armchaircriminologist

[armchaircriminologist]

The murder and rape of Engla Höglund

Engla Höglund (b.1998 d.2008) was a Swedish girl who was raped and killed by a sadistic pedophile named Anders Eklund (b.1965).

On April 5th 2008 10-year-old Engla went missing while riding her bike in Stjärnsund, Sweden. A quiet, safe and rural community - a place where you let your kids run around freely and where you knew your neighbors - Stjärnsund hadn’t seen much crime, much less of this brutal nature.

Engla’s mother kept calling and calling her phone, but Engla wouldn’t answer. After a few hours passed, she called the police. Soon, a massive search effort was underway with over 200 volunteers combing through the woods looking for Engla. Most of these people knew who she was, knew her family, on account of the small city they lived in.

A pedestrian is out for a walk testing his new camera on April 5th, 2008. He captures a car, and he captures a girl on a bike. The girl on the bike is 10-year-old Engla. The man in the car is her soon-to-be killer, Anders Eklund. Just 20 minutes or so after this photo is taken, Engla will be raped and brutally murdered.

The photographer with the images he unknowingly took of the victim and her predator.

Anders Eklund had spotted Engla on her bike and approached her, according to him, warning her about riding on the road with her bike. But Engla had felt threatened by him, and responded by kicking him on the leg.

“Then I went mean”, Eklund said.

He shoves Engla and holds her down til she passes out. He puts her limp body in the backseat of his car, but she awakes, terrified, and tries desperately to run. Eklund catches up to her, beats her, and chokes her for several minutes til she is dead.

He then rapes her dead body.

After a while Engla’s phone rings. He locates it and sees the caller ID says “Mom”. He waits for it to finish ringing and then throws the phone away.

Following this he places Engla in the trunk of his car and drives to a pizza place. He surprises the staff who knows him as a regular by not finishing his pizza.

After this he returns home and has some coffee while contemplating what to do next. He decides to drive north with Englas body, where he dumps it in a field and sets fire to it.

Thanks to the photographer who captured Eklund’s red Saab he could be arrested after police ran a check on the license plate and found out the cars owner was a convicted rapist and child molester.

Anders Eklund was sentenced to life in prison in 2008.

[armchaircriminologist]

Wow.

Katie Fusco (pictured on the left) was adopted as an infant and raised by her adoptive parents in Dutchess County, New York. By time she was 18 years old, she had established herself as a talented artist with a bright future ahead of her. She graduated from high school in May 2016 and had plans to enroll in the local community college, and then eventually transfer to SUNY Purchase to study digital advertising. However, a short time later, Katie’s plans changed. Like many adoptees, Katie had grown curious about her biological family. She had recently tracked down her birth parents, Alyssa Pladl (37), and Steven Pladl (42, pictured above on the right) through social media and began to correspond with them. In August 2016, Katie decided not to enroll in college. Instead, she opted to move to Henrico, Virginia to live with Steven, Alyssa, and their two other daughters.

Some time after moving to Virginia, Steven and Katie began engaging in a sexual relationship–despite the fact that they were biologically father and daughter. About a month after their relationship began, Alyssa Pladl moved out of the home. Steven instructed his two younger daughters to stop calling Katie their sister, and to instead refer to her as their stepmom. In July 2017, the couple got married. Their marriage was official; they were able to “legally” wed because they did not disclose their father-daughter relationship. Their wedding ceremony was complete with guests, including Steven’s parents.

In September 2017, Katie gave birth to her biological father’s baby. By that time, the couple had moved to North Carolina and Katie had taken Pladl as her surname. Four months later, in January 2018, both Steven and Katie were arrested and charged with incest and adultery. The two were released on bond, and Katie moved back to New York to live with her adoptive parents. Steven’s mother gained custody of their son.

In early April 2018, while their charges were still pending, Katie decided to end her romantic relationship with her birth father. Despite being barred from contacting each other, Katie reportedly called Steven from New York to end their relationship. The events that followed brought this already disturbing tale to a heartbreaking end.

Fuming from their breakup, Steven apparently traveled to his mother’s house and killed his and Katie’s infant son. Afterwards, he drove over 500 miles to Wingdale, New York where he waited outside of Katie’s adoptive parents home. He watched as Katie and her adoptive father left together in a vehicle. He followed the two as they drove from Wingdale to New Milford. While stopped at a stop sign between routes 7 and 55, Steven shot Katie and her adoptive father, killing them both, before turning the gun on himself. A chief police officer who was working their case described the overall grim incident, stating “We may never understand the mindset or motives of Steven Pladl, but we do know his actions have shattered the lives of countless people.”

