VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
THIS PROGRAM CONTAINS VERY STRONG IMAGES.
On Monday, December 17, a call comes in
by a person who has found a burnt out car in an area called Hedlandet.
We asked the patrol that was to go to the scene
to film as they got to the car and to approach very carefully.
So they come down and see this car here,
and they're very careful, and you can see how they're moving.
They're trying not to get into the middle of everything.
And here, they try to look into the car.
You can't see much from this angle,
but he leans forward and you can see...
the torso of the body.
THE BURNING MAN
On Monday, December 10, 2018,
a man enters the police station in Hallstahammar in Västmanland
and reports that his 50-year-old son has been missing since December 5.
At this point in time, the missing person and his father
are working in construction together on a building.
They were meant to be working there on the 6th, but he doesn't show up.
What makes him report it is that
this is unusual behaviour for his son.
He likes his job, they have this project that needs completing,
he basically just felt that something was not right.
First of all, our hope is to find out his whereabouts,
that he's alive and well and that there's a natural explanation.
That's what we hope for.
The picture we get of the son is that he's a family man.
He has daughters, he runs a company with his father.
He likes his job, is a very kind and loyal person,
and very well-liked.
We then try to investigate and find out where he might be.
We visit the known addresses where he might be found.
But he's not there.
But he has to be somewhere.
The report states that the missing man's father
received a text message from his son.
In it, he writes that he's gone to his caravan in Orsa.
After that, nobody hears from him,
until the 10th of December, the same day the report is made.
The missing man's daughter suddenly receives a new text message.
But something isn't right.
When the family tries to contact him, they receive some replies,
but both the daughter and father react to the fact that
they're not worded the way he usually writes his texts.
It says, for example, "It will be nice to have a bit of a holiday,
I haven't had a holiday all summer," or something like that,
"Love, Dad."
And that's what the daughter reacts to,
he never writes "Love, Dad." He'd never done that.
The very next day, a new sign of life appears.
This time, it's from the missing man's ex-partner.
She sends a reassuring text saying they are both in the caravan.
The caravan was in a parking lot in Orsa.
We were assisted by local police who went and checked it out,
and it was completely untouched and empty.
So they haven't been there.
So it adds to the concern that something has happened,
that isn't quite right.
It's also really strange that he doesn't contact his family himself,
that it goes through his ex-partner.
That's really what makes it strange.
During questioning of the missing man's family,
more information turns up that worries police.
The father says he's seen money disappear from various accounts.
It amounts to over 300,000 at that point in time.
The father does an analysis of the companies
when things start looking out of control.
It's almost at the point where... They won't have enough to operate
if things continue the way they're going.
In connection with this, police obtain information
that the missing man was involved in a transaction that went awry.
It's a witness who is questioned quite early in the investigation
who says that the missing man had been involved in some caravan sale,
and that this had been weird in some way and hadn't worked out,
and that the buyers had been upset,
and that they were behind his disappearance in some way.
When we managed to get hold of, and question these people,
we thought, okay, sure, they haven't fully been on the same page,
and they've disagreed,
but they had nothing to do with his disappearance.
Since it appears the ex-partner is with the missing man,
police now search for her as well.
They got together in 2015 after meeting on a dating site,
and she moved in with him a short time later with her four children.
The ex-partner and he have had a relationship
which seems to have been a bit shaky, so to speak.
It's been a bit up and down for a few years.
At this point in time, they are together,
but I don't know how stable the situation is.
The ex-partner is the last known person to see him.
We can see they've had a fair bit of phone contact earlier in the day.
Their phones are both moving in the same direction.
Police also obtain interesting information,
claiming the ex-partner had lived in a safe house during 2017.
It was difficult to find out exactly what had happened,
and what caused the ex-partner to be provided with a safe house.
She moved southwest in Sweden somewhere,
and lived a safe house there for a short time.
We couldn't find a report.
So we never found out why she was provided with a safe house.
The circumstances with money disappearing,
texts that don't add up,
that they're not in Orsa when they say they are,
all makes us suspect he's not missing voluntarily,
but that he's been kidnapped.
We suspect his ex-partner has something to do with it,
since she's the only one who has had contact with him,
but I've seen investigations where we've made assumptions too early,
and it's hard to solve things when you realise a month or so later,
so it's very important to remain open to alternative perpetrators
throughout the investigation.
There are no other signs that his disappearance
could be linked to anywhere or anyone else.
So the ex-partner is arrested in absentia for kidnapping,
and simultaneously listed as wanted in our systems.
