Man admits to severed head murder

A Lithuanian teenager admitted on Tuesday he had murdered a woman and dumped her severed head and mutilated remains into the sea in a Scottish harbour.

Aleksandras Skirda, 19, pleaded guilty to killing fellow Lithuanian Jolanta Bledaite, 35, when he appeared at the High Court in Edinburgh, the Press Association reported.

He murdered Bledaite at her flat in Brechin, eastern Scotland, in March this year, after binding her legs, hands and arms, and putting tape over her mouth and nose.
He then hit her on the head and knifed her repeatedly before putting a pillow over her head.
Afterwards he admitted cutting off her head and hands and trying to dispose of her body parts in the sea.

Bledaite, 35, was identified after two young girls found her head in a plastic bag in the harbour at Arbroath, about 15 miles away. Her severed hands were also found on the foreshore and police divers later found a suitcase containing her body nearby.
Bledaite, from the town of Alytus, 150 km west of the Lithuanian capital Vilnius, was thought to have been in Britain for about 18 months before her death.

The Brechin area is popular with Eastern European migrant workers looking for labouring jobs and work in fruit-picking industries. It was estimated there were about 4,000 such workers in the region last year.

Skirda, who also admitted a charge of stealing 1,400 pounds from cash machines using stolen bank cards, was remanded in custody and is expected to be sentenced early next year. He was told he faced a life prison sentence.

A second man, Vitas Plytnykas, 41, pleaded not guilty to charges including murder. He is due to stand trial in Edinburgh in February next year.

Reporting by Michael Holden