[armchaircriminologist]

The Shirley Ledford Tape

On Halloween night, 1979, at approximately 10:30 p.m. Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris drove into Sun Valley, where they encountered Shirley Lynette Ledford as she hitchhiked home from the job she held as a waitress. Within 5 minutes of Shirley Lynette entering the van which Bittaker and Norris referred to as Murder Mac, Bittaker had driven to a quiet side street, where he slammed on the brakes of the van before throwing Shirley from the passenger seat into the rear of the van. Norris then wrestled her to the floor, stripped the clothes off the terrified girl, and bound her hands behind her back.  This is just part of the transcript of the tape Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris recorded in the van with Shirley Lynette Ledford (it does not include extensive periods where all one hears are Shirley’s heartbreaking screams, weeping, gasps of pain/agony and wailing):

Bittaker: (Slapping Shirley) Say something girl, huh? Huh? Ledford: What do you want me to say? Bittaker: Huh, huh? Say something, girl! Don’t you hit me? Huh, huh? Bittaker: Say something girl. Huh? Ledford: Ouch! (Shirley begins to scream) Bittaker: Say something! C’mon! You can scream louder than that, can’t you? Huh? What’s the matter, don’t you like to scream? (Slapping sounds can be heard). Ledford: (Screams) Oh no! Bittaker: What’s the matter, huh? You want to try again? Ledford: (Screams) Oh no! Don’t touch me! No! Bittaker: Huh? You want to try again? Ledford: On no, don’t touch me! No don’t touch me. No! No! No! No! No! Bittaker: Want to try again? Ledford: No, no, no, no, no, no, no!

Keep reading

[armchaircriminologist]

The Gang of Amazons/The Family of Monsters

Serial killer family responsible for at least 30 victims

A family in Russia (mother Anessa Tardiviyeva - nursery school teacher, husband Roman Podkopaev - a dentist, and their two daughters, 25-year-old Viktoria Tardiviyeva and 13-year-old Anastasiya Tardiviyeva) - brutally tortured and murdered at least 30 people during a 6-year serial killing spree stretching from 2008-2013.

Husband Roman died during a shootout with police when the family was finally apprehended, and the oldest daughter Viktoria was wounded.

Mother Anessa referred to herself as “a gangster by nature”, and claimed the killings were a “means to get money”.

The family’s modus operandi was robbery homicide, tho it’s hard to argue that robbery would have been the main motivation behind 30+ murders, among them whole families and several children.

“It's just like another day at the office.”

Inessa Tardiviyeva on the killings.

In 2010, the family gouged out the eyes of two teenage girls in a residence they were robbing before stabbing them to death. Overkill seems to have been a recurrent theme, as well as prolonged torture.

They targeted law enforcement families mostly, but often diverted from this. Any family could fall victim. The two young daughters participated in the torture and murders actively, encouraged by their parents.

The family would enter houses by the back door or thru the windows and kill the occupants inside by either shooting them with a shotgun or stabbing them to death. The stabbings were always excessive, 30+ stabs no matter the state of the victim.

[armchaircriminologist]

Christine Schürrer

Christine Schürrer is a German woman who brutally killed two children - 1-year-old Saga and her brother, 3-year-old Max - in Sweden, 2008. Saga and Max were the stepchildren of Torgny Hellgren - a man Christine had met and had a intense affair with while on vacation in Greece. When they both left for their respective homes, Christine developed an obsession with Torgny.

What follows is a terrifying account of obsession, stalking and murder.

Christine met Torgny while on vacation in Crete, 2006. They had a short, casual but fiery romance while in Greece before Torgny returned back home to Sweden and Christine to Germany.

In the fall of 2006 she would visit him in Arboga, Sweden a few times but Torgny didn’t feel good about the meetings or Christine and ended the fling via text in 2007. Christine responds by sending him a letter saying he was an idiot, that she had been throwing up all night and was in deep shock. This was strange to Torgny as he had seen their contact as just a casual thing - a vacation flirt which had dragged on.

“She was disappointed that I had ended the relationship, and of course you can be disappointed, but I reacted to the fact that it was such an incredibly strong reaction from her”, said Torgny.

