Sufficient Evidence at Sjöbo

INTERNAL CASE REVIEW

Case No. 93-0147 — LINDGREN, Elsa M. Methodological Assessment and Procedural Notes

Prepared by: Göran Vikström, Senior Inspector (Ret.), Ystad District Police Date of Preparation: 14 January 2024 Classification: Internal — Not for Distribution

Section 1: Purpose and Scope

This review is undertaken at the author’s initiative, pursuant to the general provisions of Section 14, Paragraph 3 of the Internal Affairs Protocol governing retrospective case assessment. The purpose of this document is to provide a methodological assessment of investigative procedures employed during the active phase of Case No. 93-0147, from 14 November 1993 through 28 June 1994, and to identify areas where procedural standards were met, exceeded, or fell below the expectations outlined in the Ystad District Police Investigative Manual (1991 edition, revised 1993).

The scope of this review is confined to methodological questions. It does not constitute an appeal, a request for case reopening, or a commentary on judicial outcomes. The conviction of Faris al-Rashidi (Ystad District Court, Case No. B 1247-94, sentenced 12 September 1994) is a matter of judicial record and is not subject to reassessment within this document.

I should note that this review was not requested by any supervisor, department, or external body. I am retired. Nobody asked me to write this.

That sentence does not belong in a document of this kind. I will leave it.

Section 2: Case Summary

On the morning of 14 November 1993, at approximately 07:15, a welfare check was initiated at the residence of Elsa Margareta Lindgren, age 74, residing at Björkvägen 12, a farmhouse located 6.2 km southeast of the town center of Sjöbo, Skåne County. The welfare check was requested by Lindgren’s daughter, Karin Lindgren-Borg, residing in Lund, who reported that her mother had failed to answer the telephone for a period of two days. Lindgren-Borg stated that her mother always answered by the third ring unless she was in the garden, and that in November there was no garden to be in.

Officers Svensson, P. and Holmqvist, A. arrived at the residence at 08:40. Access road conditions: frozen gravel, single lane, no passing points for approximately 800 meters. The officers noted that the mailbox at the road entrance contained two days’ mail, including a letter from Lindgren-Borg postmarked 10 November, which was later opened and found to contain a recipe for almond cake and a school photograph of Lindgren-Borg’s son, aged seven, dressed as a troll for a class play.

This detail was catalogued as personal correspondence, no evidentiary value. I include it here because I remember holding the photograph in an evidence bag and looking at the boy’s face, painted green, grinning with the uncomplicated pride of a child who has been given a costume, and thinking that Elsa Lindgren never saw it. That she had been dead on her kitchen floor while this photograph sat in her mailbox in the November cold, waiting.

The front door was unlocked. The deceased was found in the kitchen, seated in a wooden chair that had been displaced approximately 1.4 meters from the kitchen table. Her right hand was resting on the table surface. Her left hand was in her lap. The position suggested that she had been seated at the table when the blow was struck, and that the force of the impact had pushed the chair backward but had not displaced her from it. She remained seated. I do not know why this detail persists. The image of a woman receiving a fatal blow and not falling from her chair. The body’s refusal to acknowledge what had happened to it.

Cause of death, as determined by the forensic pathologist (Dr. B. Salomonsson, Lund University Hospital): blunt force trauma to the posterior cranium, consistent with a single blow from a heavy object. No murder weapon was recovered at the scene or subsequently.

Ambient temperature in the kitchen at time of discovery: 14 degrees Celsius. The heating system was operational. The thermostat was set to 20 degrees. This discrepancy was consistent with the front door having been left open, or having been opened and not fully closed, for a period of several hours. The cold had come into the kitchen and settled there. When I arrived, I could see my breath.

Outside temperature on the morning of 14 November 1993: minus 2 degrees. Clear sky. Frost on the road. No wind.

I was assigned lead investigator at 09:20. I arrived at the farmhouse at 10:05. I had driven from Ystad on the E65, then north on the 13 toward Sjöbo. The road passes through flat agricultural land. In November, the fields are bare. The soil is dark and heavy — Skåne clay, which holds water all winter and releases it slowly in spring. On that morning, the frost had whitened the furrows so they looked like the ribs of something exposed.