The title stuck out.
There aren't even a handful of kidnapping cases per year
in the Västmanlands district,
so that's what caught my attention.
We always check the debtor's office.
The financial aspects are of interest.
Have either of them got debts with the debtor's office?
That can provide certain indications.
I ran a check on his business and there were no anomalies
in the annual accounts and so on.
So the image of him as an orderly person,
it swiftly became stronger.
When they moved in together,
they'd run a hostel in Mölntorp.
I looked into it a bit and it didn't seem to be a dazzling establishment.
And despite having studied economy,
bookkeeping didn't seem to be her strongest suit, you could say.
The more we dug into both her past
and what she'd recently been involved with,
the more we got the impression that something wasn't quite right.
The ex-partner's financial situation was pretty dismal.
Looking at what she earned the year before and in 2018, it wasn't much.
And then there was their hostel
where she might have made a bit of money,
but nothing went through the correct channels, so to speak.
Through a closer look at the money that had disappeared
from the man's accounts,
police uncover new information.
His accounts have been emptied,
both his private and company accounts,
and all the money, almost half a million,
has been transferred to the ex-partner's account.
This further strengthens suspicions toward the ex-partner,
and it becomes even more important for police to find her.
We call her from the police,
leaving police text messages that are delivered as phone calls.
Her relatives and ex are contacted.
So quite an effort was made
to make some kind of contact with the ex-partner.
But we don't succeed. We don't know where she is.
But on the 15th of December,
five days after the man is reported missing,
something unexpected happens.
The ex-partner suddenly shows up voluntarily at the police station.
When she enters the police station, I'd have described her as very calm.
An initial interrogation is held where we share our suspicions.
She doesn't know where he is.
She doesn't feel particularly worried about him at this stage,
and says he'll probably turn up.
When she's asked if she's tried to contact him,
she says, "No, he'll turn up when he turns up,"
and says she hasn't had her phone for awhile.
She denies everything at this point and as far as the money is concerned
she claims that it's according to an agreement they've made.
Police don't obtain much new information from the interrogation,
but one thing is new,
it turns out she's recently moved to a house in Bälgviken.
That's of great interest,
so we have to go and search it.
The decision is made to search both the house and property,
to look for anything that might help advance the investigation
and provide answers. He has to be somewhere.
It's a one and a half storey house.
She's renting it and has moved in quite recently.
It's clean and tidy.
There are lots of boxes, she's been to Ikea.
There are beds and TV units and other furniture.
But otherwise it's clean and tidy, and no sign of there having been...
a fight in any way.
While the technicians go through the house,
a call comes in that someone has found a burnt out car
in an area called Hedlandet,
and it's a few kilometres away, not too far off,
so I get a feeling it might be related to his disappearance.
Just a few days before Christmas, Anders and his colleague Magnus
are driving in the forest around Hedlandet
when they discover something strange in the forest.
It's the 17th of December, we're each after a Christmas tree,
so we're having a look on our piece of land here.
There's new snow, it's around zero degrees,
and when we reach this spot,
we see a van with a car trailer behind it.
We thought it was stolen goods
that someone had hidden in the forest.
It seems suspicious.
So we decide to get out and see what's going on.
And this is where we begin to realise the car has been burnt.
There are no windows left and no paint.
The whole situation seems bloody suspicious.
We approach and have a look but don't see anything.
It's very burnt out.
I walk around the car.
Magnus walks another lap around it and looks into the car,
and sees a skull and a rib cage.
It's very burnt out with no flesh or anything left on it.
So we decide to call the police.
When police arrive at the scene and check the license plate number,
they see it belongs to the missing man.
The burnt out van and trailer are transported
to a police garage in Eskilstuna,
and forensics begin a very difficult and extensive examination.
I'm struck by how badly burnt it is.
I've never seen a car that was so burnt out.
It's almost ash. It's almost like it would crumble if you touched it.
We wondered if it could be a regular car fire,
because that's one alternative to consider.
But, to reach those temperatures,
something flammable must have been added.
And, among other things, a petrol can is sitting on the trailer,
there's a net with a few leftover bits of firewood.
So it seems someone's used petrol and thrown some wood on
to get the fire hotter.
The next step is to examine the body
in the hope identifying the body and cause of death.
When we secure the skeletal remains,
we have to be extremely careful because it's so fragile.
Just touching it is almost enough to pulverise it.
So there's not much left of the body.
But there's a tiny bit left of the heart
from which we could extract blood, and thereby establish the identity.
