His ex-wife killed the daughter and injured the son

The Court of Appeal’s verdict today – life imprisonment for the mother who murdered

She was 13 years old, loved volleyball and wanted to be a brain surgeon.

On September 8, she was stabbed to death by her own mother.

This is the story of the girl who didn’t get to grow up, of the little brother who survived but is now afraid to sleep.

And about the father and his ten-year fight for his children.

It’s a Friday morning in September 2023 and a ten-year-old boy is covered in blood.

With 15 knife wounds in his body, he makes his way out into the townhouse area in Vallentuna, pushing a desk chair in front of him as support.

A neighbor hears him shouting and runs out.

“Mother has stabbed me. I don’t want to die,” says the boy.

When the police arrive at the terraced house from which the ten-year-old fled, his 13-year-old sister is found stabbed to death in her own bed.

Up in a bedroom, their 45-year-old mother lies with self-inflicted injuries and a bloody knife next to her.

It quickly becomes clear that the mother is the perpetrator and she is suspected of murder.

expand-left

full screen

The legs can’t bear it

Three miles away, the children’s father and his partner sit with their computers at the kitchen table.

They are working from home this Friday, and the father is in the middle of a video meeting when there is a knock on the door.

– There are three police officers outside. They ask me to sit down. Then they tell me that my daughter is dead and that my son is injured. But they don’t want to say what happened, I think they might have been in a car accident.

The father collapses on the floor. His legs can no longer carry him.

– The police confiscate our mobile phones. We don’t understand anything. I ask them to drive me to my son in the hospital, but they search me and instead drive us to the station for questioning, he says.

Only after the questioning has ended will the father and partner find out which hospital the son is in. They rush there – but are not allowed in.

Instead, they are placed in a waiting room with police officers. The hours ticked by without any announcements.

Didn’t get to meet the son

In the end, the father’s sister sees on Aftonbladet’s website that the children were stabbed and that the mother is a suspect.

– At this point they had already notified her of suspicion but did not inform us of what had happened. Instead, we were treated as suspects, even though it was clear from the start who the perpetrator was. It was an incredibly unpleasant situation, says the father and partner.

expand-left

full screen

After a while, two women from social services come to the hospital. They say that he will not be allowed to see the son, even though he has shared custody of the children.

According to the father, they say that they intend to protect the boy from him, that the son is afraid of the father and does not want to meet him.

And this is the reason why the father wants to tell his story – because of how he feels he and his family have been treated by the authorities.

– If it can help a child get better, or help a mother or father out there who is currently having a hard time, then it is worth it, he says.

Because when the children’s mother murdered his daughter and stabbed his son with 15 stab wounds, there were only a few days left until the third custody dispute over the children would begin.

The ex-wife once again wanted to try to get sole custody of the children, despite previous judgments stating that it would be shared.

“It was devastating”

Everything started, the father says, when they separated in 2014.

The tours that followed are many and tortuous and are also reproduced in the long preliminary investigation into the murder and the attempted murder.

The ex-wife has filed police reports and reports of concern that the father was violent, none of which have turned out to be true.

In the first years, they both followed the court’s directives and the father saw his children regularly with sleepovers.

But in 2018, things started to change.

The ex-wife no longer followed the court’s decision, she made it increasingly difficult for the father to see the children.

– It was crushing. She also began to alienate the children from me, telling them that I was dangerous and bad for them, he says.

– It has created a distance between me and the children, that I have not been able to meet them enough and we have not been able to create enough memories together.

He noticed the children starting to pull away from him but he still kept trying. He saw them whenever they wanted and kept coming to his son’s soccer practice and his daughter’s volleyball practice.

expand-left

full screen

“There is no excuse to kill children”

The father finally chose to report the children’s mother, but social services did not initiate an investigation. He says that he never, that is, thought that she would physically harm the children. However, he was afraid that she was breaking them down psychologically.

But he feels that he was never listened to, but that both social services and the school had decided that the accusations made by his ex-wife against him were true.

– I know her and I know how manipulative she can be. But social services never listened to me.

– Unfortunately, I think that it is often better to listen to the mother. There are preconceived notions that the father is always the perpetrator. I wish the social services could look at all cases as individual cases instead of generalising, he says.

Just before the murder of the daughter and the attempted murder of the son, the ex-wife had once again applied for sole custody. The following week they would meet in court.

The father feels that a picture has been painted in the media that the ongoing custody dispute was the cause of the murder and the attempted murder, that it stressed her to do what she did, and that he was somehow contributing to this.

– In fact, it was she who initiated every custody dispute. Regardless, shouldn’t a custody dispute lead to something like this? There is no excuse in the world for murdering children, he says.

“Wanted to punish myself through the children”

The 45-year-old mother was sentenced to life imprisonment in the district court – a sentence that was upheld today in the Svea Court of Appeal. She has denied any wrongdoing. In questioning with the police, she claims that her daughter is not dead and that everything is staged.

However, the major forensic psychiatric investigation carried out by her shows that she was not or is not ill at all, rather that she is simulating symptoms.

– She just wants to avoid prison. She can’t straight-facedly show remorse, it’s completely unimaginable, says the father.

Why do you think she did this?

– She could never accept that I had moved on in life, so she wanted to punish me. She couldn’t ruin my relationship, she couldn’t get me fired from my job, so she used what would hurt me the most – the kids.

It took ten days before the father was able to see his son after the murder. But the meeting was allowed to take place only via video link.

The father remembers how the son asked him: “Was everything mother said about you a lie?”

– When I said yes, he broke down.

expand-left

full screen

“Afraid that the mother will kill him”

They finally got to see each other during a supervised visit to a playground. Then it became clear that the father and son had a strong bond.

After that, preparations began for the boy to move home with his father and his partner. Since December, he has lived there permanently.

Today he is 11 years old. He is physically recovered, he is playing football again and going to school.

But it’s been a long way to get there, and there’s a long way to go.

The boy has been diagnosed with complex PTSD and especially the nights are difficult.

When his mother tried to kill him in his own bed while he was sleeping, it took him a long time to stop associating going to bed with the worst event of his life.

The father often breaks down in tears when we talk, especially when he describes how his son is doing.

– He is still very afraid that the mother will come out and kill him or hurt us. And he blames himself, he doesn’t think he did enough to save his sister. He questions why he is the one who lives.

The partner says that despite everything that has happened, they are now a functioning small family; she, the father, the boy and the dog.

– Now he is safe and secure with us and it will remain that way. This is also why we want to remain anonymous, so that he can heal in peace.

“Look what it cost me”

The sister the boy lost, the daughter taken from the father, are constantly in their thoughts. The father describes the daughter as his kryptonite, the one who was both his and his son’s weakest point.

She was very smart and good at school, she was caring and kind. She wanted to be a brain surgeon and she loved to play volleyball.

– I could never resist her or say no. It was enough for her to say ‘Daddy’ and I went weak in the knees.

The father and the partner return again and again to the disappointment they feel at how they were treated, both during the struggle to be with the children, but also how they were treated by social services and the police.

When everything has calmed down a bit, the father plans to report Ivo to Vallentuna’s social services. Vallentuna municipality has already carried out its own investigation into the handling of the social service and concluded that no mistakes were made, but the father feels that it is an insult to his daughter and his entire family.

– I have always been a father who fought. I never gave up despite all the humiliation I was subjected to. Now they believe me but look what it cost me. If they had taken us seriously, my daughter might be alive today.