Turkish Cypriot man sentenced to 39 years in prison after he was found guilty of stabbing Vietnamese to death 33 times over sex

A north Cyprus court on Tuesday found a 48-year-old Turkish Cypriot man guilty of fatally stabbing a 40-year-old Vietnamese national Dam Thi Hop 33 times and sentenced to 39 years in prison.

The decomposing body of the deceased woman was found wrapped in a carpet and blankets on January 6, 2019 in a wooden area near the road linking Ercan airport and the nearby village of Gaziköy, almost a year and a half after she had first been reported missing in 2017.

It had initially been believed that her death was related to serial killer Greek Cypriot Nikos Metaxas, who pleaded guilty to having murdered seven women and girls in 2019, but investigations later turned to 48-year-old Serhat Sonmez and his family after one of his neighbours heard him arguing about the incident in 2021.

It was heard in court on Tuesday that Hop had agreed to have sexual intercourse with Sonmez in exchange for money before he told her he wanted to marry her and then gave her 50TL (around €13 at the time) in cash. She then asked for more money, and he proceeded to stab her 33 times and then kick her in the head as she fell to the ground.

Asked why he had stabbed her 33 times, Sonmez said, “I lost control, I wanted her to go the way she came.”

It was also heard in court that Sonmez had confessed to the police and four psychiatrists that he had killed Hop.

Serhat Sonmez at a previous court hearing

Sonmez’s son, who was not named publicly as he was 13 years old at the time of the incident, also spoke in court, describing the day of the incident.

“When I woke up, my father was stabbing the woman. The woman was trying to say things like, ‘brother don’t do this’. The woman died. My father took the woman’s body to the bathroom. He wrapped it in a carpet and a bag. He asked for help to carry it. I said, ‘I can’t do it’. My grandmother and I, the three of us, dumped the woman in the Ercan area at midnight,” he said.

He then said that after having dumped the body, the family went to eat at the Niazi’s restaurant on Kyrenia’s seafront “with the money he found on the woman”, before his grandmother fell ill.

“She felt sick during the dinner and we called an ambulance but they said she was fine. After returning home, my father cleaned up the blood. He pasted wallpaper on the wall where the blood was splattered,” he said.

He added that he himself had earlier been sentenced to six months in prison for being an accessory to the murder, and that he was “very affected” by the incident.

Serhat Sonmez’s mother Seckin Sonmez, who was arrested and died in prison of Covid-19

Sonmez, his son, and his mother Seckin Sonmez were all arrested in October 2021 after they were heard arguing in the garden of the house in which they all lived in the northern Nicosia suburb of Kuchuk Kaimakli.

A local resident recorded the son saying to his father, “you could only kill a woman” and “if I report you, you’ll receive a life sentence!”.

Serhat Sonmez then replied, “I will kill you too!”

The Turkish Cypriot police had then searched the house, finding a knife with a ten-centimetre blade, a wheelbarrow and a Suzuki car, all of which they believed had been used to carry out the crime.

Police inspector had also said at a previous hearing that an “attempt to cover blood stains on a wall” was discovered.

In a last-ditch attempt to save himself on Tuesday, Serhat Sonmez said Hop had been killed by his mother, who was also arrested in 2021, but died in prison from Covid-19 in December that year.

The judge said the court had decided it was “not possible” for his mother to have killed Hop given the health problems she was suffering before her death.

She pointed out that someone in Seckin Sonmez’s state could not have inflicted 33 stab wounds, “18 of which were severe enough to penetrate the bone”, and that Serhat Sonmez had only first made this claim after his mother had died.

At a court hearing before her death, Seckin Sonmez had said her feet were “gangrenous”.

However, the judge was willing to acquit Serhat Sonmez of the charge of premeditated murder.

“It is clear that the defendant brutally killed the victim and stabbed her 33 times, but there is no evidence that he planned it. The persistent stabbing was not a plan, it was a brutal attack. The defendant killed the woman as a result of a sudden fight,” she said.

He will then sentenced to 39 years in prison.