Sweden was shaken in 2006 by the Bobby case. Without the school and social services having any idea of the advice and intervention, a ten-year-old boy was sadistically beaten to death by his mother and stepfather.
The stepfather had met Bobby’s mother through a phone dating site just over a year earlier. She was nine years younger than him and had given birth to Bobby at a young age. The boy and mother soon moved in with the man in his isolated croft in Nässjö municipality in Småland.
Bobby disappeared from school in December 2005 and was reported missing in January of the following year. A large search effort was launched, but the police early suspected the mother and her partner. The couple drank large amounts of alcohol and the stepfather had previously been convicted of crimes against children and a rape with sadistic elements. It was the mother who finally told the police where they dumped the body. Bobby’s body was found under the ice in Lovsjön. It was weighed down by chains and wrapped in a mattress and garbage bags.
Involved many
The Bobby case received enormous attention in Sweden and engaged many people. After his death, the Riksdag enacted the law lex Bobby in an attempt to detect and prevent similar cases.
On June 7, 2006, Bobby was buried in Ödsmål’s church outside Stenungsund. At the request of Expressen and Bris, the public sent close to 30,000 roses to the funeral. Two days later, the mother and stepfather were sentenced by the Eksjö district court to ten years in prison for aggravated assault, aggravated causing the death of another and several other crimes against Bobby. In the judgment, the district court wrote: “It is difficult to imagine physical or psychological abuse against a child that could be more reckless than the [styvpappan] and [mamman] has subjected Bobby to.”
Prosecutor Erik Handmark wanted to see the couple convicted of murder, but the district court concluded that they had no intent to kill, even though they subjected Bobby to very serious violence. The verdict was upheld later that year by the Göta Court of Appeal. The stepfather’s appeal to the Supreme Court was rejected.
Released in 2012
After serving two-thirds of their sentences at Hinseberg and Kumla, respectively, they were both released in 2012. During this time, the stepfather changed his first name. In 2017, he was sentenced again. This time to daily fines for child pornography offenses after having child pornography images on his mobile phone.
At the time of the child pornography conviction, the stepfather lived in an apartment in Oxelösund. The last years of his life he lived in Stockholm. According to the civil registration register, after the end of 2017 he had no fixed address and was registered “without known residence”. One of the last public documents he leaves behind is an appeal to the administrative court of an application for assistance under the Social Services Act.
Bobby’s mother also changed her name after the verdict. She moved to a place in western Sweden and has not been convicted of a crime again after the prison sentence.