A young mother of two from England unexpectedly died during a vacation in Turkey, and her heart was allegedly removed from her chest cavity, officials have said.
Beth Martin, 28, of Portsmouth, died due to an unexplained illness. Her family is demanding answers after a post-mortem revealed her heart was missing.
Ms Martin claimed to have been sick on her travel from the UK to Turkey and initially blamed it on food poisoning. She became "delirious" and was admitted to the hospital within hours of landing in Istanbul.
She died the following day, on April 28, The New York Post reported.
The Turkish Ministry of Health said Ms Martin died from "cardiac arrest due to multiple organ failure" but did not specify the detailed cause of death.
Ms Martin's husband, Luke Martin, was upset with Turkish officials, saying they were uncooperative and initially assumed he had poisoned her.
After successfully arranging for her body to be sent back to the UK, British coroners informed him that his wife's heart was missing.
Ms Martin's family reported possible medical incompetence, a poorly conducted inquiry, and egregious mismanagement by Turkish authorities.
The Turkish authorities claimed she "did not undergo any surgical procedures" during the initial autopsy at the hospital where she died, disputing the British coroners' inferences.
Ms Martin's family is left wondering if the medical staff at the Marmara University Pendik Education and Research Hospital in Istanbul, Turkey, gave her penicillin before realising she had a medication allergy.
Her death is currently being investigated.
Ms Martin, her husband Luke, and their two young children, Elouise, 8, and Tommy, 5, departed on a dream vacation to Turkey on April 27.
The family's dream soon became a nightmare after she fell ill during the flight.
A GoFundMe page was created in the name of Ms Martin with a goal of raising 250K pounds (approximately 28 lakh).
Her devastated family alleged the Turkish doctors kept them in the dark and that she was "pinned down, poked and prodded invasively" before her death. They are still baffled by what transpired in those final hours.
Ms Martin's husband Luke claimed that armed cops interrogated him from the back of a van in a hospital parking lot, subjecting him to "grilled, accused and broken beyond repair," per the GoFundMe post.
It would take six months for coroners in England to figure out what caused Ms Martin's organs to fail suddenly.
