by Simon Cox
Erla too portrayed Gudjon as a dangerous man; she said she had been frightened to mention his name to the police as she was afraid of him and what he might do to her.
Karl Schutz had been listening to this testimony and was increasingly certain Gudjon was involved in the case. In his report to the Justice Minister on 5 November, Schutz said they suspected Gudjon Skarphedinsson ‘had been present in the smuggling in Keflavik 19/11/74, and participated in the fight with Geirfinnur’. In the past, this suspicion alone would have prompted Gudjon to be hauled in to Sidumuli immediately, but Schutz was more systematic than this. He wanted a list of possible criminal cases Gudjon had been involved in, even if he hadn’t been charged. This information could be useful during the questioning, it would help Schutz to gauge how truthful Gudjon was being. A week after sending his report to the minister, Schutz had all of the information he needed to make his move against ‘the foreigner’.
On 12 November, in the quiet of the morning, Sigurbjorn and Eggert arrived at the apartment to arrest Gudjon. He was asleep and appeared bemused when they showed up, but he didn’t put up any kind of struggle. They searched the apartment but found no weapons, drugs or forensic evidence to link him to the crime. But when they looked under his desk they found a small notebook. Flicking through it, they came upon two pages that seemed odd and were of immense interest to them. Gudjon had written notes about when Geirfinnur first went missing.
Gudjon was taken to the Corner where Eggert had questioned him in May. This time, Eggert and Sigurbjorn told him he was suspected of involvement in Geirfinnur Einarsson’s death. The detectives used Saevar and Erla’s testimony to take him back over the events of 19 November 1974. They said Gudjon had arranged the meeting with Geirfinnur. ‘You spoke to Geirfinnur on the phone? You arranged a meeting with him at 9.30 in Keflavik?’ the detectives asked him. Eggert accused Gudjon of being the instigator who then contacted the others. Saevar, Erla and Kristjan had told them independently that Gudjon had arranged the meeting with Geirfinnur. (Saevar, Erla and Kristjan had done the same when they had implicated the Klubburin men, and this had been shown to be false, but Schutz and his task force didn’t seem to be worried about the suspects doing the same thing again.) Gudjon listened to this, increasingly annoyed. His reply was unambiguous: ‘I never had a meeting with Geirfinnur. I didn’t know him at all. I never met him. I had no contact with anyone else in Keflavik. This is all a lie.’ His denial couldn’t have been more emphatic. Gudjon was adamant that all he knew about Geirfinnur was what he had read in the newspapers.
Gudjon repeated what he had told the detectives in May: how he had met Saevar when he had taught him at school and after that they had intermittent contact. Saevar was always the one seeking him out, asking for favours, inviting himself around to Gudjon’s apartment. He definitely was not a close friend and Gudjon only knew Erla through Saevar. As for Kristjan, he had never met him and knew nothing about him.
The minutes turned into hours. The detectives believed the gang had transported Geirfinnur’s body to Kristjan’s apartment in Reykjavik where Gudjon had played a key role in deciding where to dump it. Gudjon was getting agitated: ‘I have never been to Kristjan Vidar’s home in Grettisgata. I know nothing about the conversation about moving Geirfinnur’s body. I didn’t take part in carrying corpses. To tell the truth, I believe that Geirfinnur was never killed. Perhaps he is abroad somewhere.’
Gudjon still had his barbed sense of humour, but there was little to laugh about. The police line of questioning was placing Gudjon front and centre in Geirfinnur’s death and burial. They even accused him of going south to Selfoss, where steam rose from the town’s geyser covering the woods in a hot mist, to look for potential burial spots. ‘I know nothing about the burial place,’ Gudjon replied. ‘This is all a fabrication, as I have repeatedly said.’
After almost six hours, the detectives called an end to the interview and brought Gudjon back to the sickly green cell, number six. He was still in shock. He assumed, as his fellow inmates previously had, that the police would soon release him. It was his first taste of his new life as one of Iceland’s worst criminals.
Gudjon was questioned three more times that day and his ordeal ended at 2.30 in the morning. In total he had been questioned for over 11 hours without a lawyer being present. Unlike the other suspects, though, there were no threats from the detectives of indefinite incarceration and he was remanded in custody for a comparatively lenient 20 days.
