Gardaí investigating the disappearance of Icelandic man Jón Jónsson in Dublin five years ago have enlisted the help of Europol, the EU law enforcement agency.
Investigators intend to use the agency, which is officially called the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation, to help co-ordinate with Icelandic police and chase down new leads, including tip-offs that Mr Jónsson may have been murdered by a hitman in a case of mistaken identity.
Gardaí are to meet their Icelandic colleagues in Europol Headquarters in The Hague in the Netherlands in the coming weeks to discuss the next steps for the investigation.
Members of the Jónsson family travelled to Ireland last week where they met two senior gardaí who briefed them on the developments.
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It is understood gardaí conceded at the meeting that communications to date between Irish and Icelandic police could have been better.
“The big change – and what satisfies us most from this meeting – is that the Irish police told us they will be meeting Icelandic police at Europol headquarters in The Hague where the case will be brought to the next level in co-operation with Europol,” David Karl Wiium, brother of Mr Jónsson, told Icelandic public broadcaster RÚV on Wednesday night.
The involvement of Europol suggests gardaí are increasingly convinced there is a criminal element to Mr Jónsson’s disappearance. However, despite requests from the family, gardaí have yet to upgrade the case to a formal murder investigation.
The family have received tip-offs that Mr Jónsson may have been murdered by a known violent criminal who was sent to kill another man in Dublin.
The case has received renewed public attention in recent weeks due to the release of a podcast series produced by RTÉ and RÚV with the co-operation of the family.
Mr Jonsson, a father of four and taxi driver, vanished on February 9th, 2019, after leaving the Bonnington Hotel on the Swords Road in north Dublin, where he had been staying. He had come to Ireland with his fiancée for a poker tournament and short holiday in Ireland.
The missing man, who was aged 41 years at the time he vanished, left the hotel on foot at about 11am and was recorded by a security camera 200m away passing the entrance to a nursing home next to the hotel.
Beyond those images gardaí had no information about where he went and no trace of him has ever been uncovered. He had never been to Ireland before, had no friends or family here and had never gone missing before.
In the years since, two anonymous messages, one delivered to Ballymun Garda station and one to a Dublin priest, stated Mr Jónsson’s remains were in Santry Demesne, a public park and wooded area about 3km from where Mr Jonsson was last seen alive.
The notes said the body was between trees and near a body of water.
Gardaí treated the notes as credible and searched an area of the park last year but found nothing of evidential value.
The Jónsson family has been campaigning for gardaí to launch a wider search of the park and its lake.
“The search has not been properly done,” Mr Wiium said last week as he toured the park.
“I’m not suggesting they dig the whole park up. But we want to get better answers.”
A source in Iceland told the podcast producers about a man who claimed to have killed Mr Jónsson, having intended to murder someone else. The information tallied with two other tip-offs received independently by Mr Jónsson’s sister and stepbrother.
Family members were told that this “hitman” had been contracted by an eastern European criminal organisation to kill a man who was involved in the poker scene in Iceland.
The suspected intended target was attending the poker tournament in the Bonnington. The alleged hitman arrived in Dublin about a week before Mr Jónsson.
The suspect, who is not from Ireland or Iceland, is considered a dangerous criminal who has serious convictions including ones for drugs and extreme violence.
Mr Jónsson’s relatives were told the hitman owed money to organised criminals who run illegal poker clubs in Iceland.
One theory they are eager for police to explore is that the hitman was contracted to kill a man who had previously come into conflict with this same group of criminals and had agreed to carry out the killing to pay off his debt.
