by Simon Cox
Then there was Gudjon, the fourth member of the gang that night. He was also in custody and the reporters asked why it had taken so long to arrest him. Schutz wasn’t going to take the flak for this, he handed over to Orn Hoskuldsson who admitted this was a difficult one to answer. When Gudjon was interviewed in May 1976, the Klubburin men had just been released, attracting huge criticism in the media. At that time the investigators weren’t quite sure exactly how Gudjon was involved in the case and they didn’t want more bad publicity for arresting the wrong man.
Schutz let the voyeurs of the press into some of the work they had been carrying out in the past six months. At first, they had tried to find witnesses but he said they soon gave up. ‘The biggest difficulty was that is has been a long time since the murders happened. We couldn’t work that well with witnesses and suspects because their memories had faded. There were many details. In fact, solving the case was like a mosaic.’
The detectives also found that many of the friends and associates of Saevar and the rest of the gang were unstable and their testimony was of limited value. ‘After two months, we turned around completely,’ Schutz explained. ‘We applied the same approach as in Germany. We found a few fixed points we could use between the defendants. We always had to be alert because Kristjan Vidar, Saevar and Erla tried repeatedly to mislead us, and they were often subtle… We can tell you that we have five confessions from people of whom three will most likely have caused the death of Geirfinnur.’ These people weren’t a ‘mafia’, as the press had speculated, they were middle ranking criminals who he said ‘used every opportunity they could to get their hands on money. It is beyond reasonable doubt… it’s safe to assume it’s an open and shut case.’
There were still questions left unanswered, of course, the biggest of which was the location of bodies. ‘We’re not in a position to give you a fully solved case because the bodies haven’t been found. Those who caused the deaths have made statements about where they are buried.’ They had made many attempts to dig at various locations he explained, but the cold weather meant the ground was too hard. He said, ‘It’s also possible the locations might be wrong. Maybe those responsible are afraid if we find the bodies then we will know how they were killed. Or they hope a trial without a body will end more favourably for them.’
Schutz conceded the case was based ‘95 per cent on the confession statements but we were very careful to substantiate what they said. We came to the conclusion the confessions were widely plausible. The result also relies on the sequence of events which is almost beyond all reasonable doubt.’ Having set out for two and a half hours, chapter and verse, the case and his belief in the confessions they had obtained, Schutz declared, ‘You know that in a state ruled by law, no one can be found guilty except by a court, so we can’t tell you that the suspects are guilty… [but] solving of this case must be considered a good result above all from the point of view that it has been a great mystery in Iceland for many years and hasn’t given Icelanders any peace.’
Having listened to Schutz’s version of events, the journalists wanted a comment from the Justice Minister, Olafur Johannesson, the man who had brought Schutz to Iceland. In a statement he enthused about him: ‘I am extremely thankful to the men who worked on this,’ he said, ‘and especially Karl Schutz, the German criminal expert.’ His sign-off would be picked up by the papers the next day: ‘The nightmare is over.’
Karl Schutz’s parting gift before returning to a peaceful retirement in Germany was a final report on the Reykjavik investigation of the killing of Geirfinnur Einarsson, primarily for Olafur Johannesson, who had lavished praise on him for solving ‘a wicked crime’. Schutz wrote his report before leaving the brutalist hotel that had been his home for the past six months.
He reported that Saevar, Kristjan, Gudjon and Erla had deliberately tried to complicate the issue for a long time but had now largely admitted their crimes. There were many similarities in their accounts of the preparation, implementation and aftermath of the crime. Gudjon though, was still a problem. Schutz was still angry about the lie detector test, which had led to Gudjon changing his mind about his involvement and not submitting a final confession. For weeks he had avoided being formally questioned. When he did talk to the detectives he kept saying, ‘I do not remember exactly.’