They agreed to see each other one last time in Arboga. Torgny has the impression that she had let the separation sink in, and that things were ok between them.

But, a short time after this meeting, she would call him and say that she had tried taking her own life, that she had been robbed of her wallet, and that she didn’t have money for gas.

Torgny let Christine spend a couple of nights on his couch, before driving her to the airport. While at the airport, Christine again tried to kill herself in a restroom, according to her own statement.

The following summer Christine moved from Germany to Sweden. She contacts Torgny but he replies that he has a family now and that he doesn’t want anything to do with her.

In October, she is admitted to a psychiatric hospital in Stockholm. She tells the doctors she is depressed about breaking up with her “boyfriend”, and again tries to kill herself while there.

In February 2008 she sends Torgny a letter saying she’s given birth to his child, but put it up for adoption. A lie, of course. Later Torgny would get a letter from a man saying he’s adopted the child, but the letter was written by Christine.

On January 30th, March 12th and March 14th Christine visits Arboga without saying she is, or saying hi.

Torgny is now living with his girlfriend Emma and her two children, 1-year-old Saga and 3-year-old Max. He says there were strange noises around their apartment on several occasions on the dates Christine was in Arboga.

On March 17th 2008, Christine once more arrives in Arboga by train. She goes to Torgny and Emma’s apartment, knocks on the door, and when Emma answers Christine hits her with a hammer to the head 15 times. Emma’s two small children witness this, and Christine immediately attacks them with the hammer to their heads as well.

Emma is critically injured, but survives. She makes a frantic, panicked phone call for an ambulance as she’s holding her two already dead children in her arms. Emma survives.

It takes days before Emma regains memory of what happened. She drifts in and out. She is forced to experience the trauma and unspeakable horror and grief of losing her children several times over.

On August 26, 2008 Christine was found guilty of the murders and assault on Emma. Christine underwent a psychological evaluation to see if she was fit to be sentenced to prison or receive psychiatric treatment. She refused to cooperate in the tests so it was not possible to make a correct assessment on her psychological health.

On October 14, 2008 she was sentenced to life in prison as the evaluation showed that she suffered from no mental illness (as defined in Swedish law). If - or when (life sentences are typically commuted after 10–15 years in Sweden) Christine is released from prison she will also be forced to leave Sweden and barred from entering the country for life. Christine defense attorney said that he would take the case to the court of appeals. The case received extensive coverage from both the Swedish and other world media.

[armchaircriminologist]

The murder of Silje Redergård

Silje Redergård (b. 1989 d. 1994) was beaten and murdered in Norway by two 6-year-old boys in 1994. The case echoes the infamous James Bulger murder where Jon Venables and Robert Thompson brutally abducted and killed 4-year-old James. Children killing children is always difficult to come to terms with, and in 1994 Norway was a nation in shock and mourning.

On October 15th 1994 5-year-old Silje was found naked and dead in the snow at a soccer field in the quiet, small town of Trondheim in Norway. A town with hardly any crime, peaceful and tucked away in the mountains.

Prior to this, Silje had been playing in the snow and making snow castles with two 6-year-old boys who lived next door. They’d played together before, but weren’t very close. At some point the fun stopped, and no one knows just what happened. A childish disagreement, a tantrum? The boys turned on Silje and started mercilessly beating her with stones, punching her and kicking her. They then removed her clothes, and left her to die in the snow.

"We didn't know that anything was wrong until a local boy came by and told us," Silje’s mother Beathe Redergård says. "He was the one who first told us what had happened. He was only eight-years-old, so we didn't know whether he was telling the truth. We went over towards where it had happened and saw a group of police officers. We were stopped and couldn't get to Silje." The police, she says, had cordoned off the area. Beathe Redergård stated -

"They asked us who we were, and then they put us in a police car and drove us to the station. We were interviewed. It looked like the murder could have something to do with sexual abuse because she was undressed, so the suspicion falls on the closest family members. We were at the police station for a long time. Afterwards, we were driven home. It was almost 10pm."

Naturally Silje’s parents and everyone else thought it must’ve been an adult who did this to her. It wasn’t until the following day that the shock of what had really happened to Silje was revealed.

