Head-on-the-beach killer Vitas Plytnykas has been sentenced to life imprisonment in his Lithuanian homeland.
But in a decision which has been met by shock in Angus, the one-time Red Army soldier may be released three years earlier than the 28-year term laid down by a Scottish court for the slaying of countrywoman Jolanta Bledaite.
The callous brutality of Plytnykas, 46, and friend Aleksandras Skirda shocked Arbroath and Scotland in the spring of 2008 when they killed and dismembered Jolanta.
The quiet 35-year-old had been a flatmate of Skirda in Brechin and the pair hatched an evil plan to plunder the hard-working woman’s bank account, but its execution turned to murder before they transported the body parts of their victim to Arbroath by car and public bus in suitcases and shopping bags.
They dumped Jolanta into the sea, only for her head to wash up on the town’s foreshore days later, where its gruesome discovery by two young sisters sparked a murder hunt that led to Plytnykas and Skirda receiving life sentences at the High Court in Edinburgh the following year.
Lord Pentland ordered that Plytnykas_who served time for killing a man in Germany before arriving in Scotland_should serve life, with a minimum term of 28 years for the “wicked scheme.”
Plytnykas was deported in February and today a court in Vilnius upheld the life sentence handed down at the High Court in Edinburgh in 2009.
However, it appears the 46-year-old could be considered for parole after serving 25 years.
Former Angus Provost Ruth Leslie Melville, who led a campaign which raised £16,000 in just a few weeks to return Jolanta to her family so she could be laid to rest, said today’s outcome was “what she had feared most.”
“There is no way on God’s earth that this man should ever be released into society when he is still able to wreak more havoc on the lives of innocent people,” she said.
For more reaction to the Vilnius decision see Saturday’s edition of The Courier.