by Simon Cox
They followed a route the police believed the cars had taken on the fateful night from Reykjavik to Keflavik. As they made their way out of town into the jagged shadows of the lava fields, Schutz began interviewing Gudjon in the car. He probed Gudjon on why he couldn’t remember such important events from the past, and invited him to remember.
Gudjon went back to 1974 and the depression he suffered, along with the death of his father, which had been a violent jolt to his mental state. His relationship with his father was complicated; for years he hadn’t lived with him and when he was expelled from school he was an obvious disappointment to the sober Lutheran minister who had devoted his life to the church. Unfortunately Gudjon hadn’t received any help from a psychiatrist, so his condition had not improved.
Having explained his memory blockage, Gudjon felt the haze started to clear a little. He began to entertain the notion he had been in the Volkswagen that drove to the airport. ‘Saevar could have been there,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure if Erla was there. Kristjan I don’t know personally. Therefore, I can’t say whether I went on this trip. But it is quite certain that there were people in the car.’ He sounded confused and made no sense but he was slowly pulling himself into the picture, entertaining the notion that he had been in Keflavik that night.
By the time they reached Keflavik it was dark. As they entered the main street, Gudjon commented, ‘I suspect we have driven here.’
The car carried on toward the Hafnarbudin, the simple wooden cafe that hung out over the ocean, where Geirfinnur was headed on his last night alive. The police said Gudjon had taken over control of their direction, telling the police where to go. They drove to the harbour, deserted where the shells of boats and warehouses were creaking in the evening wind. Gudjon wanted to get out of the car to take a closer look but the police wouldn’t let him.
He asked if they could go back to Grettisgata, the shabby street in East Reykjavik where Kristjan lived. When they arrived, Gudjon said he had never been there – but he had been in the house next door.
When he returned to his cell, Gudjon lay for a while, then sat down to complete his diary for the day. It had become a vital document to him; it was his attempt to find an answer to the case, to make sense of reality:
‘I see no reason other than trying to help with the case the best I can. It’s a pity I remember so little. Went on a pleasant drive to Keflavik… I want to solve the case immediately and receive a heavy and long sentence. I’m finished.
He said later the ride had come to nothing, he could not remember anything. He didn’t know what cars they were driving on the night Geirfinnur went missing. He might have seen a fight in the harbour but he couldn’t properly see it as he said it ‘was dark and I am very short-sighted’. He couldn’t remember seeing a body. He wasn’t sure if he was involved in digging a grave for the body. He was a hesitant suspect, feeling for answers. With each passing day, he was moving closer towards admitting his involvement and his guilt.
The next day Gretar returned to interview Gudjon and his diary reflected the growing importance of the detective in moving Gudjon towards a confession:
I had a long conversation with Gretar today. I’m trying to remember the trip to Keflavik. I’m tired after this. I wish I could remember all this. Gretar says I just need courage and we will try again tomorrow.
Gudjon would later realise the difficulty he was in: ‘The case was impossible. Nobody could turn back. The police could not, the papers could not, and the judges could not. It had all gone too far.’
At the beginning of December, Gudjon was remanded in custody for another 60 days. The court was told, ‘very large gaps remain in his account’ but he couldn’t be released as it was feared he would influence potential witnesses.
16
December 1976
On 8 December, late at night, when the streets had gone quiet and there was a low hum over the city, Gudjon sat down for an interview with Gretar. After a month of these conversations they were comfortable in each other’s company. In different circumstances they would have shared a drink and a smoke inside one of the city’s bars, or in summer sit outside, wishing they could be back among the fresh stillness of the countryside.
By now Gudjon had convinced himself he had taken part in Geirfinnur’s murder. He had been taken out on another journey to Keflavik with the detectives Gretar Saemundsson and Eggert Bjarnason, and there was a new urgency to the case which Gudjon wrote about in his diary: ‘They want it over before Christmas. I’m feeling so bad at the moment. So tired. I can’t remember anything. I do not know anything. And I’m losing my mind. I’m completely worn out.’
