The Knutby case: what too much God can do to you

31Dec06

If I ever doubted that religion does harm not only far away, like in the Middle East, but also closer to home (both geographically and culturally), I need not look far for reassurance. The small town of Knutby, Sweden, has had its share of trouble with connection to religion. The ingredients: two murders, one attempted murder, brain washing, sex, an extremist sect, and someone called “The Bride of Christ” (and no, it’s not Mary Magdalene like in The Da Vinci Code). And worst of all, it’s true.

Helge Fossmo was a pastor in the extreme Knutby congregation of the more mainstream Swedish Pentecostal Church. The sect was led by Åsa Waldau, known as “The Bride of Christ”. In 1999, Helge’s first wife, Helene, died under mysterious circumstances. She supposedly fell in the bath, and the case was closed as an accident. In 2003, Helge has gotten himself a new wife, Alexandra, and a nanny for his children, Sara Svensson. Sara has had a love affair with Helge, who has subsequently lost interest. In November that year, she tries to kill Fossmo’s wife with a hammer, but fails, and the story is not reported. Then, on January 10th, the story takes a new turn. Some time in the middle of the night, Alexandra is killed. Then, Helge’s neighbour Daniel Linde, with whose wife Helge has an affair, wakes up by the doorbell. He opens the door, and the killer shoots him once in the head and once in the chest, but he survives.

Shortly after the murder and murder attempt the nanny, Sara, confesses. She claims she did it on her own, but the police is not convinced. Later they find that she received a number of SMS messages in the months before the murder urging her to commit the murders in the name of God. Sara says she thought the messages were from God himself, while investigations show that the sender was, you guessed it, Helge Fossmo, the pastor and husband of the murder victim. Sara also had a phone conversation with Helge fifteen minutes after the crime and several times through the day.

Obviously, the media were all over the case. Stories about the sect, ruled by “The Bride of Christ”, that demanded 10% of the members’ income and held bizarre sex rituals abound. Police investigations showed that Helge’s first wife Helene had a near-fatal dose of Morphine in her body at the time of her death, and that the death couldn’t have been caused by her falling in the bath. Helge was charged with killing his first wife in 1999, the murder of his second wife and the attempted murder of his neighbour. He was found guilty of incitement to the murder and murder attempt in 2003 and sentenced to life, but he was found not guilty on the charge of killing his first wife. Sara was sentenced to psychiatric treatment, and was recently considered mentally stable enough to leave for eight hours to celebrate christmas with her family.

Helge has now admitted involvement in the 2003 murders, and just this Christmas was engaged for the third time, this time to a pen pal. The Supreme Court rejected his second appeal, so his life time conviction still stands. In his appeal trial, he portrayed himself as the sex slave of Åsa Waldau (The Bride of Christ, remember?) – just like Sara claimed she was his sex slave.

You can read more about the case at The Local – if you can read Swedish you’ve probably heard about the case already.

This bizarre case which I would have deemed extremely unplausible had it been the plot of a book highlights how strong faith can warp someone’s perception of the world. It doesn’t just happen far away – if it can happen in a sleepy Swedish small town, it can happen everywhere. Obviously this is an extreme case, but it highlights the problem with unquestioningly believing in something.

Filed under: crime, dangers of faith, extremism, religion, superstition   |  Closed