The defendant: he had to

– He has lived in his social loneliness and went out late and night to a store to buy a pack of two popular beers to ease his anxiety, says Henry Jansén, inspector of the group of serious crimes in the Östergötland police area, who questioned the man.

The opinion of the prosecutor Britt-Louise Viklund is that, in principle, the defendant self-medicates with popular beer.

Henry Jansén says that Daniel Nyqvist in the interrogations has had difficulties to express himself and tell what happened.

– There will be short answers to simple questions.

But immediately when questioning of the defendants began in June, he admitted. He says he didn’t bother to brush his teeth before taking the bus into town at seven o’clock on the day of the murder.

– I didn’t because I would still die or get stuck that day, he says.

DNA in crucial hat

Police interrogations also show that Nyqvist, then 21, felt compelled to murder two people for peace of mind. When he got off the bus, which he had taken from his home on the outskirts of Linköping, he walked through the city and saw the boy in Åsgatan.

In short and sometimes incomplete sentences, tell what happened.

– It was like automatic. I saw the boy. I attacked with a knife and then a woman. When I looked up, she was standing like an ice cream cone there. She did not say anything. I ran forward and stabbed her, she says.

Then he ran away. Along the way, she threw her hat, where police found DNA, at a newsstand. The hat was for a long time the most important piece of the police puzzle in the preliminary investigation, and thanks to DNA traces, they finally managed to link Daniel Nyqvist to the double murder.

“In a haze”

During questioning, Nyqvist says that he met other people on the way to the crime scene, but thought they were too big.

– Maybe they could have defended themselves or it was I who was too cowardly.

Before the double murder, he had had difficulty sleeping and thought he had to kill two people, thoughts which he dismissed. But this morning it all happened automatically until he attacked the boy from behind and stabbed him. When the woman arrived, he also stabbed her.

That he simply attacked them was a coincidence.

– I’ve never met any of them, he says.

The knife attacks took place without him saying a word.

– I did not hear anything in any case, he says and adds:

– I walked like in a haze.

To Paradise

Daniel Nyqvist says he used a butterfly knife that he bought at a market in Poland, where he was on vacation with his parents.

After the day of the murder, their days flowed together and he did not speak to anyone about what happened. I didn’t have a job, but I did have some periods of daily work.

Images in the police site investigation show a worn apartment, without curtains and furnished in a spartan fashion. A bed, a computer, a coffee table, and a television are all you have. In the kitchen there is no dining table, only some boxes.

When asked by police how it felt inside to live with what happened, Nyqvist, now 37, expresses some compassion.

– I’m sorry for the victims. But he had to. The more the years go by, the less you think about it.

His answer to why he killed the two people:

– Get to paradise when you die.

Petronella Uebel / TT

Beatrice Nordensson / TT