Article posted on December 28th 2012
A seven-year disappearance may be resolved
The mysterious disappearance of a young girl seven years ago is getting a meaningful solution - the Southern District Prosecutor's Office wants to prosecute the serial rapist, who was the last person the missing girl met, based on circumstantial evidence.
The story of Reili Huig (17), who went missing on the way from Tartu to Elva on February 14, 2006, has been clear to the police since the beginning.
Huik, who studied at an adult high school in Tartu, was looking for a job as a babysitter on the Internet shortly before he disappeared. Among the offers, he chose a man who claimed to be looking for a babysitter for a three-year-old child in Elva.
According to his story, the man went to construction work and therefore could not look after the child during the day. Huik was attracted to this job offer by the promise that he would receive a permanent salary of several thousand kroons. Also, the man returning from work in the evening promised to drive the girl back from Elva to Tartu himself.
Before the first day of work, the girl met the man who had been talking to her by phone at the Tartu department store. There, the man gave the girl the bus money needed for the next day's trip.
Huik was last seen getting on the Elva bus in Tartu. The police initiated a criminal case regarding the girl's disappearance. Right from the beginning, the investigators were interested in Guntars Kaziks, who had previously been repeatedly punished for sexual crimes.
The security tape of the Tartu department store linked the man to Huig's disappearance, from which it can be seen that he was the man who met the girl the day before she disappeared.
Kaziks' connection with the incident was also indirectly confirmed by the fact that at that time his place of residence was Hellenurme, located near Elva. There he was sheltered by a woman whom Kaziks had met by letter during his previous imprisonment. He lied to her that he was in prison for forest theft.
As it turned out, the woman who lived in Hellenurme at that time was only one of several women whom Kaziks had wrapped around his finger. Because the woman went to work in Tartu every day, Kaziks, who was on construction work at his own discretion, had leisurely time to deal with her in the lonely household in Hellenurme on the day of the girl's disappearance, according to the version of the investigators.
Since relatives characterized Huik as a girl who knew how to physically stand up for herself when necessary, the investigators were afraid that Kaziks might have gotten out of hand when luring the girl into a trap that day, so to speak.
The police took Kaziks into custody for several months and thoroughly searched the area around Hellenurme. Unfortunately, Huik was not found. Because Kaziks, whose chest is decorated with tattoos of a vampire biting a woman's throat, refused to admit his involvement in the crime, the man was finally forced to release him for lack of evidence of guilt.
Three years later, in the fall of 2010, Kaziks was found guilty of raping four young girls who voted alone on the Tallinn-Tartu and Tallinn-Pärnu highways. He was sentenced to fifteen years in prison. By that time, Kaziks, originally from Pärnu, had moved from southern Estonia to Tallinn.
However, the criminal case of Huig's disappearance was still among the unsolved cases at the South Prefecture Serious Crimes Against Persons Service. This fall, the Southern District Attorney's Office decided that Kaziks should still be charged with Reil's disappearance.
The prosecutor was allowed to decide in this way by the judicial practice that has changed in the meantime, which allows people to be convicted of serious crimes against the person based on circumstantial evidence as well. Since there is little hope for the addition of new evidence in the story of Huig's disappearance, the prosecutor decided to bring a solution to the girl's disappearance, if only by trying to accuse Kaziks of the incident with the help of at least circumstantial evidence.
The hope that the man himself will start telling the story of the young girl's disappearance is very small.