"One of the people who'd tried to resuscitate Silje, we went over to her house to say thanks. We thought we should thank her for trying," says Redergard. ”The woman told us that she'd done so much to try to save Silje. I was sitting with her son on my lap. Then she said it was him and another boy that had done it. "I looked at the boy and asked him, 'What did you do?' He said, 'I jumped on her because I thought she was sleeping.' Then he said he took off her clothes because he thought she was sleeping. When we found out he had done it, we left. It was too difficult. I wanted to throttle him and be done with it. When I realised that I almost wanted to kill him, we left."

The little town soon developed a lynch mob atmosphere and people were desperate to know what could have caused this brutal act of violence.

Beathe Redergard says she "felt bad" for the boys even in the middle of her grief, because they were "just little kids".

"We beat her till she stopped crying," one of the little boys later told the police.

The boys faced no criminal repercussions but were placed in another local school. The caseworker who managed the boys after the incident said, "We don't believe in prison for youngsters, so we think that if we can help them in any other way, that's what we should do."

The two boys saw psychologists, and got a lot of help to move past the incident and realize what they’d done. Not much is known about the boys except that they’ve never been in trouble again, and one of them, the one who sat on Beathe’s lap, continues to struggle daily with his past.

The case worker had this to say about the now adult boy -

"He's self-medicating, using alcohol, pills and amphetamines. Life is too hard, and the drugs let him relax. It helps him deal with the everyday. There's no joy in his life ... He's still a young man, but he has no life. He's literally living in a nightmare."

[armchaircriminologist]

The murder of Grace Packer

Grace Packer’s (b. 2001 d. 2016) short life was filled with hardship, abuse and pure terror.

Grace was a foster child of Sarah Packer, who worked as an adoptions supervisor, and her partner Jacob Sullivan. The couple had long been fostering children, a dozen of them. Grace was sent to live with Sarah and Jacob along with her little brother. It soon became apparent who was the favorite - Grace’s little brother got care and love, while Grace was treated essentially as a “nonentity” - in Sarah’s own words.

There was another girl, a 15-year-old, who was also fostered by the couple and lived there at the same time as Grace. She was continuously sexually abused by Jacob, with Sarah’s knowledge, approval and even encouragement. Jacob Sullivan was a sadist - he harbored extremely dark and sadomasochistical fantasies involving bondage, rape and even murder. Sarah Packer knew about her husband paraphelias and twisted sexuality and she got turned on by helping him live them out. She was scared of losing him if she didn’t, she claimed, and tho that might be true to an extent it became apparent that Sarah shared these fantasies. Jacob said he got off on Sarah watching and not helping the girls.

This 15-year-old girl was terribly abused by the couple. Jacob would tie her to her bedposts. He put her on a strict “diet” (more like starvation) to lose weight, dressed her in revealing outfits and would gag and tie her up while sexually assaulting her. All while Sarah watched.

Soon, the couple would turn their attention towards young Grace. Grace had a learning disability, which made her an even easier target. The 14-year-old was thrilled to get taken to a home with her brother, and her disability made her very trusting, naive, the perfect target for the sadistic couple.

Grace’s other relatives had described her as a bright, bubbly young girl with an infectious “little-girl giggle" who loved hip hop and country music, swimming, and the summertime.

But her foster mother saw her differently, as “a difficult child” who often acted out and needed to be punished.

“Grace had become, for lack of a better word, a nonentity,” Packer said. "I wanted her to go away.”

Besides being regularly beaten, emotionally abused and kept locked up in her room, Grace was drugged by Sarah with the intent of letting Jacob rape her. “To make her compliant, make her groggy." During the attack, Sarah said, Grace looked to her, and she told her, “I can’t help you anymore. This is now your life.”

She would be drugged by Sarah one final time on July 7th, 2016. 14-year-old Grace was bound with zip ties, a ball gag placed in her mouth, punched in the face and brutally raped by Jacob. Sarah watched, to Jacobs delight. This was his sick fantasy, and both of them were excited it was finally happening.

At one point Grace managed to break free, and Jacob started strangling her, telling her, “Just go, honey, just go,”

Grace looked to her foster mother for help - “I took her hand and told her it was OK to go,” Packer said. “It seemed like it took forever, but it was only a couple minutes.”

After, they buried Grace in a cardboard box filled with kitty litter and kept her in the attic til deciding to dismember her body. The dumped the pieces in the woods. On Halloween 2016 her remains were found.

As the police investigation ramped up and media attention intensified, Sullivan and Packer attempted suicide, but survived. In the intensive-care unit at the hospital, Sullivan confessed to hospital staff, and later police, that he had killed Grace, whom he called a “nightmare.”

