Death of Kevin Hjalmarsson

Last updated
Kevin Hjalmarsson
Born1994
Sweden
Died16 August 1998(1998-08-16) (aged 3–4)
Arvika, Sweden
Cause of deathSuffocation
Body discovered16 August 1998
Known forBeing the victim of an unsolved murder

Four-year-old Kevin Hjalmarsson was found dead in Arvika, Sweden on 16 August 1998. [1] [2] [3] Two brothers, then five and seven years old, were accused of murdering him and were claimed to have confessed. [4] The brothers were extensively investigated and interrogated, but they were never charged with a crime [5] .

Contents

On 27 March 2018, all suspicions against both brothers were dismissed by Swedish police after a lengthy second investigation of the case. [6] Each brother was expected to receive one million SEK in damages.

Case

Kyrkviken, part of Glafsfjorden lake in Arvika Kyrkviken 1.jpg
Kyrkviken, part of Glafsfjorden lake in Arvika

Soon after the death of Kevin Hjalmarsson, police theorized that he had been murdered with a stick which had been pressed against his throat, ending in his suffocation, and that his body had then been left on the shore of Kyrkviken, part of Glafsfjorden lake in Arvika, 30 m (98 ft) from the presumed murder site. [7] [8] There were no drag marks on the ground or on Kevin's body that would have been consistent with a body that had been transported from one location to another. [4] First responders were called about a drowning at Glafsfjorden; an ambulance was dispatched at 21:22 and took the boy to hospital, where the police first inspected the body. [1] It was initially speculated that a pedophile was the perpetrator. [9] [1] Police at Länskriminalen in Värmland made an analysis of the victim and his life up to his death. [1] Two brothers, five and seven years old, were accused of the murder and allegedly confessed. [10] During further investigations, psychologist Sven Å. Christianson, professor at the psychological institute in Stockholm, was called in. He was later criticized for his handling of the Thomas Quick case.

Treatment of the children

In May 2017, the children came forward and stated that the police used threats and rewards to mislead them into "confessing" the crime. “They almost threw it at me and would say ‘yes this has happened’. It was a lot of pressure that was the thing that made it so scary.” and “I remember that I was afraid of the police [but] if I did what they wanted, they would be happy and satisfied”, said Robin, who wants an apology. [11]

The police had no recording of any confession, despite producing video and audio recordings of several other interrogations, which display serious pressure put on the boys to confess. [12]

The boys were never convicted of the murder, so they were legally only regarded as suspects. [4] Both boys were taken by social services for treatment and psychological help at a children's institution. [13] The state imprisoned the children away from their parents and their friends and community for years, and tried several times to make the separation permanent. Years later, because all the state efforts failed, and no foster parents could be found, the children were returned to their parents.

Criticism of the investigation and media reports

In Linda Kidane's documentary Mordet på Kevin, broadcast on Sveriges Radio on 2 October 2015, the investigation was presented as a complete success and Kidane confirmed that the two brothers had murdered Kevin Hjalmarsson. [14] After Janne Josefsson and other journalists started to look into the case, the documentary was removed from Sveriges Radio's official website. [15]

In April 2017, Dagens Nyheter published an article that analysed the investigation of Kevin Hjalmarsson's death. [4] The article highlighted several faults in the initial investigation, such as how interrogations of the two boys were conducted and how the boys were led through the crime scene. [4] The two boys were subjected to extensive interrogations; this was deemed counterproductive by experts on children since it could lead to false confessions. [16] Among those with a critical view were psychology professor Ann-Christin Cederborg, who said that the interrogations of the two boys were conducted against all rules concerning how an interrogation should be conducted. [17] According to Cederborg, the methods used on the boys produced false confessions. [17] The two children were subjected to threats and rewards depending on what they answered during interrogations. [13] Neither the boys nor their parents had any legal representation during the entire investigation and interrogations. [13] The alleged confessions that led to the closing of the investigation were never recorded on audio or video. [4]

At the same time that Dagens Nyheter was investigating the case, a documentary by Dan Josefsson, Fallet Kevin, was in production. [18] [19] The documentary showed parts of the video interrogations with the boys. [20] The first episode of the three-part documentary was broadcast on Sveriges Television on the Dokument inifrån show in 2017, a few weeks after Dagens Nyheter published their first article about the case. [19] [20]

On 8 May, 2017, the district attorney decided to re-open the investigation into the case. [21]

On 27 March 2018, all suspicions against the two brothers were completely dismissed. [6] [22] Police also indicated that they now believed Kevin died in an accident. [22]

On 9 March 2022, it was announced at a press conference by justice minister Morgan Johansson that both brothers would be awarded 1 million (SEK) each in damages. This was done ex gratia, as it was decided by the government. [23]

In June 2022, the case was covered in episode 214 of the true crime podcast Casefile .

