A dead body would be found at the bottom of a harbour stabbed 5 times, wrapped in a black plastic bag and weighed down with iron chains. However, even more, shocking than the crime itself was that it wasn't murder.

(This is a write-up I did years ago but I am uploading it here since text posts weren’t available on this sub when I uploaded it. As it was an older write-up, my writing style might be a tad bit different. I also made a few tiny edits and changes

Before I moved to this subreddit and early into my endeavour into doing write-ups full time, I kinda focused only on True Crime from Iceland so it is even a little nostalgic to upload this case again

The next write-up for Italy’s case will take a little bit longer since It’ll be back to being a long case with a lot of sources)

Neskaupstað is a small town in eastern Iceland with a population of 1,481. It is a place unfamiliar with crime being a very small town in a small country where the nationwide murder rate is around only 1-3 a year.

On February 11, 2004, a professional diver arrived at Neskaupstað’s harbour to survey the scene due to a winter storm that raged across the entirety of Eastern Iceland with the storm resulting in a ship once crashing into the harbour. Needing to access any damage the storm may have caused he put on his diving suit equipped himself with an underwater camera and descended into the water.

Once he went down to the seabed about 6 meters deep he found a large black plastic bag in the shape of a human body. The bag was tied together at the next and feet and was wrapped in chains. The diver quickly called the police. After the police removed the body from the harbour they began their investigation.

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The police at the scene

Neskaupstað was horrified by the discovery in their small town and if they didn’t fear a killer being on the loose before the police did little to quell their fears.

The body belonged to a man of Southern European descent, was described as “strongly built”, had curly hair and a moustache, had no noticeable blemishes or peculiarities, was 180 centimetres tall and was 30-40 years old. The body was determined to be a foreigner based on his Southern European ancestry and how due to Iceland’s small population it would be very difficult to go missing without anyone noticing much less die and remain unidentified. In fact, one Icelandic TV news Broadcast said that it was the first time in history that a dead body in Iceland was found with a recognizable face, and no signs of decomposition or skeletonized that wasn’t able to be swiftly identified

The body being brought to the moruge

The composite sketch of the man

The police managed to catch a break with the time of discovery as the diver likely wouldn’t be contracted to survey the damages until Spring or Summer at the earliest but possibly not until two years later at the latest. But since there wasn’t any rush and he had a day off he decided to do so on his own time meaning the body was discovered 24 hours or less after the man was sunk to the harbour instead of months or years.

With how recent the find was it had been deemed impossible for the body to have been disposed of elsewhere and for the current to bring him into Neskaupstað. As for what may have caused his death, the body had sustained 5 stab wounds and possibly a gunshot wound to the back of his neck although it was later determined to be a small cut. The case was declared a homicide, Iceland’s first homicide of 2004. The man, however, had no identification on his person so the police created a composite sketch and went door to door asking the residents if they had seen him or anyone matching his description.

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The stab wounds on his clothing

Police interviewed over 100 people but only one interview actually gave a potential lead. The employees of a bar and restaurant named Egilsbúd claimed that they saw the man or someone resembling him come in on February 6th at 10:00 PM and didn’t leave until 2:00 AM. On that night there were 50 people consisting of both Icelanders and foreigners. The staff, unfortunately, did not remember his name and there weren’t any fights or confrontations that could lead to suspects.

The police looked into any foreigners whose whereabouts were unknown but nobody they found ended up matching the body. The only foreigner who rented a guest house in Neskaupstað was a Japanese man however, he was located and even if he wasn’t, the man wasn’t of Asian descent.

Three days before the body’s discovery three Norwegian nationals were staying in Neskaupstað but only one of them got on a bus back to their ship home but the ship left port long before the body would’ve been disposed of. But just to be sure the police shared the sketch of the body to the crew of the ship and none of those on board knew the man.

The last lead was a Portuguese man let go from his job at the Kárahnjúkar power plant only a few days before the body had been found and at the time his whereabouts were unknown.

