Authorities yesterday arrested Hamdi Ayri (27), the man responsible for three murders in three days in the Izmir province, and in his confession, the killer said he did it for money.

Police teams arrested Hamdi Ayri (27) in Mu?la’s Bodrum district in the early morning hours on Wednesday following an intensive effort that involved 350 police officers from Izmir as well as cooperation from law enforcement and judicial authorities in Mugla. Police tracked the suspect through victim Mustafa Has’ mobile phone, which H.A. allegedly sold to a shop in Mugla, said Izmir Gov. Cahit Kiraç. No witnesses have come forward in the killings, and security camera records have not yielded any clear footage. A sketch of the suspect was released by police Tuesday, but Izmir Police Chief Ercüment Yilmaz said the sketch, which bore no resemblance to the suspect, was released purposefully to allow him to move without concern that police were tracking him. Kiraç said H.A. did not have a criminal record.

Ayri was apprehended by police at around 5:30 a.m. yesterday and sent for legal processing. Along with Ayri, police seized the bags of the three victims and the remaining cell phones, Kiraç said. News reports yesterday said in addition Ayri had been in possession of a passport and 4,000 euros. The suspect also said he had stolen the gun he allegedly used in the murders from a restaurant in Bodrum. Ayri gave his initial testimony to authorities in Izmir yesterday and confessed to the murders. He said that he killed his victims for money.

Police Chief Yilmaz explained the working groups his department had set up to draw connections between the crime scene and the criminal — and to make the killer easier to catch. Explaining that officers gathered video evidence from security cameras in the areas near the murder, Yilmaz noted that Ayri had gone to a store to sell one of the victims’ cell phones, allowing police access to that footage as well. Police tracked the killer as he boarded a bus from Izmir to Bodrum.

You can read more about this case in a previous article A Fear of a Serial Killer in Izmir.

-article from Today’s Zaman, rewritten and adapted by admin-