And it's confirmed that this is the missing person.
The forensic investigation continues,
and they now take a closer look at the trailer.
It has only minor burn damage,
but forensics discover something that confounds them.
We find an oily mass on the trailer.
It's black, and we gather up a bit and smell it.
It doesn't smell like petrol, but rather like frying oil.
It smells like a hamburger shop, or a fried food smell.
What the hell is this?
In this black, oily substance, we find fabric remnants
and, among other things, we find buttons and a zip from work pants.
Initially, we thought someone had burnt his clothes on the trailer.
But we still wanted to know what the substance was.
Is it something they used to burn the stuff on the trailer?
But when we receive the results
that the oily substance is human fat,
we're like, "Okay, what does this mean?"
Because human fat doesn't just end up on a trailer.
It requires a body to be subjected to very high heat.
So then we think,
"Has he been burned on the trailer before ending up in the car?"
Since everything points to murder, the crime classification is changed.
the 43-year-old ex-partner, Carina, is arrested on the 28th of December,
suspected of the murder.
The family felt she was controlling of him,
that she exploited him,
that she was only really with him for his money.
Eventually, the family distances themselves somewhat from the couple,
and it's because they don't like her.
Naturally, we look at her personal circumstances
during the investigation,
and it comes out in questioning that she's been with several men
that she's used for money and loans,
and not treated them well,
that they've been exploitative relationships.
Police now need to map out Carina's activities
during the days between the disappearance of the deceased man,
the 5th of December, until ten days later,
when she voluntarily comes in to the police station.
We have a huge gap there, it's like a black hole for us,
so it's everything from looking at phone traffic, texts, phone calls,
gather financial records, and order bank statements from all accounts.
We see that, during the days following the disappearance,
Carina is incredibly active in purchasing lots of things.
She visits various shops and buys cleaning products,
she buys angle grinders and discs for them,
paint, a few different times,
and a lot of purchases related to odour-removal.
Covering tracks, basically.
The actual petrol can from the trailer was interesting,
because there's an unmanned petrol station somewhat in the countryside,
where she's been caught on camera, filling two cans of petrol.
The can on the trailer looks very similar to those next to the pumps
at the petrol station.
In connection with the man's disappearance,
the family tries to find out what's happened to him.
Where is he? Can we contact him?
And just by change,
a family member gets news of
a change at the Swedish Companies Registrations Office,
and that this change entails Carina taking over his company,
and that he and his mother, who previously held these roles,
would be removed from the company.
They manage to stop it before it goes through, but if no one noticed,
the change would have been made.
This suggests that Carina would benefit from the man's death,
and that this could be a motive for killing him.
By analysing the deceased man's phone,
it can be seen that his last phone call occurred in the Bälgviken house
at the same time as Carina's phone also makes a call from there.
This makes the forensic house search even more important.
We wanted to find a sign of a struggle in there,
that there's blood or some kind of disturbance,
something that makes it look like things are a bit off, basically.
What's weird is the upstairs.
Carina has laid carpet in one of the bedrooms,
and it's very carelessly done.
It doesn't fit, so she's had to join it,
and she's done that in the middle of the floor.
Incredibly carelessly done, and it doesn't fit properly at the edges.
We get the feeling that something has happened in this room
that she wants to hide.
We divide the room up with string.
Then we swab it, basically.
But we get no traces of blood up there either.
So he hasn't been killed up there in a way that's caused bleeding.
There was also an earth cellar on the property that was locked.
And the metal plate on the lock looked new.
There was an older one underneath which was broken.
We open it and enter the earth cellar.
We immediately see that it's strange.
Forensics see that the floor looks almost wet.
And when they examine it closely,
you could see it's freshly painted. The paint has barely dried.
It's not an exercise in precision.
Leaves have been painted over.
They've painted around shelves rather than bother moving them.
We crack away this layer of paint in order to...
see if there's anything under it,
and, yes, we see there are grind marks in the concrete floor.
We can also see that in the drain in middle of the basement floor,
is a white powder that turns out to be washing powder.
So there's a lot here that tells us there's something
someone wants to hide in this earth cellar.
It's very suspicious.
Why would someone repaint an earth cellar in the middle of winter?
Why would that top the list of renovations?
We work our way into the earth cellar,
and we find a number of hairs partway up one of the inner walls.
They're of interest and are sent for analysis,
and the results confirm they share DNA with the deceased person.
That's when we felt that, yes, we were right in thinking
he's been stored in this earth cellar.