That is not a relevant observation. I include it because it is what I remember.

The distance from the nearest neighboring property (Hansson, P-O., Björkvägen 8) to the Lindgren residence was approximately 320 meters. The intervening terrain was flat and without obstruction. No streetlights were present on the access road. The nearest commercial establishment — a petrol station on the outskirts of Sjöbo — was 3.2 km to the northwest.

Section 3: Initial Investigation and Witness Assessment

The canvass of neighboring properties commenced on 14 November 1993 at approximately 13:00 and continued through 16 November. Nine properties within a 2 km radius of the Lindgren residence were contacted. Of the nine households, seven were occupied at the time of the canvass. Two properties — seasonal residences owned by families from Malmö — were unoccupied and had been since October.

Interviews produced the following of note:

Svensson, K. (Björkvägen 3, 1.4 km south): No observations on the evening in question. Reported that Lindgren was “a private woman” who “kept her house well” and who had been seen less frequently in town since her husband Erik’s death in 1987. Svensson stated that Lindgren walked to the Sjöbo library every Wednesday and returned books in bags she carried in both hands.

Nilsson, G. and Nilsson, R. (Stationsgatan 11, 1.9 km west): No observations. Stated that the road to the Lindgren property was rarely used after dark. “You’d notice headlights,” Gustav Nilsson said. “There’s nothing else out there to make light.”

The interview with Per-Olov Hansson (Björkvägen 8), conducted on 14 November at 14:20, produced the following statement, here summarized from the original transcript: Hansson reported that on the evening of 13 November, at a time he estimated as “around nine, maybe later,” he heard what he described as “a raised voice, a man’s voice, not speaking Swedish — or not proper Swedish.” He stated that the voice came from the direction of the Lindgren property. He did not investigate. He stated that he “didn’t think much of it” until he learned of the death the following morning.

The phrase “not speaking Swedish — or not proper Swedish” was entered into the case file. Its significance was assessed at the time as potentially relevant to suspect identification.

I should describe the context. I should have described the context thirty years ago, in the original file, but context is not a field on the intake form.

In November 1993, the Sjöbo municipality was home to approximately 260 asylum seekers housed in temporary accommodation at the former Sjöbo folk high school, 11 km northwest of the Lindgren residence. The presence of the asylum seekers had been a matter of local contention since 1988, when Sjöbo held a municipal referendum on refugee reception — the first of its kind in Sweden, organized by Sven-Olov Johansson of the Centre Party, though it was not a Centre Party initiative but something more local, more specific, more instructive about what a community will do when given a mechanism to express what it has been feeling. The referendum was not binding but its result — 67% opposed — was widely reported nationally and internationally. Sweden’s image of itself shifted slightly that year, in the way a mirror shifts when you discover it has been hung at a flattering angle. The temporary housing remained operational in 1993 through a county-level administrative decision that overrode the municipal vote.

I do not wish to characterize the political climate. The political climate is a matter of public record. I will say only that when Per-Olov Hansson told us about the voice, the direction of the investigation shifted. It did not turn. It shifted, as weight shifts in a car taking a curve too fast. Afterward, it was difficult to correct.

Faris al-Rashidi, age 31, an Iraqi national residing at the Sjöbo temporary housing facility, was identified as a person of interest on 17 November 1993. The basis for identification: proximity to the Lindgren residence (11 km), a prior shoplifting charge (Sjöbo ICA, September 1993, value: 47 kronor — two tins of sardines and a loaf of bread), and a physical description provided by Hansson that matched al-Rashidi in only the most general terms — “dark hair, medium height, thin build.” The description was consistent with approximately 40% of the adult male residents of the temporary housing facility. It was also consistent with Per-Olov Hansson himself, who had dark hair and a medium build, though I did not make this observation at the time. Or I made it and did not record it, which amounts to the same thing.

