made an instant breakthrough in the investigation. Her first hit was the programme
listings for TV Värmland in Karlstad, advertising a segment in the series “Värmland
Murders” that was broadcast in 1999. After that she found a brief mention in a TV
listing in Värmlands Folkblad.
In the series “Värmland Murders” the focus now turns to Magda Lovisa Sjöberg in
Ranmoträsk, a gruesome murder mystery that occupied the Karlstad police several
decades ago. In April 1960, the 46-year-old farmer’s wife was found murdered in
the family’s barn. The reporter Claes Gunnars describes the last hours of her life and
the fruitless search for the killer. The murder caused a great stir at the time, and
many theories have been presented about who the guilty party was. A young
relative will appear on the show to talk about how his life was destroyed when he
was accused of the murder. 8:00 p.m.
She found more substantial information in the article “The Lovisa Case Shook the
Whole Countryside,” which was published in the magazine Värmlandskultur. All of
the magazine’s texts had been loaded on to the Net. Written with obvious glee and
in a chatty and titillating tone, the article described how Lovisa Sjöberg’s husband,
the lumberjack Holger Sjöberg, had found his wife dead when he came home from
work around 5:00. She had been subjected to gross sexual assault, stabbed, and
finally murdered with the prongs of a pitchfork. The murder occurred in the family
barn, but what aroused the most attention was the fact that the perpetrator, after
committing the murder, had tied her up in a kneeling position inside a horse stall.
It was later discovered that one of the animals on the farm, a cow, had suffered a
stab wound on the side of its neck.
Initially the husband was suspected of the murder, but he had been in the
company of his work colleagues from 6:00 in the morning at a clearing twenty-five
miles from his home. It could be verified that Lovisa Sjöberg had been alive as late
as 10:00 in the morning, when she had a visit from a woman friend. No-one had
seen or heard anything; the farm was five hundred yards from its nearest
neighbour.
After dropping the husband as a suspect, the police investigation focused on the
victim’s twenty-three-year-old nephew. He had repeatedly fallen foul of the law,
was extremely short of cash, and many times had borrowed small sums from his