Background
Beginning in early 2000, human legs were found in bags left in rubbish bins and along the shoreline in several districts of Istanbul. The press came to call the case the Severed Leg murders. The rest of the remains were never located, so even today it is unclear when, where and under what circumstances the victims died.
Because only limbs were recovered, it was also never settled beyond doubt that every find was a homicide. Police officials at the time did not entirely rule out that some remains came from a medical institution. Even so, the pattern of discoveries led many to suspect a single perpetrator or a small circle.
What happened
According to newspaper records, the first leg was noticed on 8 January 2000 behind the Spice Bazaar by a man collecting paper. On 19 May 2000 another was found on the shore near the Eminönü ferry pier; having been in salt water, its date of cutting could not be established. On 7 December 2000 high-school students found a young woman's leg in Eyüp. In March 2001 two more legs, one belonging to a man and one to a woman, were found near the Golden Horn. Reports also mention finds in Beyoğlu and on the Maltepe shore.
In total, remains of eight different people are usually cited, seven women and one man, though sources give differing counts. The press reported that the legs had been cut with care and that those of the women appeared to belong to young people. The only person identified is reported to have been a 17-year-old girl; no further detail about her is given here.
Investigation
Istanbul police formed a special twelve-person team, as press coverage in 2002 described. It checked missing-person reports, examined the sites and used forensic medicine analyses. The absence of a comprehensive DNA database in Turkey at the time made identification extremely difficult, and without the rest of the remains no cause of death could be determined.
No suspect was ever publicly named and no one was prosecuted. Nobody has been convicted or tried in connection with the case, and no name should be associated with it.
Where it stands today
The file was never solved. According to reports, the limitation period for the offences expired around 2021. The case remains one of the most cited examples in Turkish discussions of serial crime, yet the authorities never formally established that a single offender was responsible.
Most of those whose remains were found are still unnamed. Dark Location keeps this page in memory of the unidentified victims and to draw attention to identification efforts.