The Dark Heart: A True Story of Greed, Murder, and an Unlikely Investigator

by Joakim Palmkvist

The essence of it is simple: no body, no murder. Many jurisdictions hold as a legal rule that a defendant’s out-of-court confession is not enough evidence to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt. Nor can a defendant be convicted on the testimony of an accomplice alone. In other words: there has to be tangible proof that a crime has been committed for anyone to be arrested, tried, and sentenced.

Ultimately, it seemed that this was a result of his shyness and insecurity, the way a person can become when they grow up in the shadow of an overbearing and domineering father.

crime, lethal violence, which would include both murder and manslaughter, something like eighty to one hundred cases are typically reported in Sweden every year, an average that goes back a number of decades. Almost all are solved.

An investigation team needs to have at minimum twenty-five people on it to be considered fully effective.

Spontaneous questioning—back away, play dumb, but not too dumb. Ask, but don’t question. Play along to make your interlocutor take the bait.

Intuitive interrogation strategy: validate the other person, then present alternatives. That is what makes people talk. And some talk more than others.

Film director Ingmar Bergman called it “the hour when most people die, when sleep is deepest, when nightmares are most real. It is the hour when the sleepless are haunted by their deepest fear, when ghosts and demons are at their most powerful.”

The first rule of a skillful liar is to stick as close to the truth as possible. The second is to avoid statements that are too easily checked. The third: to let your dupe’s imagination feed the lie.

Criminologist Leif G. W. Persson talks about three main rules for a successful murder investigation. They are quite simple: Go with it. Nothing happens by chance. Don’t complicate things.

They escaped the indeterminate lifetime sentence because Göran Lundblad’s death had been so quick. He hadn’t had time to feel much fear, there was no drawn-out suffering before the shot was fired and his brain exploded. Given that, lifetime imprisonment was inappropriate, as established by the Supreme Court in 2013.