The family of the Staten Island woman killed during her trip to Turkey has identified her body. Sarai Sierra's husband Steven Sierra and her brother David Jimenez traveled to Istanbul for the grim duty, and a Turkish news agency reports that after identifying the body, Steven Sierra and Jimenez took her body to a church for a funeral.
Sarai Sierra, a 33-year-old mother of two who worked part-time at a chiropractor's office and was trying to complete her bachelor's degree, had gone to Turkey to pursue interest in photography—she was very active on Instagram. She planned the trip with a friend, and though the friend had to drop out, Sierra traveled on her own, taking photographs, and eventually meeting up with a male Instagram user, who Turkish police identify as Taylan, on January 21, the day she was supposed to leave. But she never got on the plane, and on February 2, her body was found in he "low-income district of Sarayburnu" by some ancient walls.
Taylan was questioned by the police but released; he said he did meet her but they later went their separate ways. Now, investigators are demanding DNA from 21 possible suspects in Sierra's death. Huseyin Capkin, head of Istanbul Security Department, said that she died from head trauma and emphasized that she was not a secret agent. However, the Daily Beast reports that there's been much rampant speculation:
Some of the wilder theories have percolated in the famously raucous Turkish press. The tabloid Vatan, for example, published an article claiming that Turkish authorities were investigating the possibility that Sierra was a foreign agent, citing side trips she made to Munich and Amsterdam after arriving in Istanbul on January 7. The far-right Yeni Safak, meanwhile, took the idea further in a recent op-ed. The author posited that Sierra was working for the CIA—only to be killed by her former handlers when they discovered that she’d betrayed them for the Russians.
And Turkey’s biggest newspaper, Zaman, ran an article today titled “Was Sarai From the USA a Spy?” It concluded that Turkish authorities have no evidence to support the idea.
Sierra's mother Betzaida Jimenez told the Today show that her grandsons, 9 and 11, did not know their mother was dead, "Their father is going to talk to them when he comes back, and we’ll all be there to support him."
