close by. I'm sure she would have taken her phone with her to Galeta Bridge.

The landlord of the hostel where she was staying in the pleasant neighborhood of Beyoglu found her belongings in her abandoned room, including her passport, iPad and the Samsung Galaxy phone she took pictures with.

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york...g-turkey-hunt-article-1.1248989#ixzz2JFyV5Ge3

 

[stmarysmead]

It does seem odd that a young mother, inexperienced traveler, would make her first trip out of the country alone, to meet strangers she met online.

Did she travel to Amsterdam with these strangers?

Spending this long away from home, even in a hostel, is expensive. Then you add on more airfare to another country. This is a strange story.

 

[Chewy]

Ok if she was kidnapped by a Turkish person I can tell you straight up that they would have taken her passport, they are worth tens of thousands of dollars over there and the woman could pass for an Arab, so this would mean it might be easy to have a girlfriend or sister or friend pose as her.

I think it's someone in the Hostel. Either another tourist who figured he or she could get away with murder because of the situation, or a situation where the woman herself ran away from her life and faked her disappearance.

 

[Snoopster]

bbm

I know you don't have time to go look, but can you remember what the picture looked like? I'd like to see the comment. Thanks.

It was here:

http://statigr.am/p/376809509984850632_2337227

And I found the comment. It was from someone with the name beginning as dclayt...

To paraphrase a bit better (I don't think we are allowed to quote from this kind of source) the guy says to SS's brother that something doesn't add up about this guy that she met up with in A. And then he asks the brother to txt him.

The usual caveats here....it's just a comment on IG.

 

[Walker]

I found this little blurb that concerns me:

http://privateinvesigations.blogspot.com/2013/01/sarai-sierra-from-ny-missing-in-turkey.html

That link which you provided suggests that SS was a member of an Orthodox Jewish group. Sierra can be a Sephardic name. Or else these private investigators believe that SS's disappearance may be otherwise related to Orthodox Jewish interests.

T.O.T. Consulting, is a full Consulting firm, bonded & located in New York. A firm that has been conducting professional Investigations and surveillance worldwide for over 14 years. We specialize in the Jewish orthodox communities, using only highly Trained professional male and female investigators (Jewish or Non-Jewish).

 

[Walker]

Ok if she was kidnapped by a Turkish person I can tell you straight up that they would have taken her passport, they are worth tens of thousands of dollars over there and the woman could pass for an Arab, so this would mean it might be easy to have a girlfriend or sister or friend pose as her.

I think it's someone in the Hostel. Either another tourist who figured he or she could get away with murder because of the situation, or a situation where the woman herself ran away from her life and faked her disappearance.

Maybe something about the passport sent up red flags; for example, the erratic pattern of travel. They wouldn't want the document if going through customs the person using it might be scrutinized.

 

[belimom]

It was here:

http://statigr.am/p/376809509984850632_2337227

And I found the comment. It was from someone with the name beginning as dclayt...

To paraphrase a bit better (I don't think we are allowed to quote from this kind of source) the guy says to SS's brother that something doesn't add up about this guy that she met up with in A. And then he asks the brother to txt him.

The usual caveats here....it's just a comment on IG.

Thank you. Before you posted this, I looked at comments on one of the other photos. There was a guy who lives in Amsterdam asking repeatedly about where she was: "Are you still in Amsterdam?", "Where you right now?", etc. It may be nothing, but I wonder if he's maybe an IG follower of hers who became obsessed, and then realized she was actually that close - although one of her last responses to *him* was that she was on her way back to Istanbul. May be nothing - but it stood out. Not sure if she met up with him, though, in Amsterdam.

 

[belimom]

Ok if she was kidnapped by a Turkish person I can tell you straight up that they would have taken her passport, they are worth tens of thousands of dollars over there and the woman could pass for an Arab, so this would mean it might be easy to have a girlfriend or sister or friend pose as her.

I think it's someone in the Hostel. Either another tourist who figured he or she could get away with murder because of the situation, or a situation where the woman herself ran away from her life and faked her disappearance.

We stayed at a hostel this past summer with our kids in a 'family room'. It was not foreign travel, and the people were very nice. However... the rooms were extremely cheap and I do think hostels (some more than others) attract questionable people, due to the length of time you can just stay there for almost nothing, can pay in cash with no ID (unlike most hotels these days), etc.

One thing that struck me as interesting is that some hostels don't have doors that lock. The one we stayed in did have doors that locked, but it didn't have a/c - and this was July. We were told to just open the windows for air. Others slept with the doors wide open to their rooms (and this was a motel-type of place so all the doors opened to the outside).