Packer told authorities that Sullivan’s confession made her "feel betrayed.”

Jacob Sullivan was sentenced to death, and Sarah Packer to life, for the murder, rape and dismemberment of Grace Packer.

[armchaircriminologist]

The murder of Tova Moberg

Tova Moberg (b. 1998 d. 2017) was brutally murdered by her boyfriend of 3 years, Billy Fagerström. Before her death she had endured years of physical and emotional abuse at the hands of Billy.

She had lived under constant threats from him. A secret diary was found under her bed following her death as well as a USB stick filled with photographs of the abuse she endured. Among other things, he had threatened to drown her in a lake, dunked her head into a wall, beaten her with fists and various objects, forbidden her to see her friends, go to school and go to work. Her friends had long feared for her life, and Tova was terrified of Billy.

On May 14th, 2017 Billy made real of his threats. He strangled Tova and hit her in the head with a hammer about 20 times. Following this he strapped her dead body to a wheelbarrow on his parents farm where he lived and dumped her in a nearby lake.

After being found a horrifying tale of abuse soon began to form.

Text messages sent from Billy to Tova, translated from Swedish -

T - My lesson starts in 20 minutes. I don’t want to come today... I haven’t done anything to deserve to die and I’ve told you everything you’ve wanted to know. You have to calm down.

B - YOU DON’T WANT TO COME TODAY? 😂😂😂😂😂😂

B - YOU’RE GOING TO FUCKING COME HERE AS SOON AS YOU QUIT IM TELLING YOU

T - Calm down please

B - DECIDE IF YOU’RE COMING OR NOT

B - OR I’M HIDING IN YOUR GARAGE

B - YOU CUNT

B - ON YOUR BIRTHDAY I’M GONNA SPIT IN YOUR FACE

B - AND WHEN YOU GRADUATE THERE’LL BE A LOT OF MINGLE SO YOU’RE GONNA BE BEATEN TO BITS THE SAME NIGHT

B - AND I DECIDE WHEN YOU MINGLE

B - BECAUSE YOU HAVE A TWISTED FEMINIST IDEA

B - and NEVER think I’m not serious about your graduation

From Tova’s diary -

“So I told Billy and then all hell broke loose, he became totally fucking crazy and said that my dad is a pedophile and that he (Billy) is gonna kill us all etc... And I HAVE to go there because he wants “to talk” about how I’m going to solve this? How I’m going to clear his name. I don’t even understand anything anymore. It’s just getting worse and worse and he’s getting crazier and crazier.

I hope I survive tomorrow... Goodbye and Goodnight.

Btw I’ve taken one of the big knives out and am keeping it by my bed... If anything should happen...”

Police at Billy’s house and the lake where he dumped Tova’s body

Tova’s family at her rememberance ceremony.

[armchaircriminologist]

Bobby Äikiä (b. 1995 d. 2006) was a Swedish boy who was brutally tortured by his mother and stepfather, leading to his death at the mere age of 10.

Bobby was born with Fragil-X Syndrome, a disability with autism-like symptoms and extreme shyness. He was also born with a cleft palate.

Bobby lived with his mother Niina Äikiä in Stenungsund, Sweden. He liked riding his bike, going on the swings and taking walks. He was described as a kind little boy, and very introverted.

In 2005, Bobby’s mother Niina meets and marries Eddy Larson and moves with him to a small farm, leaving Bobby behind to stay with her mother. Eddy had previously spent 5 years in prison for aggravated abuse, rape and sexual abuse. Two of his past girlfriends had reported him for abuse.

In September of 2005, Niina went and got Bobby from her mother and moved him to the farm to stay with her and Eddy. What follows would be start of a year of pure hell and sadistic torture for Bobby at the hands of those who should protect him.

10-year-old Bobby was operating at the intellectual capacity of a 5-year-old, and was put in a special school for disabled children. He learned how to write his name and count to 5. Bobby enjoyed his new school and new classmates and started opening up more and more. Soon, however, he started getting a lot of absence because his parents would often call him in sick.

Bobby’s last day at his school would be December 15th, 2005. The following day his mother would call him in sick, saying he had a cold and a fever and would be gone for a few days. But when school started again after Christmas on January 10th, Bobby was nowhere to be seen.

Bobby’s last month alive was filled with grave violence and cruel torture, almost every single day, after Eddy and Niina had a lot of alcohol.

