11 Years Later, a Signal and an Arrest

türkçe links to original Turkish article

(HaberTürk Newspaper, 31 October 2016)


                 When a cold case gets hot.

On 8 July 2005 a truck driver was waiting for his load of goods
at the truck park on the highway in Gaziosmanpaşa, Istanbul.
As the truck driver walked in the nearby woods he came upon
a woman's body.

Police arrived at the scene and identified the dead woman as
Zeynep Sarnıklı (39), whose throat had been cut in three places.
The truck driver gave a statement and police began the hunt for
Sarnıklı's missing cellphone.

The phone's old technology and non-use stymied the investigation
for 11 years.  But in recent days a new development changed all
that when a signal came from the phone.  Istanbul homicide police
determined that a woman in Mersin was using the phone.  After
taking the woman into custody, police learned that the phone in
question was essentially being used as a common phone by a
number of people.

Police then conducted traffic analysis of the phone's SIM card
and noted that there had been frequent calls to a village in Palu
district in Elazığ province.  This led police to Mehmet Arıkanoğlu
(33), who first denied the murder allegations.  Nevertheless,
Arıkanoğlu was brought to Istanbul, where he confessed to the
crime in court, explaining that "I made a proposal to her but we
couldn't agree on the money.  She went after me with a knife but
I grabbed it and stabbed her."



Signal came from Mersin (İçel) and linked to Palu district in
eastern Elazığ province.