My guess is that she went out to take pictures and was followed either by someone from the hostel or by an IG follower -- both would know she was leaving soon and that if they were wanting to do something it would have to have been that day.

MOO

 

[ami]

It does seem odd that a young mother, inexperienced traveler, would make her first trip out of the country alone, to meet strangers she met online.

Did she travel to Amsterdam with these strangers?

Spending this long away from home, even in a hostel, is expensive. Then you add on more airfare to another country. This is a strange story.

I've done a lot of traveling alone, all through my 20's and 30's, even when I was a young mother. I don't see anything odd about it - every single place I've traveled I've met many other solo female travelers, and it's very normal and not that expensive. Also I get the sense that Sarai Sierra's family was financially comfortable.

I read through her Instagram comments and she seems like a friendly, kind and happy woman with a good support system. She was from NYC, and seemed to consider herself a true New Yorker, so she wasn't a wide eyed ingenue with no street smarts. All told for someone like that, traveling to Istanbul for a couple of weeks to take photos should have been a fun adventure.

I can only imagine she ran into a random, bad situation of the type that unfortunately happens everywhere. I think the best hope is that she became sick or injured enough to be hospitalized and not able to communicate, but not enough to suffer serious long term consequences. That seems like threading the needle, but I truly hope that's what has occurred.

 

[ami]

Thank you. Before you posted this, I looked at comments on one of the other photos. There was a guy who lives in Amsterdam asking repeatedly about where she was: "Are you still in Amsterdam?", "Where you right now?", etc. It may be nothing, but I wonder if he's maybe an IG follower of hers who became obsessed, and then realized she was actually that close - although one of her last responses to *him* was that she was on her way back to Istanbul. May be nothing - but it stood out. Not sure if she met up with him, though, in Amsterdam.

I noticed that too, and it did stand out. Though it seemed this person didn't know she was in Amsterdam until after she'd returned to Turkey. And she wasn't posting her exact location publicly as far as I could see. I wonder if she belonged to other public sites where she was posting more detailed descriptions of her trip?

 

[stmarysmead]

I've done a lot of traveling alone, all through my 20's and 30's, even when I was a young mother. I don't see anything odd about it - every single place I've traveled I've met many other solo female travelers, and it's very normal and not that expensive. Also I get the sense that Sarai Sierra's family was financially comfortable.

I read through her Instagram comments and she seems like a friendly, kind and happy woman with a good support system. She was from NYC, and seemed to consider herself a true New Yorker, so she wasn't a wide eyed ingenue with no street smarts. All told for someone like that, traveling to Istanbul for a couple of weeks to take photos should have been a fun adventure.

I can only imagine she ran into a random, bad situation of the type that unfortunately happens everywhere. I think the best hope is that she became sick or injured enough to be hospitalized and not able to communicate, but not enough to suffer serious long term consequences. That seems like threading the needle, but I truly hope that's what has occurred.

I truly hope you are right. But meeting strangers from the Internet in a foreign country when you are alone there, does not seem "street smart" to me. In fact, meeting strangers from the Internet alone in hometown BeaverCleaver Land would be concerning too.

It's the combination of all those intersecting points, and the trip to Amsterdam, that seems odd to me. And if the family is comfortable, I would think they would want her to stay in a hotel not a hostel...for all the very reasons in the informative post about hostels previously posted here.

By the way, my twenty something daughter traveled alone for business to Istanbul and has been back since.She also has lived in NYC and therefore took the normal precautions a woman alone takes in any big city. She loved the experience! I mean nocriticism from that standpoint. Just plans to meet Internet strangers in a city where you have no support system and have never visited before.

 

[fringles]

About the trip to Amsterdam - it's actually very common for people to do this sort of trip, for a couple of reasons.

- It's much cheaper, usually, when booking long-haul return flights, to book the return to/from the same city. So if she wanted to spend the majority of her time in Istanbul it would make more financial sense to fly in/out of there and then book one of Europes many low-cost carriers for the Amsterdam trip separately.

- I think a lot of people don't realise how much of a 'no biggie' it is to travel within Europe until they arrive. I've seen it happen a lot (and I've done it!) where you go somewhere for a few weeks, thinking 'and maybe I'll go on a trip to such-and-such-a-place when I'm there, I'll see how my funds are holding up/how much fun I'm having in my main city' - then you check the flights, realise it's a matter of a hundred euro or so and think 'well why not?'.

Basically, as someone who lives in Europe and travels here a fair bit, the Amsterdam trip doesn't seem hinky to me in the slightest, on the face of it. If she was meeting friends from online there then that maybe changes it a bit, but as a thing to do, not strange at all.

