Nightmares of the brutal head-on-the-beach slaying continue to haunt the grandmother of victim Jolanta Bledaite.
Albina Sapalaite (82) cannot escape the terrible mental images of the young farm worker’s tragic end in Brechin two years ago.
But despite her pain, Albina, who raised Jolanta, prays daily for the little girls who found Jolanta’s body parts on an Arbroath beach.
Albina says the children are never far from her thoughts and she hopes that one day their emotional scars will heal.
She was speaking at her home in Lithuania through an English-speaking friend as her family marked the second anniversary of Jolanta’s killing.
Sunday mass was held for Jolanta’s soul in the church where she sought solace as a child near her home at Balbieriskis, in southern Lithuania.
Afterwards her grandmother Albina, and her mother Ona Lazauskiene (59) went with flowers to her grave in the cemetery.
A headstone inscribed simply Jolanta Bledaite 1972-2008 marks the plot where she is buried.Monstrous endBut her grandmother said it wasn’t just on anniversaries she grieved for her. She said she still couldn’t get out of her mind the monstrous way in which Jolanta’s life had ended and she would go to her grave with nightmare images of the torture inflicted on her beloved granddaughter.
“I remember Jolanta as my little girl, and I worry about these little Scottish girls more than anything.
“I pray they will be able to put the horror of that day behind them but I am afraid for them.”
A woman of strong faith, she encouraged the same in Jolanta from an early age and they would regularly trek a distance to attend services.
She is convinced that real justice for Jolanta’s murderers will come. She has no feelings of mercy for Vitas Plytnykas, the mastermind of the plan to kill and rob Jolanta, and prays he ends his days in prison.
She said, “They must feel as Jolanta did when she was murdered, when they tortured her and then when they killed her.
“But it is not possible for them to ever feel the pain and horror Jolanta must have felt at this time or the sadness of the people who knew and cared for Jolanta during her time in Scotland.
“The final deserved punishment for Vitas Plytnykas and Aleksandras Skirda will be fixed by the God they will have to answer to.”