CHOP SHOCK
Behead guy’s ex-stepdad is jolted by news
THE FORMER stepfather of an accused Long Island killer says he was stunned to learn that his ex-wife’s son is suspected of murdering and dismembering a woman in Japan.
Yevgeniy Bayraktar, 26, was locked up after cops found a severed head stuffed into a suitcase inside his rental apartment in the city of Osaka.
“I always thought of him as being strange, but I never would have thought he would do something like this,” Bayraktar’s former stepfather Benny Dacy told the Daily News on Tuesday.
Bayraktar has confessed to disposing of a woman’s corpse — and even led police to more body parts, according to the Asahi Shimbun newspaper.
The Mastic Beach man had been traveling in Japan since January when he met the woman through a matchmaking smartphone app, authorities said.
The unidentified victim met the suspect near the Osaka train station about midnight on Feb. 16.
A surveillance camera captured the pair entering his rented apartment. The footage also showed a man believed to be Bayraktar carrying a large bag as he left the home between Feb. 16 and Feb. 18. But the woman was never seen leaving the pad, according to local reports.
Bayraktar was arrested in the city of Nara, about 75 miles away, on Feb. 22.
Two days later, investigators discovered a severed head in a suitcase inside one of the rooms Bayraktar had rented in the Osaka building.
News of Bayraktar’s connection to a gruesome murder shocked Dacy.
The Texas man wed Bayraktar’s mom Regina Mishura about 15 years ago after meeting her in Ukraine through a mailorder bride service.
“He was a terribly shy young guy,” Dacy said. “He had friends but he was very shy and very awkward.”
Dacy said Bayraktar was about 10 or 11 years old when he moved to Abilene, Texas, with his mother, who had secured a visa reserved for fiancées.
The young boy didn’t have a particularly hard time fitting in at school in America, Dacy said.
His English was decent. He liked video games. And he played football and basketball in middle school. But Bayraktar was a loner. “He just kind of kept to himself,” said Dacy. “And his mother spoiled him.”
Dacy said Bayraktar’s mom left him while he was on a work assignment in a different state.
The Texas man heard from her only once several years later when she called asking if he had finalized the divorce.
Unbeknownst to Dacy, Bayraktar and his mother settled in Long Island.
The boy attended William Floyd High School in Mastic Beach from 2007 and 2008, school officials confirmed to the Daily News Tuesday.
Nearly a decade after he last saw Bayraktar, Dacy said it was hard to imagine that the boy he knew as strange and awkward would grow up to be a murderer.
“He never did anything to me to make me think he would do something like that — something so terrible,” Dacy said.