SHARE
COPY LINK

MISSING

Mystery shrouds missing Swede

Malmö police have issued an international missings persons for 30-year-old Jenny Persson who was last seen on August 1st.

Mystery shrouds missing Swede

Jenny has now been missing for over a week and despite a slew of tip-offs, police are nowhere closer to discovering the circumstances surrounding her disappearance.

“We can’t confirm that a crime has been committed but we can’t find a natural explanation,” said information officer Lars-Håkan Lindholm to The Local on Thursday.

The police have received several tip-offs but nothing that has led them any closer to discovering Jenny’s whereabouts. At the same time they are less inclined to comment on the case, stating that the ongoing investigation requires restraint.

On Wednesday it became clear that apart from some text messages in July, neither family nor friends had seen Jenny since May.

According to the boyfriend, Jenny left the flat they shared in central Malmö around 9am on August 1st. When leaving, she said she was going “to work”, the boyfriend told police.

“There are definitely some peculiarities surrounding this case,” said Lindholm.

According to Lindholm, Jenny had told all her friends and family, including the boyfriend, that she was working at the local hospital.

But Jenny hadn’t worked at the hospital since August last year.

“It is like being struck in the face to know that she lied to us,” said her mother Anita Persson to Kvällsposten.

The family had noticed a change in Jenny over the course of the spring.

“When we met her around her birthday she wasn’t looking good and she had withdrawn during the year,” said the mother to the paper.

The boyfriend also confirmed to the paper that Jenny hadn’t been herself lately.

“She could sit for hours and just stare out the window. I asked her what was wrong but all she’d answer was that she needed some time to herself,” he told Kvällsposten.

According to the police they have received information about the change in Jenny and are investigating where she could have been going when family thought she was at work.

“It certainly looks like she was leading some sort of double life,” Lindholm told The Local.

When she hadn’t returned to the flat by August 2nd, she was reported missing by her boyfriend. Since then the police have been looking for clues as to what could have befallen her, but so far they haven’t come up with anything.

However, one of Jenny’s neighbours told Kvällsposten that they had spoken only the week before her disappearance.

“I saw her the last week of July. I met her and her boyfriend outside our house and we talked about our dogs,” the neighbour said to Kvällsposten.

The police confirms that they have received information of someone seeing Jenny between May and August but won’t disclose how trustworthy these are.

The police are now following up leads and trying to find out from Jenny’s mobile phone, from her computer and bank statements what she could have been doing during the days.

According to Lindholm the case is treated with the highest priority and the police have now filed an international missing persons report.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

SKIING

Spain mourns Blanca Fernández Ochoa, the Olympian skier found dead in Madrid’s sierra

The body of former Spanish alpine skimedallist Blanca Fernández Ochoa was found Wednesday in a mountainous area near Madrid after days of searches for her by hundreds of police and volunteers, officials said.

Spain mourns Blanca Fernández Ochoa, the Olympian skier found dead in Madrid's sierra
Archive photo of Blanca Fernández Ochoa during her Olympic career.

The 56-year-old — won a bronze skiing for Spain in the 1992 Winter Games in Albertville, becoming the country's first female Winter Olympic medallist — had been missing since she was last spotted on surveillance video at a shopping centre on August 24th.

Her car was later found at a parking lot near the start of a hiking trail in Cercedilla, a mountainous village near Madrid. The authorities said they are still investigating the cause of her death.

“Solidarity, support and human warmth have been felt these days in the mountains of Cercedilla. Security forces and many volunteers have taken part in the search for Blanca Fernández Ochoa. But nothing could be done. My affection to all her family,” Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez tweeted.

Hundreds of police, firefighters, forest rangers and volunteers, backed by helicopters, drones and tracking dogs, had taken part in the search for Fernández Ochoa.

Her family only alerted the authorities about her disappearance on August 29th because they said it was not unusual for her to go on hikes in the area, even without her phone, according to Spanish media reports.

Police on Saturday issued an appeal on social media for help from the public in locating Fernández Ochoa along with a picture of her, which drew media attention to her disappearance.

She was well known in Spain, where she had taken part in several TV reality shows after retiring from sports.

Her older brother, Francisco Fernández Ochoa, won a gold medal for skiing in the 1972 Winter Olympics in Japan. He is the first and only Spaniard to have won a gold medal at the Winter Olympics.   

There is a statue in his honour in Cercedilla.   

Until 2018 the brother and sister were the only Spaniards to have won medals at a Winter Olympics.

“It is a very sad day for Spanish sports,” Spain's secretary of state for sports, Maria Jose Rienda, said in a statement.

READ ALSO: Snowboarder from Ceuta wins Olympic medal for Spain

SHOW COMMENTS