A police crime scene manager made a horrific discovery in the bin of an Essex bar, finding the severed tongue and genitals of a father who had been tortured to death in a brutal murder linked to a love triangle.
The Grisly Discovery in a Chelmsford Bar
The chilling moment is revealed in a new Channel 4 documentary, Catching a Killer: Buried Truths. Paul Clark, a Crime Scene Manager, is pictured looking into the bin at the Barista bar on Duke Street, Chelmsford, after a colleague made the initial find. Bruising on the base of the tongue indicated it had been forced out and cut while the victim, Cumali Turhan, 46, was still alive.
Mr Clark, who served as a police officer for three decades, told the programme: "You think you have seen everything but actually you haven't. It's bad enough someone being murdered but actually dismemberment as well, terrible." He noted that wine bottles had been placed on top of the remains, suggesting it was the bar's regular waste bin.
A Love Rivalry Turns Fatal
The investigation established that Turhan was believed to have been lured to his death by Ceyhan Dinler, then 38, due to an "ongoing and simmering issue" over a woman both men were seeing. CCTV captured the pair having a heated conversation at The Globe pub in Chelmsford on 19 November 2024. They were later seen walking to the nearby Barista bar, just a minute's walk from the local police station.
Turhan, a Tottenham Hotspur fan and Turkish national, was fatally stabbed in the neck after being mutilated. Dinler fled to Turkey the following day and remains wanted for murder. Police found Turhan's blood on the ceiling and Dinler's bloody fingerprint on a table.
Landmark Landfill Search and Conviction
In a painstaking operation led by Det Chief Insp Louise Metcalfe, Turhan's body was recovered 45 days after the murder from the Enovert rubbish dump in Stanway, some 20 miles away. This is believed to be the first successful recovery of a body from a UK landfill site by police. The search involved 10 locations and 1,650 officer shifts.
Ciprian Ilie, 44, a Romanian national, was jailed for seven years in October last year for assisting an offender and preventing a lawful burial. Ilie, arrested at a homeless shelter, claimed he was threatened with a knife to help clean the bar and dispose of the body in a bin, which was later unknowingly taken to landfill by refuse collectors.
DCI Metcalfe stated: "At the heart of this case is a father who lost his life in truly horrific circumstances and a young daughter who must grow up without him." Turhan had texted the mother of his daughter shortly before his death, saying, "I'm sorry for everything, I'm sorry I failed my family." Essex Police continue to work with the Crown Prosecution Service to locate Dinler.
