Kurdish translator killed wife for insurance, court hears (From Haringey Independent)

Kurdish translator killed wife for insurance, court hears

5:44pm Wednesday 10th March 2010 in

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A SCHOOL dinner lady was murdered by her cheating husband for £375,000 of life insurance money, a court heard.

Elif Oruc, 42, was stabbed in the heart and left to bleed to death on her kitchen floor in a “sickening” planned attack by Mikdat Sahpaz, a former employee at Haringey's Kurdish Community Centre, prosecutors claim.

The 46-year-old defendant, known to friends as Seyhan, allegedly used money taken from a bank account set up for his daughter to fund his lifestyle and even went on holiday to Germany with his mistress and her children.

But when faced with the prospect of a messy divorce from his loveless marriage he killed his wife and ransacked their Wembley home in an effort to make the murder look like a botched burglary, the Old Bailey heard.

Duncan Penny, prosecuting, told jurors how Mr Sahpaz later collected their two children, 13 and nine, and brought them back to the house where their mother, who worked at Barham Primary School, lay dead.

Referring to the defendant, Mr Penny said: “When the man entered the kitchen he confronted a truly terrible sight.

"There lying in front of him on the kitchen floor was the lifeless body of his wife, stabbed in the heart.

"She had been left to bleed to death in the last three hours. To most men, you might think, this sickening sight would be something of a shock.

"To this man it was not and the reason was because this man was both her husband and her murderer."

Mr Sahpaz was well known at the community centre, in Portland Gardens, just off Green Lanes, and was on their payroll until 2006. After this time, he regularly used the centre and arranged work with people he met there, the court heard.

He was allegedly driven to the scene from Green Lanes by Huseyin Erhalac, who prosecutors say had no idea what his passenger's intention was.

The defendant stood to gain from his wife's death through a £375,000 life insurance pay out and by taking control of two properties they had owned together.

Mr Sahpaz denies murder.

The trial continues.