The police got their first lead as to the man’s identity based on his sweater which had Lithuanian tags on it. The police took the man’s fingerprints and sent them to Interpol to try and find a match and on February 18, they were contacted by the Lithuanian police who told them that the body belonged to a 29-year-old man from Telšiai, Lithuania named Vaidas Jucevicius.

The clothing tags

Vaidas was born on November 20, 1974, In Telšiai, Lithuania. In the ninth grade, he began to study electrical engineering but later dropped out. He went to work as a bartender in Šiauliai but due to stomach ailments he had to quit that job and return to Telšiai and attempted to get employment as a bartender there but no work of any kind could be found in his home town which is when he began to turn to crime. He was arrested in both Lithuania and Germany for a series of car thefts and incidents relating to public intoxication and thus secured a pretty lengthy criminal record.

Vaidas Jucevicius

Vaidas’s body was put on a plane to Reykjavik for a more advanced and technical autopsy. The police in Reykjavik X-rayed his body and that is when they discovered something that would completely change the course of the investigation. Inside his body, the police found 223.67 grams of amphetamine that had been wrapped in latex plastic gloves that were cut up. It had seemed that Vaidas attempted to graduate from petty theft to drug crimes.

Vaidas’s X-Ray

In total, the coroner removed 61 packets of amphetamine from his body and discovered that one of them had torn itself open while inside his body leaking into his body, bloodstream and organs with the coroner labelling the cause of death as kidney failure due to the burst open pocket with the stab wounds being made post-mortem. That meant that this case was not a homicide after all. The investigation wasn’t quite finished though since somebody still had to wrap his body in a bag, stab it repeatably and wrap it in chains to sink to the bottom of the harbour.

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The packets removed from Vaidas’s body

Now that the police identified the body they could now trace Vaidas’s movements and contacts. They discovered that he was staying in a guesthouse with three other men with all three becoming persons of interest but unfortunately for them, there was a leak and the media learnt of the three and their names and published a report on them meaning that they now knew the police were looking into them. The three all went to the police station in Reykjavik to be questioned. All that really happened, however, was that they simply denied knowing Vaidas and left.

The police showed Vaidas’s photo to border control officials at Keflavik airport and asked to see their security footage so they’d know when he arrived and who he arrived with. Vaidas arrived in Iceland on February 2 having gotten on a plane to Copenhagen, Denmark from Vilnius, Lithuania and then boarded a second flight to Iceland.

From what they saw during their review of the footage, a man was standing in the airport holding a sign with Vaidas’s name written on it. Vaidas didn’t notice this sign since he left the airport half an hour earlier. He ordered a bus to bring him to his hotel and had to be contacted by those he was meeting to get picked up at a hotel. By coincidence, the three arrived at the airport at the exact moment Vaidas boarded the bus. This, however, still proved that their suspects were lying and on February 20, all 3 were arrested. So who were these three?

Jónas Ingi Ragnarsson who was born on January 11, 1972. He was a High School graduate from Hamrahlíð. During his student years in Hamrahlíð, he was in the school’s choir and volunteered as treasurer of the student association. He completed two years of education in computer science at the University of Iceland, but then entered the labour market, working for Íslandssíma, among others. He worked for a while as a doorman at Thomsen.

Jónas Ingi Ragnarsson

The second was Grétar Sigurðarson born on August 2, 1976. Grétar had held many jobs such as a banker, personal trainer and worked in insurance. He also was educated at a lifeguard school in England most recently he had set up a doorman company which served several restaurants in Reykjavik.

Grétar Sigurðarson

And lastly, a Lithuanian national born in Telšiai, on September 29, 1980, named Tomas Malakauskas. Tomas had lived in Iceland for 2- 4 years and worked at Glerborg in Hafnarfjörður together with his partner from Lithuania in the fall of 2001 living in a rented apartment. He left his job in 2002 and began a series of odd jobs. He had previously been involved in a car accident in Iceland and received compensation for his injuries and damage to the vehicle.