Bobby was carried outside by his parents, naked and tied to a chair, where they electrocuted his hands, feet and genitals with the electric fencing. He got almost daily beatings with logs, fists and belts. The slightest perceived misbehavior from Bobby, such as a wrong look at Eddy or making too much noise while eating, would be punished brutally. He would often be made to stand outdoors in minus temperatures naked. If he cried, he’d get it worse, so he learned how to hide his tears.

One time Bobby was tied to a chair and beaten with a log til he lost control of his bowels. Eddy took his underwear off and forced them onto Bobby’s head and mouth. “That’s what you do with dogs”, he’d say. Eddy would also use a vacuum cleaner on Bobby’s penis til it bled.

He would have his face taped to a cushion soaked with urine. He’d be tortured with candle wax. He’d be fed cat food, and have alcohol poured down his throat with a funnel. Bobby would often plead with his parents to kill him.

On January 14th, 2006 Bobby was forced to lay on his back outside, naked in the snow. Eddy grabbed a shovel and started covering his body with snow. Bobby managed to get up a few times but was again and again pushed back down and buried in the icy snow. After a while Bobby said he had to pee, and was allowed up. But he couldn’t, and this angered Eddy and Niina even more. Niina sat on top of Bobby and Eddy pushed down his boot in Bobby’s chest. They decided to go back in but Bobby couldn’t walk, so they carried him.

They placed him on a chair in front of a fire to warm him up. Bobby kept trying to get up, so Eddy taped him to the chair. Later that evening, they carried Bobby to his bed. When Eddy went in later that night to check on him, he was lifeless. No pulse. Niina tried giving chest compressions to her son. No one called an ambulance.

Bobby had choked to death on his own vomit.

They put a blanket over him, had a whiskey to calm their nerves, and went to bed.

The following morning they placed Bobby’s dead body in a sack, and drilled a hole in the ice on a lake where they sank the body down into the dark water. After, Eddy erupted, “Let’s have a cheer for the piece of shit finally being gone!”

Eddy Larsson and Niina Äikiä were both sentenced to 10 years each, and given new identities upon release.

[armchaircriminologist]

Lennart Persson was arrested in an outhouse on his parents property in Gävle, Sweden. Inside, his bed was covered with stuffed animals, torn up photographs of his two dead sisters and pieces of cloth with their blood on them.

“I wanted to be able to smell the blood to remember”, he said and explained to the officers that it calmed him.

When asked, he can’t explain why he has a desire to drink blood and eat human flesh. The criminal psychologist assigned to his case wouldn’t be able to get any answers, either.

Even as a child, Lennart Persson was different. He was born with a medical condition which affected his legs and spent large amounts of his childhood in a hospital. When the other children were drawing snowmen and kittens, Lennart was drawing fangs, blood and monsters. “He was just very different”, says a former classmate, “most people thought the whole family was strange, and no one wanted to go over there to play”.

According to notes from a communal health inspection, the Persson family had over 60 cats in their residence, and the house was filthy and littered with cat feces and stank of urine.

When he was 18, his parents got him his own apartment, and Lennart proceeded to isolate himself and having increasingly dark thoughts.

“I started getting harassed by kids all the time because I was a recluse. They’d bang on the door and stuff. So I went and grabbed two of them and threw them out on the yard. Then I went to their parents apartment and hit the door with a baseball bat until it broke. If anyone had been home I would have killed them”.

During this time, Lennart very rarely saw his two foster sisters - Anna Norell and Camilla Lifvendahl. Lennart states he saw them as his real sisters, and loved them as such. At the same time it was revealed that he had sent Camilla anonymous letters during 2003 with obscene pornographic contents. He told coworkers that he had gotten a 14-year-old girl pregnant, but that he and his girlfriend were adopting the baby. The next day he brought photos to work of these two women he allegedly also lived with, a brunette and a blonde. These were actually pictures of his two sisters.

Camilla Lifvendahl

Anna Norell

Lennart felt that he could no longer suppress his desire to kill people if he kept living alone, so he stopped paying rent, got himself evicted and moved into a small outhouse on his parents property. He’d very rarely leave this little house except to eat and wash up. He often bought movies and on occasion would inexplicably burn the video tapes in the garden. No one asked why. No one knew that he felt tormented by demons and thoughts of blood.

On match 30th 2005, Lennart took the bus to his sister Anna’s home and brutally stabbed her to death.

