A court in Istanbul gave Atalay Filiz, the suspect of three murders and dubbed a serial killer by the Turkish media, an aggravated life sentence for the 2016 murder of a woman, months after he was handed down two life sentences for other murders.
The 29-year-old suspect, who is currently in a prison in the city's Silivri district, was captured in the western city of İzmir last year after a manhunt that made headlines. He was in hiding after murdering Fatma Kayıkçı, a 40-year-old woman who was his landlord in Istanbul's Tuzla district.
Filiz had been on the run from police since 2013 after he shot Göktuğ Demirarslan and his Russian girlfriend Elena Radchikova dead in the capital Ankara. The victims were his friends from his time at school in France. He said in his first interrogation that he killed the couple because they were asking him questions about the disappearance of Filiz's girlfriend, Olga Seregina. Last June, authorities deemed him mentally competent to stand trial despite his testimonies where he said unseen powers instructed him to commit the murders "through messages in newspapers."
Prosecutors have told the court in earlier hearings that Filiz knew the consequences of his actions when he plotted to kill Demirarslan and Radchikova and similarly, killed his landlord Fatma Kayıkçı "in a premeditated way." Prosecutors have also asked the court not to punish Filiz for theft as there was no evidence that he robbed Kayıkçı of any money after killing her.
In March, a court in Ankara gave him an aggravated life sentence for the murders of Demirarslan and Radchikova.
Filiz, who was on trial Friday for the murder of Kayıkçı, told the court it was not premeditated as prosecutors claimed. "I was on good terms with Fatma. I could have killed her secretly if I planned it. I would kill the man who called police when he saw me while hiding in İzmir too if I was a man plotting murders," he said.
