A court in southwestern Turkey sentenced a perpetrator, anonymized as H.A., on Tuesday to an aggravated life sentence for the 2018 death of his pregnant wife, S.A. The victim fell to her death in Kelebekler (Butterfly) Valley, a popular destination in the southwestern province of Muğla in 2018. The defendant, who claimed his wife fell on her own, was accused by the victim’s family of killing her for life insurance.
In the last hearing, the prosecutor said the defendant was the only beneficiary of a life insurance policy in his wife’s name and had planned the murder thoroughly. “He took her to a part of the valley people do not frequent much and kept her waiting there for hours. He claimed he did not see how his wife fell but his statement is not convincing,” the prosecutor said in his final plea to the court for sentencing H.A. The court sentenced the defendant on charges of premeditated murder.
“Justice prevailed. We still have pain but it is alleviated a little,” Nayim Yolçu, the victim’s brother, told reporters after the trial. “Nobody can get away with murdering women in our country,” he added.
S.A. was found dead at the bottom of a cliff in the valley on June 19, 2018. She was allegedly taking selfies with her husband when she died. The victim was seven months pregnant at the time of her death and the police treated her death with suspicion, launching an investigation that ended with the arrest of H.A. in 2020. It was discovered that the suspect had taken out a life insurance policy on behalf of his wife worth $29,000 (TL 400,000) shortly before her death. An eyewitness had claimed that the victim was not aware of the life insurance and the suspect himself had signed the insurance documents. The suspect had also withdrawn a loan in his wife’s name and spent it, as well as taking a state allowance paid to widowers to go on vacation abroad following his wife’s death, according to media reports.
