The convicted man and his defenders had first requested that the HD should dismiss the charge for murder and secondly for a reduced sentence and a changed interest calculation of the damages, but the HD now rejects that request and the Court of Appeal verdict thus stands.
It was on 23 November 1996 that the 16-year-old girl disappeared in Husum in Örnsköldsvik municipality. When her body was found in a wooded area just outside Husum on May 22, 1997, it turned out that she had been stabbed and subjected to sexual violence.
In the summer of 1998, a then 20-year-old man was charged and sentenced by the Örnsköldsvik district court for the murder, but the man was acquitted in October of the same year, mainly because there was a lack of technical evidence that could link him to the crime.
The investigation had a new breakthrough in 2020 when a new analysis succeeded in obtaining a DNA profile from a sperm stain found on the girl’s pants that matched the previously freed man.
In the spring of 2022, the Supreme Court decided that the case should be dismissed on the basis of the new evidence to the detriment of the now 44-year-old man. During the summer, a new hearing was held in the Court of Appeal for Lower Norrland, where the man was sentenced to five years in prison.