Sarai Sierra’s widower marries murdered woman’s childhood friend

Razı Canikligil NEW YORK - Hürriyet

Arrayo said she would be happy to raise the Sierra couple’s children, Sion and Silas, with her own child, Angel. Hürriyet Photo

The husband of U.S. tourist Sarai Sierra, who was murdered in Istanbul last year, recently married her childhood friend, Hürriyet has learned.

Sarai Sierra, 33, left the United States for the first time in her life on Jan. 7 last year to take pictures in Istanbul and went missing in the city on Jan. 21.

She planned to head to the Galata Bridge, a well-known tourist destination that spans the Golden Horn waterway, to take some photographs. When she failed to appear in New York on her planned day of return, her husband, Steven Sierra, contacted the owner of the accommodation at which she had been staying, only to learn that her passport, equipment chargers and other belongings were still there.

Sierra’s dead body was found Feb. 2, 2013, along Istanbul’s city walls near Sarayburnu beneath Topkapı Palace.

Z.T., or “Laz Ziya,” admitted to killing Sierra, but said he did not rape her beforehand, but rather simply attempted to kiss her. Z.T. claimed he was on drugs at the time and that he killed the woman with a rock following a physical struggle.

After returning to the United States with his wife’s body, Steven Sierra told the couple’s two children that their mother was dead. Following a year of mourning, the man reportedly married Sarai Sierra’s childhood friend, Dulce Arrayo, in Staten Island on Jan. 23 at the same church at which Sarai Sierra’s funeral ceremony was conducted. Arrayo said she would be happy to raise the Sierra couple’s children, Sion and Silas, with her own child, Angel.