Why were the man and his partner killed on the farm outside Härnösand, and who wielded the murder weapon? Nearly 20 years later, the police are still seeking answers about the double murder in Brattås.
A DNA trace from a suspected perpetrator may be what finally solves the mysterious case, the police hope.
It is the daughter of the man who finds the couple on Thursday, June 2, 2005. She has become worried and driven out to the remote farm in Brattås to check that everything is okay. There, inside the barn, she finds her father's partner dead. Hours later, the man's body is also found, hidden under a pile of clothes in the same building.
The couple, both in their 70s, have been killed with severe violence to the head, the police can establish. The murder weapon, likely an axe, is missing.
It is also discovered that the residence has been searched, carefully. Cabinets and doors are ajar.
The strange thing is that the murderer, or murderers – two unknown shoe prints have been found at the crime scene – ignored the cash that was easily accessible in the home. They seem to have been looking for something else.
GW: No Robbery
The fact that the money was left behind speaks against it being a botched robbery. This is also something that criminology professor Leif GW Persson, who has followed the case closely, has pointed out.
In a normal elderly robbery, they would never have missed it, he said in a segment about the murders on SVT's "Crime of the Week" in 2010.
What is known to have disappeared is a folder with business documents. So, in the background, there is something economic that he (the perpetrator) wanted to talk about.
The woman's bank card was the only thing that disappeared that could have had any real value. It got stuck in an ATM the day after, when the wrong code was entered several times. This happened at the only ATM in Härnösand without a camera, and one theory is that they tried to create a false trail.
A New Attempt
But 19 years have passed, and the answers are still missing. No one has been charged with the murders, and over time, the investigation has cooled down. In several rounds, they have tried again, without success.
Now, another attempt is being made in the investigation.
The hope is that we can really give this a genuine chance, says Marie Kristiansson, police inspector at a group in Region North that investigates cold cases, with Brattås as priority one.
All material is being reviewed again. It is being done with an open mind, and no theories are being ruled out, not even the one about a botched robbery attempt.
It is a peculiar circumstance that they left the money that was easily accessible. But it is contradictory that they still took the bank card.
She is sparse with details about what the police know, but based on the shoe prints, it is estimated that two unknown individuals were at the crime scene.
She does not want to comment on Leif GW Persson's theory about the sequence of events, that the man was killed first and that the woman was attacked when she saw what had happened.
That's not something I want to comment on.
Many Tips
A large number of tips have come in to the investigation, but Kristiansson is convinced that there are people who are sitting on crucial information and appeals to them to come forward.
But perhaps most of all, she is counting on the revolutionary method that solved the high-profile double murder in Linköping in 2004: genealogy. They have a DNA trace from the crime scene that is believed to be from a perpetrator.
To use the method, a law change is required, something a government inquiry has proposed to happen in January 2025.
We have tested a large number of people before, without getting a match. But we hope for genealogy, says Kristiansson.
"A Thousandth of a Blood Drop"
Genealogist Peter Sjölund, who found the murderer in Linköping, believes that there are good opportunities to move forward in the Brattås case with the method.
It only takes a thousandth of a blood drop to get good DNA, reasonably, there should be something to work with.
Especially if the person who left the trace has roots in Northern Europe or the British Isles, he says.
When Peter Sjölund solved the Linköping case, he was alone; now, there are five people in his group. Additionally, there are several other teams in the country. While waiting for legal clearance, they are refining their methods by finding unknown fathers.
Previously, we found maybe half of all fathers, now we find nine out of ten.
The method of finding criminals using genealogy comes from the USA and became known when it was used to track down the so-called Golden State killer Joseph James DeAngelo in 2018.
In brief, the method involves uploading a DNA profile from a crime scene into a genealogy database, where other genealogists have uploaded their DNA. The profile is then compared to the others in the database (only people who have consented to comparisons are included). If the profile from the crime scene matches other DNA profiles, it becomes possible to find the person who left the trace through genealogy.
In Sweden, the police tried the method in a pilot project in the investigation into the double murder in Linköping in 2004 and managed to find the perpetrator with the help of Peter Sjölund.
The Data Protection Authority later assessed that the method was illegal. The matter became a question for a government inquiry, which has proposed that the law be changed in 2025 to allow the method to be used.
