Smail Tulja

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Smail (Smajo) Tulja is a Montenegrin-Albanian Muslim mass murderer. He was involved in killing 8 women, 1 from New York City in the United States, 5 from Belgium and 2 from Albania.

1 Biography
2 Murder Investigations
- 2.1 Arrest and trial
3 External Links

[edit] Biography

Smail (Smajo) Tulja was born Smail (Smajo) Džurlić in Plav, Montenegro. He married Remzija Tulja and took her last name. Since then, he kept using his wife’s last name in official documents.

However, Albanian Muslim Džurlić family moved to Serbia's Kosovo province from Montenegro 40 years ago and immigrated to United States from there.

[edit] Murder Investigations

While living in New York, Smail was a cab driver. Tulja had met Mary Beal, a 61 year old widow, during an appearance in a courthouse when she was an interpreter. He dated her until the two got into a dispute over money. Beal has reportedly told her neighbors “If you ever don’t see me with the dogs for one day, come looking for me.” Beal disappeared on 15 September 1990. Three weeks later, her decapitated, dismembered body was found in two bags near the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Smail Tulja was immediately a prime suspect, being that he also had 11 prior arrests in The Bronx and Manhattan for crimes including assault and attempted murder. Also because detectives discovered bloodstains in Tulja's Bronx apartment, but when they went to arrest him and question him, he had already left the country. Either way, the police didn’t have enough evidence to charge him until 1995.

Since he changed his last name was changed to Tulja, this has made the search for him more difficult, since the international warrant for his arrest was under the name Smail Džurlić.

Brooklyn North Homicide Detective Dennis Singleton traced Tulja to Belgium, where another five women were slaughtered and dismembered since the Albanian butcher fled there. Tulja then disappeared from Belgium too and was finally located closer to home (Podgorica) when Detective John Osorio happened to be at a session where an FBI agent was discussing the recent unsolved homicides of two women in Albania who’d been stabbed and dismembered.

In the late 1990's, Tulja moved back to Montenegro and lived alone on the outskirts of Podgorica.

The NYPD, Interpol and FBI worked with Montenegrin authorities to locate Tulja, who was found because in January, Interpol notified the FBI that it had matched the 1974 fingerprints to those "of an individual who had applied for a government identification card in Montenegro" because he had submitted his fingerprints while applying for a government job in Montenegro, according to court papers.

Police suspected that a woman whose body was discovered in Albania shortly after Tulja's return to Montenegro, and who has never been identified, may have been his wife — and his last victim, according to newspapers. Tulja's wife, Remzija, had disappeared under unclear circumstances.

[edit] Arrest and trial

Tulja was arrested from his home in Montenegro on 22 February 2007, at the age of 67.

Some of Tulja's neighbours described Tulja as "quiet and polite". Others describe his behavior suspicious because he never left his house nor socialised.

Several pieces of evidence and some documents have been found and taken from his home that may be connected to the alleged crimes he committed in the foreign countries.

Tulja is currently awaiting trail.

Dušan Lukšić, a lawyer in Montenegro representing Tulja, said: "My client [Smail Tulja] is not guilty of the murder of Mary Beal."

Lukšić said he had no information about the other killings in Albania and Belgium. He said Tulja will "exercise his right to remain silent" at this point in the proceedings.

He said Tulja has to be tried in Montenegro because local laws do not allow extradition of Montenegrin citizens. He said the maximum sentence Tulja could get if tried, convicted and found guilty is 20 years under Montenegrin law.

Lukšić also said he was informed that FBI agents were in Podgorica, but said he didn't have any details to give them.