Tomas Malakauskas (he hid his face in every picture of him I could find)

The three denied any involvement but Grétar was the first to give in and confessed especially when all of their vehicles were seized and homes searched with police finding Vaidas’s blood in the back of a jeep he had rented. According to him, Vaidas had eaten all the drug packets before entering Iceland to smuggle all the drugs in with the plan being for him to pass them out naturally so they could later sell them all in Iceland.

Not long after he arrived they went to Tomas’s apartment (where Vaidas was meant to stay while in Iceland) and Vaidas started suffering from severe pain and became extremely ill and would frequently vomit. They talked about bringing him to a doctor but Vaidas refused worried that the drugs would be discovered in his body. They decided they would arrange for him to be flown back to Lithuania so he could receive medical treatment without being arrested.

Vaidas’s health kept deteriorating as he would vomit out any food given to him and soon traces of blood were observed in his vomit. Since he didn’t want to go to a hospital the three had to go to pharmacies to purchase medication to help Vaidas with his stomach pains and blockage. Mainly Grétar was placed in charge of finding medications since due to his brief tenure as a personal trainer he knew a great number of things about the human body. The medicine which included Contergan (Grétar bought some on the black market) would briefly ease his symptoms but they’d always come back and worse than before.

The topic of taking him to a doctor had arisen yet again and Vaidas asked about bribing a doctor to ignore the drugs in his body but he was told such a thing wouldn’t be possible or at least very difficult in Iceland leading to him rejecting medical treatment yet again in favour of returning to Lithuania where a doctor was already waiting for him.

On February 6, Vaidas had a flight back to Lithuania arranged but on the drive to the airport, he remained extremely ill and still vomited blood in the backseat of the vehicle causing them to return to Tomas’s apartment because in Vaidas’s own words, he could not board a plan in this condition.

They went to a new apartment and came by another resident and they explained this away by saying Vaidas was drunk. Grétar gave him some more medication before leaving for the bathroom when he heard a loud moan followed by a splashing sound returning to the room to find Vaidas lying motionless in a puddle of his own blood. Grétar attempted CPR but Vaidas never regained consciousness.

The three panicked none of them wanted this or even considered it as a possibility. Tomas was especially shaken as he kept repeating “Now he’s dead, Now he’s dead” on repeat causing Grétar to snap and threaten to kill him if he didn’t stop. Jónas and Tomas quickly went to a store to purchase the black bag Vaidas was found in alongside some string to tie it, they also purchased a blanket, more bags and tape. They quickly stuffed Vaidas into the bag and rolled him up into a carpet before carrying him out of the apartment and stuffing him into the back of the jeep with Grétar repeating the phrase “You are pathetic” to the other two.

Various ideas were thrown around with Tomas suggesting that they bury the body in a cemetery but this was shot down due to the ground being too frozen. They then asked about dumping him in a ditch outside of Reykjavik. Tomas mentioned the drugs in Vaidas’s stomach and if they should remove them but Grétar got enraged at the idea and refused to do so and neither could stomach the idea of cutting open a body. Grétar almost came to blows with Jónas and Tomas over Vaidas’s death and he eventually split off from them getting on a plane to Eastern Iceland to stay with his mother leaving Jónas and Tomas to figure out what to do with Vaidas themselves.

Jónas completely denied any involvement and only admitted to picking up Vaidas. According to him, the only thing he was guilty of was helping the Lithuanian community in Iceland (Poles and Lithuanians make up Iceland’s largest ethnic minority). He also denied knowing about the drugs in Vaidas’s stomach and claimed that he was teaching him about selling summer homes in Iceland. He claimed that the man being driven to the airport and had his flight cancelled due to illness was not Vaidas, Vaidas had not been in the apartment and he was only driving to Neskaupstað with Tomas because he had done so many times before.

