Psychologist Helena Bering disappeared on August 18-
from a parking space in central Stockholm.
It was Helena's husband who shortly before midnight on Wednesday night-
called the police and reported her missing.
The husband became worried in the evening when she didn't come home.
She left home around 8 am and was supposed to be back at 5-6 pm.
He became more and more worried as time went on.
He tried to call her cell phone but just got the answering machine.
In the evening of August 18, 2004 the police in Stockholm were told-
that 56-year-old Helena Bering was believed to be missing.
We don't know where the woman has gone. That's a fact.
We're looking for all kinds of information-
- to get to the bottom of this.
Already on the same night the report came in-
the police took several steps to find Helena.
We went to her workplaces and looked for her car.
We contacted towing companies-
to check if her car had been towed.
We got permission from her husband to put out a message to mass transit-
and taxi companies and other organizations-
with her description so they could keep an eye out.
We even contacted the hospitals.
None of this produced any results.
Initially we immediately felt worried-
- that a crime had been committed.
In the assessment we had made of Helena-
there was no indication that that she had disappeared voluntarily-
- or gone off with a lover.
Our gut feeling from the beginning was that a crime had occurred.
We had to try to find Helena while she was still alive.
- What do you think happened? - I think she was...
...abducted by one or more people.
In a case like this, you have to take into account-
the fact that she could have been kidnapped for ransom.
Someone might have wanted to squeeze money out of the family.
It was important to keep this in mind as well.
In these cases, it often happens that the perpetrators tell the family-
- not to contact the police.
Helena Bering was a mother with five children.
She lived in a house in Täby with her husband.
The police were interested in fact that Helena-
had worked as a psychologist throughout her whole career.
Could there be an explanation for her disappearance among her clients-
- or people she had met through work?
She was very well known in psychology circles-
as a very good, competent individual.
When she disappeared she was working as a school psychologist.
She worked at the prison service for a while.
She had her own practice in Stockholm for private patients.
She cared about people. She was involved with prisoners-
and worked with the criminal justice system.
Not just as a psychologist, she also inmates stay with her-
to help them. She had great compassion and empathy.
When the report came in we had nothing to go on.
We knew the woman was missing, what kind of car she had-
- and that her phone was off.
Our main objective was to obtain as much information as possible-
about Helena, her family and what they think-
- might have happened.
It feels unreal, it really does.
It feels like she's in the house.
It's hard to really understand that she's gone.
- Did anyone threaten her? - No.
To move forward the police mapped out-
everything Helena did on the day she disappeared.
When she left home, she said she would be home around 6 pm.
In the morning she went to a school in the Stockholm area-
- where she was the psychologist.
At 1 pm, a patient had an appointment at her office.
According to the patient, Helena arrived-
- a couple of minutes after 1 pm.
They parted ways at 2 pm.
That patient was the last person that we knew of at that time-
- to have seen Helena Bering.
She had a toothache and had a dentist appointment-
in Näsbypark at 2.30 on the Wednesday.
It was an appointment she really didn't want to miss.
When we accessed the voicemail on Helena's phone-
we found out that the dentist had called to ask if she was on her way.
It was a time indication we could use.
On the basis of this information, we had a window of 2-2.30 pm-
where something had happened to Helena Bering.
She had worked at several of the big government institutions-
with difficult patients. Could this have anything to do with it?
Could it be one of her ex patients who had a grudge against Helena?
But despite a huge amount of work in that direction-
we couldn't find any reason for her disappearance.
Her role was to help the inmates in various ways.
We found nothing there that could be relevant to her disappearance.
This is a difficult question, but could she have left voluntarily?
No, I don't think so.
What makes you think that?
Her whole personality, her sense of duty and... everything.
At that point we had no leads at all.
We had to just collect as much information as possible-
to see if we could find something that stood out that we could go on.
We constantly had the mantra of saving Helena's life before us.
We looked into the whole threat thing-
but we couldn't find any concrete threats from anyone.
- This is a mysterious case. - It's an unusual disappearance.
They generally tend to be much simpler.
But this seems to be an exception, actually.
Normally when people disappear nothing has happened.
When a woman like her disappears it is, to put it briefly-
the husband or boyfriend who did it.