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sture Bergwall</span> Swedish alleged serial killer

Sture Ragnar Bergwall, also known as Thomas Quick from 1993–2002, is a Swedish man previously believed to have been a serial killer, having confessed to more than 30 murders while detained in a mental institution for personality disorders. Between 1994 and 2001, Quick was convicted of eight of these murders. However, he withdrew all of his confessions in 2008. As a result, his murder convictions were quashed, the final one in July 2013, and he was released from hospital. The episode raised issues about how murder convictions could have been obtained on such weak evidence, and has been called the largest miscarriage of justice in Swedish history. Journalists Hannes Råstam and Jenny Küttim and Dan Josefsson published TV documentaries and books about the murder cases; they claimed that bad therapy led to false confessions. Dan Josefsson claims that a "cult"-like group led by psychologist Margit Norell manipulated the police and talked Sture Bergwall into false confessions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ulf Olsson</span> Swedish murderer

Ulf Olsson, also known as Helénmannen was a Swedish murderer. He was convicted for the murders of 10-year-old Helén Nilsson and 26-year-old Jannica Ekblad in 1989. Found after a DNA test in 2004, Olsson was convicted and sentenced to psychiatric care in 2005. Although he was first brought to the attention of the police in 2002, he had been in contact with two different police officers through anonymous letters and phone calls since only a couple of months after the murders. The investigation is the second-largest in Swedish history, only surpassed by the investigation of the 1986 assassination of Swedish prime minister Olof Palme.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Crime in Sweden</span> Overview of crime in Sweden

Crime in Sweden is defined by the Swedish Penal Code and in other Swedish laws and statutory instruments.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Assassination of Olof Palme</span> 1986 murder of the Prime Minister of Sweden

On 28 February 1986, at 23:21 CET, Olof Palme, Prime Minister of Sweden, was fatally wounded by a single gunshot while walking home from a cinema with his wife Lisbeth Palme on the central Stockholm street Sveavägen. Lisbeth Palme was slightly wounded by a second shot. The couple did not have bodyguards with them.

Ten-year-old Helén Nilsson was the victim in a sadistic murder case in Hörby, Sweden, in March 1989. The murderer, Ulf Olsson, the so-called Helén man, was convicted in April 2005, having been found after a DNA test in 2004.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Murder of Catrine da Costa</span> Swedish case of murder

Catrine da Costa is a Swedish murder victim whose remains were found in Solna, north of Stockholm, in 1984. Da Costa had been dismembered, and parts of her body were found in plastic bags on 18 July and 7 August. The case is known as styckmordsrättegången. How da Costa died has not been established as her vital organs and head have never been found.

Maureen Cathryn Harriet "Cats" Falck was a Swedish television journalist who, together with her friend Lena Gräns, disappeared in Stockholm in 1984 while she was investigating a scandal involving the smuggling of weapons from Sweden to communist states in Eastern Europe. The dead bodies of Falck and Gräns were later found at the bottom of the Hammarby Canal in Stockholm. The deaths remain unsolved but later reports claim that they were assassinated in a state-sponsored operation by agents from East Germany.

Per Anders Eklund is a Swedish murderer and rapist convicted of killing a 31-year-old woman in 2000 and a 10-year-old girl in 2008. Eklund is also a suspect in other murder cases currently under investigation, including the unsolved 1994 murder of Malin Olsson in Gothenburg. On 6 October 2008, he was sentenced to life imprisonment for the two murders, one rape in Sandviken 2006 and on child pornography charges.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Islam in Sweden</span> Islamic organization in Sweden

Contacts with the Muslim world dates back to the 7th–10th centuries, when the Vikings traded with Muslims during the Islamic Golden Age. Since the late 1960s and more recently, immigration from predominantly Muslim countries has impacted the demographics of religion in Sweden, and has been the main driver of the spread of Islam in the country.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Murder of Gerd Johansson</span> 1939 child murder in Stockholm, Sweden

