Murdered his wife to solve a crime

A forensic technician “trial murdered” his wife to test a new crime-solving method. Stock Photography.Image: Anders Wiklund / TT

At the National Forensic Center (NFC), the technology, which is becoming increasingly popular in homes, is called home automation. In their simplest form, they are apps that can turn lights on and off. But the most advanced systems can be motion sensors or door and window sensors that can send a message to the user’s mobile phone and alert them that a window or door is opening or closing.

With home automation systems, water and heat flows can also be controlled, and the systems also provide the opportunity for burglary protection and monitoring.

– There are many who invest in theft protection. Instead of hiring the big security companies, many choose to install sensors on windows and doors and have the opportunity to be alerted if something happens in the home.

For those who have a home automation system, all events are recorded in a control unit. And it is from these devices that Johnny Bengtsson and his colleagues at NFC hope to gather information, data that can be used to recreate the course of events in a home if it is a crime scene.

– As an example, I can tell you when my wife and I did a test in which I let her turn off all the lights in the exterior and interior lighting. She went to bed in the bedroom and then I broke into the house and pretended to kill her, says Johnny Bengtsson, whose home, of course, is equipped with a home automation system.

When the test robbery and test murder took place, he was able to secure the data from the control unit he has at home. He then got all the times for when the lights went out and for when the motion sensors reacted in different rooms during the night when the fictional crime was committed.

– This does not say who did what, it only indicates the passage of time. But if home automation systems exist, you can extract data and recreate a sequence of events and perhaps a hypothesis about why the person moved the way they did. It would be difficult with a traditional crime scene investigation.

But home automation can be used not only to solve crimes but also to commit them. An example is a homeowner who set fire to his home in Sandviken at a distance from Thailand, previously reported by NFC’s Kriminalteknik magazine.

The man started the house fire from Thailand by turning on a remote switch via an app to an electrical outlet at the house in Sweden. At the outlet was a soldering iron, placed near combustible material that ignited when the man turned on the power from Thailand.

The man was sentenced to two years in prison for arson, and forensic expertise is now being used in firefighter training for future forensic technicians.

Johnny Bengtsson says there is growing public interest in home automation, and both can be good for law enforcement.

– If more people can get it, it will help us solve any crime, he says.