Published: Less than 10 min ago
In a handwritten letter to the district court, one of the young women suspected of murdering 21-year-old Tove wants to change lawyers.
In a handwritten letter to the district court, she writes that she does not trust her.
Now the lawyer is leaving her assignment – instead she wants a lawyer from a Stockholm-based top law firm.
Two young women are in custody suspected of murdering 21-year-old Tove in Vetlanda.
Now one of the women, a 20-year-old, is requesting to replace her lawyer Maria Birkhammar. Neither she nor her parents trust her. This is what the woman writes in the handwritten letter to the Eksjö district court as P4 Jönköping was the first to report on.
According to her, the lawyer is lacking in his support and commitment, something she believes is “incredibly important” in the vulnerable situation she as a suspect finds herself in.
“Both me and my parents feel incredibly alone in this fight. She rarely answers the questions we have and shines with her clear ignorance of everything in this process,” she writes and continues:
“I don’t feel safe at all in this situation.”
Suggest another lawyer
Instead, she suggests Clea Sangborn, a lawyer at Försvarsadvokaterna, one of Sweden’s top law firms, based in Stockholm.
The woman writes that she has informed her current lawyer about it and contacted the agency.
The lawyer Maria Birkhammar has submitted a request to the district court not to represent the woman anymore. In an email to Aftonbladet, she writes that she does not recognize herself in the criticism.
“What is written in the letter is incorrect. I have taken care of the client’s interests in the case in every way. I have shown a great deal of support and commitment to the goal and always respond promptly to questions.”
But since the woman lacks confidence in her, she believes that it is better for someone else to take over the task.
Disappeared after a night out
Tove disappeared after a night out in Vetlanda in mid-October. After a several-week long search, she was found dead in a wooded area.
The police’s suspicions were directed early on towards the two young women who spent time with Tove on the night she disappeared.
The women are in custody on probable cause, suspected of kidnapping, murder and violation of grave peace. Both have undergone a so-called P7, a small forensic psychiatric examination, but neither of them is considered to suffer from a mental disorder.
They have both given their view of what happened the night Tove disappeared. There it appears that a younger woman, an 18-year-old, suspects that the 20-year-old woman may have something to do with the disappearance as she “in retrospect experienced the woman’s behavior as deviant”.
Aftonbladet has searched for Clea Sangborn without success.