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

[Chewy]

Found this

http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/ShowTo...tain_retreat_near_Istanbul_please-Turkey.html

 

[Hexe]

I hope they look for her around hiking places, she may have fainted from dehydration while hiking or have gotten lost. I know in Cyprus they have the mountains that people go to that would be a terrible place to get lost. I'm wondering if Turkey has the same.

Not near Istanbul, as far as I know.

 

[radiator]

I hope they look for her around hiking places, she may have fainted from dehydration while hiking or have gotten lost. I know in Cyprus they have the mountains that people go to that would be a terrible place to get lost. I'm wondering if Turkey has the same.

Istanbul is very hilly but it's also very urban (think twice the population of NYC). if she fainted somebody would most probably have seen her.

 

[lucky181]

Not sure if this has been posted. I've found Tarlabasi Blvd, not St.

The hostel where her family says she was staying is located on Tarlabasi Street, considered a more dangerous area in the upscale Beyoglu neighborhood.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...:+usatoday-NewsTopStories+(News+-+Top+Stories)

 

[ami]

Not sure if this has been posted. I've found Tarlabasi Blvd, not St.



http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...:+usatoday-NewsTopStories+(News+-+Top+Stories)

Also from that article: Tarlabasi Street is cut off from the rest of Beyoglu by a large boulevard, much of which is closed as part of a renovation project.

 

[ami]

Link to picture of house/hostel:

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/Default.aspx?pageID=447&GalleryID=1155&gpid=1

 

[Orgona]

I hope they verify that the friend who supposedly backed out really exists. Maybe she wanted to go alone for some reason but she found it easier to "sell" the idea to her husband she was gonna go with a friend. This would open the door to a voluntary disappearance. That would be the best outcome.

Maybe something happened to her in that house she was staying in. Accidental or otherwise.

Something could have happened to her somewhere in the city caused by stranger(s). Maybe she was meeting up with other people from IG community there?
Maybe she just met some seemingly friendly people in the city and they did something to her.
Some accident could have happened to her while taking pictures, she could have ended up in water somewhere...
So many possibilities with so little info.

I have to say I'm still wondering about the trip to Amsterdam too. Maybe she went there with someone and found out something about that person which in turn made her dangerous and a liability for them.

 

[Chewy]

Something is very weird about her Instagram friends not outing everything they know to the public. I do wonder if she was having an online affair and thought of this as a way of getting away. Maybe she didn't think it would cause so much attention?

 

[radiator]

(snipped)

Maybe something happened to her in that house she was staying in. Accidental or otherwise.

I would think that if something happened in the house they would have gotten rid of her stuff and just said that she checked out as planned.

 

[stmarysmead]

Some questions that concern me, but I admit my reliance on the early reporting may be causing my concern and confusion.

1. The landlord says the room was prepaid for 13 days by the Internet...so I assume that was pre-trip planning. Thirteen days coincides with the time she was actually there...since reports are that she was coming home that night. But why does the husband say the trip was "cut short?" Seems like she stayed in that room just exactly as long as she planned to pre-trip.

2. Did the family know prior to her disappearance about the two side trips? Communicating by skype and text affords a certain amount of "privacy." Were the trips spontaneous or preplanned as well? Do they know where she stayed in Munich and Amsterdam?

3. The sister talked to her that morning of the day she was supposed "to leave." If the flight was that day, were her clothes in the room packed? I wonder what time her flight was supposed to leave and what time check out was since she only paid for 13 days. Did the hostel owner become concerned when she did not check out as planned and her things were still in the room?

 

[absentia]

Quote from the same link:


Why did the friend back out? And, what about the graffiti interested her? Could she read Turkish? Does Instagram have any particular reputation, other than just a website to share photos?

oh no. I mean, sharing personal info online itself is rife with privacy issues - one must be careful. But to travel internationally ALONE to meet with persons "met" online? This is unwise. weird that she did okay until the end of the trip. someone didn't want her to leave?
I would think if she just didn't want to leave, she'd have taken her things with her, wherever she decided to stay. unless she's making it look like a disappearance. But I'd never leave my passport in my room, even in Canada. I carry it on my person always.
Is she trying to stay there or is someone keeping her there?

 

[belimom]

Link to picture of house/hostel:

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/Default.aspx?pageID=447&GalleryID=1155&gpid=1

Do you have the name of it? I wonder how many rooms there were and if there were other guests.

