Ten years for GHB murder

A 21 year old woman has been found guilty of murdering her 22 year old boyfriend, after he died from drinking vodka which she had laced with the drug GHB.

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The woman denied killing him, but was sentenced on Wednesday to ten years in prison by Gothenburg district court.

Last November the man was found dead in his apartment in Hisingen. At first, it appeared that he had died of natural causes. But pathologists later found a significant quantity of butanediol, sold on the street as GHB, in his body.

The woman insisted from the beginning that she had not killed her boyfriend. She claimed that she had wanted to break off the relationship and that he had threatened to take his own life. According to the woman, she found her boyfriend dead in the bathroom in the morning. Beside him stood a vodka bottle containing a reddish liquid.

No technical evidence, such as blood and urine analysis or a pathologist's report, was presented in the case. But several people testified that the woman wanted her boyfriend dead. A good friend to the woman, a 25 year old man, described how on the night of the murder she told him on the telephone that she had managed to kill her boyfriend by poisoning him.

The court considered it out of the question that the man had committed suicide. His relatives told the court that his life and job was well-organised, and that he was a happy and psychologically stable person.

Suicide was not a possibility for him, maintained his relatives. Neither the woman nor the man used drugs, according to her own evidence.

What was clear, said the court, was that a few hours before the 22 year old's death the woman bought the reddish liquid. It was also clear that the mixture in the bottle contained butanediol, and that the 22 year old died of butanediol poisoning.

According to the court, the only explanation for the man's death was that the woman, whom he trusted and liked, gave him the drink, with a deadly dose of butanediol, with the intention of killing him.

The woman was also found guilty of serious fraud, having taken money out of the man's bank account after his death. In 1999 she was found guilty of arson.

The woman's 25 year old friend was sentenced to two years in prison for neglecting to report a murder and for fraud.


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TT/The Local