The murder of Gerd Johansson is one of Sweden's most notorious murder cases, concerning the disappearance and murder of a 10-year-old schoolgirl in Stockholm on 1 December 1939. Eight days after her parents had reported her missing her body was discovered in Lötsjön a lake in Sundbyberg; she had been raped and strangled to death. News media was filled with reports of the murder and her playmate Jan Sparring was interviewed by several media; Sparring later became a known singer in Sweden. A month after her body was discovered, media reported that her killer must have a dog and that jute fibers had been found on her coat. Police also stated that they were searching for a black car in connection with her murder.

Sven Åke Christianson is a Swedish professor of psychology. He is also a psychologist and writer. His research primarily concerns the function of human memory, crime and mental trauma and interview methods. He is widely discredited and his methods are considered pseudoscientific and unreliable.

Dozens of reported sexual assaults in 2014 and 2015 at We Are Sthlm, a youth festival in the Swedish capital Stockholm, were not publicized by the police. The Stockholm police had received 38 reports of sexual harassment at We Are Sthlm in 2014 and 2015 together, from female visitors at the festival, most of whom were under 15 years of age, but had not publicized these reported harassments in their press releases then. Police spokesperson Varg Gyllander in 2016, during the commotion about the 2015–16 New Year's Eve sexual assaults in Germany, suggested that this non-reporting in 2015 and 2014 may partly have been caused by the police's fear to "talk about these things in the context of the immigration debate today".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2017 Stockholm truck attack</span> Islamist terrorist attack in Sweden

On 7 April 2017, a vehicle-ramming Islamist terrorist attack took place in central Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. A hijacked truck was deliberately driven into crowds along Drottninggatan before being crashed into an Åhléns department store. Five people, the youngest an 11-year-old girl, were killed. 14 others were seriously injured.

Lisa Holm, a 17-year-old girl from Skövde working in Blomberg in Götene Municipality, Sweden, disappeared on 7 June 2015 and her body was found days later in a workshed. Her disappearance, the search for her, and the trial and conviction of Nerijus Bilevicius for her murder received widespread media attention in Sweden and Scandinavia.

Bombings in Sweden are attacks and sabotage using explosive devices by criminals in Sweden. The weapons used are weapons such as hand grenades and explosives intended for either civilian or military use. Legal authorities use the term allmänfarlig ödeläggelse genom sprängning and media in Sweden use the shorter term sprängdåd. This crime was not categorized separately prior to 2017. In 2018 there were 162 explosions, and in the first nine months of 2019, 97 explosions were registered, usually carried out by criminal gangs. According to Swedish police commissioner Anders Thornberg in 2019, there is no international equivalent to Sweden's wave of bombings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jenny Küttim</span> Swedish Journalist

Jenny Küttim, born Andersson, is a Swedish investigative journalist.

Stig Folke Wilhelm Engström was a Swedish graphic designer. Long treated by police as an eyewitness to the assassination of Prime Minister Olof Palme, Engström was separately proposed as Palme's assassin by the Swedish writers Lars Larsson and Thomas Pettersson.

The double murder of 8-year-old Mohammed Ammouri and 56-year-old Anna-Lena Svensson happened on 19 October 2004 in Linköping, Sweden. Both where stabbed to death at Åsgatan in Linköping. The murders remained unsolved and with no suspects for 16 years until the new method of ancestorial DNA was used. In June 2020, a suspect was arrested and later found guilty of the murders and sentenced to psychiatric care indefinitely. It was the first time in Swedish history that the method of ancestorial DNA was used to solve any murder or other crime in Sweden.

22-year-old Helena Andersson disappeared on 14 June 1992 in Mariestad, Sweden. Since then, several suspects in her disappearance have been arrested, and later released without charge. The disappearance has received extensive media attention since 1992.