Traces of human fat are also found in the earth cellar.
The same kind of fat found on the trailer.
Police also make the discovery of burnt fabric remnants and buttons
with traces of the deceased man's DNA.
Carina had a fairly long, blue jacket
that she wore during these shopping trips,
and this human fat was also found on this jacket.
The back of the jacket was also scorched.
The jacket had her DNA on it,
so we could ascertain that Carina, wearing this jacket,
had handled the body which had deposited the human fat into it.
Despite having found many clues that cast suspicion on Carina,
it is still unknown how the man died,
and all hope for a clearer picture of what has happened
now lies in interrogations with Carina.
Police hold 13 interrogations with her.
Together, the interrogations last seven or eight hours.
Police go through all the evidence against her,
but she either says, "No comment," or just sits quietly,
looking at the police.
She could be so happy, just talking animatedly with her defendant
and even the interrogators,
then we'd start recording, and she'd go totally silent,
and stare at the floor.
The pressure increases with her total silence,
because then we need an even stronger case around her.
It's easier if she claims something,
because then we can either try to disprove it or confirm it,
but we had nothing.
As Carina is completely silent during interrogations,
the investigation comes no closer to an explanation
as to how the man has been killed.
Then the medical examiner has an idea of another investigation
they should try that could potentially show if he was poisoned.
The medical examiner was very passionate and backed this 100%.
He has this idea, and calls me.
He said that when they do these examinations,
there are certain parts they save,
in case they need to do further examinations.
And then it struck him that they had this part of the stomach saved,
packaged up in the freezer at the forensic lab.
Realises we could actually do this.
We can find out one way or the other.
That there are substances that shouldn't be in the body, or not.
Within a few weeks, it's confirmed that there were
two very strong medications in the body,
but it's not possible to determine the amounts that were in the body,
so we don't know.
He has sedatives and anti-anxiety medication in his system.
Whether he's ingested them voluntarily or not
is a question that requires investigation.
Then we do complete subscription reports on him.
He hadn't been prescribed anything like that.
He'd barely ever been prescribed anything.
Police learn through questioning neighbours
that the deceased man's white van and trailer
was driven up onto the lawn in front of the house and earth cellar.
This, the medication from his stomach,
as well as other technical evidence that has been gathered,
police begin to develop a theory of what has taken place.
The chain of events as we see them
are that the two of them go to Bälgviken on the 5th.
I think he's felt pressure from his family about the disappearing money.
In this situation, when they're out there,
it comes up in conversation, they have a disagreement,
and then he dies somehow.
My theory of how the murder came about
is that Carina has crushed tablets,
put them into food and fed it to him.
He becomes calm and drowsy, maybe lays down on the couch.
His DNA was found
on a pillow on the couch in the living room.
We analysed every pillow and his DNA was only found on one.
I would argue that Carina suffocates him with the pillow,
given there were no other signs of fighting or a struggle.
After he's dead, she tries to set him on fire.
But it doesn't work. What happens instead is that his clothes burn,
and the temperature is so high that His body fat starts melting.
Carina realises this didn't go well, this didn't work,
so she has to take the body back on the trailer,
and stows him in the earth cellar.
We also know that, around the same time,
Carina Heed's children are coming to visit the house for the first time,
so she goes to Ahlsells to buy the new metal plate,
and mounts it on the door with a padlock,
because the door hadn't previously been locked,
and that was to avoid the possibility
of one of the children going down to the cellar.
Then Carina buys firewood,
cleaning products, she gets cans of petrol,
she loads him back in the car, drives to Hedlandet,
and finds the fairly secluded place where she dumps his car.
She loads his car up with firewood. She'd bought 160 litres of firewood.
Pours the petrol into the car and sets it alight.
And her jacket is probably singed in the process.
And she goes back home to Bälgviken.
After that, she begins the process
of trying to destroy the evidence, and cover it up.
She goes to the hardware store and buys grey paint and a sander.
She wanted to get rid of the evidence as quickly as possible.
For me, it's all of it together that makes it such a strong case.
When we put it all together, it's solid.
But it seems like heavy work, moving the body and all the other steps.
What other contacts does she have? Could she have had help?
Police decide to do a reconstruction
to see if it's physically possible for Carina to move a body
in the way they think she has.
We choose a colleague who
was most similar, purely physically, in height and everything, to Carina,
who then tries to drag a body
whose weight corresponds to his at the time.
We added a couple of kilos to be totally sure.
And this is to see if it's doable.