Al-Rashidi was brought in for questioning on 18 November. He denied any knowledge of the Lindgren residence or its occupant. He stated that on the evening of 13 November he had been at the temporary housing facility, watching television with two other residents. The two residents corroborated his account, but their statements were assessed as having limited evidentiary weight due to their status as co-residents and their limited proficiency in Swedish. I wrote that assessment. “Limited evidentiary weight due to limited proficiency in Swedish.” A man’s alibi diminished because he could not speak the language of the country that was about to convict him.

I note that the interview with al-Rashidi was conducted in Swedish with the assistance of a telephone interpreter. The interpreter service was based in Stockholm. Connection quality was assessed at the time as adequate, though the recording of the interview contains several passages where the interpreter asks al-Rashidi to repeat himself, and at least one passage — approximately four minutes in duration — where the interpreter appears to be summarizing rather than translating. I listened to that recording again last year. I am not certain why. The tape quality has degraded. Al-Rashidi’s voice is thin and far away, as though he is speaking from inside something.

Additional physical evidence: a partial boot print recovered from the soft ground near the Lindgren residence’s front entrance. The print was consistent with a size 43 boot of indeterminate make. Al-Rashidi wore size 43. So did Per-Olov Hansson. So did I.

Section 4: The Lindgren Residence — Scene Assessment

I return to the scene because the procedural record requires a comprehensive account of physical evidence recovered. That is the reason. It is sufficient.

The kitchen of the Lindgren residence measured approximately 4 by 5 meters. Flooring: linoleum, brown, worn through to the subfloor in a path between the stove and the sink — the path a person walks ten thousand times without thinking, the path her feet had memorized. One window, east-facing, with cotton curtains of a pale blue pattern that had faded unevenly, darker where the folds protected the fabric from sunlight. The window looked onto a back garden — approximately 0.15 hectares, fenced with low wire — in which the deceased had maintained a vegetable plot during growing seasons. At the time of the scene assessment, the garden was dormant. Rows were still visible in the soil. Bean poles had been removed and stacked along the fence. The earth had been turned and covered with straw in the manner of someone who intended to plant again.

Garden tools were stored in a small shed adjacent to the back entrance: three spades of varying size, a rake, hand shears, a trowel, a hoe with a handle that had been wrapped in electrical tape where the wood had split. All had been cleaned and oiled for winter storage, hung on nails in the order she would need them in spring. The largest spade nearest the door. The trowel at the back. The shears at her eye level — she was not tall, perhaps 162 centimeters, based on the pathologist’s report, which I should not have memorized but have.

I noted this arrangement. It was not relevant to the investigation. A woman who stores her tools this way is a woman who expects to use them again.

The kitchen table was wooden, pine, scarred with use — rings from cups, a gouge near one corner where something heavy had been dropped or set down too hard. On the table at the time of discovery: one plate (white, unchipped, from a set — I checked the cupboard, there were five more, all matching), one cup (ceramic, dark blue, with a handle slightly crooked where it had been glued after breaking — the kind of cup that survives a set, the last of something, kept not because it matches but because the hand knows it), one knife, one fork. No food had been served. The arrangement suggested preparation for a meal that did not occur, or perhaps simply the way a woman who lives alone sets her table out of habit, the way I set mine.

On the counter beside the stove: a cutting board with an onion, uncut. A pot, empty, on the back burner. She had been about to cook. The onion was beginning to soften by the time I catalogued it, two days after her death. I held it in my gloved hand and wrote in the evidence log: “1 yellow onion, approx. 8 cm diameter, showing early decomposition.” An onion she had taken from a basket by the back door, a basket she had woven or bought or been given, and she had placed it on the board and then the doorbell rang or someone knocked and she went to the door and opened it.

Bookshelves in the adjacent sitting room contained approximately 200 volumes. I catalogued them per standard protocol. I note the following not for evidentiary purposes but because — I will say it plainly — they are what I remember when I think of Elsa Lindgren, whom I never met alive and whom I know better than most of the living.