This doesn't seem to be like that and it is very mysterious.
We found no clues or traces of the missing Helena.
The investigation went nowhere.
Then something happened to give the police something to go on.
When we started on the case, the family had already-
- contacted the evening papers.
On Saturday, the evening papers had big articles-
- about Helena's disappearance.
They had a picture of her, and her car's license plate number.
The very same evening that the article was published-
the police got a call from a reader.
The person had passed the parking lot-
- at the ferry terminal in Nynäshamn-
and seen a car with the letters RBB.
He had a colleague who was called RBB.
He noticed it, so when he came home and read the paper-
and saw Helena had disappeared and that the car she was driving-
had the license plate letters RBB, he called the police.
After three days Helena's car was found, locked and with the alarm on-
in this parking lot in Nynäshamn, south of Stockholm.
We are in Nynäshamn right next to the ferry terminal.
From here boats go to Ventspils in Latvia-
Gdansk in Poland and Visby on Gotland, among other places.
This is where Helena Bering's car was found, parked a little crooked.
Forensics and staff arrived from the County CID.
They shone a light into the car and saw that no human was inside.
They could determine that the car was locked with the keys.
Police dogs searched the whole area-
to see if they could find any tracks from the car.
Something belonging to Helena or the perpetrators.
Something like the car keys. But they didn't have any success.
When they had finished examining the car-
it was towed to the police station for further examination inside.
In the car, by the steering wheel, forensics found traces of blood.
On closer analysis, they concluded that the blood was Helena's.
We understood that Helena had been the victim of a violent crime.
We also found that the car stereo had been stolen.
No Swedish thief is dumb enough to take a stereo worth a couple hundred-
and in doing so be linked to a serious violent crime.
This suggests an economic motive, to be able to sell it back home-
- in their home country.
They checked the position of the driver's seat.
It turned out to be as far back as possible.
Helena was a relatively short woman.
She couldn't have driven the car with the driver's seat like that.
Some other person had parked the car in Nynäshamn.
There was a parking receipt in the car from Östermalm in Stockholm-
stamped at around the time of her disappearance.
There is a parking machine that Helena bought her ticket from-
when she was going to her patient appointment.
She ended her parking ticket at 1.58 pm.
We felt that something had happened between Stockholm and Nynäshamn.
That a potential body could be in a ditch or in the forest.
We used our police helicopter to pick through-
and look in the ditches in case there was a body.
We had a motorcyclist and a dog handler combing the wooded areas-
- on the road to Nynäshamn.
To narrow down the search, it was important for the police-
to establish when the car was parked in Nynäshamn.
When it was found there was a parking ticket on the windshield.
It had been issued at 4 pm on the day after Helena's disappearance.
This narrowed down the window for when the car could have got there.
One of the first things we did was to knock on doors.
From this we were able to establish-
that the car had arrived on Wednesday evening.
The same night Helena disappeared, from around 6 pm onwards.
When we found the car in Nynäshamn our first thought was-
that it was someone from a nearby country who took the ferry.
We worked broadly, it could also be a person living in Nynäshamn.
An addict or something.
The police identified potential offenders in the area.
They also focused on the ferry terminal-
and the boat departures and passenger lists in the last 24 hours.
It was extensive and time-consuming work.
Suddenly the police got a tip-off.
Something that led investigators toward what they feared most.
On August 29 I received a call from the police in Uppsala.
A mushroom picker had been looking for mushrooms a few hours earlier.
On the way back to his car he discovered a body.
He saw that it was a body. He went over and looked.
He saw that the person was dead and he contacted the police.
I went to Bålsta.
Forensics and dogs searched through the thicket of woods along Route 263.
The police are unclear about what findings, if any, were made.
We concluded that it was Helena Bering lying in a small ditch.
She was lying on her back with one leg drawn up toward her.
We saw that she had injuries, stab wounds to the chest.
The coroner got there and the body was turned over.
We then saw that she also had stab wounds on her back.
It was clear she had been murdered when we found her.
Helena's body was found just outside Bålsta.
A place far north of Stockholm.
This sent the investigation in a new direction.
The police are awaiting answers from of the coroner's examination-
to understand when the body was left at the scene.