“I couldn’t stop. I just stabbed and stabbed. Then I did the worst part. I bent down over her and I drank her blood. Then I cut up pieces of her”

He thought the police would come and arrest him, but they never did. Instead, Lennart went to Anna’s funeral and placed flowers on her grave.

Soon Lennart would start driving around and looking for people to kill. “I started looking for people whom I could kill and drink blood from”.

On October 25th 2005 he went to the house of his other sister, Camilla, and stabbed her to death. When he drank her blood, the demons went quiet.

“I’ve accomplished that, I’ve drank the blood, I’ve satisfied myself, the demons have left me”, he’d state to police after.

When police showed up to arrest him, he said it was a relief.

[armchaircriminologist]

The Colt Family Incest Case is an Australian family, dubbed the Colt incest clan by the media, that were discovered in 2013 on a farm near Boorowa, New South Wales to have been engaging in four generations of incest beginning with Tim and June Colt, a brother and sister who emigrated from New Zealand in the 1970s. An official investigation was opened in the July of 2012 after a child reported overhearing another child at a local school speaking of an unkempt girl, living in the woods, who was pregnant with a child fathered by her own brother. The child overheard the girl say that one of her sisters was pregnant and they did not know which of her brothers was the father. Over the next year, police tracked the family and put several children in foster care and later discovered the living area of 38 members of the Colt family in the woods. Children and adults had regularly engaged in sexual activities, resulting in pregnancies. Because of this, some of the children were born with genetic deformities. They had no access to running water, showers, toilets or hygiene products. The family had grown to nearly 40 members ranging from grandparents to mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, aunts, uncles, nephews, brothers and sisters all engaging in various forms of incest. The Colts were charged with incest and child neglect. 

[armchaircriminologist]

Female accomplices to murder and rape

2. Rose West

Rosemary Pauline “Rose” West (b. 1953) is a british serial killer and the wife of Fred West (b. 1941 d. 1995). Together with her husband Fred, Rose would torture, sexually assault and murder a total of 10 women - one of which would be her own daughter, Heather.

Rose grew up in an incestous household where she would be regularly raped and abused by her own father, Bill. Young Rose had also experimented with molesting her brothers - even raping one of them when he was 12-years-old.

Rose was very early on exposed to and taught that sex and violence came hand-in-hand, and once she hit puberty this was crystallized. At age 15, she met 27-year-old Fred West at a bus stop. The couple married soon after.

Fred West had himself grown up in an abusive and incestous household, often encouraged in his sadistic urges by his father, Walter West, a convicted sex offender.

Fred later claimed that his father Walter had an incestous relationship with his children, the three young girls in the family. Fred was the eldest of Walters 6 surviving children, two of which had died in infancy. Fred also claimed that his father had introduced him to bestiality as a young boy.

After Rose married Fred he was sent to prison and 17-year-old Rose became responsible for caring for his two daughters from a previous marriage - Charmaine West and Anne Marie West. Young Rose quickly grew resentful of the girls and even hated Charmaine. In 1971, Charmaine went missing under Rose’s sole care, and when questioned about the disappearance Rose said,

“Gone to live with her mother and bloody good riddance.”

Meanwhile Rose started prostituting herself, encouraged by Fred, seeing clients in their home on 25 Cromwell Street. One of the clients visiting her for her services was her own father, Bill.

Soon Fred and Rose began taking on boarders, renting out rooms in the unseeming house they shared. The renters were all young women, and most of them would never make it out again. 25 Cromwell Street had become a real life house of horrors for vulnerable young women looking to start their lives.

Rose and Fred would meanwhile rape and torture their own children, one of which, Mae, was forced to book her mother’s sex work. Fred’s daughter Anne Marie was even impregnated by her father and infected with sexually transmittent diseases as a young teen.

The cellar in the West home soon became a torture dungeon for their children, and the burial site for renters.

The basement at 25 Cromwell Street. Once this cellar was filled with bodies, Rose started burying them under the patio - including her daughter, Heather.

In 1987, the couples oldest child Heather (16) went missing. Rose stated,

“She has not disappeared, she has made a conscious decision to leave…Heather was a lesbian and she wanted a life of her own.”

