At 11 o’clock, the Court of Appeal for lower Norrland comes with its verdict in the unusual case – that rescission is granted to the detriment of a previously freed person happens very rarely.
The now 44-year-old man who is again suspected of the murder of Malin Lindström was convicted by the district court in 1998 but was acquitted later that year in the Court of Appeal, primarily based on the lack of technical evidence that could bind him to the crime. Although there was a sperm stain on the girl’s clothes, it was too small for the analysis methods of the time to produce a DNA profile.
Recently, however, investigators succeeded in this and the sperm turned out to belong to the man, which led to the new trial in the Court of Appeal.
Multiple versions
Over the years, the 44-year-old man has given a number of different stories about what happened at the time of the 16-year-old girl’s disappearance. During the Court of Appeal hearing earlier this summer, another came: the man admitted that he had been in contact with the girl’s dead body but continued to deny that he had killed her.
He said he hung out with three people – about whom he did not want to name or give any other details – and together with them found the girl’s dead body wrapped in a tarpaulin. The leader of the gang must have urged the four to masturbate at the tarpaulin and here and there the 44-year-old must not have understood that there was a body inside it, he only discovered this afterwards. That he had not previously told about this, he explained by saying that he was threatened by the people he hung out with and therefore did not dare.
“Logical explanation”
– There is a threat picture that explains why he had difficulty leaving a sensible story in police interrogation and that the stories have shifted and swayed, but there is a logical explanation and it is related to the threat picture, the man’s lawyer Ulf Holst said during the hearing.
During the trial, the prosecutor demanded that the man be sentenced to six years in prison for the murder. Ulf Holst wants to see a acquittal, as he believes that the prosecution against the client has not been proven.
– There is room for an alternative course of events and an alternative perpetrator, Ulf Holst said during his closing argument according to SVT Västernorrland.
In connection with the conclusion of the hearing, however, the Court of Appeal decided that the 44-year-old should continue to be detained pending the verdict.