"I don't believe that I'm a killer. It doesn't feel like it. For some reason, I'm having a hard time believing all this. It feels almost untrue."
On May 11th, 2010, the town of Härnösand, Sweden, was struck with the horrid news of a triple murder in an otherwise peaceful residential area.
Two siblings, a 12-year old girl, her 15-year old brother and their father had been brutally murdered in their home, and the assailant had fled the scene.
The children's stepfather was the one who found the bodies and called the police, who in turn arrested him as a suspect. They also suspected the children's mother's ex-husband, with whom she had a 21-year old son, Ragnar Nilsson.
However, it didn't take long before both men were freed from suspicion when the police apprehended the aforementioned Nilsson, who almost immediately confessed to the murders.
The day of the murders, Nilsson had been at his mother's house together with his younger half-siblings, who were both waiting for their dad to pick them up. (The dad had been married to Nilsson's mother at one point, making him Nilsson's former stepfather.)
When the 15-year old brother came home from school, Nilsson attacked and stabbed him when he got into the house. After that, he did the same to the 12-year old sister, who had been watching TV, not having heard the commotion out in the hallway.
Once he was done, Nilsson dragged the bodies down into his room in the basement, partially hiding them under his bed, before grabbing a newly sharpened axe while waiting for his stepfather's arrival.
Upon arriving at the scene, unknowing of his children's fate, the 49-year old father was attacked by an axe-wielding Nilsson, who struck him with the weapon until he was almost unrecognizable.
Then, he dragged the stepfather's body down to the basement as well. Before leaving, he struck his siblings' bodies with the axe in what Nilsson described as an “act of mercy”, had the children still been alive.
After cleaning up the mess he had made, Nilsson stole his stepfather's car and took off to Holmsund, where he intended to board a freighter heading to Russia. Luckily, the captain of the boat stopped him and called the police.
During the interrogations that followed, Nilsson talked about a long, deep-seated hatred towards his former stepfather. According to him, the stepfather had always "violated and scared" him when he was little, and that as a result, Nilsson hadn't felt like a part of the family.
Nilsson said that he liked his siblings, but that he slowly began hating them as time went on. He said that he wanted to take out "revenge" on his former stepfather and that he killed his siblings because "they were his (the stepfather's) kids".
Nilsson's friends and relatives describe him as "calm, but when he gets into uncomfortable situations, he becomes really aggressive". In fact, his former stepfather had begun to worry about his children living under the same roof as Nilsson, because of how irrational he had been acting as he got older. Apparently, Nilsson had been planning on wiping out his entire family for a while, but “settled” for his stepfather and siblings in the end.
After a forensic psychiatric examination, Nilsson was sentenced to treatment at the Forensic psychiatric clinic in Sundsvall, where he remains to this day.
If you were talking to a suspected serial killer with a specific m.o and they said "you aren't my type, but I'd make an exception for you" how uncomfortable would that make you. Like shit.
that sent a shiver down my spine and I'm not even Beckett.
