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CRIME

Everything you need to know about the Swedish murder case that’s stranger than fiction

Fraud, forgery, bribery, threats, drowning and stabbings: it's not the work of fiction, but the details that have now emerged from a high-profile Swedish murder case. The Local picks apart the key allegations from the complicated "summer cottage murder" case.

Published: 28 April 2017 13:03 CEST
Everything you need to know about the Swedish murder case that's stranger than fiction
The summer cottage at the centre of a complicated Swedish murder case. Photo: TT

In brief…

A woman and her now ex boyfriend have been charged with the murder of her father and attempted murder of her mother in the summer of 2016, while the woman has also been charged with the murder of her then husband a year before in 2015.

Additionally, she has been charged with fraud, forgery of documents, bribery and threatening a public servant. If it sounds complicated, that's because it is. So let's take it in stages…

The suspects

At the centre of the case is a 42-year-old woman who ran her own business, has six children, is trained as a social worker and has no previous convictions.

Also involved is her boyfriend, a man from Afghanistan who came to Sweden as a lone refugee from Iran in the autumn of 2015, although his lawyer confirmed a day before the charges were pressed that the pair have broken up. Though the man claims to be 19, the prosecution believes that is not true and that he is actually 25. 

Both have been remanded in custody since last September over what has been called the “summer cottage murder” (sommarstugemorden). The name comes from the scene where the alleged violent crimes took place, a summer cottage in Arboga, central Sweden.

It was there in August 2016 that the woman's father was killed in a stabbing, while her mother was seriously injured. Her former husband, meanwhile, was found drowned near the same cottage a year before.

READ ALSO: Two dead in eastern Sweden 'murder mystery'

Police initially treated the drowning as an accident, but flags were raised by an insurance company for reasons that will be explained below, and a public prosecutor decided to begin a preliminary investigation into suspected murder.

In November 2016 the drowned man's grave was opened in order to carry out a comprehensive forensic examination. The woman has now been charged with the murder of her then husband, either alone or with additional help.

A further 25-year-old man was also remanded in custody for being involved in the murder of the husband, and though still officially a suspect, he is no longer detained.


An aerial image of the crime scene. Photo: Henrik Montgomery/TT

The additional charges

The violent crimes that allegedly took place around the summer cottage are not the only incidents in the case.

The fraud charge relates to the woman's attempts to take out money from a life insurance policy less than a month after her former husband died in 2015. When asked by the insurance company if there was any reason to suspect that the death had been caused by another person, she said no. The woman had taken out the policy in her husband’s name, with herself as the beneficiary.

It doesn't stop there: it is also alleged that while she was remanded in custody the woman twice attempted to bribe a prison officer with 5,000 kronor in order to allow her to post a letter without it first being examined – hence the bribery charge.

In police questioning meanwhile, the women threatened two interviewers with assault.

“I hope the hospital has bought extra wheelchairs because there are a lot of people who are going to have their knees broken after this, everyone who hurts me,” a police transcript of questioning quotes her as saying. For that she has now been charged with threatening public servants.


Prosecutors answering questions about the case. Photo: Henrik Montgomery/TT

The evidence

Evidence used in the investigation includes knives, the blade of the knife believed to have been used as the murder weapon in the killing of the father, and letters. A book with notes has also been examined, as have telephone logs and text messages.

Material linked to the woman's financial situation, and information about the woman being reported for a sexual offence in her company – for which her business partner expressed a desire to end their work together – has also been used by the prosecution.

Last February, prior to the trial and after being remanded in custody for almost half a year, the woman's boyfriend admitted that he had helped murder her father with a knife.

“She instructed and directed the 25-year-old,” according to prosecutor Jessica Wenna.

The man claims that during the summer of 2016 his girlfriend had attempted on several occasions to get him to murder her parents, to which he said no, but on the day that the murder took place he was under the influence of drugs. 

The female suspect, who is said to have transported her boyfriend to and from the summer cottage in a car and handed him the knife, has denied all charges.

Among the evidence used by the prosecution is an interview with the woman's mother, who survived the attack and not only witnessed it, but also gave details about her daughter's relationship with money and the circumstances around the scene of the crime.

There is also information from several of the female suspect's children that she asked them to cast suspicion on someone else as well as lie about several things.

If the prosecution cannot prove that the woman carried out the murder herself, they will push for her to be convicted of instigating or being complicit in the acts by encouraging the now 19-year-old man to carry out a crime.

The prosecution also says there is information to suggest her boyfriend has killed before, and they want him to be deported and banned from returning to Sweden if he is convicted.


A different angle of the crime scene. Photo: TT 

The motive

The prosecutors argue that the woman’s motive for carrying out the violent crimes was financial. It can be proven that she made a first attempt to have her husband killed in 2014, they claim, and sought the help of three different people to do so.

