The sister of missing Esra Uyrun says she cried when she heard about the Nicola Bulley case due to its shocking similarities.
Mother-of-one Esra vanished after leaving her home in Clondalkin, west Dublin, on February 23, 2011. The 38-year-old’s car was found in Bray, Co Wicklow.
And now, as her family marks the 12th anniversary of her unexplained disappearance, her heartbroken niece told us she would rather her aunt was dead than still alive and held captive.
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Ayda Pekkaya, who was just 17 when her aunt went missing, said: “To be honest, this sounds absolutely awful but after a few years passed all I could wish for was I hope she isn’t here, because if she was still alive, God knows what she’s living.
“So there’s a certain part of you that just starts to think in a really horrible way where you just think for her own sanity and for her own peace, I really hope that whatever has happened to her she’s not here because all the other extremities I’m thinking about are just insane.
“Obviously you think of certain things like trafficking and being locked in a cell for so many years. I’ve watched so many true crime documentaries that are real and you know you just think about what could have happened.”
Esra, whose son was just two years old at the time, told her husband she was going to the shops to pick up a few bits at 7.20am on February 23. But the young mother never came home.
CCTV footage picked up her car at a roundabout, only five minutes from her home, at 7.55am. The vehicle was later found abandoned in a car park in Bray with her purse in the boot.
Meanwhile, Ayda’s mother Berna Fidan, who is Esra’s sister, has been heartbroken to hear about the shocking Nicola Bulley case. Berna, who lives in the UK, has been following news of the 45-year-old, who vanished while out walking her dog in St Michael’s on Wyre in Lancashire on January 27.
She said: “Oh my God, I just sat and cried because I couldn’t believe it and I’m thinking that’s yet another woman. It upsets me now to see it on the news every day here.
"And they’re still looking for her.” Like Esra, Nicola vanished without a trace and her family are no clearer as to what has happened to her.
However, Berna says whereas the UK police were quick to launch a massive search, gardai were extremely slow. She added: “Can you see how much attention is paid to this whereas when my sister went missing I found it so difficult to get the gardai to get someone to search that mountain area.
“I got the public involved and charity organisations involved before they went and sent somebody. They sent a search and rescue team on the Sunday. It happened on Wednesday.
“They said, ‘Oh well, we sent gardai to walk the path’. I said the public walk that every single day from Bray all the way to Greystones.
“I said if there was anything there the public would notify you. I told them it was the mountain itself that needed to be searched.”
Berna is now working with TG4 on a new documentary that is set to air later in the year. She is travelling to Ireland in the coming weeks and will meet with a senior Garda to be updated on the case for the first time in many years.
She said: “I’ve been asked by a superintendent if he could speak to me. I thought well that’s taken 12 years for this to happen. What’s going to come out of that now I don’t know.
“This time of the year is always hard for us. It’s just unbelievable that so many years have passed. The pain hasn’t gone away. We talk about her every day.
“I know there’s somebody out there that knows something. I find it impossible that someone just disappears.”
Ayda, now 29, was close to Esra. She said: “She was full of life. She was just incredible, so loving and so kind. The only way I can describe her is just family oriented.
“We just need someone to come forward. At the end of the day all I can think about is my mum and my nan and the fact they need closure.
“You can’t imagine what missing could feel like until you feel it. Where is the body? Is she alive? Is she not?”
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