Posted on 02/06/2013 5:21:59 AM PST by jimbo123
FBI agents probing the murder of a Staten Island mom in Turkey said they don’t believe she was there just to take pictures — and said she hung out with a “criminal element” during the solo trip abroad.
“There are a lot of open questions that need to be answered,” a source familiar with the ongoing case told The Post.
Mother of two Sarai Sierra, 33, was found dead from a ferocious blow to the skull in a seedy area of Istanbul last Saturday after failing to show up for a Jan. 21 flight home to New York.
“The first people she met up with were a criminal element,” the source said of Sierra, who flew to Turkey Jan. 7, then to Amsterdam on Jan. 15 and Munich on Jan. 16 before heading back to Istanbul Jan. 19.
The FBI is in Turkey investigating the case, and is looking into a possible connection to drug trafficking — among other lines of inquiry, a source said.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
A 33 year old unemployed mother of 2 takes off for a three week vacation to Europe while her "cash-strapped" bus driver husband stays home with the kids. That's odd.
She wants to go because she's an avid amateur photographer and sees the trip as a great opportunity to enjoy her hobby. But she takes no camera with her, instead emailing home photos taken with an iPad and a Samsung smartphone.
Rather than flying to Amsterdam and then to Turkey, she flies directly to Turkey and then flies from Istanbul to Amsterdam and then back to Istanbul - an unnecessarily expensive itinerary for someone on a budget who is staying in a hostel.
The only way this makes sense is if she is a drug mule.
Of course,most of the local media is reporting none of this.
She should have taken The Midnight Express.
She planned to stay for three weeks, eh? Well, she may well be there that long until they raise the funds to get her body shipped back.
This is a strange but incomplete story. Her email, text messages and social media posts should point the family and investigators in the right direction.
It certainly does sound as if something criminal was involved, if not drugs, perhaps serving as a courier of illegal funds in other criminal transactions.
The “photography” claim was clearly false, and now it also turns out that her friend (who was supposed to accompany her) didn’t back out of the trip at the last minute, but actually told her quite some time ago that she wouldn’t be able to go with her.
She sounds to me like somebody who was probably pretty naive and got into something way over her head, probably through one of her internet contacts.
I’m sure the husband knew exactly what was going on up until she disappeared. And he was probably aware that things were starting to go bad because he tried to get her back to the U.S. a couple days earlier than planned. That’s probably when they killed her after they found out she was trying to change her flight back and slip out of Istanbul early.
This one is simple. She was having an affair, possibly with someone she met on the internet. Guy got what he wanted and killed her.(or didn’t get what he wanted)
She was a contraband mule. And her husband knew what she was doing.
I think the FBI is interested in finding out who she was supposed to meet at Newark airport when she was to arrive back in the U.S. with whatever she was supposed to be carrying.
The husband has probably said to himself a hundred times “Why did I let her travel alone?” That indeed is the question. It is better to have an angry wife (or ex) than a dead one.
Ah, I see. You figure they were hurting for cash and this was some sort of a planned drug-connected hook up to make money? Well, whatever the “plan” was that was discussed on the internet, it appears to have changed for the worse for the woman.
Actually, it would be an interesting plot for a movie. Especially when things started to unravel. With her in Turkey and her husband in NYC. I think it was her first trip overseas, too.
My daughter is an amateur photographer but she has some pretty sophisticated camera equipment. I’ve never seen her use her phone or IPad to take pictures. She also has an 11 year old and a 9 year old and wouldn’t leave them for a minute to travel alone, abroad. This story stinks to high heaven.
I think she thought she had found a way to make some substantial money.
Phone cameras are great and getting better but any serious amateur photographer would have an SLR camera and probably at least a standard and a telephoto lens. Similar to the film camera equipment of years ago but today they are digital.
Going on a memorable first overseas trip for the purported reason of picture taking and using only a phone camera is beyond ridiculous. She could have bought (or charged) a low-end SLR digital camera for a few hundred dollars.
Yes. I assumed from the moment I heard of it either she was nuts, in love with a crazed muslim, or involved in crime or terrorism. A normal person would not do this.
I wonder if he went public with this because he figured it was better to risk going to jail than end up like his wife.
My wife is an amateur photographer too. When we went to Europe on vacation she brought a separate carry-on bag with her cameras and her set of lenses, plus other equipment, and checked her tripod.
Sarai Sierra was a photography enthusiast like President Obama is a skeet enthusiast.
That was my thought precisely when details of her itinerary began to emerge a few days ago. Also in her picture, taken by a Istanbul street security cam, I saw no cameras ... strange if the reason for the trip was to take pictures as a amateur photographer. Bottom line she is probably a drug mule, or works for a escort service and met a Turkish client who encouraged her to travel to Istanbul.
I am an amateur photographer mom- I only can take pics in between holding kids hands. I still travel w at least a dslr and a second lens. Without kids, I would have hands/time for setting up more. The whole story has stunk from the get-go.
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