And if the murder took place at the scene.
Helena's body lay about 200 meters from road 263.
Next to the parking spot and inside the forest-
- all kinds of junk had been dumped.
There was also a pornography den.
There was a patch of dense spruce trees.
Inside there were lots of laminated pornographic images.
It was something we had to take into account.
Did it have anything to do with her murder?
All of the pornographic images were seized.
We got help from the Criminal Profiling Team-
to see whether the porn stash could be linked to the murder.
They concluded-
that it wasn't directly linked to Helena's murder.
While we were there we heard a helicopter in the air.
It turned out to be the media who were very interested-
and were looking over the crime scene.
They were standing outside the husband's home-
almost before we had time to inform him of her death.
One of the most spectacular articles was in an evening newspaper.
The headline said-
that Helena had been the victim of a ritual murder.
They had put bones into the shape of a cross.
Then they had taken the family's candles-
which they had left at the place where Helena Bering was found.
They had put the candles in a ring around the bones-
as an image for their completely crazy article.
That really hurt the family.
When you work on a case with intense media coverage-
it generates a lot of tip-offs and further speculation-
that sometimes almost drowns police work.
We cannot disregard the information that comes in-
without at least reading through and analyzing it-
- before we can put it aside.
It is unclear when and where Helena Bering was killed.
The police are investigating what happened after she disappeared.
They want to hear from people who may have seen something-
around where the body was found on road 263.
The coroner can't say with certainty-
- when Helena was murdered.
We also used an entomologist for the autopsy.
This is a person who studies mosquito larvae and mosquitoes.
In court cases, it is about somehow analyzing-
and evaluating insect material collected from a crime scene.
When it comes to murder cases, it's almost always insect larvae.
What you do is you figure out the age of the larvae.
If the larvae are of a certain age then you can consider-
that the person has been dead at least that long.
If the larvae are a week old, the death occurred one week earlier.
Insects are dependent on the outside temperature.
On a body they basically have unlimited food.
If you know the temperature, and the larvae's length, you can figure out-
how long it would take them to grow to a certain size.
Blow fly larvae are commonly called maggots.
We came to the conclusion that there were about eleven days-
between the discovery of the body and when the eggs were laid.
She died the day she disappeared or the day after at the latest.
Once again the police focused on the ferry terminal in Nynäshamn-
where Helena's car was parked the same day she disappeared.
The work of checking boat departures-
and passenger lists then began to give results.
The M/S Fellow, which departed for Lithuania, aroused their interest.
It was a ship that was mostly used by truck drivers.
There was very little passenger traffic on this boat.
There were four people who had booked a ticket for this boat-
a relatively short time before its departure.
Some people we interviewed had noticed-
a man and a woman who had traveled on the M/S Fellow.
They were traveling together, but they didn't seem to fit together.
They were behaving a little strangely.
You could say they were quite odd.
The man was almost twice as old as the woman.
These two lived in Kaunas.
Kaunas is Lithuania's second largest city.
The police then started focusing their efforts on the East.
One thing that is always interesting in this type of crime-
is to look at cell phone usage.
Almost everyone had a cell phone, even back then.
When we examined Helena's phone, it had been used-
up to a certain time, and then it stopped-
- somewhere northwest of Stockholm.
After that it hadn't been used. But it could still be in use.
I used international channels to request information-
from the Baltic States' operators in case the cell phone was in use there.
A few days after the body was found there was a match-
to my request for help in Lithuania.
They told me that her cell phone had connected-
- in a city in Lithuania.
It then became interesting to search for more information from Lithuania.
When the police found out who used the cell phone-
the investigation and cooperation with the Lithuanian police-
found itself in a complicated situation.
We were able to determine that the phone was used in the city of Kaunas.
We naturally contacted the Lithuanian police-
and asked them to find out who was using her cell phone.
To our surprise, it turned out-
that the person who had registered the SIM card in Helena's cell phone-
was one of the police chiefs in Kaunas.
It was both surprising and worrying.
We had to tread carefully-
so that the police chief did not get information about this-
that would make him get rid of the cell phone.
We understood that this was a hot trail for us.
A person using the phone of a murdered person in Sweden.
