Background
A woman living in the Söke district of Aydın disappeared on 2 December 2012. Relatives lost contact with her at that time, but an official missing-person application was filed only years later, on 31 October 2017, by her son. After the application she was formally sought as a missing person, yet no sign that she was alive was found.
On the day she went missing, an unidentified woman's body had been found beside the highway between Milas and Söke. For years no link was made between the two files, and the body remained in the records without an identity.
The investigation
When the Söke Chief Public Prosecutor's Office found no evidence that the woman was alive, it focused on the possibility of a homicide and re-examined records of unidentified bodies in neighbouring provinces. In June 2026 the İzmir Forensic Medicine Institute was asked to run a comparison. Its report dated 14 August 2026 concluded, through DNA comparison with blood samples from the woman's mother and son, that the body found in 2012 was hers.
Her husband was treated as a suspect. According to press reports, he had left the area after her disappearance, lived in other provinces for about 14 years, and never filed a missing-person report. Technical analysis of phone and vehicle movements indicated that he was in the area where the body was found on that date. He was detained on 11 June 2026 and arrested the next day on suspicion of murder.
DNA profiles of unidentified bodies are often kept in national records, but comparison with samples from a missing person's relatives becomes possible only once a report has been filed. In this file the turning point was the missing-person application made years later and the systematic comparison that followed.
Where it stands today
According to published reports, the investigation continues and there is no conviction against the suspect; the presumption of innocence applies. Developments regarding an indictment and trial should be followed through official statements.
The file illustrates how re-comparing unidentified-body records with missing-person files through DNA can produce results even after many years. This text is written with respect for the missing woman and her family.
For relatives of the missing, such files mean a long period of uncertainty. The confirmed identification was the first step that allowed the family's mourning and the judicial process to begin. That the file was clarified shows the value of re-checking old records even when a missing-person report is made late.