The man and the 29-year-old woman had been in a sexual relationship for about a year prior to the killing. On the night in question the couple started to argue after an evening of drinking, and the man strangled the woman.
The man, from Karlskoga, 240 km west of Stockholm, told investigators that he first strangled the woman with his hands, then took a belt and bound it round her neck. He then had sex with her dead body in order to defile her, he said.
“It is clear that while she was conscious she must have experienced a strong fear of death,” the court wrote in its judgement.
The convicted man had appealed for the court to either convict him of the lesser charge of manslaughter or to put a time limit on his sentence.
The court said that the murder itself was not “carried out with extraordinary cruelty” – a criteria when applying life sentences. It ruled however that the killing combined with the violation of the body merited locking him up for life.
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