 

[Hexe]

Ok if she was kidnapped by a Turkish person I can tell you straight up that they would have taken her passport, they are worth tens of thousands of dollars over there and the woman could pass for an Arab, so this would mean it might be easy to have a girlfriend or sister or friend pose as her.

One thing: Turks are NOT Arabs.

 

[ami]

I truly hope you are right. But meeting strangers from the Internet in a foreign country when you are alone there, does not seem "street smart" to me. In fact, meeting strangers from the Internet alone in hometown BeaverCleaver Land would be concerning too.

It's the combination of all those intersecting points, and the trip to Amsterdam, that seems odd to me. And if the family is comfortable, I would think they would want her to stay in a hotel not a hostel...for all the very reasons in the informative post about hostels previously posted here.

By the way, my twenty something daughter traveled alone for business to Istanbul and has been back since.She also has lived in NYC and therefore took the normal precautions a woman alone takes in any big city. She loved the experience! I mean nocriticism from that standpoint. Just plans to meet Internet strangers in a city where you have no support system and have never visited before.

I hear you. I don't know yet whether it's really the case that she was meeting instagram or other internet people while she was there - just from that one line in the article it's hard to know what the real story is. And if she had been doing that, I can see how that might not have been the smartest move, though have to admit I know a lot of people who do this (travel forums, solo travelers grouping together sight unseen to get good deals on safaris and the like).

But the hostel part makes sense to me. It's a fun and community-oriented way to travel. I got the sense that Sarai was having an adventure, being creative. Hostels can be great ways to do that, while hotels are just a different and more isolating experience. If she and a friend had planned this together, it would probably have felt awesomely like "roughing it" while not actually roughing it, and even financially comfortable travelers like to keep their living expenses down.

I guess it's all just speculation at this point until some more facts are released. Reading her posts on Instagram, I just found myself really relating to her quite a bit. :frown:

 

[Chewy]

double post

 

[Chewy]

About the trip to Amsterdam - it's actually very common for people to do this sort of trip, for a couple of reasons.

- It's much cheaper, usually, when booking long-haul return flights, to book the return to/from the same city. So if she wanted to spend the majority of her time in Istanbul it would make more financial sense to fly in/out of there and then book one of Europes many low-cost carriers for the Amsterdam trip separately.

- I think a lot of people don't realise how much of a 'no biggie' it is to travel within Europe until they arrive. I've seen it happen a lot (and I've done it!) where you go somewhere for a few weeks, thinking 'and maybe I'll go on a trip to such-and-such-a-place when I'm there, I'll see how my funds are holding up/how much fun I'm having in my main city' - then you check the flights, realise it's a matter of a hundred euro or so and think 'well why not?'.

Basically, as someone who lives in Europe and travels here a fair bit, the Amsterdam trip doesn't seem hinky to me in the slightest, on the face of it. If she was meeting friends from online there then that maybe changes it a bit, but as a thing to do, not strange at all.

This may seem entirely stereotypical but I wonder if she went to Amsterdam partly to enjoy smoking pot in a cafe type of thing? Even though travel is fairly cheap within Europe, what's the appeal of Amsterdam if you can do a jaunt to Italy, France, England or Spain? Seems strange to me why she'd go there.

Makes me wonder if the people she went with could have been druggies?

 

[fringles]

This may seem entirely stereotypical but I wonder if she went to Amsterdam partly to enjoy smoking pot in a cafe type of thing? Even though travel is fairly cheap within Europe, what's the appeal of Amsterdam if you can do a jaunt to Italy, France, England or Spain? Seems strange to me why she'd go there.

Makes me wonder if the people she went with could have been druggies?

Possible, I guess, but tbh, if she was into smoking pot she could do that in any major european city. The Netherlands did recently enact a law against 'pot tourism' - they're a little tired of the reputation, I think, so they've made a law that only residents can legally smoke. However, it's apparently not really being enforced, so probably everything's pretty much stayed the same.

As to why go there - without sounding like the Dutch Tourism Board, Amsterdam is an amazing city! It's beautiful, for starters - with some gorgeous museums - including Anne Franks house, a Van Gogh museum... the Dutch are incredibly friendly, it's a great town for tourists because it's small and everyone speaks english. It's a very safe place, too - out of the countries you mentioned I would feel safest in Amsterdam out of major cities in any of those. I personally think it's a shame it has the rep of girls and weed, because that's such a tiny part of it. But it's definitely a place a lot of tourists go, and would recommend - I'd say it's probably in the top 10, if not top 5, stops on the european tourism trail - and for someone who wants to speak English, it's there or London really.

 

[keeponsearching]

Do people take their passports with them everywhere when travel abroad? So you wouldn't leave it in your room?