A WOMAN and her best friend were stabbed to death on holiday in Turkey after she refused a waiter’s proposal to marry her 15-year-old daughter, sources said today.

Marion Elizabeth Graham and Kathy Dinsmore, both aged 53 and from Newry, Co Down and described as inseparable, were found murdered in woods 75 miles north of Kusadasi.

It is understood a 17-year-old Turkish waiter, known to the family as Alex, has been arrested. He was due before a judge tonight.

The two women suffered multiple stab wounds, including having their throats cut, and their bodies were found in forest near a graveyard to the east of the port city of Izmir.

It is believed the waiter had asked Ms Graham for her daughter’s hand in marriage but was refused.

The women travelled with him out of Kusadasi yesterday after Ms Graham’s daughter Shannon went on a boat trip.

Raymond McGuinness, the girl’s father and Ms Graham’s ex-partner, said he was never fully in favour of the relationship since the two teens began going out last summer.

“There was always something that was not quite right,” he said.

The alarm was raised last night when the waiter, said to have been in a distressed state, arrived for work in a Kusadasi restaurant.

He claimed he had suffered a cut to his hand trying to fight off kidnappers who had bundled the two women into a van. They had not been reported missing from their extended holiday at this stage.