CT Ex-Army Ranger Faces Extradition To Netherlands In Murder Case

NEW HAVEN, CT — The criminal complaint filed in federal court reads like fiction.

Ex-U.S. Army Ranger Jacob Mazeika of Connecticut and two other soldiers are an alleged murder-for-hire squad who carried out a brutal slaying in 2019 in the Netherlands, court records show.

Mazeika was living in New Haven when he was arrested last spring, and has been held since, as the government of the Netherlands has been working to have him extradited to face murder charges for his role in the killing of a German businessman at the behest of a Swiss businessman, according to court records obtained by Patch.

The United States and the Kingdom of the Netherlands have an existing extradition treaty.

A solider originally from Bristol, Connecticut, Mazeika is facing 19 charges in the Netherlands including murder, aggravated manslaughter and extortion resulting in death among them, court records show.

It was late November of 2019 when Dutch authorities were summoned to the home of Thomas Schwarz in Bergen, Limburg, the Netherlands. When police got there they found Schwarz lying on the floor covered in blood, his hands and feet tied with wire. An autopsy found he'd suffered numerous "deep" stab wounds, had "serious" injuries to his back, his ribs were broken, and his throat had been cut.

After an investigation that included tracking phones, one on the Autobahn, communications in encrypted messaging apps, security camera footage, flight records to and from the U.S. to Germany, the Netherlands, and Moscow, among other inquiries, Dutch authorities alleged that Mazeika and two other men, Justin Causey and William Lyle Johnson, were hired by a Swiss national named Lukas Fecker to extort and kill Schwarz, court records show.

Fecker owns a company that buys businesses "on the verge of bankruptcy," federal court documents read adding that Schwarz owned a business "financial trouble" called Taurus Farms in North Macedonia and that he owned Fecker money. It's alleged that the men, first tried to extort, and later killed, Schwarz, court records show.

The details surrounding the killing, and the investigation, are found in the court record below.

Mazeika, who the Hartford Courant reported, served a tour in Iraq in the National Guard Military Police and two tours in Afghanistan in the Army’s 101st Airborne Infantry, was arrested in New Haven last April and has been in custody since.

Mazeika, also an Iraq war veteran, signed off on the extradition on Sept. 20, court records show.

Read the previously sealed, and now redacted, complaint here.