In the last nine years, local communities around Ålborg in northern Jutland have experienced a new, unofficial record, according to EkstraBladet: Since 2015, seven murders have shaken the local communities in North Jutland. The seven “horrific” murders include triple murder, dismemberment with a “knife, blunt force and strangulation with nylon thread”.
The last murder was as late as 12 March this year, when a 13-year-old girl was killed in Hjallerup. A 17-year-old boy was charged with the murder and rape of the young girl.
– We don’t know the poor people (the girls’ parents, journ.anm). But unfortunately we have experienced something similar before, so I think we are hit hard up here. It feels close every time, says Peter Høgh, who visited the crime scene in Hjallerup to show respect for the relatives, according to EkstraBladet.
On Monday evening, a 13-year-old girl was found murdered in North Jutland in Denmark. Video: Nora Bakketun Show more
Therapy trip
Høgh’s wife, Anna Margrethe Høgh, says that many people showed up at the scene of the murder in Hjallerup last month to show that they feel for the victims.
– The family must know that many people feel for them. We mourn on their behalf, says Høgh, according to the Danish newspaper. The couple saw the crime scene visit as a kind of therapy.
For Michael Højer, the murder of the 13-year-old girl gave him dark thoughts. One summer night in 2015, a schizophrenic 19-year-old killed his parents and older brother in their home in the northern Jutland village of Gandrup. 30-year-old Højer went to class with his older brother and knew the family. He still remembers when his dad called to tell him about the murder of his classmate.
– It is still in me, and it comes up again every time there is a new murder in the area here. You never forget it, says Højer to EkstraBladet.
The schizophrenic 19-year-old who killed his parents and brother is serving time in a closed psychiatric ward.
Body divided
The 17-year-old who killed and raped the 13-year-old girl in Hjallerup last month has admitted that he killed her. But denies guilt for the murder.
Two years earlier, there was another murder in Northern Jutland. Nursing student Mia Skadehauge Stevn was brutally raped and killed north of Ålborg. The so-called Mia case attracted a lot of attention at home and abroad. Also in Dagbladet.
– Never. I have never seen a corpse that has been dismembered so violently.
The details are shocking: – Never seen before
This is how retired forensic pathologist Hans Petter Hougen described the brutal dismemberment described in the indictment. A 37-year-old man was accused of killing Mia Skadhauge Stevn. According to the indictment, the perpetrator will have divided her body into 231 parts, and then hidden them in different places in a forest a few kilometers from his home.
IN MEMORY: Flowers and candles in honor of Mia Skadehauge Stevn at the net at Vesterbro in Ålborg. She was killed in February 2022. Photo: NTB Show more
– It is quite a task the forensic pathologists have faced. None of us are used to dealing with cases on this scale. I have never experienced anything like it, says Hougen, with over 12,000 autopsies behind him.
MURDERED: Mia Skadehauge Stevn disappeared after a city trip. She was raped and killed. Photo: Police in Denmark Show more
Unstable men
The North Jutland sociologist and village researcher Rolf Lyneborg Lund knows Aalborg University says to EkstraBladet that murders in small village communities can mark the local inhabitants for generations.
– Terrible cases such as murder and suicide can affect the community much more strongly in small communities than in large cities such as Ålborg and Copenhagen. It can trigger a form of collective guilt and grief, which is linked to the place and not just to the people who are directly involved, he tells the newspaper.
He has studied the seven murders that have occurred since 2015 in North Jutland: In Gandrup, Vadum, Hammer Bakker, Hjallerup and Sulsted.
The Sulsted murder case has not been written about much in the Danish media, but happened in the same area. A man in his 30s confessed to the murder of his mother and attempted murder of his stepfather in September 2016. He killed his mother with a nylon thread, according to EkstraBladet. The man was declared schizophrenic.
Provost in Hallingdal Sveinung Hansen tells Dagbladet how the murders in Torpo in Ål municipality in Hallingdal affect the local community. Video: Anabelle Bruun. Reporter: Kristoffer Solberg Show more
All the murders EkstraBladet goes through were committed by “mentally unstable or ill men”, according to Lund.
– My claim is that this is not accidental. When you live in a place where everyone knows everyone, you can lift each other up. But people with serious mental health problems can harbor horrible thoughts for a long time, without anyone noticing, Lund continues.
He believes that residents of small communities can take on indirect, or irrational, guilt.
– People ask themselves: “Could we have helped?”. It would not have happened in the same way in a larger city, he says.
2024-04-06 07:37:33
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