Gudjon and Gretar were inside Sidumuli, in the Corner, and Gudjon was racked with guilt. First for the Klubburin men: Einar Bollason, Magnus Leopoldsson, Valdimar Olsen and Sigurbjorn Eriksson. He knew when they were arrested that they were innocent and it weighed heavily on him not to have had the courage to tell the police about it. He no longer saw himself as an innocent; he was caught up in the maelstrom where the police, prison guards and the public were all convinced the suspects were guilty.
Gretar wanted to go through the case systematically, covering each key aspect as he went along. Gudjon knew this was important; he had been told this was the final interrogation. He said he was going to explain, ‘The truth in this case as best as I can. A few points are unclear in my memory but I might recall them later.’ Gudjon began talking and he would not stop for the next five and a half hours:
Saevar arrived with Erla and asked Gudjon to bring him to the airport, he was late for an appointment in Keflavik. Gudjon was reluctant, but finally agreed to take them. They drove a light blue Volkswagen that Saevar had at his disposal and there were four of them heading to Keflavik. He remembered they talked about getting tough with the man they were going to meet if he did not want to negotiate with them.
When they got to Keflavik there were a lot of people around the cinema on the main street and Saevar told them all to duck down. They drove on to a building marked ‘Pipe Making Factory’ and stopped there. He said the passengers got out of the car, except Erla. They went behind a building and Gudjon drove to the corner of the main street. When the passengers returned, Saevar was upset about not being able to meet the man and talked about making a phone call. They drove towards the cafe and a passenger in the back seat got out to make a call. When he returned he told them the man was coming.
The man arrived and got in the car. He didn’t say his name but Gudjon became aware this was Geirfinnur Einarsson. Saevar talked to Geirfinnur in the car and the others joined in a little in the discussions. They were talking about alcohol and generally fishing for information from one other. Saevar offered Geirfinnur money for getting alcohol or information about it. Gudjon said when they got to the harbour, Saevar and Geirfinnur still hadn’t come to an agreement. He couldn’t remember why he stopped the car, but the men all got out. Three of them ended up in a fight with Geirfinnur that led to his death. Gudjon remembered that Geirfinnur was walking away, but he caught hold of him, to stop him. He couldn’t remember if he punched Geirfinnur, but he remembered grabbing him around the neck. He didn’t remember the injuries but there was no blood on him after the fight. He didn’t notice when the corpse was placed in the car but he remembered the words Saevar said as they drove towards Reykjavik, that he was an accomplice to murder. Gudjon had become very frightened because of what happened and didn’t have the guts to look in the back of the car but there was no doubt that the body was in the vehicle.
Erla had left the car when they were in the harbour and her jacket was still in the car. He later read a statement from a driver who said she had taken a ride to Reykjavik. (Although in reality, the driver had already seen her photo in the newspaper and couldn’t be sure he had given her a lift on the night in question.) On the way to Reykjavik, the three of them discussed what should be done with the body but didn’t reach an agreement. Gudjon drove out on Alftanesveg and they stopped to put the bod
y there. They then drove to a district heating plant in Crustal, but he said his memory might be wrong about that. He didn’t remember having to take the body from the car or having driven into the alleyway at the back of Grettisgata 82. Gudjon said he thought Saevar had borrowed shovels but he was not sure. He said the fourth man he had talked about in the car was Kristjan and he didn’t know him before this trip.
The interrogation ended at 5am. Gudjon had confessed to the policeman he trusted most. He admitted to being one of the killers. Gudjon was the last piece in the jigsaw – he was the driver the team had spent months trying to find. He was taken back to his cell drained, physically and emotionally.
After waiting weeks for this statement and an admission of guilt, it was a strange confession. It was full of gaps and holes and there were still many unanswered questions. For example, why would they drive the body back to Reykjavik where it could be discovered, rather than dispose of it in the wasteland of Reykjanes where the investigators believed they had already dumped Gudmundur Einarsson’s body?
Gudjon recalled how Gretar didn’t react much as he confessed to the crime, but he knew the task force would be happy, ‘because I couldn’t take it back, because it proved I was guilty of something’. Gretar’s role as befriender had worked, they had their confession.
After Gretar had left, Gudjon turned to his diary to try to make sense of what he had told the detective:
I woke up late and started talking to Gretar and we talked for a long time. It ended at supper. We started talking again after supper and talked until five o’clock in the morning. And then I confessed my part in the death of Geirfinnur Einarsson. And I gave for the third time my account of a trip to Keflavik which was rather unlucky for me of all the trips I have taken in my life.