Astrid Lindgren, eight volumes, several in early editions with the original Ilon Wikland illustrations. Tomas Tranströmer, three volumes, one — Den halvfärdiga himlen — with a cracked spine suggesting repeated reading and a marginal note in pencil on page 41 that I could not decipher. Wislawa Szymborska, two volumes in what appeared to be Polish — Wszelki wypadek and Ludzie na moście. Selma Lagerlöf, four volumes. A Swedish-Polish dictionary, heavily annotated in both languages. Harry Martinson. Karin Boye. Several volumes of poetry in languages I did not recognize — later identified as Lithuanian and, possibly, Latvian.

A woman who read poetry in three languages. Who lived alone on a farm in Skåne and read Szymborska in the original. Who had a Swedish-Polish dictionary so heavily used that the binding had separated and been repaired with tape.

On a shelf in the hallway, above a row of boots — five pairs, all practical, the smallest pair with mud still dried on the soles from what must have been the last time she worked the garden: four trophies from regional motocross competitions, 1962-1968. Beside them, a framed photograph of a Husqvarna 250cc motorcycle, the race number visible — 47 — and behind the motorcycle a man squinting into sunlight with the expression of someone who is about to do something that makes him happy. These belonged to the deceased’s husband, Erik Lindgren, who died of a stroke in 1987.

The trophies were not arranged chronologically or by placement. The 1965 trophy — third place, Skåne Regional Championship — was at eye level, centered. The 1967 trophy — first place, the highest finish — was pushed to the back, partially obscured by a vase of dried flowers. I do not know why she arranged them this way. I have a theory. The 1965 race was the one he almost won, the one he talked about. The 1967 race was the one he won and did not need to talk about. She kept the stories at eye level. The facts could take care of themselves.

That is not my theory to have. I did not know these people. I reconstructed their lives from objects in a house where one of them had been killed, and I have carried those objects in my mind for thirty years the way the hallway shelf carried the trophies — not in the order they matter to anyone else.

I will note that I spent eleven days at the Lindgren residence during the active phase of the investigation. This is longer than standard for a scene of this size and complexity. I was thorough. I was also, I think now, reluctant to leave. The house was quiet and cold and full of a person who was no longer in it, and something about that fullness — the books, the tools, the onion on the board — made leaving feel like a second abandonment.

Section 5: Alibi Verification — Witness B. Holm

On 14 March 1994, pursuant to standard pre-trial verification procedures, I conducted an interview with Britta Holm, age 69, a retired schoolteacher residing at Parkvägen 4, Sjöbo. Holm had been identified during the initial canvass as a peripheral witness — she lived approximately 1.8 km from the Lindgren residence but frequently walked along Björkvägen in the early evening hours, a habit she maintained regardless of season or weather. She had been interviewed briefly on 15 November 1993 and stated at that time that she had observed nothing unusual. The March interview was a routine pre-trial follow-up.

The interview was conducted at Holm’s residence. Duration: approximately 45 minutes. Coffee was served. Holm was cooperative and appeared cognitively sharp. She corrected my spelling of her street address on the interview form.

Her statement presented certain ambiguities requiring further assessment.

I determined that a follow-up interview was non-essential given the strength of corroborating evidence already in the case file.

The case was advanced to the prosecutorial phase on 21 March 1994. I submitted my recommendation that the evidence against Faris al-Rashidi was sufficient to support prosecution.

Section 6: Prosecutorial Recommendation and Case Disposition

On 21 March 1994, the case file for 93-0147 was submitted to the Ystad District Prosecutor’s office with a recommendation for prosecution. The recommendation was based on the totality of evidence gathered during the investigation, including but not limited to: witness testimony (Hansson, P-O.), physical evidence (boot print analysis), suspect proximity, and the assessment that alibi testimony provided by co-residents of the temporary housing facility did not meet the threshold of reliability.

