Phones4U businessman dies in jail while serving sentence for murdering transgender wife
Exterior of a Phones4U store. (Newscast/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
A founding Phones4U employee jailed for the murder of his trans Russian bride, whom he battered and smothered to death in 2010, has died his prison cell in Turkey.
Chris Collier was serving a 24-year prison term for the killing of his allegedly “mail-order” wife – he boasted he had “bought her” online before he bludgeoned and suffocated her.
The 49-year-old killed Julia, 35, in a rage at their home in the resort of Kusadasi on the Aegean coast, Stoke-on-Trent Live reported.
Chris Collier callously killed trans wife in a fit of rage.
Collier emigrated to Turkey in the late 1990s after becoming the first salesperson for Phones4U, a phone retailer that shuttered its doors in 2014.
He bragged to friends in Ronwall, Staffordshire, that he had allegedly “bought” his “mail-order” bride Julia.
Moving to Turkey, Collier reportedly ran an estate agency in the resort town while Julia was a pianist providing private lessons as well as performing in hotels and bars.
The former phone salesperson was probed by police after his wife’s death. Her passing stunned the wider Cheddleton community, a parish village in the West Midlands.
A drone photo shows the aerial view of a beach as people sunbathe under colourful parasols and swim in the sea in Kusadasi district of Aydin, Turkey. (Ferdi Uzun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Mike Worthington, a former colleague of Collier, said: “He was an entrepreneur and did very well for himself but things obviously went very wrong for him.”
“I would have liked to have seen him serve his sentence in an English prison really, because you hear all sorts of stories about these foreign prisons.
“Forty-nine is no age. It’s a tragic end to his life, firstly to be jailed in Turkey and then to die there.”
Seven years into 24 year sentence, murderer dies of pneumonia and sepsis, coroners say.
After he was found guilty, a Turkish judge ordered Collier spend two decades behind bars.
But earlier this month, he died seven years into his sentence on October 5 of pneumonia, according to a coroner’s report.
As a result, UK authorities have opened an inquest into the death.
Asia, Turkey, Southern Aegean Coast, Kusadasi, City View. (Marka/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Assistant North Staffordshire coroner Sarah Murphy said: “The medical cause of death was aspiration pneumonia, bacterial infection related to sepsis.
“He had been jailed in Turkey and was being transferred into a hospital.”