There was another section stamped ‘CONFIDENTIAL’. This went into the motivation for the killing and the personalities of the suspects. His harshest condemnation was for the two men who had been charged with both murders, Saevar and Kristjan. Schutz said the interrogations showed the killing of Geirfinnur was not something that got out of hand but had been pre-meditated:
Before the act was committed, the offenders (Saevar and Kristjan) had discussed killing Geirfinnur and that they should take the action together. It is the pattern of these defendants that gives rise to suspicion that they had a careless attitude towards the death of Geirfinnur. Both had murdered Gudmundur Einarsson to prove that they were capable of killing a man for a trivial reason. Saevar imagined that Geirfinnur’s death could be beneficial in two ways. Even though he (Geirfinnur) had been vague about the hiding place of the alcohol Saevar could recover 70,000 kronor and eliminate an uncomfortable witness (to the smuggling).
It wasn’t clear how Saevar would find out where the alcohol was as all the suspects said Geirfinnur didn’t know. During his months of interviews with these two killers, Schutz found particularly troubling signs with Kristjan and his need to physically dominate others:
His ‘combativeness’ seems to be his only weapon in order to gain recognition. He uses every opportunity to show his strength and he seems to be keen on ‘destroying’ his opponent. For this reason you should not ignore the possibility that Kristjan might be seized by a kind of ‘killing lust’.
Although Schutz believed Kristjan had dealt the final blows to Geirfinnur, he had not acted alone. Saevar had always been the boss in their relationship and he was just as culpable for the death as he knew things could turn ugly.
Although he is well aware that it could take a dangerous turn, due to the fact that Geirfinnur, in his opinion, was not willing to tell them where the alcohol was stored. If so, he has, to some extent, deliberately failed to fulfill his duty to stop Kristjan. From this point of view, Saevar has killed Geirfinnur through Kristjan, looking at Kristjan’s actions as if they were his own.
When he moved on to Gudjon, it was a different matter. He said he wasn’t violent and his personality and behaviour suggested he had no intention of killing Geirfinnur, but his inaction clearly irked Schutz. He explained that Saevar and Kristjan could have organised Geirfinnur’s death:
However, Saevar has clearly stated that Gudjon should have gained his share of the ‘business’. There was clearly a deal with him. According to the results of the investigation, he was a driver on the way to Keflavík and was actively involved in the basement of the house at Grettisgata. There are no reasonable arguments that he does not look at his company’s actions as if it were his own work. Anyone who goes for illegal purposes to a pitch-black harbour must be held responsible for the operation. He had done nothing to prevent the actions of his friends. It is clear his excuse ‘they would have tortured me’ must be considered incredible. There was almost deliberate negligence.
Then there was Erla, the person who had started it all. Schutz had never believed her when she had tried to retract her confession on their very first meeting. He felt that through the work of the detectives assigned to each suspect they had built up good character profiles for them. Erla had helped Saevar with various offences such as fraud and theft, but kept quiet about serious criminal offenses such as the Gudmundur case:
She gave police information that led to the situation being investigated. She gave this information of her own accord. It was also her statement that brought the Geirfinnur case to a halt. With a deliberately incorrect testimony she drew innocent citizens into the matter which caused them to be subjected to many months of isolation.
This of course was the Klubburin suspects and her half-brother Einar who had spent three and a half months locked up in isolation. This was nothing compared to Saevar and his ‘gang’ but still enough to have damaged them. Schutz said Erla was only present at most to provide ‘psychological assistance’. She hadn’t gone to help Geirfinnur or to the police as she was worried about prosecution, but also felt bound to Saevar and that she had done this ‘on her own initiative’.
Schutz reported that her testimony was very confusing: it changed from day to day and she had frequently lied. Her confession that she had shot Geirfinnur was thought very unreliable. Schutz didn’t elaborate on how they decided when such a consummate liar was telling the truth. This was undoubtedly when it suited the police most and matched the testimonies of others.
