The murder of Catrine da Costa

The unsolved murder of Catrine da Costa inspired the books of Stieg Larsson and Henning Mankell. This case shines a light on Sweden’s dark underbelly of sexual violence and misogyny

My investigation into Sweden’s most notorious (and unsolved) murder of a woman trapped in the sex trade

This article was first published in 2010, and updated in March 2024

Sweden was the first country to criminalise paying for sex (in 1999) after a feminist campaign prompted by the murder of Catrine da Costa. The law prohibiting the purchase of sexual services in Sweden came into force as part of the larger Violence Against Women Act, with the parliament defining prostitution as a serious form of male violence against women and children - harmful not only to the individuals involved, but also to society at large.

This law broke new ground and helped to galvanise the abolitionist movement. A number of feminists had been fighting for the introduction of this law for many years because they saw prostitution as simply another form of men’s violence towards women. The unsolved murder of da Costa, a sexually exploited young woman found decapitated near to the notorious street prostitution zone in Stockholm, gave a further push to the campaign to deter men from paying for sex.

The arrest of two seemingly respectable men for da Costa’s murder provoked the women of Sweden to organise against the sex trade. They marched through the city centres; circulated petitions; and appeared on television programmes protesting against the ill treatment of women, particularly vulnerable females such as da Costa. The case led to a change in the law on prostitution and the act of paying for sex has been criminalised since 1999.

When this law was introduced, there were an estimated 2,500 women in prostitution in Sweden. Today there are around 500. And what is particularly impressive is that the number of women trafficked into Sweden is now between 200 and 500 a year - the lowest tally in Europe. Not only are those selling sex (largely women) not arrested, they are also offered bespoke services and support if they wish to exit prostitution.

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Malmskillnadsgatan, Stockholm, used to be where the street prostitutes in the capital gathered. The 600-meter long road in the city centre was always teaming with drug addicted women at night, weaving in and out of the traffic, some barely able to stand. This was the street where Catrine da Costa, a 28-year-old prostitute and heroin addict, was last seen alive in June 1984. Her remains were later discovered in bin bags. Her head and some internal organs were missing, and have never been found.

Catrine da Costa

It is not unusual for prostituted women to be murdered, but police knew that the mutilation made this case different. The case, known in Sweden as ‘styckmordet’ (the ‘cutting up murder’) provided the country with a horror story about which people are still divided today. Although the case has remained high-profile – there are at least four books and numerous TV programmes and newspaper investigations on the topic, and the case sparked a feminist campaign which eventually changed Swedish law on prostitution – the gory, complicated details are about to be aired all over again in a Swedish court. The two men at the centre of this case, doctors named Teet Härm and Thomas Allgén, successfully sued the Swedish government for forty million Swedish Kronas (just over £3m) in 2010, as they were labeled as ‘guilty’ of cutting up da Costa by a judge, despite being acquitted of her murder.

Sweden has a population of nine million, and a good record of equality between men and women. Half of its MPs are women, and State provision of childcare and maternity benefits are next to none. There is a strong government commitment to tackling violence towards women and children, and a vibrant feminist movement. However, this does not affect the rates of rape, child abuse and domestic murder, which remain the same as countries without such equalities measures in place. The styckmordet polarised opinion in this small population. For some, the case is a story exaggerated out of all proportion, in which two ordinary, professional men have been turned into monsters by both the media and man-hating feminists. For others, it is a major miscarriage of justice, in which a downtrodden, abused and innocent victim was violated beyond belief, only for her killers to walk away. So what is the real story of the styckmordet? Are Härm and Allgén the victims of the worst miscarriage of justice in the history of Sweden, or cold-blooded psychopaths and master manipulators of their many supporters?

The bin bags were discovered in Solna, north of Stockholm, and very close to the Department of Forensic Medicine at the Karolinska Institutet. The police actually considered a theory that da Costa had died in other circumstances and then been cut up as a prank by medical students due to the proximity of the gruesome find. A promising young forensic pathologist worked at Karolinska Instituet. Teet Härm worked regularly with police to help solve murders and unexplained deaths. At 30 years old, he had already published papers and spoken at international conferences on his main topic of interest – death by strangulation. Härm had personal experience of this type of death. In 1982, two years before da Costa died, his first wife was found hung in their bedroom.