The trial commenced on 15 August 1994. The prosecution presented its case over four days. The defense was represented by a court-appointed attorney whose name I have forgotten, which is not unusual for a case thirty years old, except that I have forgotten nothing else about this case — not the temperature of the kitchen, not the color of the curtains, not the race number on the Husqvarna — and the forgetting of his name feels less like a lapse of memory than like something I have chosen not to carry.

Al-Rashidi maintained his innocence throughout. His testimony, through an interpreter present in the courtroom this time, was that he had never visited the Lindgren property, had never met Elsa Lindgren, and had been at the temporary housing facility on the evening of 13 November watching a football match on television. He named the teams. He named the score. He named the minute of the winning goal. These details were not verified.

He was convicted on 12 September 1994. Sentenced to ten years. He served eight. He was released in 2001 and deported to Iraq in 2002.

I have written the above in the passive voice, as is customary for documents of this nature. But I should say: I recommended the prosecution. I prepared the evidence summary. I testified. I sat in the courtroom on four consecutive days in August — the windows open because the ventilation was inadequate, the sound of traffic from the street below mixing with the interpreter’s voice, which was calm and professional and which carried al-Rashidi’s words into the room with a careful neutrality that made them sound like facts — and I watched a man I had arrested be convicted on evidence I had gathered, and I felt something I mistook for completion. The way you feel when a door closes and the draft stops.

I should not have used the word “felt” in a document of this kind. Emotional responses are outside the scope of a methodological review.

Section 7: Post-Conviction Assessment

This section departs from standard review format. I acknowledge this. The departure is necessary for a complete methodological assessment. Or it is necessary for me. I am no longer certain I distinguish between these.

In the years following the conviction of Faris al-Rashidi, I continued to serve as Senior Inspector with the Ystad District Police. My service record from 1994 through my retirement in 2021 reflects 142 additional case assignments, of which 118 resulted in prosecution, of which 103 resulted in conviction. These numbers are a matter of record. I do not cite them to demonstrate competence. I cite them because they are what I have.

In 2004, my wife Agneta moved to an apartment in Malmö. The separation was not formalized for another three years. She said I had become “unreachable,” which is a word I have turned over for twenty years the way I once turned over evidence in the Lindgren kitchen. Unreachable suggests distance. It suggests that she tried. It suggests that there was a period — perhaps years — when I was becoming unreachable and she could see it and I could not, or would not, and the difference between those does not matter to the person on the other side of it.

I have Type 2 diabetes, diagnosed in 2009. I manage it with insulin injections that I administer at intervals my endocrinologist would not approve. I have lost feeling in two toes of my left foot. I live in a rented flat in Trelleborg, on the second floor, with a view of the harbor through a window I keep closed because the draft aggravates a condition in my shoulder that is not relevant to this review. I write this at my kitchen table. The table is smaller than Elsa Lindgren’s. There is one plate, one cup, one fork, one knife. I did not arrange them this way deliberately. They are simply what remains after everything that is not necessary has been removed, which is what happens to a life, I think, if you let it.

In October 2023, I drove past the Lindgren farmhouse. I had not intended to. I was driving to a medical appointment in Lund and took the 13 through Sjöbo instead of the motorway, which I told myself was because the motorway is tedious, which is true, but the 13 passes through Sjöbo and I knew this and the appointment was not until the afternoon and I had time and the day was the kind of gray, still autumn day when the light in Skåne does not come from the sky but from the fields themselves, the stubble holding the last warmth of the season.

The farmhouse has been renovated. The new owners painted it white. The garden was different — ornamental, not productive. Shrubs where the vegetable rows had been. No bean poles. The tool shed was gone, replaced by what appeared to be a carport with a boat trailer. The Husqvarna trophies and the books in three languages and the single cup from a broken set and the onion on the cutting board were not visible. Of course they were not visible. Thirty years. The house had been sold twice. A person’s kitchen is not an archive. It is the first thing the next occupant dismantles.

I sat in the car with the engine running for approximately twenty minutes. The fields around the farmhouse were bare. The soil had been turned for winter. The sky was the color of unpolished metal. A tractor was working a field perhaps 600 meters to the south, moving in slow passes, and I watched it the way I used to watch the sea from the office in Ystad — not seeing it, exactly, but letting it fill the space where thinking would otherwise have to be.