Having spent so long on the case, the team had an established playbook. In between the ‘official’ interviews they would get a detective to befriend Gudjon and get information from him informally in his cell. Gretar Saemaundsson was chosen for this task. He was young and slim with a friendly relaxed manner, but underneath a steely determination. Gudjon immediately liked him. ‘He was a farmer’s boy like me,’ he recalled. ‘He was the same age as me, we had a lot of things in common, we knew the same places.’ They would chat about growing up on a farm, and the joys of being in the countryside out of the city. Gudjon found, ‘I had forgotten sometimes that he really was policeman and more of a friend.’ Gretar was no more a friend to Gudjon, though, than the young detective Sigurbjorn was to Erla. As an experienced detective Gretar’s job was to help solve the case and he would feed back whatever Gudjon told him to Schutz and the task force.
The police were also being fed stories by Saevar, Kristjan and Erla. Seavar said it was Gudjon, the older, more intelligent man who was in control on the night Geirfinnur died. Erla kept mentioning Gudjon’s involvement and that she was certain he was in Keflavik and had helped to move the body. Kristjan thought Gudjon was ‘the foreign looking guy’ who had been driving the car to Keflavik.
Gudjon could see, ‘Everybody was making up stories. And the problem was to get the stories to fit together. The road to Keflavik, what happened in Keflavik and how we got back to Reykjavik? Where did we go after that?’
After that brutal first day, the pace of the interviews slowed. To Gudjon it appeared the police were running out of steam. He sensed from the detectives that ‘They were about to give it up, there was no way to build a case out of it – it was a muddle, they didn’t have anything.’
Gudjon was in a muddle of his own. While he was sure he wasn’t in Keflavik when Geirfinur went missing, he had no clear recollection of what he was doing that night. He would get blackouts sometimes when he would drink – maybe that had happened on that night and he couldn’t remember?
After three days in custody, Gudjon got to see Karl Schutz. As soon as he walked into the Corner to face his new interrogator, Gudjon could tell immediately that things would be different. ‘Schutz was very tough and you better do what he wanted to, if you want to have peace. He was able to beat you up. You know these old German motherfuckers.’ Gudjon had an advantage over the other suspects in that he could speak to Schutz in German. The detective thought Gudjon was the brains of the operation, with Kristjan as the brawn and Saevar the fixer with the street smarts.
Gudjon had managed to get a lawyer, Harold Blondal. Gudjon didn’t think he was ideal fit – he specialised in shipping and business. But Gudjon didn’t have much choice when it came to lawyers, so he had to make do with whoever would take on his case.
Schutz focused on two areas in his interview. The first was a phone call Saevar had made to Gudjon from Copenhagen in April 1975. Gudjon was at home with his kids when the phone rang. He said he didn’t know who was on the other end of the line and had no choice but to accept the call. He said Saevar had started ‘asking about news from Iceland. I said there was nothing new, nothing more to add’. He remembered it as a very brief call, as Gudjon was paying the bill. Schutz thought he was lying as Saevar had told them a different version. According to Saevar, he asked Gudjon if it was safe to come home and Gudjon had told him to say nothing about Geirfinnur. When this was put to him, Gudjon shot back, ‘This is a pure lie.’
The second element that Schutz kept returning to was the not
ebook the police had found in Gudjon’s apartment. Inside were detailed notes about the first days after Geirfinnur’s disappearance. Why did he have newspaper cuttings only about the first few days? Gudjon’s explanation was that having been questioned in May, he decided to do some homework as he knew nothing about the case. He went to the national library and went through the newspaper cuttings to make notes. It wasn’t out of some morbid curiosity about the case, he claimed. ‘People disappear all the time,’ Gudjon told the police, ‘I can’t say it’s my cup of tea.’ Schutz’s theory was the notes were to help Gudjon contruct a plausible alibi if he was questioned by the police again.
During these initial interrogations Gudjon was still trying to figure out where he was and what he was doing two years before on the night of 19 November 1974. He thought he was in his apartment with his kids doing some DIY. But lined up against him were Saevar, Erla and Kristjan, all of whom said he was in Keflavik. How would all three of them construct the same story?