There was a final chapter to his report, titled ‘Secondary Effects’. This traced six cases that had cropped up during the investigation that needed further investigation. The principal one was Kristjan’s highly dubious confession of killing a third person:
Kristjan Vidar Vidarsson has during interrogations said that he had killed another man at Grettisgata in August/September 1974, with Saevar and Tryggvi Runar. He claims to have killed him with an iron bar. On closer inspection it might be possible to discuss Villy Petersen from Faroe Islands, who has disappeared this time, and nothing has been asked about him since. In parallel, Kristjan has given an account of his grandmother chopping up the body in the cellar and then it was transported in a cloth in Albert Klahn Skatfasson’s car. Kristjan’s story is very dubious, but this matter should be investigated further.
There was also Kristjan’s arson and suicide attempt while he was in the old prison, the Hegningarhusid. Saevar had confessed to an attempted burglary at a chemist in Selfoss, while Saevar, Erla and Kristjan had repeatedly made false accusations about innocent Icelandic citizens who they claimed had participated in the Geirfinnur case.
Before leaving Iceland, Schutz gave a final, expansive newspaper interview reflecting on his time in the country. He mentioned some of his previous big cases and said the Icelandic officers he worked with were diligent and hardworking but they lacked the necessary specialist skills to deal with complex cases. They needed training in modern investigation methods. ‘I’m not just talking about fingerprints or footprints,’ he said, ‘but also all possible other signs that a criminal has entered into a crime scene, including blood, sweat and even dirt, which might have come loose from the offender’s shoes.’
They also didn’t have the technology or equipment to properly analyse any forensic clues they did find, he said. The police had to use laboratories abroad, which Schutz warned ‘can cause considerable damage in the investigation of criminal cases’ as the evidence can ‘suffer major delays in research and this creates undoubtedly great danger’.
He had written to the attorney general with recommendations to improve policing in Iceland and said he didn’t rule out returning to Iceland again. Days after the final dramatic press conference he was gone, never to return.
PART 3
18
March–December 1977
With Schutz out of the picture, the suspects had a new sheriff in town. Gunnlaugur Briem, the lead judge in the court, was dapper in a casual way, with a round, friendly face and thick hair he wore neatly combed back, revealing a prominent forehead. The prosecution and defence would present their evidence to Briem and two other judges, who would ultimately pass judgement on the case. On 16 March, the judges already had the other case on their hands and were going through the Gudmundur evidence when the prosecutor formally charged Kristjan, Saevar and Gudjon with the murder of Geirfinnur Einarsson.
The charges stated they had attacked Geirfinnur in Keflavik harbour and inflicted such injuries upon him that he died. They moved his body that night in a car driven by Gudjon to the home of Kristjan Vidar at Grettisgata 82 in Reykjavík. On 21 November 1974, Kristjan, Saevar and Erla had taken Geirfinnur’s body in a car driven by Erla from Grettisgata 82 to the Raudholar, stopping at a gas station to get a petrol canister. In the Raudholar they put Geirfinnur’s remains in a shallow grave and then poured petrol on his body and burned it.
Erla was charged with participating in these acts. Kristjan Vidar was also accused of stealing Geirfinnur’s wallet from his pocket, which had 5,000 kronor inside as well as various documents and a special drawing pencil. Kristjan Vidar, Saevar and Erla were also accused of making false charges in 1976 in the statements they gave to the police investigation and the criminal court of Reykjavik falsely accusing Einar Bollason, Magnus Leopoldsson, Sigurbjorn Eriksson and Valdimar Olsen of being involved in the death of Geirfinnur and smuggling offences.
At this point the judges had already spent months going through the voluminous material the Gudmundur investigation had generated and were unhappy with the conduct of the case. This was clear in a report written in January by one of the judges, Armanns Kristinsson. He delivered a withering assessment of the Gudmundur inquiry, pointing out many flaws in the police investigation:
Nothing had been done to try to coordinate the testimony of the different parties. There had been neglect exploring significant evidence and questioning a valuable witness. There had been no discussions with other residents in Hamarsbraut 11 [Erla’s apartment] or the neighbours. There had been no discussions with the landlord when the apartment had been rented, and who was the leasee… The people who had been with Erla in the early hours of 27 January 1974 and had driven to her home to Hamarsbraut 11 have not been interrogated. Only Kristjan Vidar had described Gudmundur’s clothing on the night in question, the other suspects had not been asked to describe either his appearance nor his clothing. The police also need to examine whether Tryggvi Runar had come into the apartment in Hamarsbraut 11 on the night in question. Kristjan had said that Saevar took Gudmundur’s wallet, but that issue was not studied further by the police. The investigation needed to explore the medical aspects of the case in more detail, such as whether Gudmundur could have died from a single blow without excessive blood flow. They would need to scrutinise the plausibility of Kristjan’s testimony about using the knife.
