Evil husband who pushed pregnant wife off cliff to claim insurance gets life in prison
MUGLA, TURKEY: A Turkish husband who pushed his heavily pregnant wife off a cliff so he could cash in her life insurance policy has been sentenced to life in prison.
Hakan Aysal, 40, was found guilty of pushing his seven-months-pregnant wife Semra Aysal, 32, off a cliff in southern Turkey in June 2018. The judges at Fethiye High Criminal Court, southern Turkey told Aysal on Tuesday, October 25 that he must serve at least 30 years in prison before being considered for release. Turkey's Penal Court earlier gave Aysal an aggravated life sentence on February 15 for the murder of his wife, The Mirror reported.
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Earlier this week, the court rejected Aysal's last-minute insanity plea after medical experts confirmed he was mentally stable when he pushed Semra to death. According to Sun, Aysal tried to challenge the verdict by claiming that he had been mentally unstable but forensic medics ruled him sane. He was hauled back to court on October 24 so his punishment could be confirmed.
In the previous trial, the court heard that Aysal lured his pregnant wife to a clifftop beauty spot for a selfie and then pushed her off. The investigators initially became suspicious after he tried to cash in a £40,000 ($46k) insurance payout just days after his wife’s death.
During the previous trial, witnesses who were present at the cliff told the court how Aysal was 'completely calm' as he flagged down help after Serma fell to her death. Sait Erturk, a passing driver he stopped, said he didn’t even come down to search for his wife. "I was driving there when I saw someone was waving at me, and I stopped. Hakan came and said that his wife had fallen down the cliff. We immediately got out of the car and started looking for her, but we couldn't see where she would have landed from where we were," Erturk told the court. "We tried to get closer to the edge for a better look. Hakan did not come with us down there. We stayed there until the gendarmerie arrived. Hakan was very carefree and calm. He was not acting like a man whose wife had just fallen off a cliff."
Another witness, Recep Sahin, whose daughter captured Serma's final moments before she fell to death, told the court that he was enjoying the view with his family when Serma fell. "My daughter was filming the view with my phone and the Aysal couple came down the slope at that moment. We even joked: 'Either this man will throw the woman off or the woman will throw the man.'"
The victim's older brother, Naim Yolcu, took the stand in a previous hearing and told the court, "When we went to the Forensic Medicine Institute to get the body, Hakan was sitting in the car. My family and I were destroyed, but Hakan did not even appear sad. My sister was always against taking out loans. However, after she died, we learned she had loans taken out by Hakan on behalf of my sister."
Aysal was the sole beneficiary of his wife's life insurance. However, the payout was rejected after the police announced an investigation into the matter.