Teet Härm

Although the death was ruled a suicide by the coroner, police had their suspicions that Härm had murdered her. Ann-Catherine was found hanging from the side of a bed with a ligature around her neck. She was, however, dressed up for a night out. Two months later, Härm submitted his very first paper on strangulation. He was, by then, considered somewhat of an expert on sexual violence. A paper he published weeks after his wife’s death, Entitled ‘Face and neck injuries due to resuscitation versus throttling’ is cited in the Maryland Network against Domestic Violence Investigation and Prosecution of Strangulation Cases.

Police officers had noted that Härm’s response to his wife’s death seemed unusual and callous. He was viewed by many as cold, arrogant and, in the words of one former colleague, ‘creepy’. Härm took great interest in his work; would invite friends to view post mortems; and was a consumer of violent pornography and frequent buyer of prostitutes. He had been known to send unsolicited post mortem reports to friends, complete with photographs. His wife was described as ‘sexually liberated’, and was in the process of divorcing Härm when she died.

After the discovery of the bin bags, Härm’s former father-in-law contacted the police. He’d reported his suspicions of Härm at the time of his daughter’s death, and now thought the young doctor could have killed da Costa. “He thought Teet was sexually perverted,” says Härm’s lawyer Anders Agell, “and when he saw in the press about da Costa, he made up his mind that Teet had killed both of them.” So when police set about their investigation, Teet Härm’s photo was amongst the pictures of suspects that officers trawling the red light area showed to the street prostitutes.

Almost fifty of the women said that they recognised Härm from Malmskillnadsgatan. One woman said she was frightened of him, and that he had previously been violent to her. Later, during questioning, Härm reluctantly admitted buying sex ‘only once’, after a fight with his wife, but in fact he was known as a regular among the street women.

Härm was arrested for both murders in December 1984. His house was searched, and police recovered a number of items, including hard-core pornography, a doll with a flex tied around her neck, a vibrator, whip, and a knife in a leather sheath. After five days of questioning, Härm was released without charge.

Working with Härm at the forensic department was his former supervisor, Jovan Rajs. Rajs had performed the post mortem examination on da Costa’s body parts, and initially told the police he thought that, based on the incisions, the perpetuator could have been a butcher. Rajs, together with police investigators, visited a slaughterhouse to examine the method used for cutting-up animals. He was initially skeptical about Härm being the main suspect in the case, but was soon to change his mind. He claimed, after a second examination, that the incisions used to dissect da Costa had probably been made by someone skilled in dissecting human, rather than animal, corpses. Eventually, Rajs became so convinced of his former colleague’s guilt that he told police, during a statement to them in January 1985, that, “I think if you do not establish his guilt, then you might as well all go and hang yourselves.”

The police had leaked information regarding Härm’s arrest to the press almost immediately, even though Swedish law forbids the naming of suspects prior to a conviction. But it was very easy, says Agell, to work out exactly who the newspapers were describing when a ‘young doctor’ working ‘close to where the bodies were found’, and who had ‘helped police with a number of cases’.

Thomas Allgén

The press had a field day with the da Costa case. It contained all of the elements loved by the media and the public alike. Sex, violence, prostitution, tales of infidelity and sexual perversions, were all thrown into the mix. But one major factor which rendered the reporting of the case unstoppable was the profession of the two accused. As with the Harold Shipman case in the UK, people were shocked a doctor, charged with the responsibility of saving people’s lives, could be killing for kicks.

“It is obvious to me,” says Agell, a well-respected professor of law who is working on the case for no fee, “that the police gave information to the press about who they were holding for this crime.”