‘You have no alibi,’ the detectives told him. ‘We have your fingerprints and we have evidence and we’re sure that you’re not telling the truth. You should tell us the truth.’ They didn’t have evidence, that’s why they were relying on him to tell the truth.
The police gave Gudjon some paper to write down his thoughts and he began keeping a daily journal, written in his careful, neat script. His first entry was dated 18 November 1976: ‘I know nothing about this case… Sometimes I feel guilty, that I’m guilty of something but I can’t remember what happened… This is taking away all my strength. I must be ill.’
The diary would be vital for Gudjon, a way of trying to make sense of the situation and the internal monologue running though his mind. In this first week he was intensely aware of the shame he had brought on his family. ‘I’m a very proud man,’ he recalled, ‘so if I made mistakes it takes time to make up for that.’ But the police told him there was a way he could instantly put right his mistakes and make his family and his daughter proud of him, by helping them solve this terrible crime. ‘I was the only one who knew all about it and could tell the truth about it. I was the one. I was different, I was older.’
The police thought that exploiting Gudjon’s strong attachment to his family could yield results. They wouldn’t let his wife or mother see him. Instead they brought Gudjon’s uncle, the imposing figure of Jon Isberg, to the jail. Isberg was the sheriff of Issafjordur, in the Westfjords. He was tall, solid and bald with thick glasses and liked wearing his official uniform.
The police thought Isberg could sway Gudjon and persuade him to open up. Isberg was only in the cell for 15 minutes, just long enough to tell his nephew he had to confess. ‘This must be solved,’ he insisted, ‘we must have it out of the world.’ Gudjon said his uncle saw the case as very straightforward. ‘He talked like it was easy to see I was involved, there was no doubt in his mind about that.’ The access Isberg was allowed contrasted with that allowed to Gudjon’s lawyer, who was struggling to see him. The intervention didn’t work; Gudjon was only annoyed by the presumption that he was guilty.
The second anniversary of Geirfinnur’s disappearance on 19 November brought a flurry of press activity. The lack of progress in the case led to questions of whether the Icelandic criminal justice system was capable of dealing with such a serious and complex crime. Journalists concluded that much was still unknown about Geirfinnur, and the only certainty was that he went to meet an unknown person on the evening of 19 November 1974. Kristjan, Saevar and Erla may have played a role, but it wasn’t clear exactly what they had done. It was clear from the previous two years of enquiries that the police weren’t capable of handling it, which was why Schutz had been called in.
While this was happening, Gudjon’s mental health was deteriorating as the doubts built within him that maybe he was involved after all. Back in his cell, laid flat out on the bed staring into space, he began to blame himself for his clouded memory. The guilt that he felt piling in him was reflected in his diary entries, like this one from 20 November:
New humiliation, disgrace and shame. I, who lived in the belief in the two years previously that I knew nothing about the matter and now I have been involved in it… Am I insane or have I been there? I say yes to that. Much of what I have done in recent years was insanity.
By afternoon, the light had faded and ahead of him was the empty darkness and silence of the evening inside his green stone tomb. After his first few days in detention, Gudjon would frequently end up crying during his daily interviews with Gretar and the other detectives. In the evening he would always turn to his diary as a source of solace. Two days later he wrote: ‘I have lived with this for two years absolutely convinced that I had nothing to do with this. But now I think things are becoming a bit clearer. If only I knew if I was involved in this.’
The next day, when he was brought again before Karl Schutz, Gudjon didn’t mince his words: ‘This is cursed nonsense. I was not there that night. I’m sure.’ But doubts had started to creep into his testimony, as well as into his diary. ‘Are you involved in Geirfinnur, or can you not remember?’ Schutz asked. For the first time Gudjon voiced the suspicions that had started out as fine threads and had begun to knit together, forming thicker strands in his mind. ‘I don’t remember why I say no. As far as I know. I have nothing more to say. This is all odd.’ The interrogations were getting to him, eating away at him and affecting his ability to sleep:
Nights are the worst. I pray desperately for sleep but it is slow in coming, and I have intrusive thoughts. Oh, my God, my God why have you forsaken me? Because my life is destroyed, reputation defied, home, children, marriage, friends, acquaintances, relatives… I’m a sick man. In reality, I am not an evil man, but hopelessly defective… I wished I had never touched cannabis. It destroyed my life… If only I knew if I had participated in this or not.
