Me, Myself, Sarai

The morning after a woman's body was found stuffed inside a cavity along an ancient wall in Istanbul, my photo editor told me to get on the next flight to Turkey.

Photos by Pearl Gabel

The morning after Sarai Sierra's battered and lifeless body was found by a police officer, stuffed inside a cavity along an ancient wall in Istanbul, my photo editor told me to get on the next flight to Turkey.

"You're on the Sierra story," he said.

Two weeks earlier, the tale of the missing 33-year-old Staten Island woman—a wife and mother of two—had begun creeping into metro headlines. It started as a blurb and morphed into a scandal. She had traveled alone to Turkey, a companionless vacation with a jaunt to Amsterdam through a known drug smuggling corridor.

"What do you think happened to her?" the reporter who had been sent with me asked, as we waited to board a nine-hour direct flight.

"Drug smuggling, maybe," I said. "Why would she fly to Amsterdam and back like that?"