Under the Icelandic system the detectives worked for the court, so Sigurbjorn, Eggert and the others would now work for these judges rather than Orn Hoskuldsson and Karl Schutz. The judges wanted more control over what was happening to the suspects and to get a grip of the wayward police investigation. The first Gunnlaugur Briem had known of Erla’s release in December before charges had been brought in the Geirfinnur case was when he read about it in the newspaper days later. At the end of January, Saevar had been transferred to the old prison and placed in a cell next to Kristjan’s. Gunnlaugur thought it was a dumb idea and was unhappy it had been done without his prior knowledge.
Tryggvi was also in Gunnlaugur’s sights. He had been sent to the Litla Hraun jail down on the south coast in November 1976, where he was able to socialise with other prisoners. His new-found freedom didn’t last long. In the middle of January, he was brought back to Sidumuli and the judge Gunnlaugur Briem ordered that he be kept in total isolation. Having had a brief taste of a more relaxed environment made the solitary confinement even more punishing. Throughout all of this, his diary shows that he maintained his innocence.
The judges had questioned him about the rape he had been accused of. They said Tryggvi had a harsh, angry tone towards the woman who said he had attacked her, and they had a witness who said Tryggvi had threatened to kill him. Tryggvi denied this was the case and that there had been ‘a misunderstanding with them’.
He talked about his case with the director of Sidumuli, Gunnar Gudmundsson, who continued to break the rules and have discussions with the inmates. Tryggvi wrote, ‘I do not know anything, since I came nowhere near there, even though I have confessed to being in the case.’ There had been early attempts to drag him into the Geirfinnur inquiry too, but it was found that he was at sea on a trawler at the time. Even the detectives couldn�
��t twist that. During his time in isolation, Tryggvi felt great antipathy towards Saevar and the rest of the gang for dragging him into this mess, but seeing what they were going through in two murder inquiries, he felt, ‘I do not envy the guys over this. I am starting to feel sorry for them, despite all of us having been through this.’
Tryggvi tried to protest his continued detention. Despite his ongoing focus on his exercise regime, in March he refused to eat because of the delays in finishing the case. Howver, he was soon persuaded to stop his nascent hunger strike. In the evening the guards would get their own back when they came around with the drugs. ‘I just took them,’ he wrote. ‘I am not stressing about not taking them any more – it’s bad enough… you just have to be completely numb and don’t know anything in your head in this cell. But in the end there must be some end to this hell.’
Now that the suspects were formally charged, the ‘nightmare’ was over for the nation. But there would be no easing up on the suspects. The new sheriff wanted to put the squeeze on Gudjon, who was still reluctant to fully engage with the investigation. Gunnlaugur Briem ordered some shock therapy. Gudjon was also told that all of his letters to his mother would be read by the judge and there would no longer be any visits from his wife and family. Briem banned all visits from Jon Bjarman without his special permission. Later he would ban any contact with Gudjon’s new lawyer, Benedikt Blondal.
While he was trying to tie up the loose ends in the Geirfinnur case, Briem wanted to achieve what neither Schutz nor Orn Hoskuldsson had, to find Gudmundur’s body. That meant bringing back Albert Klahn into the inquiry. Albert had had plenty of time to think about the case and his friends languishing in a cell several paces long and just wide enough to lie down in. On 4 March, Albert was brought in for an interview at one o’clock in the afternoon. He wouldn’t leave for another 13 hours.