He wanted to speak to Gretar, the policeman who had become his ‘friend’. He valued their time together and wanted to help the investigation because of his friendship with Gretar. Gudjon did have one other regular visitor, the prison chaplain, Jon Bjarman. Bjarman wasn’t there to make him confess, he sat and listened to the confused young man and it gave Gudjon some hope.
His diary entry for 25 November was more positive: ‘Today I had a good visit from Rev Jon Bjarman. We talked a lot about the case and more. He is nice, and believes in my innocence.’
Gretar had been to see him too that day. Gudjon wanted him to fill in the gaps in his memory. He asked Gretar if it was true that he had driven to Keflavik. He had no idea if he had, but already he trusted the policeman so implicitly that he was willing to believe what Gretar said. This gave the young detective huge influence over Gudjon. He told him to write down everything, but in his diary Gudjon wrote how his policeman friend’s tone was negative:
Gretar came and suggested a lot of things and indicated that I was in a bad position in regard to the case. He wants me to get used to the idea that I could be a murderer. This is too much. According to this I should admit what Saevar and Erla are saying but it must be a misunderstanding.
For Erla there was no misunderstanding, she was sure Gudjon had been at Keflavik harbour. ‘I am fully confident, 100 per cent,’ she stated in the interviews she had given since Gudjon had been arrested. She said they picked him up in Reykjavik and drove to Keflavik. They went to the harbour where she saw Gudjon talking with Geirfinnur. When Geirfinnur tried to walk away, Gudjon grabbed hold of him and started fighting and Kristjan Vidar went to help. When she saw this she ran away and hid.
Erla later said, ‘I was scared and weak and needed to get to my baby and that’s why I lied… I was lying the whole time, it was just me alone in my bed with a nightmare.’ But Erla’s bad dream on a dark, snowy night, had turned into a living nightmare for the other suspects, all of whom she had implicated.
Erla wasn’t allowed outside in the old prison’s scratchy asphalt exercise yard or to communicate with any other inmates. The old prison was in the
centre of Reykjavik, yards from the majestic white stone Hallgrimskirkja which towered over the low-rise houses with their bright tin roofs and the featureless apartment blocks. It was less harsh than Sidumuli, but also less secure. On 23 November Erla was in her corner cell when she heard a noise outside her window. When she looked out she couldn’t believe it; there were two figures on the roof of the jail and they were heading towards her. When they reached her window they whispered, ‘We’ll be here tomorrow night. What do you want – Coca Cola or maybe something else?’ Erla was bemused; she had no idea who they were but grateful for the human contact.
The next night the figures returned as promised but as they got to the cell, the lights went on outside and the men were surrounded by the police. The police had been listening, ready to pounce and within moments they were inside Erla’s cell. They forced her to strip and then searched her cell. She was taken to Borgutun 7 the next day and questioned about the men. She had no idea who they were, but the police had found some slips of paper with phone numbers on them. The men had come armed with a camera and tape recorder and planned to get an interview with Erla that they could sell to the newspapers. Even if they had got an interview it’s unlikely it would have changed the public’s perception of Erla as a malign force who was part of a criminal network.
Gretar and his bosses were convinced that Gudjon was also part of this network. The police could see he was in a delicate state – emotional and struggling to talk about the case. They got the prison doctor to visit him. He prescribed chlorpromazine which Gudjon had taken before to treat and control his depression. Gudjon said this affected his police interviews: ‘I turned very carefree in what I said. And of course I was supposed to help my nation out of this mess.’
It was inevitable that one day Gudjon would be taken out of the prison for a drive with Schutz and the detectives. It was late afternoon on 28 November, dusk in an Icelandic winter when occasionally a salmon pink sky would bring a brief splash of colour before the darkness swallowed up the light. Gudjon had Schutz and his translator Peter Eggerz for company.