It was like he had woken up from a dream. The weeks of being told only he could solve the case, that he must help his nation out of this crisis, had got to him. He hoped his admission would provide some relief for the public, who had been consumed with the case:
Let’s hope that Geirfinnur’s body will be found in the next few days and the nation can draw a deep breath and relax. It seems to me I have become immune to such things. I’m like a machine. I find it inhuman. There is nothing that affects me anymore, I have closed myself emotionally. Actually, I’m dead.
Confessing to the murder hadn’t brought the release he hoped for. He concluded, ‘My burden is heavy.’
At the same time the police had Gudjon’s confession about Geirfinnur, the prosecutor’s office took a major step forward in the Gudmundur Einarsson case. After months of imprisonment and interrogation, on 8 December, Kristjan Vidar Vidarsson, Saevar Marino Cieselski and Tryggvi Runar Leifsson were formally accused of breaking article 211 of the Icelandic penal code and charged with the murder of Gudmundur Einarsson.
The charges stated that in the early hours of 27 January 1974, the three men had attacked Gudmundur Einarsson in the basement of Hamarsbraut 11. Kristjan Vidar used a knife in the attack in which Gudmundur had been killed and his body was taken to an unknown location. Albert Klahn Skaftasson was also charged with participation in the murder on account of having provided transport to help Saevar, Kristjan and Tryggvi remove the body of Gudmundur in order to destroy evidence of the offence. This happened in January 1974 and later in the summer of 1974 when Gudmundur’s remains were transferred to yet another location. This had been achieved using a car that Albert had driven and had at his disposal.
In addition to the murder charges, Tryggvi Runar was charged with separate offences of arson, rape and theft. The arson charge dated back to 1972 when he was held in Litla Hraun jail and had set fire to some old newspapers in a wood drying room. The rape was in October 1974 when he was accused of attacking an 18-year-old woman in her flat in Reykjavik. The thefts were in 1974, one from a ceramics shop, and he was also charged with stealing a wallet.
Saevar was charged with theft and, together with Erla, theft, forgery and fraud. Saevar and Kristjan were also charged with various thefts. Saevar and Gudjon were charged together for drugs offences.
The police and prosecutor still didn’t have Gudmundur’s body or any idea where it was. There was still no valid forensic evidence – all they had were the confessions – but they felt these were enough to secure a conviction.
In the absence of a jury in the Icelandic court system, the case was assigned to three judges who would decide the suspects’ fate: Ármanns Kristinsson, Haraldur Briem Henrysson and Gunnlaugur Briem. The judges would assess the evidence and then hear testimony in open court before passing their judgement.
The day the men were charged, one of the detectives, Harold Arnason, wrote a report about a conversation he had with Kristjan where he had set out a tale that was incredible even by the standards of the Gudmundur and Geirfinnur investigations. It concerned a young man from the nearby Faroe Islands who had gone missing in September 1974 and was never found. Kristjan claimed he had killed the man with Saevar and Tryggvi. The police account doesn’t give any details of how or why Kristjan said this happened. Instead, the police account focuses on his macabre story of the disposal of the man’s body:
Kristjan Vidar said that his maternal grandmother had helped to partially dismember and hide the body of a Faroese man who has been missing since September 1974. Kristjan reported that after the death of the man, Saevar and Tryggvi came with the body to the basement and into the laundry room at Grettisgata 82. They came to the conclusion that they would need to cut the body up. Kristjan was expected to do it, Tryggvi called him a coward if he couldn’t. Kristjan met his grandmother outside and he forbade her to go down into the laundry room but this only served to arouse the curiosity of the old woman. Saevar and Tryggvi went up to Kristjan’s bedroom, took sleeping pills and slept until noon the next day. Then they put the body in two bags and Albert Klahn was asked to transfer it in his Toyota. Kristjan said they decided to go with the bags to the Fossvogs garden and bury them there. His grandmother was part of this discussion and was not happy with the hiding place and that led to arguments between them. Kristjan said he wasn’t sure what had become of the Faroese man’s remains but he is pretty sure his grandmother does.
