The real-life Swedish murder that inspired Stieg Larsson

Long before the books of Stieg Larsson and Henning Mankell shone a light on Sweden’s dark underbelly, there was the murder of Catrine da Costa. It's a case that continues to shock, baffle and divide the nation.

By Julie Bindel - Telegraph.co.uk

November 30, 2010

Malmskillnadsgatan, Stockholm, used to be where street prostitutes in the capital gathered. The 600m-long road in the city centre was always teeming with drug-addicted women at night, weaving in and out of the traffic, some barely able to stand.

This was the street where Catrine da Costa, a 28-year-old prostitute and heroin addict, sold herself. A police mugshot, taken after she was arrested for soliciting, shows a pretty young woman with pale freckled skin and sad eyes. Her light coloured hair is feathery against a thin neck.

Da Costa was last seen in Malmskillnadsgatan on June 10 1984. She had previously been married to and had a son with a Portuguese man. Her mother, to whom she was close, raised the alarm after not hearing from her daughter for a few days.

Five weeks later some of her remains were discovered in a bin bag near Solna, north of Stockholm, and close to the Department of Forensic Medicine at the Karolinska Institute. Almost three weeks later, another bin bag full of da Costa’s body parts was discovered less than a mile away. The head and some internal organs were missing, and have never been found.

It is not unusual for street prostitutes to be murdered, but the mutilation made this case different. The case, known in Sweden as styckmordet (the ‘cutting up murder’), gave rise to an almost unprecedented public outrage. It has spawned four books, several television documentaries and countless newspaper and academic articles in Sweden over the years.

The discovery of the body parts, and the arrest of two seemingly respectable men for da Costa’s murder, provoked the women of Sweden to organise against male brutality. They marched through the city centres; circulated petitions; and appeared on television programmes protesting against the ill-treatment of women, particularly vulnerable females such as da Costa. The case was to lead to a change in the law on prostitution; men who pay for sex are now criminalised. Yet outside Sweden this dark and twisted tale has received little attention.

Until the da Costa case, Sweden liked to think of itself as a respectable, liberal country where not much happened. Today, thanks to the uniquely dark and grisly novels of Henning Mankell and Stieg Larsson, we know that isn’t the case.

Larsson, a life-long opponent of violence against women, witnessed a brutal rape when he was just 15; the Swedish title of his book The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was Men Who Hate Women. And Mankell has often said that the underlying purpose of his Wallander books is to ask the question ‘what went wrong with Swedish society?’ For many, the answer is ‘Catrine da Costa’.

But who killed her? Last July, the statute of limitations on the case ran out, which means no one can ever be tried again for the crime. Half of Sweden believes that they know who killed da Costa, except they got away with it. The other half believes the alleged murderers’ arrest and trial was the worst miscarriage of justice ever to occur in Scandinavia. The suspects may have been cleared, but their names have been blackened.

At the time da Costa went missing, two bright, successful doctors named Teet Härm and Thomas Allgen were working in Stockholm, progressing well in their lives and careers. Four years later, they were on trial for murder, their reputations in ruins.

Although acquitted in court of the murder, the two men’s innocence was by no means confirmed. Dismissing the case, the trial judge even declared that though murder could not be proved, he was convinced that they had cut up the body. Ever since the first finger of suspicion was pointed at them a quarter of a century ago, Härm and Allgen have been suing the Swedish government for 40million krona (just over £3m) in an attempt to finally clear their names. But earlier this year the Attunda District Court ruled that the doctors are not entitled to financial compensation. Kammarrätt, Sweden’s main administrative court, withdrew Härm and Allgen’s licences to practise medicine in 1991. Since then there have been numerous legal attempts to strike the remarks of the judge. Neither suspect has been employed since first arrested.

I travelled to Sweden to ask those involved in the case if Härm and Allgen are the victims of a prejudiced media-led campaign. Or are they cold-blooded psychopaths and master manipulators of their supporters?

Teet Härm was a young forensic pathologist working at Karolinska Institute when the body parts were found. In a photograph taken in the early Eighties, Härm looks pale and thin, with cheekbones jutting out from under small, staring eyes. One eyebrow is higher than the other, giving him a look of perpetual inquisitiveness. He was regularly called upon by police to help solve murders and unexplained deaths.

At 30, Härm had already published papers and spoken at international conferences on his main topic of interest – death by strangulation. Härm had personal experience of this type of death. In 1982, two years before da Costa died, his first wife was found hanged in their bedroom.

Although the death was ruled a suicide by the coroner, police had their suspicions that Härm had murdered her. Ann-Catherine was found hanging from the side of a bed with a ligature around her neck. She was, however, dressed up for a night out. Two months later, Härm submitted his very first paper on strangulation.

He was, by then, considered somewhat of an expert on sexual violence. A paper he published weeks after his wife’s death, entitled ‘Face and Neck Injuries Due to Resuscitation Versus Throttling’ is cited in an American publication, the Maryland Network Against Domestic Violence Investigation and Prosecution of Strangulation Cases.