If I were traveling alone, I would pick a larger place to ensure there were plenty of people around me, not a small place on a side street. But that's just me...

 

[ami]

Some questions that concern me, but I admit my reliance on the early reporting may be causing my concern and confusion.

1. The landlord says the room was prepaid for 13 days by the Internet...so I assume that was pre-trip planning. Thirteen days coincides with the time she was actually there...since reports are that she was coming home that night. But why does the husband say the trip was "cut short?" Seems like she stayed in that room just exactly as long as she planned to pre-trip.

2. Did the family know prior to her disappearance about the two side trips? Communicating by skype and text affords a certain amount of "privacy." Were the trips spontaneous or preplanned as well? Do they know where she stayed in Munich and Amsterdam?

3. The sister talked to her that morning of the day she was supposed "to leave." If the flight was that day, were her clothes in the room packed? I wonder what time her flight was supposed to leave and what time check out was since she only paid for 13 days. Did the hostel owner become concerned when she did not check out as planned and her things were still in the room?

About #2, I'm pretty sure they knew. She was posting publicly on Instagram that she was in Amsterdam, posted some pictures from Amsterdam, had left Amsterdam and was now back in Istanbul, etc. And from some of the comments it looks like her family was following her on Instagram, so I don't think this was at all secretive.

In one of the articles it said she wasn't packed to leave. But she wasn't due to return to NY until the following afternoon, so she may have had all day Monday to sightsee before her flight.

 

[lucky181]

This article (I assume loosely translated into English) shows another picture of the house she was staying in. The street looks more like a side street and not Tarlabasi Blvd. There is a street mentioned, Kömürcü Zeynel Sokak No:20, that is off Tarlabasi on google maps. Not sure why that street is mentioned.


http://www.habermonitor.com/en/haber/detay/can-not-get-lost-in-beyoglu-us-sierra-dan-new/54033/

 

[ami]

Do you have the name of it? I wonder how many rooms there were and if there were other guests.

If I were traveling alone, I would pick a larger place to ensure there were plenty of people around me, not a small place on a side street. But that's just me...

No, the article didn't say - it gave the name of the owner though.

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/ho...n-20-.aspx?pageID=238&nID=40002&NewsCatID=341

 

[absentia]

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.

I don't see anything in the comments on that link referring to an unknown male in A'dam. are you sure it was that page?

 

[stmarysmead]

My husband worked for many years for a European company....which meant that we were fortunate to be able to combine personal travel with business travel. Even then, we would consider cost and convenience. Why not visit Turkey, then Munich, then Amsterdam and fly home? Why double pay for lodging in Turkey and in these other places, when essentially, they could be "hops" on your way home? Why pay for a round trip ticket back and forth to Turkey from Amsterdam, when it could be part of "going home?"

This puzzles me too.

 

[Orgona]

(snipped)

I would think that if something happened in the house they would have gotten rid of her stuff and just said that she checked out as planned.

You could be perfectly right. But there is also the possibility he was afraid his neighbors would say she was never on the sidewalk with her luggage, no taxi were called and seen arriving. The owner could have thought it easier to distance himself this way, to say she just went to eat and never came back. He could be completely innocent too. He is just one of the possibilities.

 

[Hisimage]

I hope they verify that the friend who supposedly backed out really exists. Maybe she wanted to go alone for some reason but she found it easier to "sell" the idea to her husband she was gonna go with a friend. This would open the door to a voluntary disappearance. That would be the best outcome.

Maybe something happened to her in that house she was staying in. Accidental or otherwise.

Something could have happened to her somewhere in the city caused by stranger(s). Maybe she was meeting up with other people from IG community there?
Maybe she just met some seemingly friendly people in the city and they did something to her.
Some accident could have happened to her while taking pictures, she could have ended up in water somewhere...
So many possibilities with so little info.

I have to say I'm still wondering about the trip to Amsterdam too. Maybe she went there with someone and found out something about that person which in turn made her dangerous and a liability for them.

Yes** I agree. I know there are good reasons to back out. Still a 3 week trip is nothing to sneeze at. I don't travel much. And I am a chicken! So maybe it isn't odd to be "okay" with a friend backing out. As stated, what is she were going to meet somebody and the friend wasn't really going?

 

[ami]

I don't see anything in the comments on that link referring to an unknown male in A'dam. are you sure it was that page?

Do a word search for "Amsterdam" and you'll see the comment. The person who left it seems to be a member of the instagram community (lots of followers, photos and people he's following).