In his own diaries, Theodor Engström described himself as a “ghost child”.
According to the Security Police’s report, the 33-year-old has shown an interest in the Norwegian terrorist and mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik and in a diary he writes that he “wants to make a Swedish Breivik and kill 20 preschool children”.
He is also said to have shown an interest in Anton Lundin Pettersson, who committed the school attack in Trollhättan, the man who was behind the mass shooting in Christchurch in New Zealand in 2019 and the perpetrator behind the massacre in Port Arthur in Tasmania in 1996.
The mother: “Suffers from mental problems”
Engström suffered from a serious mental disorder at the time of the murder, the Swedish Medical Examiner’s Office determined in August after completing the investigation.
In the interrogations, an image of a person suffering from mental problems and addiction also emerges. His mother describes her son as a calm, caring and warm person with an IQ of 140. At the same time, she states that he has been feeling very unwell and that he was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome in 2013. He was said to have received anti-depressant medication, which he however stopped with during 2018.
“When Theodor received his diagnosis in 2013, he crashed mentally. Theodor is a very broken person, he doesn’t expect kindness from anyone,” says the mother, according to an interrogation protocol.
She further describes him as a loner. His father, in turn, states that his son has ADHD and that he is autistic and is in contact with psychiatry in Kalmar.
A doctor in psychiatry who has met Theodor Engström several times confirms the information about autism in questioning.
Drugs were seized at several locations
That Theodor Engström may have experimented with drugs is reinforced by the seizures made by the police. In questioning, he also says that he smoked cannabis during the first days in Visby and that he had LSD patches with him “in case the courage fails”. In the defendant’s backpack and in the tent on Gotland, there were 7.01 grams of cannabis and 30 doses of LSD.
A further 42 doses of LSD, cannabis, narcotic tablets and powder were found in the home.
In questioning, the mother also states that Theodor Engström has taken benzodiazepines that he did not have a prescription for.