In fact, Heather had been raped, killed and buried under the back patio. The other children would joke “Heather is under the patio!”, after their Father Fred had threatened they would “wind up like Heather under the patio” if they kept misbehaving - not realizing how true that would turn out to be. When social workers heard this, they alerted police and soon 25 Cromwell Street was a crime scene. The cellar, garden and patio were dug up unearthing 10 female corpses, two of which would be Heather and Rose’s long missing stepdaughter Charmaine.

The victims all bore signs of sexual torture and sadism, must still wearing ball gags and restrains, mummified with duct tape (a straw sticking out of one nostril for air, to prolong their sadistic torture), several decapitated and dismembered, one even scalped.

“Yeah, see, you've got the killing all wrong, no, nobody went through hell, enjoyment turned to disaster, well most of it anyway.” - Fred West

In 1995, Rose West was sentenced to life in prison. She claimed, and still does, that their reign of terror was Fred’s doing. Fred West killed himsekf in his prison cell the same year, avoiding sentencing.

[armchaircriminologist]

Female accomplices to serial murder and rape

1. Myra Hindley

Myra Hindley (b. 1942 d. 2002) was a british serial killer and the wife of Ian Brady (b. 1938 d. 2017). Together the duo abducted, sexually assaulted & murdered 4 children, as well as killing a 17-year-old with an axe, between July 1963 and October 1965.

Myra met Ian when she was 19, and he soon shared with her his interests in Nazism, sadism and pornography. On their first date he took her to see “The Nuremberg Trials”, and encouraged the impressionable and inexperienced Myra to read the works of Hitler & Marquis De Sade.

Brady took her virginity, during which he bit and beat her violently.

After indulging in these now shared interests together for some time, they craved taking their sexual and violent urges further, leading to Ian testing his wife’s subjugation to him by involving her in the kidnapping and murder of their first victim, Pauline Reade (16) - a friend of Myra’s little sister, Maureen.

Pauline was lured away by Myra to Ian, who subsequently raped, beat and buried her on the Saddleworth Moors, which would become the final resting ground for 4 out of their 5 victims.

By this time, Myra was completely submissive to Ian. She looked how he wanted her to look, believed what he wanted her to believe (adopting the belief, among other things, that “death & rape are the supreme pleasure”) and did what he wanted her to do. No doubt Ian had awoken in Myra something that had long been hidden inside her, and Ian knew he had found his soulmate - a woman who was ready to assist him in making his most perverted fantasies of pain and pleasure a reality.

A mere 4 months after the murder of Pauline Reade, Ian and Myra sodomized & killed John Kilbride (12). 7 months later, their next victim, Keith Bennett (12), met the same fate on the Saddleworth Moors.

In 1964, the duo abducted 10 year old Lesley Ann Downey. Ian & Myra photographed and recorded her torture, rape & murder. The transcripts of the tape can be found online, and are harrowing.

“The phrases "Let me go" and "Please" were audible, and also "Don't undress me, will you?" and "I want to see mummy".

At one point there was a blowing sound into the microphone and a child screaming: "Don't" and "Mum, ah". The tape ran on: Woman (Hindley): "Shut up" Child: "Please God help me, ah, please, oh." Woman: "Come on." Child: "Please, please - Oh (then faintly),"Help, oh, I cannot while you have got hold of my neck. Oh (followed by scream) - Help (followed by gurgling noise)." There were "screams and gurgles". Woman: "Sit down and be quiet" Man (Brady): "Go on." “

The turning point for the couple came in 1965, when Myra Brady’s 17-year-old brother-in-law, David Smith, approached police with a story of pure terror. David has witnessed Ian killing 17-year-old Edward Evans with an axe. Ian and Myra had proceeded to joke about the mess it had made, and bragged about their other victims being buried on the Moors.

On May 6th, 1966, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley went to trial where Ian was found guilty of the murders of John Kilbride, Lesley Ann Downey and Edward Evans. Myra was found guilty of the murders of Lesley Ann Downey and Edward Evans, as well as harboring Ian with the knowledge that he had killed John Kilbride.

They were both sentenced to life with a minimum of 30 years for what is today infamously known as “The Moors Murders”

Ian Brady and Myra Hindley happily pose for the camera on the Saddleworth Moors - the burial site for 4 of their victims.

Sidenote -

Before Myra’s death in 2002, she turned over some documents wherein she claimed that she had been systematically beaten, drugged & raped throughout her relationship with Ian.

“In graphic detail, Hindley describes a catalogue of sadistic abuse by Brady including violent rape, regular throttling and threats of murder if she did not comply.”