Malmö man admits to beating wife to death

The 42-year-old Malmö resident under suspicion of the killing of his 33-year-old wife after he was found trying to stow her lifeless body into a van has admitted to causing her death, but claims that it wasn't murder.

• 'I saw a lifeless woman's bloodied head': witness (18 Jul 12)

“He hasn’t admitted to murder. He wants it to be classified as manslaughter or possibly aggravated assault and causing the death of another," said the man's lawyer Ulf Bjermer to daily Kvällsposten.

The man was discovered around 3.30am on Wednesday morning by passersby on a street in central Malmö when he asked them for help lifting what witnesses quickly realized was a human body wrapped in a blanket into a van.

The witnesses immediately alerted police and kept the man from leaving the scene by surrounding the vehicle.

Police later arrested the man, who claimed that the woman’s death was an “accident”.

When police arrived the woman was still alive but died later on the way to the hospital.

Police believe that the man beat his wife so badly that he caused her death.

They also suspect that the five children, four of which were fathered by the 42-year-old, were in the couple's flat at the time of the assault.

However, according to deputy prosecutor Bo Birgersson, it is not believed that the children witnessed the beating, as it took place in a separate part of the apartment.

“With the exception of the youngest child, but it is too young to have understood anything of what has happened, “ Birgersson told Kvällsposten.

Birgersson also confirmed that the woman had filed for a divorce twice in the last few years but later retracted the petition and moved back in with the 42-year-old.

“If it is true that she changed her mind it is hard to see how that could be the motive,” said Birgersson to the paper.

The man has given a statement to the police about how the woman died, but it doesn’t completely correspond to the woman’s injuries and some of the police’s findings in the flat.

“We haven’t confronted him about that yet and we can therefore not go into any details,” said Birgersson to the paper.

After a hearing on Friday that lasted all but ten minutes the court decided to remand the man into custody under suspicion of murder.

The Local/rm
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