That same year, a young GP at a hospital in Alingsås, near Gothenburg, called Thomas Allgén was going through a separation from his wife Christina. Allgén knew Härm, as they had worked together for 18 months at a hospital in Stockholm between 1980 and 1981. Allgén had invited Härm and his new girlfriend to dinner at his home, shortly after the death of Härm’s wife in 1982. Christina Allgén took a strong dislike to Härm, and he was not invited back.

At the time of Härm’s arrest in December, Allgén was under investigation following an allegation from his wife that he had sexually abused their daughter Agda (not her real name), aged 2. She remembered Härm and had realized that he was the styckmordet’ suspect hinted and in the media. After months of investigations, Christina sensationally reported that her daughter had said things which suggested that she was present during the cutting up of da Costa’s body. Christina told the police that Agda had said to her, “Daddy cut off the breast. They took the head off and threw it away. Then the lady was chopped up.” Agda also made reference, it was alleged, that Härm was with her father during the dissection. The child used certain phrases that were interpreted by Christina and the professionals working with her to show that Agda had witnessed da Costa being hit on the head with a hammer, put on a grill, and having her eyes removed and eaten by her father and Härm.

Christina had worked out soon after the initial arrest of Härm, who the suspect was – she had telephoned the police after reading the press reports and asked if the man they were holding was Härm, which they confirmed. When Agda began to ‘disclose’ what she believed was hard evidence that the two men were the killers, she felt she had no choice but to involve the police. She reported her theory to the authorities, and a child psychiatrist and a child psychologist were engaged by police to examine the evidence and found it credible.

However, another shocking event was about to hit Swedish society and distract the police from investigation both of the da Costa case and the allegations of child abuse for almost a year. In February 1986, Prime Minister Palme, the popular leader of the moderate social democrat party, was gunned down whilst leaving a Stockholm cinema with his wife.

Swedish feminists

Child abuse investigations are notoriously laborious, as child witnesses need to be taken through evidence extremely slowly and carefully. During 1985 and 1987, child protection professionals worked on the case with police, preparing for what would undoubtedly be a very difficult trial, if it was ever to get to court.

But compelling evidence was building against the two suspects, and more was to fall into the police’s laps. During the latter stages of the pre-trial investigation, in autumn 1987, a married couple who owned a photo shop close to the Karolinska institutet contacted the police. They said that years before, in the summer of 1984, they had developed and processed prints of a film roll which contained horrible images of a body cut into pieces. They, and their employees, had apparently been very upset by these pictures, they said, but didn’t notify the police of their existence. The owners told police that the customers – two young men – had claimed that the pictures were part of a secret investigation, and that they must tell nobody about them.

The photo shop owners were shown lineups with the two doctors and they identified Allgén, and, although to a lesser extent, Härm.

Härm, was arrested for a second time in October 1987, more than three years after the discovery of da Costa’s body parts. Allgén was also arrested – for child sexual abuse and the murder of Catrine da Costa.

At the pre-trial hearing, the senior prosecutor ruled that evidence from the scores of prostitutes who said they had encountered Härm was inadmissible, because the women were ‘unreliable’. He also made a number of derogatory comments to the press about them. This, alongside the fact that one of the suspects had been accused of abusing his own daughter, added fuel to a growing feminist campaign for justice for da Costa.

Marianne Eriksson remembers the case as it unfolded back in the 1980s “as if it were yesterday”. As an MEP and committed feminist, Eriksson had helped to bring about the law, implemented in 1999, which criminalises paying for sex. “These arrogant men thought they could get away with it,” says Eriksson, and maybe they have. But one good thing that came out of this tragedy is that the feminist movement was galvanised by this case.”

A petition was organised by women’s groups, which gathered thousands of signatures. Feminists would appear on TV and in the press, highlighting the shocking levels of sexual violence in Swedish society. There were marches and rallies, and women who had never considered themselves feminist were suddenly walking arm-in-arm with those who dedicated their lives to ending male brutality.

After a five week trial, the jury returned a guilty verdict at the District Court. However, before the verdict could be confirmed by the judge, a number gave interviews to the press. As a result, the High Court overturned the conviction and ruled that the two doctors were free to go.

