Reykjavík Grapevine - 01.07.2016, Blaðsíða 22

I was only planning to scare them. I
placed one shot into the rifle, which I
carried in one hand, and held wire in the
other hand, to be used to bind their hands
so I could drive them both to the police
station without incident. When they an-
swered the door, the first girl wrestled for
my rifle, setting it off. The recoil kicked
the butt of the rifle into her head. She
began fighting back, so I struck her with
the butt of the gun until she was uncon-
scious. The other girl fled out into the
country. I followed her in my car as she
staggered in and out of the ditch before
attempting to flag down a truck driv-
er—overreaching and slamming into the
truck’s passenger-side fender before col-
lapsing on the road’s shoulder. I placed
another shot in my rifle and walked over
to help her up. She was clinging to the
side of the truck, bleeding.
A Ride To “Joy House”
On Monday, August 16, 1982, two sis-
ters were hitchhiking in the South of
Iceland, a common travelling method
among tourists. In fact, it’s the most
common pitch this magazine receives,
with the obligatory headline, “Thumps
Up! Hitchhiking Around Iceland.” The
testimony you read above is from the
convicted murderer Grétar Sigurður
Árnason. It was he who picked up the
hitchhiking sisters Yvette and Marie
Bauhaud.
Grétar dropped the sisters off at a
small cabin in the countryside called
a Sæluhús or “Joy House.” By the next
morning, August 17, Yvette was miss-
ing and Marie was being attended to at
a medical centre in Höfn.
Marie’s Court Testimony
I wanted to go to Norway. I never under-
stood why we came to Iceland. Maybe
it was my sister’s idea. Once you’re
backpacking around Iceland, you know
you’re going to be there a while. We vis-
ited Jökulsá at Breiðamerkursandur, and
still needed to get to Skaftafell. I don’t
remember whose idea it was, mine or my
sister’s, but we decided to hitchhike.
A car stopped to pick us up. The driver
must have been between 40 and 45 years
old. He put our luggage in the trunk. I
take the passenger seat and my sister sits
in the back. I never noticed a rifle. He told
us his job was to protect the area and help
tourists whose cars had broken down.
We get the impression he’s some sort of
sheriff or something. He spoke English
really well, so he must deal with tourists
regularly. He took us to a cabin called
Sæluhús. The first thing we did was write
a “thank you” to him in the guest book.
My sister wakes me up and tells me
there’s a man at the door. She answers
the door. It’s the man who gave us a ride.
He’s strangely calm for a man shining a
flashlight with one hand and holding a
rifle with the other. It’s around 11:30 at
night. He accused my sister and me of
having drugs, saying he can smell canna-
bis and he wants us to come with him to
the police station at Höfn. There’s no way
we would let him take us all the way to
Höfn. We let him search our bags, but we
demanded to see some identification. We
wanted to know if he really was a sher-
iff. He showed us a random card with his
name on it. It looked bogus and we told
him we weren’t going anywhere. He was
angry. He wanted us to listen to him. He
ran out of the cabin and came back with
some metal wire. That’s when my sister
and I got really scared. We pleaded with
him to just leave us alone. He left the cab-
in again and came back with a large rock
clutched in his hand. I stepped in front
of my sister to protect her. He started
bashing me with the rock and I collapsed
to the floor. He hit my sister too, but she
ran out of the cabin’s front door. I tried to
stop him from following her, grasping at
his pant leg. He bent over and hammered
the rock onto my head, knocking me out.
I woke up to a gunshot followed by a
scream. Everything was still, absolute si-
lence. I heard the car start and pull away.
Then it’s silent again. I couldn’t move. I
worried he was still out there. After a few
moments I wrapped myself in a sleeping
bag and peeked through the door. I could
see a car, but I was scared it was him, so
I didn’t do anything at first. Then I saw
it’s a police car and I ran out to stop them.
They put me in the back and asked me
what happened. They drove me to Skaf-
tafell, but I still didn’t know where my
sister was.
What Happened To
Yvette?
Police Officer Hreggviður Sverrison
was informed about the case at 2:00 in
the morning on Tuesday, August 17. He
began his investigation at 4:20 when
he arrived at Sæluhús. Inside, the cab-
in was empty except for two bags, two
mangled wires, a pool of blood and a
pair of glasses. No hash was found, or
evidence of hash use. The guestbook
was signed by the two sisters followed
by a signature that just read, “Sheriff.”
The police went to Grétar’s house
and questioned his wife. Grétar had
told his wife he was going to help a ve-
hicle that had broken down, and that
was the last she had heard from him.
On August 19, at 8:50, the police lo-
cated Grétar’s car at Neskvísl. Inside
the trunk they found Yvette’s body,
lying face-up with red froth coming
from her mouth. There was no evidence
of a struggle within the trunk, so inves-
tigators concluded she had been dead
before Grétar had put her there.
Grétar wasn’t found until the next
morning; he had hidden in a cave par-
tially covered by a large rock. When
the police found him they could see
him asleep on his side in the cave,
looking outward with one eye open.
The police noticed he had a rifle with
him and when they went to grab it,
Grétar pulled the gun towards him-
self, cracked it open and removed the
shells. “I wasn’t going to use it on you,
True Crime
Iceland:
The Hitchiker
Murder
By York Underwood
Additional Reporting
and Translating by
Hrefna Björg Gylfadóttir
The Sæluhús
where the attack
happened
Grétar's car &
Yvette's body
Skaftafell
“I was only
planning
to scare
them.”