In the late summer of 1963 two young girls died in Stockholm three weeks apart. Berit Margareta Glesing was six. Ann-Kristin Svensson was four. In September a 33-year-old gardener named John Ingvar Löfgren was arrested and confessed to both killings. He had been questioned by detectives after the first death and allowed to go, and the questions that followed his arrest were less about him than about the Stockholm criminal police. An inquiry ordered by the parliamentary ombudsman found that a tip from his own relatives had gone unread, that most of the reports filed about him had never been registered, and that he had not even been classed as a suspect.
Svenska Dagbladet's yearbook for 1963 printed his surname as Löfgren.
On the evening of August 12, 1963, Stockholm's homicide squad was called out after six-year-old Berit Margareta Glesing was found dead in the city. Witness statements soon led detectives to believe that the man they wanted belonged to a circle of vagrants, people the yearbook account described as regulars in the area where she died.
Tips arrived in large numbers, and from them the police put together a description. The man had been seen in a brown suit, and the press began to call him "the man in brown." The yearbook described the search that followed as one of the largest operations the city's police could then mount. Detectives set out to check and question every plausible person in what the yearbook called the asocial milieu in which the killer was believed to move. Despite good witness descriptions, they did not find the man in brown.
One of the men questioned after Berit's death was Löfgren. He was released. At the time he was already being prosecuted for an earlier offense, with other charges. His history with the courts and with psychiatric care went back a decade: he had been prosecuted in 1953, and after that he spent about eight years in hospital care. He was declared cured in 1961 and had worked in Stockholm since then.
What happened to the information about him in the weeks after he was let go became the central question of the case once he was arrested.
On September 2, 1963, three weeks after Berit's death, four-year-old Ann-Kristin Svensson was fatally injured in Stockholm. She was taken to hospital and died there of her injuries. She was the second small girl to die in the city in less than a month, and the yearbook described the case as the same killer striking again.
This time the police moved quickly. A detective with the Stockholm criminal police, kriminalassistent Ingvar Johansson, and his wife had seen a man running from the area. Johansson recognized him, identified him and made the arrest himself. The man was Löfgren.
In the police car he broke down. He then gave a clear account of what he had done and confessed to killing both Berit Glesing and Ann-Kristin Svensson.
The governor of Stockholm, överståthållare Hagander, praised the police for clearing up the two cases. Others saw it differently. Critics argued that Ann-Kristin would not have died at the hands of the same man if the criminal police had done their work properly after Berit's death. Svenska Dagbladet's yearbook wrote that the violent-crimes unit had come in for sharp criticism because two small girls had been killed before the police connected the clues and caught the man responsible.
The parliamentary ombudsman, the justitieombudsman or JO, asked Stockholm's police chief, Nils Lüning, to answer the criticism of the search in Berit's case. Lüning asked for an impartial inquiry into the police work. The ombudsman's office gave the task to its head of department, Gösta Lidberg, who was to work from the police investigation files.
Lidberg's review turned up what the yearbook called a series of highly unusual circumstances in the way the criminal police had handled the investigation of Berit's death.
The most important tip about Löfgren had come from his own relatives. It had been overlooked and never followed up. The homicide squad first saw it only after he had been arrested for the second killing. By then every document concerning him had gone missing, and the papers were found only after an intensive search.
Five reports had been made against Löfgren. Only one of them had been registered. He had not even been classified as a suspect.
The ombudsman sent the matter to the Stockholm governor's office, Överståthållarämbetet, for its response and put ten pointed questions to it. In three of them the ombudsman spoke of "negligence" in the handling of the reports against Löfgren. The governor's office was granted extra time to answer, in part so that it could question the police leadership thoroughly. At the end of 1963 the yearbook reported that decisions about the Stockholm police and the investigation of Berit's death were not expected until early 1964.
The accounts published at the end of 1963 do not record a trial, a court finding or a sentence. Which court heard the case, what it found and what disposition it ordered were not reported in those accounts, and neither was the ombudsman's final decision on the police.
1953: Löfgren is prosecuted for an earlier offense, with other charges; about eight years of hospital care follow.
1961: He is declared cured and begins working in Stockholm.
August 12, 1963, evening: Berit Margareta Glesing, 6, is found dead in Stockholm; a large police search begins for a man described as "the man in brown."
August 1963: Löfgren, then under prosecution for an earlier offense, is questioned and released.
September 2, 1963: Ann-Kristin Svensson, 4, is fatally injured in Stockholm and dies in hospital.
September 1963: Detective Ingvar Johansson arrests Löfgren, who confesses to both killings.
Autumn 1963: The parliamentary ombudsman asks police chief Nils Lüning to answer criticism; Gösta Lidberg is assigned to review the police files.
Late 1963: The inquiry finds that a family tip went unread and that only one of five reports was registered; the ombudsman puts ten questions to the Stockholm governor's office, which is given more time to reply.
Early 1964: Decisions on the police handling of the case are expected.