Dilek Ertek, the head of operations for Tiffany & Co. in Turkey for nearly three decades, is dead after falling off a cruise ship. The 71-year-old was sailing off the coast of Tahiti on October 26 when she reportedly fell overboard at around 3 a.m. A search for her body was unsuccessful.
- She was hoping to celebrate her 72nd birthday on the cruise. Going on holiday was something she was passionate about. Dilek Ertek boarded the Norwegian Spirit cruise ship on October 24 and planned to celebrate her 72nd birthday in Bora Bora on November 5 before sailing on to Hawaii. Sadly, she died before ever completing the trip.
- Security footage showed someone believed to be Ertek falling from the ship. Search efforts were immediately mounted but were unsuccessful. Eventually, authorities gave up on trying to find her.
- Dilek Ertek may be dead, but the case isn’t closed. Her son, Gökçe Atuk, said some extremely expensive jewelry just so happened to go missing from his mother’s cabin in the wake of her death, the New York Post reports. He’s headed down to Tahiti to join in on the recovery efforts and is launching legal action.
- A 74-year-old man was being held under observation. Police interviewed him once the ship docked in Tahiti. However, he was ultimately released without charges and flew back home to Switzerland. However, Ertek’s friends and family have told Turkish media that there’s no way Ertek would have taken her own life, since she was so “happy and peaceful.”
- There’s something not quite right about her death. Experts have no idea how a woman barely five feet tall managed to climb over and fall from a 3-foot high guard rail. Captain Mustafa Can said it would be “difficult to fall from this type of passenger and cruise ship,” per the Daily Mail. So, what happened? There certainly needs to be more investigation to uncover how exactly this tragedy was able to take place.