Her husband is said to have left her at the start of 2015 and told a different woman he was previously married to that the female suspect could not support herself through her own salary.

The 42-year-old had financial problems and had been supported economically by her parents for several years according to the prosecution, who noted that she had higher expenses than income and relied on money from her family to maintain her lifestyle.

The life insurance policy she took out for her husband was worth two million kronor ($226,900). 

The trial will be held at Västmanland district court and begin on May 8th.

POLICE

Swedish police leaks scandal: How gang criminals got hold of sensitive information

A new report in Dagens Nyheter has revealed over 514 suspected leaks of sensitive information from at least 30 members of the police force to criminals since 2018. Here's what we know so far.

Published: 30 April 2024 12:28 CEST
Updated: 30 April 2024 15:45 CEST
Swedish police leaks scandal: How gang criminals got hold of sensitive information

What’s happened?

According to an investigative report by newspaper Dagens Nyheter (DN), multiple gang members have infiltrated the police force by, for example, dating police employees, or using family connections to gain access to sensitive information about ongoing cases.

The first article in DN’s series focuses on a woman the newspaper calls Elin, who met a man, Jonas (not his real name), on a dating app when she had one year left of her police education. She falls in love, but his only goal with the relationship is to get a source within the police force which he can use for access to secret information.

Over the course of four years until she was caught, she made multiple illegal searches in the police register for Jonas, his associates and enemies, as well as providing him with information on ongoing investigations against him.

Other cases investigated by the newspaper include a border guard who sold classified information to gangs, a police officer who leaked information to what DN describes as “one of Sweden’s most notorious criminals” and an investigator who was dating a man she was investigating, who she shared screenshots of sensitive information with.

In another case, the police received a tip-off that information was being leaked to the Hells Angels motorcycle gang. It was discovered that a group of five alarm operators had made an unusually high number of searches for members of the Hells Angels, who were later discovered to have connections with the gang that they had lied about during their background checks.

What have the consequences of these leaks been?

In some cases, the leaks preceded revenge attacks on enemies of the gang member involved in the relationship. In other cases, the gang members’ enemies disappeared or were murdered.

Some of the people from the police force involved in the leaks were sentenced to fines for illegal data access or breaches of professional secrecy, while the evidence against others was not sufficient to prosecute. 

At least 30 employees had for different reasons been considered “security risks” and either resigned or were forced to quit, the newspaper reported, with over 514 suspected leaks taking place from police to criminals since 2018.

How do criminals find police officers?

According to DN, they look for things that can be used as blackmail, like police officers who buy drugs, or set “honey traps”, like the one used against Elin, where they meet police officers or students on dating apps and start a relationship.

“You take Tinder, for example, and set your search radius so the police school is in the centre. When you get a match, it’s easy to check if it’s a student, through class lists or how they present themselves on social media. They’re proud of their line of work,” Jonas told DN.

They might also use their family connections to put pressure on relatives who work in the police force.

Why is this important?

It’s important because Sweden has seen a rise in gang-related violence in recent years, with a surge in shootings and bombings as gangs fight for control over different drug markets.

Swedes also have a high level of trust in the police force – 72 percent according to a 2024 study by Medieakademin, topping the list of state authorities, with a higher level of trust than universities, healthcare, the courts and even the Swedish church. This was five percent higher than in 2023.

Although the vast majority of police officers do not leak information to criminal networks, Sweden does not have a history of organised crime infiltrating the police force, so officials are keeping a close eye on these leaks to make sure they don’t become more common.

On April 29th, Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson told TT newswire that the leaks were “very serious”, potentially putting trust in the police force at risk.

“There are many great risks and one is that trust in police declines, that people get the idea that mafia-like methods are used to infiltrate law enforcement,” he said, before adding that he was unable to say whether it constituted a threat to national security or not purely based on the initial DN article.

“But the mere suspicion of these types of connections are damaging,” he told the newswire.

What happens now?

Justice Minister Gunnar Strömmer told DN that he planned to call a meeting with police leadership about the reports, which he described as “extremely serious”.

“[At that meeting] we will consider the need for further measures,” he said.

“Leaking sensitive information to criminals is against the law and can have very damaging consequences for the work of the police force,” Strömmer told DN, adding that it could undermine trust in the police and “damage democracy”.

Last summer, the government increased the penalty for breaching professional secrecy, and a special investigator was tasked with looking at a potential reform of the rules on corruption and professional misconduct in February – the Crime Prevention Council is also involved in that investigation, where it has been asked to provide information on how gangs use government employees.

“Protecting the integrity of the justice system against infiltration and other security threats is a central part of the new national strategy against organised crime that the government decided on earlier this year, and it is given the highest priority in our assignments to the authorities,” Strömmer told the newspaper.

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