Out of Thin Air

This film contains some strong language

When I remember things...

..it's not just some kind of mathematical machine in my head.

It is contaminated in terms of facts.

It's mixed with desires, with fears.

Memory is such a fickle thing.

Every Icelander knows about this case.

It's the biggest criminal case of the last century.

It was such torture, because I was this guilty person...

..and I had never really connected with the actual memory

of any of it happening.

When I was growing up in Reykjavik, it was a small-town community.

It felt almost like one family because everyone is related.

In '74, there were probably 220,000 people.

Iceland was a village, and you still knew most everyone.

MUSIC PLAYS

We didn't have so much experience of the outer world.

It was a safe community.

There was very little crime.

It was a state of innocence, really.

And authorities were something everybody trusted -

and newspapers, they don't lie -

and that's what people had here.

They trusted that everything was the way it seemed.

It was a time here in Iceland where there was a lot of changes,

and I remember my parents' generation was quite nervous

of what on Earth was going on...

and I felt like I was with the crowd

that really had an understanding of life.

Hippies didn't respect rules, they didn't respect law.

People would be smoking hash and discussing politics,

and I was soaking up everything they said like a sponge.

At these parties where everybody's passing the pipe, there he is -

and I was wondering, "Who's this guy?"

And somebody said, "That's Saevar Ciesielski."

Saevar had a foreign look, most definitely.

He had this dark hair and he had these Slavic eyes -

and the other thing about him was he was so mysterious.

There was always this mythology around Ciesielski.

The story was that he had this group of thugs around him.

They came from broken homes, they had left school early.

These kids were in trouble from, basically, the day they were born.

LSD had entered the picture, and on one of these occasions,

this party is going on and we're just drinking Coke or something,

and then all of a sudden,

I start feeling like I'm getting high

until I realised I am actually high on LSD.

So I started looking for a corner, somewhere where I could hide...

..and then I stumble on something, and it's Saevar,

and then he tells me somebody must have put LSD in my drink.

So we were just going to hang on to each other through this.

We talked about our view of life, innermost pain,

everything there was to know about each other.

I felt like I had met one of the most incredible human beings ever...

..and he felt the same way, you know.

After that night, there was no other way to go forward but together.

The weather changes very quickly here in Iceland.

Sometimes you have a good sunny day in the morning,

but at noon you have heavy snow.

Some people don't understand how quickly the weather changes,

and get lost.

Gudmundur disappeared on Saturday night, 27th of January...

..and on Tuesday, there was a big call for rescue teams for a search.

There was about 200 people looking, and we searched until dark.

At that time, there was no thought about this was a crime,

or something like that, because in those days it happened very often

that people got lost in the lava.

It was a nice summer. Good weather for weeks on end.

My family was very upset about my relationship with Saevar,

because they had been told that he was, you know,

a dangerous guy because he was selling drugs...

..and so I was out of my relationship with my family

because of him,

and he did have a hold on me.

I felt privileged to be considered OK by him.

Saevar had this desire to commit some kind of a crime

that he would get away with

and leave authorities just tearing their hair out

cos they couldn't prove anything.

As I was working for the telephone company,

I came up with this embezzlement that we eventually committed.

What we had to do was tamper with the telephones

to make it sound like we were calling long-distance.

I called the office where I worked and I said, "I have a postal order,"

and so it gets processed,

and sent from there to the main post office downtown...

..and then I go to the post office

and I tell them I'm here to pick up the postal order.

I was so scared.

I felt like, "I'm going to get caught."

The amount that we embezzled was just under a million krona...

..and I became pretty confident that they would never find out.

"Boy, are they going to be pissed off!

"We got 'em!"

That whole chain of events

was so mysterious

that we immediately thought,

"This is a murder inquiry."

Witnesses remember that a man came into the cafe

and he asked to use the phone.

This was about the same time as Geirfinnur got his phone call.

PHONE RINGS

Hallo?

HE SPEAKS IN ICELANDIC

Ja?

He was a good man, had no enemies.

It was unlike him to disappear like that.

There were searching teams all over.

The dogs, the divers in the harbour, everything was done.

An artist in Keflavik came up with an idea to make a clay statue

of the suspect, and the reaction was overwhelming in the whole society.

No body was found, so we were totally at a blank end.

Very early on,

I got the sense that something going on here

that's not going to end well.

Ah... And it turned out, didn't end well.

Our daughter was born here in Reykjavik

on the 24th of September, 1975.

Saevar was present at the birth, and very excited.

After she was born,

I had one focus in my life,

and that was to be a perfect mother for this child.

I would sacrifice anything -

and I was really upset with Saevar's way of life at that point.

I had told him, "I don't want this any more.

"I just want to have a normal life in the daylight, nothing to hide."

I was 20 years old, and I was so naive.

Saevar and his friends were known to the police.

They were part of some kind of a criminal underworld.

Most of them had been in prison for petty crime, thievery.

They were violent.

This was a nasty group of kids.

When they came to arrest me,

they surrounded this big building as if they were arresting terrorists.

All I could do was call my sister.

So she came around and took the baby.

I remember getting in a car.

Glimpses where I'm just really scared...

and I remember trying to tell them

I can't be here for a long time, because the baby needs me.

They took me to this prison...

..and then I was locked up in this cell.

The next day, they spoke to me

and explained that I was now going to be held in custody for 30 days

on suspicion of the embezzlement.

I just broke down and couldn't handle that reality.

What about the baby?

And then they just sent me back to my cell

and then left me there for six days and nights.

During the questioning about the embezzlement,

they told me that Saevar had been very clear

that I had been entirely on my own doing that,

and they told me, "You need to realise that Saevar

"is a really rotten human being to the core.

"There is no redemption for him."

I was really shocked

that Saevar would betray me that way,

but he had betrayed me in terms of other girls,

so it was easier for me to believe them.

Eventually, I decided to tell them everything,

not just the embezzlement,

but anything illegal that I was aware of.

And what a relief!

It was the end of an era and a beginning of a life.

These guys had actually helped me.

And then one of them says, "Oh, by the way,

"one other thing we want to ask you.

"Do you know a guy by the name of Gudmundur Einarsson?"

And then he shows me a photograph.

I said, "Yeah, I've seen this guy.

"Years ago at my girlfriend's house, she had a school party.

"I remember him because he was a really nice guy" -

and that was it.

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah. Yeah. I don't remember ever seeing him after that."

THEY SPEAK IN ICELANDIC

During that case, I think it was Erla who started to tell them

about things that had happened the year before.

This was a long questioning.

It was hours -

and during that whole process they got closer and closer

to talking about the weekend when this boy disappeared.

Somehow it got down to me telling them that I had had a nightmare.

The weather that night was crazy.

It would just howl like a wolf.

In an old house like that, you feel like the house is moving.

Then I hear some whispering.

There were people outside my window...

..and these were violent people..

and I became aware that they're whispering,

wondering if I'm awake or not.

I feel like I'm in this corner - I can't go anywhere...

..and then I wake up.

After all this questioning,

the chief of the investigation leans over and he says,

"Something terrible happened that night in that apartment,

"you witnessed it,

"and you cannot recall because of the trauma it caused you.

"So what we want to do now is you go back to your cell

"and you try as much as you can to remember,