Then I drove to Lund. The appointment was routine. My blood sugar levels were acceptable. The doctor said I should walk more. I said I would.

I have, in the years since my retirement, developed a habit of reading about cases. Not Swedish cases — foreign ones. American, British, Australian. Cases where the legal system produced an outcome that was correct by every procedural measure and wrong by every human one. I read about them at night, at my kitchen table, the way some retired men read about football or naval history. Compulsively. Looking for the pattern. Not finding it. Not stopping.

One case. In 1919, in the American state of Oregon, a woman named Ophelia Paquet — a Tillamook woman, Native American — was denied inheritance of her deceased husband’s estate. The state retroactively voided their marriage under miscegenation laws. The marriage had been legal when it was performed. The husband had wanted her to inherit. The law was changed, and the change was applied backward, and the woman lost everything, and it was entirely legal. Sufficient evidence, if you like, that the marriage violated the statute as reinterpreted.

I read about this case at two in the morning in my kitchen in Trelleborg and I sat with it the way you sit with a diagnosis. Not because the cases are parallel — an elderly Swedish woman and a Tillamook woman in 1919 Oregon are not the same injustice. But a system that produces a correct outcome from corrupt premises, and the people inside the system who see the corruption and call it procedure. Who call it restraint. Who call it knowing when to stop.

Section 8: Conclusions and Recommendations

Based on the foregoing analysis, the investigation of Case No. 93-0147 was conducted in accordance with applicable procedures and standards.

That sentence is true. I will let it stand. I will also let stand what follows, which is not within the scope of a methodological review, and which I write because this document is the only place I have ever tried to say it, and because I am sixty-seven years old and I will not write another document after this one.

On the morning of 15 March 1994, I drove from my home in Ystad to the district police station. The drive takes approximately twenty-two minutes. The route follows Österleden to the ring road, then south on Dragongatan. In March, the light is returning but has not arrived. The sky at seven-thirty is the gray that comes before color, and the frost on the fields is thin and temporary, already dissolving where the sun will reach it within the hour. Traffic was light. A school bus passed me going the other direction, its windows fogged from inside.

I had in the inside pocket of my jacket a notebook containing notes from my interview with Britta Holm the previous afternoon. I had not yet entered these notes into the case file.

Britta Holm told me the following.

On the evening of 13 November 1993, at approximately 22:30, she had been walking on Björkvägen. Her usual evening route. She maintained it regardless of season or weather. She was approximately 400 meters south of the Lindgren property. She observed a man walking on the road, moving away from the direction of the Lindgren farmhouse, walking quickly, his shoulders drawn up the way a person’s shoulders draw up when they are cold or when they are carrying something they want to keep close to their body. She recognized him as Per-Olov Hansson. She was certain of the identification. She had taught him in school, thirty-five years earlier. She said: “You don’t forget a student. Not the ones who sat in the back row and looked at you as if they were calculating something.”

She stated that Hansson was carrying something. She could not identify the object. It was dark. The object was dark. It may have been a bag or a tool or nothing at all — but it was something, she said, because of the way he held it, away from his body, the way you hold something wet or something you don’t want to touch your coat. She was not certain what. She was certain it was Hansson. She was certain of the time because she had checked her watch before leaving the house, as she always did.

Per-Olov Hansson. The neighbor. The witness who reported the “foreign voice.” The man whose testimony had oriented the entire investigation toward Faris al-Rashidi. Walking away from the Lindgren farmhouse at 22:30 on the night of the murder, carrying something he held away from his body.

I drove to the station. The car radio was on. I do not remember what was playing. I remember the steering wheel under my hands and the frost on the windshield dissolving in arcs where the heating vents reached the glass and the notebook in my jacket pocket, which was not heavy — a standard-issue police notebook, perhaps 80 grams — but which I was aware of the way you are aware of a sound that should not be present. A knock in the engine that was not there yesterday.

