Fact: The laser man
Between August 1991 and January 1992, John Ausonius shot a total of eleven people in various attacks in Stockholm and Uppsala.
One person died and several sustained life-threatening injuries.
The assassination prompted a massive police effort, which has been compared to that after the Palm murder. Ausonius was arrested in the summer of 1992 in connection with robbing a bank.
The evidence was not enough to convict Ausonius on all charges, but he was sentenced against his denial to life imprisonment for one murder, nine attempted murders and nine aggravated robberies.
John Ausonius was called the Laserman after the laser sight he used when he shot a total of eleven people in Sweden in the early 1990s. One person died and ten survived, and common to all victims was that they had dark hair or were dark-skinned.
Now André Christenson and Tim Dillman, who are also behind the popular podcast “The Interrogation Room”, make true crime theater out of the police interrogation with Ausonius. It is the first time that the authentic interrogation protocols have been dramatized, and the actor Joel Spira plays Ausonius in the show, which will be staged at Cirkus in Stockholm this autumn.
Parallels
Christenson and Dillman have long thought that there is a live performance hidden in the story of the Laserman. Among other things, because his thoughts are reflected in society even today.
— There are so many frightening parallels between the early 90s and our time with the increased racist tones. Ausonius operated just after a wave of refugees, New Democracy was started and there was a recession, says Christenson and continues:
— We don’t want to write on the audience’s noses, but by following the interrogations on stage you can get a kind of understanding of the present. How are we really doing? How do we talk to each other? What tones do we have between each other?
André Christenson, director. Press photo.
On stage in “Lasermannen” only Ausonius and two interrogators are portrayed. But in the form of pre-recorded material, the journalist Gellert Tamas, who wrote the book “Lasermannen: A story about Sweden” in 2002, and the police officer Jan Olsson, who led the hunt for Ausonius, also participate. So does Carl Bildt, who at the time of the crimes was Sweden’s prime minister.
Bildt remembers “a complicated time” in the early 1990s:
— There was a significant number who came to Sweden and the refugee policy had become controversial. It was a sudden change that occurred, and then there is often a reaction in society. It was something they were not used to and many were questioning. It was easy for those who were anti-refugee to take advantage of this, he says.
Bildt also remembers how it was uncertain for a long time whether it was the same perpetrator, and how voices were raised because Sweden had suddenly received a wave of violent perpetrators who wanted to shoot immigrants.
— But I never thought so. And when it turned out to be a lone perpetrator, I was very hesitant to give the speech to the nation that I later ended up giving. I suspected that he was looking for attention, and that a TV speech from me would trigger him even more, he says.
Attract the unaccustomed to theatre
André Christenson believes that “Lasermannen” will partly attract “Förhörsrummet” listeners to Cirkus, but also another audience.
— I hope that people who are interested in true crime and real crimes and who might not necessarily listen to a podcast want to come. And people who may not be so used to theatre, he says.
“Lasermannen” premieres on September 29.