The murder of Tove Tönnies, on the night of 16 October 2022, became a highly publicized case in Sweden. The female suspects were arrested and later found guilty at trial at their first trial. The case became historic as both women became the first females under the age of 21 to be sentenced to life imprisonment. On appeal to the higher Court of Appeal Johanna Jansson received 16 years imprisonment, and Maja Hellman was released.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "Fallet Kevin" (PDF). ninahjelgren.com (in Swedish). Archived (PDF) from the original on 4 March 2018. Retrieved 27 March 2018.
  2. ↑ "Why a 20-year-old murder case is making headlines in Sweden again". Newsweek. 22 May 2017. Archived from the original on 28 March 2018. Retrieved 27 March 2018.
  3. ↑ "Amerikansk modell skulle ha skyddat i fallet Kevin". Svenska Dagbladet (in Swedish). Archived from the original on 27 March 2018. Retrieved 27 March 2018.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Två små barn pekades ut som mördare – nu ifrågasätts utredningen av mordet på Kevin". Dagens Nyheter (in Swedish). 26 April 2017. Archived from the original on 27 March 2018. Retrieved 27 March 2018.
  5. ↑ Accused brothers speak out on "Kevin" case. Sveriges Radio. 19 May 2017. Archived from the original on 27 March 2018. Retrieved 27 March 2018.
  6. 1 2 "Brothers cleared of killing four-year-old Kevin – after 20 years". The Local. 28 March 2018. Archived from the original on 28 March 2018. Retrieved 28 March 2018.
  7. ↑ Green, David A. (2012). When Children Kill Children: Penal Populism and Political Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN   9780191629761. Archived from the original on 2018-03-27. Retrieved 2018-03-27– via Google Books.
  8. ↑ "The 20-year-old child murder case that continues to grip Sweden". The Independent. 22 May 2017. Archived from the original on 27 March 2018. Retrieved 27 March 2018.
  9. ↑ Mattsson, Titti (19 May 2017). "The 20-year-old child murder case that continues to grip Sweden". The Conversation. Archived from the original on 28 March 2018. Retrieved 27 March 2018.
  10. ↑ "Teenagers suspected of toddler's murder". Tes. 6 September 2015. Archived from the original on 27 March 2018. Retrieved 27 March 2018.
  11. ↑ "Investigation into 4yo Kevin's brutal death reopens after 19 years". Archived from the original on 2018-06-12. Retrieved 2018-06-11.
  12. ↑ "Fresh investigation into death of 4-year-old Kevin". Sveriges Radio. Sveriges Radio. 8 May 2017. Archived from the original on 2018-06-12. Retrieved 2018-06-11.
  13. 1 2 3 "What happened to Kevin? The four year old killed by a lake". news.com.au. Archived from the original on 27 March 2018. Retrieved 27 March 2018.
  14. ↑ "Mordet på Kevin – P3 Dokumentär" (in Swedish). Sveriges Radio. Archived from the original on 25 March 2018. Retrieved 27 March 2018.
  15. ↑ Cedersjö, Johan (8 May 2017). Sveriges Radio avpublicerar P3-dokumentär om fallet Kevin – Medierna. Sveriges Radio (in Swedish). Archived from the original on 25 March 2018. Retrieved 27 March 2018.
  16. ↑ "SVT:s Fallet Kevin: Det finns inget erkännande". Aftonbladet (in Swedish). 17 May 2017. Archived from the original on 27 March 2018. Retrieved 27 March 2018.
  17. 1 2 Kidspot Editor. "Investigation into 4yo Kevin's brutal death reopens after 19 years". kidspot.com.au. Archived from the original on 27 March 2018. Retrieved 27 March 2018.{{cite web}}: |author= has generic name (help)
  18. ↑ "The Kevin Case". SVT Sales. Archived from the original on 28 March 2018. Retrieved 27 March 2018.
  19. 1 2 "Dokument inifrån: Fallet Kevin" (in Swedish). SVT Play. Archived from the original on 26 March 2018. Retrieved 27 March 2018.
  20. 1 2 "Swedish brothers accused of killing a four year old boy". EthioGrio.com. Archived from the original on 28 March 2018. Retrieved 27 March 2018.
  21. ↑ "Fresh investigation into death of 4-year-old Kevin". Sveriges Radio. 8 May 2017. Archived from the original on 27 March 2018. Retrieved 27 March 2018.
  22. 1 2 "KEVIN-FALLET: Bröderna Christian och Robin frias från alla misstankar". Expressen (in Swedish). 27 March 2018. Archived from the original on 27 March 2018. Retrieved 27 March 2018.
  23. ↑ "Bröderna i Kevinfallet ersätts". SVT Nyheter. 9 March 2022. Retrieved 9 March 2022.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.