Mystery of Bank Theft Said to Be Iceland's First Is Solved After 50 Years
The thief, then a teenager, and his friends, lifted a quantity of change that the police estimate would be equivalent to about $1,600 today from a bank that was being renovated. His reasons for finally coming clean 'should be left unsaid,' Icelandic police said in a Facebook post last week, which did not identify the person making amends.
'But of course,' the police statement added, 'it's always good to lighten your conscience.'
The crime, in early 1975, had little precedent: A news article from the time shared by the police said that it was likely 'the first bank robbery in Iceland.' That characterization was slightly off, Gunnar Runar Sveinbjornsson, a press officer for the Reykjavik police, said in a phone interview: The perpetrators, who were about 14 at the time, did not use threats or force.
That would make it Iceland's first bank theft, not its first bank robbery, he said.
The man and his friends had noticed a bank undergoing construction work in Kopavogur, a town near Reykjavik, the capital. They got into the bank through a hole in its exterior wall that was covered with little more than a wooden shutter, but they could not access the vaults, according to the article.
Instead, according to Mr. Sveinbjornsson, the teenagers took baskets of change. 'It was coins only,' he said, and they may have needed several trips to get it all out; the total was about 30,000 krona.
The man said he and his friends had dipped into the spoils for drinks and food and other things 'to make themselves happy,' according to the police statement.
He will not face prosecution. The statute of limitations expired four decades ago, Mr. Sveinbjornsson said. And if the police had caught them at the time, the perpetrators would have been too young to face prison in Iceland.
'The case,' the police said, 'is dismissed.'
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