Police hunt for new Arboga weapon

Police plan to dive in the waters the Arboga River to search for a what may be a weapon used in the murder of two small children three weeks ago.

• Suspect's friend: 'There was no baby' (11 Aug 08)
• German suspect's interrogation begins (2 May 08)
• Child murder suspect arrives in Sweden (30 Apr 08)

Meanwhile, attempts continue to get the mother to talk about the night of the murders and to extradite the prime suspect in the case, a 31-year-old woman, from Germany to Sweden.

The investigation into the murders of the two small children and the attempted murder of their 23-year-old mother continues with police following up a tip from a witness who saw a woman throw an object into the stream the night of the murder.

“Soon we’ll see if we’ve found a new murder weapon. We still don’t know if the Skavsta hammer is the murder weapon,” said Börje Strömberg from the Västmanland County Police, referring to the hammer now in possession of police which was left at a security checkpoint in Skavsta Airport near Nyköping.

Currently, much of the police investigation involved waiting.

The mother’s life is no longer in danger and she has been moved from the University Hospital in Uppsala to the central hospital in Västerås. But she has not yet been able to tell the police anything about the night of the murder.

“We continued to meet with the mother and slowly establish contact with her so that she feels secure enough to open up. The mother’s story is incredibly important for the investigation, but we have to wait and see,” said Strömberg.

The 31-year-old German woman wanted in Sweden on suspicions of murder and attempted murder still refuses to talk to police. The Swedish police who traveled to Hanover, Germany were unsuccessful in their first attempt to meet the 31-year-old and returned home empty handed last Friday.

“Now we are trying to get the woman extradited here so we can question her. In the worst case, it may take 90 days before the woman comes to Sweden and that will impede the investigation,” said Strömberg.

In addition, police in Sweden are waiting for German police to send samples collected from the suspect’s fingernails at the time of her arrest.

So far tests conducted by Sweden’s National Laboratory of Forensic Science (SKL) on samples collected from the family of the victim and emergency workers haven’t yielded any useful results.

And no answer has come regarding the hammer taken at Skavsta Airport when the 31-year-old flew to Germany the day after the murder.