With the help of the prosecutor, Ronnie Jacobsson, we planned-
- to go over to Lithuania-
and take action with the Lithuanian authorities.
The police knew it was the chief's cell phone contract.
But it turns out he's not the one using the phone.
The person using the phone is a woman.
We get told that from the police and the public prosecutor's office.
With them, we agree-
that we will try to get hold of this man and woman.
The police and their Lithuanian colleagues had to act quickly.
The police chief was arrested with the woman, who is his wife.
She had her cell phone with her.
Via the 15-digit IMEI number-
we could immediately conclude that it was Helena Bering's cell phone.
The woman was interrogated first. She said that she had got the phone-
- from her husband a short time ago.
She didn't know where her husband got the phone from.
We started questioning the police chief in the hope of finding out-
why he was caught with Helena's cell phone.
The police chief was very upset-
sad and distressed about this situation.
The police chief said that he was off a few days ago.
He had gone to a beer kiosk to buy beer.
He knew the woman who worked in the beer kiosk.
He was let into the kiosk. and stood there drinking the beer.
After a while another man came who was also let in by the woman.
The police chief and the man started talking.
The man said that he had been abroad-
and had brought a cell phone back with him.
He wondered if the police chief wanted to buy this phone.
The police chief admitted he bought the phone from the man in the kiosk-
- and gave it to his wife.
The kiosk owner confirmed the police chief's story.
She also had another absolutely crucial piece of information.
She knew the man who sold the phone and knew his name.
The man was called Vidmantas Varkalis. The same name-
as on the passenger list of the M/S Fellows on August 18.
The hunt for Helena's killer continued outside Sweden's borders.
This presented some challenges.
The Swedish police relied completely on help-
from their Lithuanian colleagues to be able to act in the country.
There were also language barriers-
as lots of the Lithuanian colleagues did not speak English.
There was one officer we were in contact with.
He couldn't speak any English.
When we called him to ask for help with something-
he immediately replied: "Ten minutes."
We called back after ten minutes and he had an interpreter with him.
His name was difficult for us to pronounce.
We called him "Mr. Ten Minutes".
He was always willing and did everything we needed-
in an exemplary manner. He's a really good cop.
With the help of colleague Mr. Ten Minutes-
they continued to investigate the suspect.
The person who had sold the phone to the police chief-
Vidmantas Varkalis, worked as a taxi driver in Kaunas.
He was 37.
We were keen to get hold of him.
That's why Mr. Ten Minutes took off-
and brought in the boss of the taxi company he worked for.
The police decided with the taxi company's boss-
that he would get Vidmantas to drive to a church-
and the Lithuanian and Swedish police would be waiting for him.
Vidmantas' car was called, but he didn't answer the taxi radio.
This was repeated on several occasions.
We were worried that it had leaked out-
that we were there and that he had run away.
Vidmantas didn't go to the church, but the police got another chance.
The taxi company's boss said that at 9 pm-
his company's taxis had to drive home staff-
from a store that closed at that time.
It was highly likely that Vidmantas would show up on one of those runs.
We arrived with this bus.
Mr. Ten Minutes checked his gun and handcuffs.
Then he, myself, and another colleague ran out-
and pushed Vidmantas onto the bonnet of his taxi-
- and put on handcuffs.
His colleagues saw this and thought we were going to rob him.
They came running over and things got a bit heated.
But by putting a hand inside our jackets and yelling a little-
they backed off and the boss yelled that we were cops.
The mood calmed down and Vidmantas put up no resistance.
We were able to arrest him.
The next day we were going to meet at 9 am.
Mr. Ten minutes and the prosecutor were late for the meeting.
They eventually came and told us that they had been to the jail.
They had interrogated Vidmantas who confessed to killing Helena.
But did Vidmantas act alone?
Or was another person involved in Helena's murder?
When we had established that Vidmantas was the likely perpetrator-
we looked at the passenger lists that we had received from August 18.
He had been traveling with a woman. We were also interested in her.
We knew she was 20 years old.
She studied social pedagogy at a university in Kaunas.
The police then arrested the woman-
for suspicion of complicity in the murder of Helena Bering.
She was a bubbly, happy girl in her 20s.