We concluded that, with the physique that Carina had at the time,
she could have done it.
Absolutely, it's possible to move and transport the body in this way.
And nowhere, at any point during the investigation,
did we find anyone else who could actually
have been involved here.
There was just one person, and that was Carina.
On the 13th of May, 2020,
a year and five months after the man is found murdered,
the trial begins in Eskilstuna District Court.
I charge Carina with murder, desecration of a corpse,
and gross fraud.
And I can tell that
the court is going to go my way
and convict her of these crimes.
I was a bit worried.
You never know how things will play out.
And I was interested to see if she would say anything now.
I felt somehow that she would surely say something.
I thought, "You haven't wanted to talk during the investigation.
How do you feel about it today?
Are you prepared to talk about anything?"
Yes, Your Honour. I understand you want answers.
But I feel that what's been said, what others have said,
has been twisted and turned and isn't the truth.
So I feel, with respect to all involved,
that I want to protect my right to silence.
That's all I have to say, Your Honour.
I will therefore not answer any questions.
So we sat there during the days of the trial
and listened as Carina said nothing,
and I took it quite badly, actually,
because all the victim's relatives are on one side,
and Carina on the other,
turned almost completely away from the family,
just looking at her attorney and the wall, basically.
It was hard to see the family sit there, feeling as awful as they did,
and have to hear it all again.
He was a really lovely dad. I loved my dad so much.
He always wanted what was best for us.
How was your relationship with your dad affected after he met Carina?
We didn't talk as much. It got a bit worse.
What about when she moves in then?
The first thing is that it feels like she wants us kids gone.
That we weren't welcome anymore,
that she and her kids, it would be their house.
I got heaps of weird texts from Carina,
and she called me all kinds of insults. I was a whore, a cunt,
and idiot, and that Dad had chosen her family and I should accept that.
How did Carina treat your dad?
She was very manipulative, she made him do what she wanted.
She wasn't very nice. He told me once,
that he had sore ribs, so I asked him what had happened,
and he said Carina kicked him in the chest and probably damaged his rib.
I was in total shock.
I told him, "You have to leave her.
She'll hurt you if you don't leave."
And he said he didn't want to be alone.
It was psychological and physical abuse.
When you find out your dad has been found... in the car,
what do you think and feel?
Grandpa comes home, totally silent, and goes into the bathroom,
and I knew right away that something had happened.
And they say a burnt out car had been found,
his car, and I said, "Fucking Carina's set him on fire."
She was the only one who could have done this.
Nobody else has wanted to hurt him.
On the 7th of July, 2020, comes the court's verdict.
Carina is convicted of desecration of a corpse and fraud.
But, she's acquitted of murder.
I was furious.
Unbelievably disappointed. The air goes out of me.
We've lived with this for a year and a half.
And this is the verdict.
Because she'd been in custody for such a long time,
a year and a half, approximately,
she got to leave the district court on the same day we did,
because her sentence had been served during the detention period.
There was no chance I wasn't going to appeal the court's verdict.
I thought the court had made an incorrect judgement
and I feel she should be convicted for what I charged her with.
So murder as well.
After another year, the case is heard in the court of appeals.
Carina chooses, once more, to remain silent,
and refuses to answer any questions.
But the approach doesn't prove to be as effective in the appeals court.
On the 29th of November,
Carina is sentenced to 16 years prison for murder.
It was such a good feeling.
It's hard to describe it.
Many investigations drag on,
but this was one of the longest I'd worked on,
and when you've worked so intensively with it,
it's a huge relief and so good to feel
that the family has finally gotten some kind of justice.
And nice to have a result I agree with.
I'm so satisfied.
I felt so happy for the family's sake.
Because that's actually what affected me most.
Their disappointment after the district court decision.
And that they'd get justice now.
Yeah, it felt great.
It was such an unusual method,
that he'd been burnt twice.
It was macabre and,
when we had found this fat,
and analysis showed it to be human,
it undeniably settles in your consciousness.
I've never come across human fat in a case before.
There are really a number of things that stand out.
Carina, as a person. How she is and behaves
the days from the disappearance
until she comes into the police station.
It's a very unusual case.
That they've lost their father is...
Naturally, they're still deeply troubled by this.
Their lives have become, in many ways, destroyed emotionally.
They have lost a very dear family member.
It's awful.
And her macabre handling of his body,
that she's set fire to it multiple times,
and carted and knocked it around, it's...
there are many macabre elements in this case.
Subtitles: Lily Ray plint.com