That could have been the end of the case, but a public outcry, greatly assisted by the tabloid press, followed. These two dangerous men, it was claimed, had got away with such a heinous crime. After a campaign led by the journalist and radical feminist Hanna Olsson, who was then researching the book Catrine and Justice (1990), a retrial was ordered. Olsson had interviewed a number of prostitutes for governmental research, one of whom was da Costa. She’d got to know da Costa very well. At the end of the second trial, Härm and Allgén were acquitted of murder, but the judge declared that they were guilty of cutting up the body. They could not be sentenced because the statute of limitations had run out for that particular crime, which, at the time in Sweden, was seen as a relatively minor one.

When I traveled to Stockholm to meet those with an interest in the da Costa case, several feminists I approached said they would only speak ‘off the record’ as they felt fearful of the doctor’s supporters. “Many of us have been vilified by those seeking to clear the doctor’s names,” one prominent campaigner against sexual violence told me over the telephone. “I have already been deemed a man-hater and witch hunter”.

Psychologist Lennart Sjöberg had been recommended to me by several people as an expert in the da Costa case. He is, Sjoberg admits, “a bit obsessed” by it, and has written one of the scores of research papers on the topic. Why does he think the case became so notorious in Sweden from the offset? “The feminists at the time really put pressure on the prosecutors to retry the doctors,” says Sjoberg, “They believed that the case was symbolic of powerful men, with lots of status in society, getting away with abusing helpless women.”

Like all of the men I spoke to about the case, Sjoberg’s major criticism of the way it has been conducted rests on the validity of the evidence from Allgén’s daughter. “The child was only 18 months old when she was supposed to witness the cutting up,” says Sjoberg, “and yet she was supposed to be able to, some two years later, give credible evidence to child psychologists that is used against the doctors in court? Unbelievable.”

What did Agda actually say which led the mother, and child protection experts who interviewed her at length and testified in court, to believe that she had witnessed da Costa being dissected? The following statements by Agda were submitted by the prosecution at trial.

“In the beginning she was whole, but then she was torn into pieces.”

“When she had no head, she could not talk.”

“They drilled and drilled. They drilled off their heads.”

“They threw it (the head) into the waste paper basket. Then she became pulp.”

This case threw up the whole issue of so-called ‘false memory syndrome’, developed by men who have allegedly been falsely accused of child sexual abuse. Supporters of the notion of such a syndrome, which originated in the US and is supported by a number of psychiatrists, argue that adults, whether parents or psychologists, can mistakenly label a child’s ‘fantasy’ or ‘imagination’ for real memories of child sexual abuse. Many of the papers I have looked at in relation to this case cites the ‘moral panic’ supposedly apparent in Sweden at the time of the trial, although feminists tell me it was more a climate where the shocking level of sexual violence was being uncovered at last. However, one man I spoke to who had a minor involvement in the case, but who wishes to remain anonymous, says, “Feminists were finding domestic violence and child abuse under every rock in Sweden.”

Mihkel Kärmas, a TV journalist based in Estonia (where Härm’s parents were born) has followed the case for a number of years, and has met and interviewed Härm on a number of occasions. The media has led the case against the two doctors, believes Karmas, given license partly because of the unsavory lifestyles of the two suspects. “Teet fits the Hannibal Lector of Sweden image,” says Karmas. “He is a tabloid editor’s wet dream.”

Agers told me that Härm’s former mother-in-law was, at the time of his arrest, employed by the then leading Swedish tabloid, Expressen, a newspaper which, according to Agers, was to play a very important role in the later campaign against Härm.

At the time of the police investigation, the news was full of how Härm had been identified by ‘scores’ of prostitutes. “He was here often. Lots of people know him,” one street prostitute told a reporter from Expressen, a national daily newspaper. “I could never have imagined that he was a murderer. As a rule, when he paid for sex with Lotta it was in the car; he was quite well dressed. Nobody here knew he worked as a doctor and did post-mortems. He told me he was a photographer.”