The detective noted that Kristjan was being vague a lot of the time: ‘The truth of his narrative is questionable, but personally I find it doubtful that he lies about his grandmother, who seems to him very dear, not to mention how serious the offence is.’
It was an astonishing, crazy story; clear evidence of how Kristjan’s memory was being degraded and how he was creating false memories, mixing up elements from the stories he had constructed about Gudmundur and Geirfinnur. It was never followed up but the story highlighted the disturbed state of Kristjan’s mind, and showed how far the police had travelled that they would countenance such a tale.
It ended up in the newspapers. Visir carried a front-page story with the headline, ‘Remand prisoners in Gudmundur and Geirfinnur cases: suspected of being involved in a third disappearance.’ Dagbladid ran the same story and said the driver in the Gudmundur Einarsson case may have been involved. It didn’t name Albert Klahn, but he had already been named as the man accused of helping the others dispose of Gudmundur’s body.
The day after the charges were filed, there was another front-page headline, ‘Geirfinnur to the prosecutor in January?’ The deadline had been set by Karl Schutz, who was about to return to Germany for the Christmas holidays. He would come back in the New Year for a brief period and wanted the cases wrapped up in January and the files sent to the prosecutor.
With this deadline in mind, the police ramped up efforts to find Geirfinnur’s body. Once they had his remains, the case would be complete. On 9 December, Saevar had a five-hour interrogation with the detectives when he went through details on how he had met Gerifinnur in Klubburin days before his disappearance:
Saevar was trying to reach the man’s wallet and started talking to him. He often used to do this, to talk to the men he was intending to rob. He aske
d the man if they had been together on a fishing boat but the man said they hadn’t and Saevar asked him his name. He was Geirfinnur from Keflavik. Saevar thought there was someone with that name who was involved in smuggling, and he asked if he would be interested in bringing in some alcohol business and Geirfinnur answered he would. Kristjan had heard their conversation. Saevar expressed his willingness to come into direct contact with the party who had the alcohol, but his real purpose was to find out where the alcohol was stored in order to steal it. Saevar suggested 50,000 to 70,000 kronor in payment for the information. Geirfinnur was pleased and gave him his name and address but not his phone number. Saevar said he and Erla had later gone to Gudjon’s in Erla’s Land Rover and told him about this.
Saevar convinced Gudjon and Kristjan to take part in the plan to meet Geirfinnur and then steal the smuggled alcohol. The next day, on 18 November, Saevar started to put his plan into action.
The electrical system in the Land Rover vehicle was defective so they intended to take a rental car. It was decided to go to Keflavik the next evening. In the afternoon he and Erla went to Geysir rental company and hired a light blue Volkswagen. Saevar paid 5,000 kronor and told the man not to make a written contract, which he agreed to. Saevar had previously leased vehicles leased in this way from this man.
After going through the details of the killing, Saevar provided the police with a final location for Geirfinnur’s remains. During that same, long interrogation he went through the plans with the detectives they made after killing Geirfinnur:
He said they drove the body straight into the alley behind Kristjan’s home. He and Kristjan carried the body into the basement and put it under a pile of clothing. He reminded Kristjan to make sure nothing of any kind was put on top of the body. They had a brief discussion at Kristjan’s apartment about what to do with the body and Kristjan said that it wasn’t possible to have it in there a long time. The next day he met Gudjon at Mokka cafe on Skolavordustigur and they discussed what should be done with the body. Gudjon mentioned several options, such as burning it, immersing it in water or burying it. Saevar explained that on 21 November 1974 he went with Erla to Grettisgata 82 in her Land Rover. Erla waited in Kristjan’s apartment while they brought Geirfinnur’s body out of the laundry room and wrapped it in something, tied a string around and put it in the back of the Land Rover. In the car were two shovels that Gudjon had lent them. They drove to the Raudholar, stopping on the way at a gas station where they bought a five-litre plastic canister of petrol. They drove into the Raudholar and dug a pit no larger than the body. Then they poured petrol over it and Saevar said he lit a match and threw it onto the body. Erla was close by and watched it: the corpse burned quickly and a very bad smell came off it and then they buried it.
