Linda, As in the Linda Murder

96

On Monday 20 October, proceedings against Bengt Månsson began at the District Court in Växjö, and the judgement was made public almost three months later, on 19 January of the following year. The reason why it took so long was that the court had decided that Bengt Månsson should undergo an extensive psychological evaluation, to provide as thorough a foundation as possible for any potential verdict.

On 20 December a report was received from the forensic psychiatry clinic in Lund, but by then it was time to celebrate Christmas and the New Year and all the other holidays. And the court needed plenty of time to finesse its conclusions and generally to think things over.

It was clear from the non-confidential conclusion of the forensic psychiatric report that Månsson was severely psychologically disturbed, but that this disturbance was not sufficiently severe for him to require treatment in a secure psychiatric unit. So the District Court decided unanimously to accept the prosecutor’s recommendation and sentenced Bengt Månsson to life imprisonment for murder.

The verdict was taken to the Court of Appeal, which requested a new forensic psychological evaluation, which this time was conducted at Sankt Sigfrid’s Hospital in Växjö, under the leadership of Professor of Forensic Psychology Robert Brundin.

Brundin reached a completely different conclusion from that of his colleagues in Lund. It was his firm conviction that Månsson was suffering from a very serious psychological imbalance, and, in the Appeal Court’s verdict at the end of March, he was found guilty of murder, and sentenced to a secure psychiatric unit with specific parole conditions.

The week after the verdict was announced, Professor Brundin took part in a lengthy television interview in one of the many social-programming strands of the state-run channels. What this was really about was an extremely disturbed perpetrator with severely chaotic aspects to his personality. These in turn could be traced back to seriously traumatic experiences in his childhood.

Admittedly, these weren’t the sort of war experiences that traditionally chaotic perpetrators demonstrated, but their qualitative content and consequences were entirely comparable. And they were also covered by the laws of patient confidentiality, for which reason Brundin was unable to go into any more detail. But this certainly wasn’t a question of a sexual sadist with clearly developed sexual fantasies. Nor a stereotypically chaotic personality. He was more of an interesting hybrid somewhere between a sexual sadist and a chaotic perpetrator.

‘By which I mean that I have finally found the missing link between these two basic types, so to speak,’ the eminently satisfied Brundin declared, simultaneously wishing himself and his new patient every success in the close contact that lay ahead of them.

‘Do you think you’ll ever be able to cure him?’ the interviewer reporter asked him.

With all due respect to her and her programme, Brundin thought that the question was incorrectly framed.

‘How do you mean?’

‘This is really about how we can help future generations of people like him. But if you’re referring to the length of time his treatment will take, I’m rather afraid that this patient belongs to what is already a lost generation,’ Brundin said, because he also happened to be very well read.

Bäckström saw the programme on television. He was sitting at home in his cosy abode not far from police headquarters, with a beer, a small whisky, a sick note, an investigation into sexual harassment that would soon be dropped, and a fair amount left inside the brown envelope. Life could certainly have been a lot worse.

It would still have made more sense to boil the bastard down to make glue, Bäckström thought. For in spite of his many failings and shortcomings, he was still a man with a strong sense of basic justice.