For many involved with the da Costa case, whatever their opinion regarding the culpability of the two doctors, the main issue was that street prostitution was to be exposed as the violent and abusive industry that it is, and would lead feminists and sympathetic politicians on the road to criminalise men buying sex, which was to take until 1999 to achieve.

Louise Eek is a journalist living in Sweden, and describes herself as ‘a survivor of prostitution.’ “If Catrine had been from the upper classes, and not from prostitution, this case would probably have been solved,” she says Eek, “But this was the defining moment for feminists, in being able to say to society that men have no right to buy women.”

I correspond by email with Teet Härm. It is impossible to speak on the phone, his lawyer Agers tells me, as Härm lost most of his hearing when attempting suicide in 1985, as a result of the adverse effects of the investigation.

I ask if he killed da Costa. “I'm innocent and my life has been totally ruined by all this slander,” writes Härm. “It has been impossible for me to get any kind of work after what happened to me due to all those rumours that were spread about me all over the country, and abroad”. He is taking the Swedish state to court to apply for financial compensation in the light of this, and feels as though he has been ‘raped’ by the State.

Kammarrätt, Sweden’s main administrative court, withdrew Härm and Angell’s licenses to practice medicine in 1991, as a result of the judge declaring them guilty of the cutting up, despite being acquitted of the murder. They are unable to appeal the guilty verdict, however, because there was no formal conviction for the crime. Since then there have been numerous cases heard in a number of courts to seek to strike the remarks of the judge. They have also applied for financial compensation on the basis that they have been unemployable since they were first cast as suspects in the case.

If the two suspects are not guilty, how did da Costa die, and who cut up her body? Three months before da Costa died, a Polish butcher named Stanislaw Gonerka had been released from a psychiatric institution. He had been serving a sentence for the murder of a young woman, in 1974, whom he strangled and cut up into pieces, before packing her remains into bin bags. Her head, like that of Catrine da Costa, has never been found.

The Butcher had no alibi and had been seen among Stockholm prostitutes at the time of da Costa’s disappearance. Police knew him to be very dangerous, particularly when drunk, but dismissed him as a suspect at a very early stage of the investigation, for unknown reasons.

Many of the prostitutes in the area knew the Butcher as a customer. Several said that he frightened them. The Butcher died in 1987.

Jenny Westerstrand, a feminist activist completing a doctorate in sexual violence, in Stockholm, tells me she is surprised that so many men have publicly supported Härm and Angell. “Women traditionally do unpaid, voluntary work,” says Westerstrand, “So I have been fascinated at how many free hours so many men are putting into this case.” Their supporters, not just the media, she says, refuse to put this case to rest.

“For feminists, there is a lot resting on it,” says Westerstrand. “The outcome of this case will show where we, in Swedish society, stand as feminists. It could affect us very negatively if they win.”

No one I spoke to could tell me conclusively whether or not they believed the two men guilty or innocent, except Agers. “There are a great number of people who will get their reputation destroyed when the truth is revealed,” says Agers, “These men have been branded as the most notorious killers of our time, and yet they are totally innocent.”

“The question of guilt is not in the forefront for me,” says Westerstrand. “This is about the legitimacy of these men to practice as doctors. The accusation of child sexual abuse, and Härm’s use of prostitutes and pornography, means, for many, they are not suitable to be in this profession.”

In 2010, police retrieved DNA from samples of the Butcher’s skin which were taken at the time of his death, to see if it matched a number of hairs found with da Costa’s remains in the bin bags. He could have been a punter, and transferred his hair to her body during sexual contact with her. But at the final moment, a judge ordered that testing the sample was unlawful - an ‘overreach’.

We may never know who killed Catrine da Costa. The image of da Costa haunts Swedish society, her unsolved murder overriding even that of a Prime Minister. A strange legacy for a woman who few cared about when she was alive, selling herself on the dangerous streets of Stockholm in order to banish her demons.

*BOTH MEN ARE STILL ALIVE