Beyhan Demirci (60) shot dead on the balcony of her flat on Pieter van der Werfstraat

Beyhan Demirci (60), of Turkish descent, was standing on the balcony of her flat on Pieter van der Werfstraat in Geuzenveld on the evening of Wednesday 14 January 2015, smoking a cigarette with a blanket wrapped around her against the cold. Shortly after ten the shots came. She was fired on from the gallery with a Kalashnikov and died at the scene. More than thirty cartridge cases were found in the street, while the walls and windows around the victim were barely hit — the work of a professional, Het Parool concluded. The investigation team initially found no reason at all why anyone would want to harm her. Demirci cared for her family and in the thirty-five years she had lived in the Netherlands had never had contact with the police. Suspicion soon arose that the gunman had meant to hit her son-in-law Mehmet D., a man who was known to police. He too smoked cigarettes on that balcony and had a similar build from a distance. Police maintained that the killers had deliberately shot Demirci; D. himself believed the attack had been intended for him. In early February 2015 D. was arrested, not for the murder but for illegal weapons possession, along with two others. The weapons were a handgun and a machine pistol with an extended magazine. His lawyer stated that D. had not acquired them to carry out a killing or to avenge his mother-in-law's death, but out of fear. In March 2015 police arrested two men aged 22 and 25, partly on the basis of traces found in the burned-out getaway car; one of them was already in custody for another offence. No prosecution for the murder followed. The case remained unsolved.