Police officers had noted that Härm’s response to his wife’s death seemed unusual and callous. He was viewed by many as cold, arrogant and, in the words of one former colleague, ‘creepy’. Härm took great interest in his work; would invite friends to view post-mortems; and was a consumer of violent pornography and frequent buyer of prostitutes. He had been known to send unsolicited post- mortem reports to friends, complete with photographs.

His wife was in the process of divorcing Härm when she died. After the discovery of the bin bags, Härm’s former father-in-law contacted the police. He’d reported his suspicions of Härm at the time of his daughter’s death and now thought the young doctor could have killed da Costa.

During a visit to Sweden in 2007, I met the lawyer representing the suspects, Anders Angell, who died last year. ‘I have always viewed this case as a gross miscarriage of justice,’ he told me, ‘and I do believe that Ann-Catherine’s father, who always thought Teet was perverted, simply made up his mind that his son-in-law was guilty of the styckmordet when he read about it in the press.’

As a result of the tip-off from Härm’s father-in-law, when police set about their investigation, Teet Härm’s photo was among the pictures of suspects that officers trawling the red light area showed to the prostitutes. Almost 50 of the women said they recognised Härm from Malmskillnadsgatan. One woman said she was frightened of him and that he had previously been violent to her.

Later, during questioning, Härm admitted buying sex ‘only once’, after a fight with his wife, but in fact he was known as a regular among the street women. Härm was arrested for both murders in December 1984. His house was searched and police recovered a number of items, including a knife in a leather sheath. After five days of questioning, he was released without charge.

Working with Härm at the forensic department was his former supervisor, Jovan Rajs. He had performed the post-mortem examination on da Costa’s body parts and initially told the police he thought that, based on the incisions, the perpetrator could have been a butcher. Rajs, together with police investigators, visited a slaughterhouse to examine the method used for cutting up animals.

He was initially sceptical about Härm being a suspect in the case, but was soon to change his mind. He claimed, after a second examination, that the incisions used to dissect da Costa had probably been made by someone skilled in dissecting human, rather than animal, corpses. Eventually, Rajs became so convinced of his former colleague’s guilt that he told police, in a statement in January 1985: ‘I think if you do not establish his guilt, then you might as well all go and hang yourselves.’

That same year, a young GP at a hospital in Alingsås, near Gothenburg, Thomas Allgen, was going through a separation from his wife Christina. Allgen, who is older than Härm and whose warm brown eyes and perpetual smile made him look like a favourite uncle, knew Härm, as they had worked together for 18 months at a hospital in Stockholm between 1980 and 1981. Allgen had invited Härm and his new girlfriend to dinner at his home shortly after the death of Härm’s wife in 1982. Christina Allgen took a strong dislike to Härm and he was not invited back.

At the time of Härm’s arrest in December, Allgen was under investigation following an allegation from his wife that he had sexually abused their daughter, Agda (not her real name), aged two. She remembered Härm and had realised that he was the styckmordet suspect hinted at in the media.

After months of investigations, Christina sensationally reported that her daughter had said things that suggested she was present during the cutting up of da Costa’s body. Agda also made reference, it was alleged, that Härm was with her father during the dissection.

Christina had worked out soon after the initial arrest who the suspect was – she had telephoned the police after reading the press reports describing the suspect as ‘a young doctor’ and asked if the man they were holding was Härm, which they confirmed. When Agda began to ‘disclose’ what Christina believed was hard evidence that the two men were the killers, she said she felt she had no choice but to involve the police.

Christina reported her theory to the authorities, and a child psychiatrist and psychologist were engaged by police to examine the evidence. Both found it credible.

Compelling evidence of murder was building against the two suspects. During the latter stages of the pretrial investigation, in autumn 1987, a married couple who owned a photo shop close to the Karolinska Institute contacted the police. They said that years before, in the summer of 1984, they had developed and processed prints of a film roll that contained horrible images of a body cut into pieces. They, and their employees, had apparently been very upset by these pictures, they said, but didn’t notify the police of their existence.

The owners told police that the customers – two young men – had claimed that the pictures were part of a top secret investigation. The photo shop owners were shown line-ups with the two doctors, and they identified Allgen and, to a lesser extent, Härm.

Härm was arrested for a second time in October 1987, more than three years after the discovery of the body parts. Allgen was also arrested – for child abuse and the murder of Catrine da Costa. At the pretrial hearing, the senior prosecutor ruled that evidence from the scores of prostitutes who had encountered Härm was inadmissible, because the women were ‘unreliable’. He also made derogatory comments to the press about them. This, alongside the fact that one of the suspects had been accused of abusing his own daughter, added fuel to a growing feminist campaign for justice for da Costa.

At the end of the murder trial, the jury returned a guilty verdict at the District Court. However, before the verdict could be confirmed by the judge, a number of jurors gave interviews to the press. As a result, the High Court overturned the conviction and ruled that the two doctors were free to go.

That could have been the end of the case, but a public outcry, greatly assisted by the tabloid press, followed. These two dangerous men, it was claimed, had got away with a heinous crime. After a campaign led by the journalist Hanna Olsson, who was then researching the book Catrine and Justice (1990), a retrial was ordered. (Olsson had interviewed a number of prostitutes for governmental research, one of whom was da Costa. She had got to know her very well.)

