It is in December 2023 that police officers from the prostitution group in Stockholm first get grain of what they see as a serial criminal who targets prostituted women.
A woman who usually greets the police with a smile now sits silently staring into nothingness. After a while, she tells us that a few days earlier she met a man and had a bad time.
“He said that if I talked or would say something, he would kill me and he did not remove the knife that he held against me,” she says in questioning.
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Contact online
The contact was made through an escort site and he asked her to leave the door open for the visit. When he entered he was already masked and armed with a knife. He held it against her neck and back when he raped her, she says.
A phone number can be linked to the man, and it should turn out that there are more people who have encountered him. During January, there are at least four women who warn of a man with the same number. The warnings are posted on a closed forum for women who sell sex.
“Violent thief,” writes a woman. “He wants to steal or rape,” writes another.
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Surprisingly calm
At the end of January, the police manage to identify the man, who then appeared in more and more cases. When he is arrested two weeks later, one of the police officers notes with surprise his calmness.
“He initially asked no questions at all about how we came to be there, breaking down his door in the early hours of the morning,” notes a police officer afterwards.
The man is in his 40s and has a municipal job as an administrator.
He first denies having bought sex at all, but then admits to having chatted with escorts. A few times he has met women and paid for sex.
He denies that he would have raped or robbed anyone. Perhaps, he reasons as an explanation for the warnings the police have found about him, women have become angry when he arranged to meet but did not show up.
“It can be about many thousands just on one occasion in lost income. So I think that there has been a drive against me, among other things on this forum and revenge against me”.
In August, the man is charged with two cases of aggravated rape, three cases of aggravated robbery and two cases of buying sex. In addition to the women’s testimony, there is evidence in the form of communications they had with people after the events, chats from the man and mast connections from his phone.
The trial is ongoing in Solna district court.
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