I arrived at the station at 07:55. I entered the building. I placed the notebook in the case file — the physical file, the brown folder, third shelf from the top in the case room. I did not transcribe the notes into the digital record. I did not flag them for review. I did not amend the case summary or the suspect assessment or the prosecutorial recommendation that I had already begun drafting in my head on the drive from Sjöbo the previous evening, before I had spoken to Britta Holm, before I knew what she would tell me, the recommendation already forming the way it forms, from the edges inward, so that by the time you look at it directly the thing is already finished.

I assessed the following: Britta Holm was sixty-nine years old. The observation occurred at 22:30, in darkness, at a distance of approximately 400 meters. Her eyesight, while functional, was not verified by medical records. The identification of Per-Olov Hansson, while stated with confidence, was based on recognition from a thirty-five-year-old memory of a schoolboy. The object she observed him carrying was unidentified. The statement, taken in its totality, was ambiguous.

All of this is true. None of it is the reason I did not follow up.

I did not follow up because following up would have required me to re-interview Per-Olov Hansson — the primary witness whose testimony about a “foreign voice” had oriented the entire investigation. If Hansson was near the Lindgren farmhouse at 22:30 on the night of the murder, his testimony was not merely unreliable. It was something else. And that something else would have required me to dismantle four months of investigative work, to revisit every decision made on the basis of his statement, to explain to my superiors and to the prosecutor and to the people of Sjöbo — who had read about the arrest in the Sydsvenskan and felt the particular satisfaction of a community whose suspicions have been confirmed by the machinery they have always trusted — that the case was not what we had said it was.

I would have had to say: the foreign voice may not have been foreign. The foreign voice may have been the neighbor. The convenient answer may not have been the true one. And I would have had to say this in a community that had voted, 67% to 33%, that it did not want the people it now blamed for this death.

The evidence was sufficient. That is the phrase I used in my recommendation. The evidence against Faris al-Rashidi was sufficient to support prosecution. It is a phrase that means: we have enough. Not: we have the truth. A young detective would have kept looking. I told myself that wisdom means knowing when a case is closed. I told myself this was professional maturity. Restraint. The recognition that an investigation cannot be kept open indefinitely, that resources are finite, that at some point you must accept the best answer available and let the system do its work.

Faris al-Rashidi served eight years for the murder of a woman whose books he had never seen and whose garden tools he had never touched and whose single cup from a broken set meant nothing to him because he had never sat in her kitchen the way I sat in her kitchen, for eleven days, learning her.

He was deported in 2002. I do not know what happened to him after that. Iraq in 2002. I did not follow the news from Iraq that year. The not-following was familiar by then.

Per-Olov Hansson died in 2011. Heart attack. He was sixty-three. I learned about it from a notice in the local paper, four lines. I read it at my kitchen table. I read it twice. Then I placed the newspaper in the recycling and washed my cup — the single cup — and went to bed, and I lay in the dark with my hands at my sides and I thought about Britta Holm telling me, “You don’t forget a student,” and I thought about the notebook on the third shelf in the case room that nobody had ever looked at besides me, and I thought about the 320 meters of flat, open ground between Per-Olov Hansson’s house and Elsa Lindgren’s door.

She would have seen him coming. On a November night, with frost on the ground, from 320 meters, she would have recognized him. He was her neighbor. She would have opened the door.

Elsa Lindgren read Szymborska in Polish. She kept her garden tools oiled for spring. She set out one plate and one cup because she had learned, in the seven years since Erik died, that this was the correct number, and she did not set out a second place for someone who was not coming.

Section 9: Certification

I, Göran Vikström, Senior Inspector (Retired), Badge No. 4471, hereby certify that the foregoing review represents an accurate and complete assessment of the investigative methodology employed in Case No. 93-0147.

This review is submitted for archival purposes per Section 14, Paragraph 3 of the Internal Affairs Protocol.

Signed: G. Vikström Date: 14 January 2024 Badge No.: 4471