At the end of the second trial, Härm and Allgen were acquitted of murder. But the judge, swayed by the child’s testimony and the proximity of da Costa’s body parts to the hospital, announced his belief that they were guilty of cutting up the body. They could not be sentenced because the statute of limitations had run out for that crime, which, at the time in Sweden, was seen as a relatively minor one.

Psychologist Lennart Sjöberg, professor at the school of economics at Stockholm University, had been recommended to me as an expert on the da Costa case. Sjöberg is, he admits, ‘a bit obsessed’ by it and has written research papers on the topic.

Why does he think the case became so notorious in Sweden from the outset? ‘The feminists really put pressure on the prosecutors to retry the doctors,’ Sjöberg says. ‘They believed that the case was symbolic of powerful men getting away with abusing helpless women.’

Sjöberg’s major criticism of the way the investigation was conducted rests on the validity of the evidence from Allgen’s daughter. ‘The child was only 18 months old when she was supposed to witness the cutting up,’ he says, ‘and yet she was supposed to be able to, some two years later, give credible evidence to child psychologists that is used against the doctors in court? Unbelievable.’

Agda’s testimony threw up the whole issue of so-called ‘false memory syndrome’, developed by those who have allegedly been falsely accused of child sexual abuse. Supporters of the notion of such a syndrome, which is supported by a number of psychiatrists, argue that adults, whether parents or psychologists, can mistakenly label a child’s ‘fantasy’ or ‘imagination’ for real memories of abuse.

Leif GW Persson is head of research at the Swedish National Police Board. He has worked as adviser to the police for 30 years and was involved in the da Costa investigation from the beginning. ‘When I first heard about the case and the apprehension of Teet Härm, I was sceptical,’ he says. ‘I spent thousands of hours studying this investigation and I am convinced that both the doctors accused are innocent. There is no evidence whatsoever. [The investigation was run by] lousy and biased cops, and the media was running berserk.’

Mihkel Kärmas, a television journalist based in Estonia (where Härm’s parents were born), has also followed the case for a number of years and has interviewed Härm on a number of occasions. The media have led the case against the two doctors, Kärmas believes, given licence partly because of their unsavoury lifestyles.

‘Teet fits the Hannibal Lecter of Sweden image,’ Kärmas says, referring to his piercing stare and square jaw. ‘He is a tabloid editor’s wet dream.’ According to Angell, Härm’s former mother-in-law was also, at the time of his arrest, employed by the Swedish tabloid Expressen, a newspaper which was to be at the forefront of the later campaign against Härm.

Having initially been convinced that the two men were guilty and had escaped justice, I began to doubt that version of events. Härm and Allgen appeared to be unsavoury characters whom the police had decided were guilty due to circumstantial rather than forensic evidence.

Desperate to get Härm and Allgen’s side of the story, I made several attempts to contact them through Angell. Allgen has long refused to speak about the case and Härm is very reluctant. After weeks of trying, Härm finally agreed to correspond with me via email. It is impossible to speak on the phone as Härm lost most of his hearing when attempting suicide in 1985, as a result of the adverse effects of the investigation.

I ask if he killed da Costa. ‘I’m innocent and my life has been totally ruined by all this slander,’ Härm wrote. ‘It has been impossible for me to get any kind of work after what happened to me due to all those rumours that were spread about me all over the country and abroad.’

If the two suspects are not guilty, how did da Costa die? Three months before she was found, a Polish butcher named Stanislaw Gonerka had been released from a psychiatric institution. He had been serving a sentence for the murder of a young woman in 1974, whom he strangled and cut up into pieces before packing her remains into bin bags. Her head, like that of Catrine da Costa, has never been found. Gonerka had no alibi and had been seen among Stockholm prostitutes at the time of da Costa’s disappearance.

Police knew him to be very dangerous, particularly when drunk, but dismissed him as a suspect at a very early stage of the investigation, for unknown reasons. Many of the prostitutes in the area knew Gonerka as a customer. Several said that he frightened them. He died in 1987.

The Prosecutor General recently applied to the court for a search order to obtain tissue samples collected and held at the Karolinska hospital from Gonerka. Skin samples were taken from his body at the time of his death, to see if it matches a number of hairs found with da Costa’s remains in the bin bags. If it matches, the two suspects could be presumed innocent.

But will we ever truly know who killed Catrine da Costa? Gonerka’s name has, according to police sources, been discovered in da Costa’s diary. But could he simply have been a customer and transferred his hair to her body during sexual contact?

‘There are a great number of people who will get their reputation destroyed when the truth is revealed,’ Angell told me the last time we spoke before he died. ‘These men have been branded as the most notorious killers of our time and yet they are totally innocent.’

But we will now never know for sure who killed Catrine da Costa. She continues to haunt Swedish society, her sad mugshot rarely leaving the news. A strange legacy for a woman who few cared about when she was alive.

Dr. Teet Haerm

The Vampire Doctor