Swedish Pop Culture 2012 - Arbogamorden

Emma Jangestig, whose two children were killed

A German woman had a summer romance with a Swedish guy at a resort in Southern Europe. They kept in touch via social media, but he was not that interested to keep the relationship going and a couple of years later, he met and moved in with a single mom with two small children. They blogged about their relationship and their new home, but something went horribly wrong. The two children were brutally murdered with a hammer and their mother seriously injured, leading to one of the most publicized trials in Swedish history. 

It seemed as though the German woman had stalked her previous lover, moved to Sweden for his sake and then took it upon herself to end his happiness. An online discussion forum (see “Flashback”) dissected the case and came up with electronic traces of her movements that had previously been overlooked. Some claimed that the discussion there (in which pictures of the defendant were published) might have destroyed the chance of a doing a police line-up. 

When charges were pressed against the German woman the police rapport became public, just like all other reports in Sweden. That meant that everybody who wanted it could ask for a copy and read every single detail about the case. Because of the massive interest a virtual copy was put up on The Pirate Bay. During peak weeks, 20 000 people downloaded it every day. 

The police, however, had not taken away or censured pictures of the dead children from the police report so those were also spread all over the country and the world. The relatives were very upset and asked to have the police report taken down from the site, but TPB refused to do so. This lead to a public debate amongst lawyers, police, journalists and politicians about the Swedish freedom of information act. Since then, police reports in well publicized cases usually censure out gory crime scene and autopsy pictures. 

As for the case itself, it was far from crystal clear and mainly based on circumstantial evidence such as phone records. The German woman was convicted of murder, despite insisting she was innocent.