Tomas however, also confessed and filled in the blanks for the parts where Grétar was not present. They drove the body out of Reykjavik and drove for hours without stopping as they wanted to get as far away from the city as possible (Jónas denied knowing that a body was in the jeep.) Due to the storm mentioned earlier, the weather got worse and worse for the two the further east they drove which made their difficult situation even worse. They decided to drive to the residence of Grétar’s mother to meet up with him and seek further advice on how to handle the situation.

Not long after reaching Skaftafell. the two had to stop as they came across a car driven by two women whose vehicle had gotten stuck in the snow and another car came up behind the two and also had to stop due to the stalled car. Jónas and Tomas had to exit the vehicle and together with the other passerby helped the women get their car free and it was during this that they were almost caught as one of the other good samaritans had asked them about the odour coming from their vehicle which they explained away as having garbage in the back of their trunk.

They arrived at Djúpivogur on February 7th, having to stay at a guest house for two days due to the weather. On February 9th they pulled into Grétar’s mother’s driveway in Neskaupstað and Grétar was furious to see the two having come directly to his mother’s home and didn’t want them anywhere near the house but calmed down knowing that he would have to help the two unless he wanted Vaidas’s death to end up coming back to bite him.

The three drove around Neskaupstað to discuss their options and eventually drove to the harbour where they stole some metal chains before returning to Grétar’s mother’s driveway. They arrived at the harbour and tied the chains around Vaidas’s body. Tomas again suggested removing the drugs from his body but just the mention of this enraged Grétar. They attached some weights to the body while Grétar repeatedly stabbed him in order to prevent the body from floating. and then threw it into the ocean.

Their trials were held at the Reykjavik District Court on October 18 and while Grétar and Tomas confessed Jónas pled not guilty and continued with the version of events he told the police. Jónas’s story was described by the court as being too absurd for words.

Grétar claimed that he had no idea that the two were going over to have him help in disposing of the body and claimed that Tomas had contacts in the Lithuanian mafia who threatened his family and demanded that the police protect his family.

Tomas denied this and pointed to Grétar as the mastermind and said “Mafia only exists in movies,”. The three were found guilty of drug violations, criminal negligence as Vaidas could’ve been saved if he had seen a doctor and lastly offensive treatment of a corpse. On November 9, The three were sentenced to 3.5 years imprisonment and on April 28, 2005, an appeals court upheld the verdicts. The court believed Grétar and Tomas’s confessions as there was witness testimony supporting their claims, physical and forensic evidence as well as records of Grétar’s pharmacy purchases.

The three in court

Tomas was granted probation in September 2006 and was deported to Lithuania and banned from ever entering Iceland again. He would, however, violate this ban and return to Iceland under the alias Tomas Arlauskas. At the time of his arrest, 25 grams of amphetamine were found on him. He was sentenced to 16 months imprisonment and deported once more.

Jónas was involved in another major drug case as he and a man named Tindur Jónsson were convicted in 2009 for producing a large-scale amphetamine lab in Hafnarfjörður. Their set up if they weren’t arrested would’ve been able to produce 353 kilograms of amphetamines on a regular basis. Jónas was sentenced to 10 years while Tindur received an eight-year sentence. He was on parole during this arrest

Grétar, the mastermind’s rehabilitation was successful as after his release in February 2007, he expressed remorse and stayed out of legal trouble, taking up bodybuilding as a hobby and he has participated in the Strongest Man in Iceland competition several times. He passed away suddenly on July 16, 2022, while on vacation in Spain. Before his death, he had married and fathered two sons

This case is one of the most well-known in Icelandic history. It was depicted in episode 15 of the TV show “True Nordic Crimes” and in 2018 a movie based on this case called “Mihkel” was released.

Vaidas’s mother had wanted her son’s body returned to Lithuania but her request was denied as the cost pf transporting a body was deemed too high. Instead, Icelandic police had Vaidas cremated and shipped back to Lithuania in an urn.

Sources (In the comments)