Police call for tips in Amsterdam balcony assassination

The police released more information on the case surrounding the murder of 60-year-old Beyhan Demirci in Amsterdam last year on Opsporing Verzocht on Tuesday. Investigators hope that tips from the public will help bring this believed-to-be mistaken identity murder case to a resolution.

The Turkish woman was gunned down with a Kalashnikov as she was smoking a cigarette on the balcony of her apartment on Pieter van der Werfstraat on Wednesday night, 14 January 2015, at around 10:08 p.m. She had dinner with her grandson earlier that night and just finished speaking to her elderly mother on the telephone when she stepped out for a smoke. The detectives investigating this case could find no reason for anyone to want Demirci dead. In the 35 years she lived in the Netherlands, she never once had contact with the police. The leading theory is that the intended target was actually her son-in-law. He lived with Demirci for a while and regularly visited her apartment. He is also known to be active in the criminal world. It was dark the night Demirci was killed and she had a blanket wrapped around her. So it is possible that the gunman thought it was the son-in-law coming out to smoke. Numerous witnesses saw the gunman got into a BMW with someone else behind the wheel after the shooting. The gunman was dressed in dark clothing and was carrying a large, black suitcase with the Kalashnikov in it. The perpetrator and getaway driver sped away from the scene in a black BMW 320 at around 10:10 p.m. Ten minutes later, the car was found burning on Ben Hope in Amsterdam Osdorp, about 5 kilometers from the murder scene. The police are looking for witnesses who saw the shooting, saw the perpetrators flight or saw the getaway car being set on fire. Witnesses with any information regarding this case are asked to contact the police at once, even if they do so anonymously.