She could speak English.
It was hard to imagine that she could be involved.
But she was.
At this point, she said that she had been in Sweden-
- with Vidmantas.
She shifted the responsibility-
over to him as much as possible.
On November 1, 2004, the pair were extradited to Sweden.
The hearings with both of them continued there.
The police hoped to find out what happened when Helena disappeared.
Vidmantas explained that it was his strained financial situation-
that led him to come to Sweden.
I had heard that you can make lots of money there.
So I thought it might be worth going over and giving it a try.
They didn't manage to make any significant amount of money.
When they were about to return home they realized they had no money.
The woman and Vidmantas had a plan-
to rob a suitable person to get money, and hopefully a car.
They didn't have enough money to buy a boat ticket-
- to travel home to Ventspils.
We wandered around the city, I don't know where we ended up.
Then she pointed to a woman and said: "She looks easily frightened."
When Helena parked her car-
they believed that she was a suitable target.
She had a big car so they could fit their luggage in the car-
when they were going to the ferry terminal.
In a reconstruction the 38-year-old showed-
how his girlfriend, played here by a police officer-
stopped Helena Bering to ask for directions.
Meanwhile, the 38-year-old jumped in, armed with a knife.
What did they actually get?
A cell phone and around 1,500 Swedish kronor.
They forced Helena to drive. It appears they went the wrong way-
and ended up on the E18 going north.
They ended up near Bålsta on Route 263 and stopped the car.
Helena Bering was led into the forest.
From here the information differs about who walks with who.
But Vidmantas' original story is-
that he walks into the forest with Helena.
He hears a voice saying: "Kill her."
He doesn't know if it's his inner voice or if the woman says it.
He even gets it into his head that Helena is trying to escape.
He stabs her in the back. Then everything goes black, he says.
The woman has a different version of the whole thing-
- where she diminishes her role.
She puts the blame on Vidmantas entirely.
Vidmantas and the woman drive back toward Stockholm.
Vidmantas hands the knife to the woman who throws it out the window.
They collect their luggage from the main train station-
and continue south towards Nynäshamn.
When it was time to prosecute I felt-
that the evidence against both of them was compelling.
The doubts we had were about the role of the woman in it all.
Sometimes you could get the feeling-
that Vidmantas wanted to protect her from involvement in the murder.
But it was just a feeling, it wasn't enough to prosecute her.
Vidmantas was prosecuted for murder and kidnapping-
- and the woman for kidnapping.
On December 15, 2004, the trial began-
against Vidmantas and the woman in Stockholm District Court.
Of course, the victim's husband was there.
And the couple's children were present.
Vidmantas expressed some remorse and shame for what he had done.
The woman on the other hand seemed quite indifferent.
She listened to what was said but didn't really show any emotion.
The person who showed emotion in court was the interpreter.
When the details emerged about what had happened-
and how one family had been hit with a completely senseless murder-
the interpreter broke down. We had to send for a new interpreter.
Such strong emotions were aroused during the trial.
Vidmantas wept and apologized for what he had done.
The woman sat with her head high and her glued-on smile.
The woman said, "If it makes you happier, I'll go to jail for a bit."
Those were her final words.
Vidmantas Varkalis was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder.
The woman was sentenced to four years for unlawful imprisonment-
- and aggravated robbery.
The sentence was appealed, but the judgment was upheld-
- with an increase in damages.
There was a positive outcome. The perpetrators were prosecuted.
Our starting position was very difficult.
It was, as it often is, thanks to the mistakes of the perpetrators-
that we managed to solve the crime.
There are actually no meaningful murders.
But killing someone to get a car instead of taking the train-
is among the most meaningless reasons imaginable.
That came through strongest in the case and during the trial.
When the woman was going to be released from jail-
- Vidmantas appeared in the media.
He shifted the blame to her.
He said that he had taken the blame for her sake.
I wanted to save her, protect her.
My personal conviction is-
that Vidmantas carried out the actual murder.
But that the woman was involved in it all.
That's my personal conviction.
For me personally, the fact is-
that I don't forget any of the murder cases I've worked on.
But this case is really engraved in my memory.
Subtitles: Nicola Monchy www.sdimedia.com