Woman gets 15 years for stabbing boyfriend

A 42-year-old Swedish mother of five charged with the murder of her boyfriend in June this year, has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for stabbing her spouse to death and then photographing his injuries.

• Woman stabs boyfriend, claims ‘self-defence’ (27 Aug 12)

“The court finds that the violence that has been carried out was extensive and that XX must have been aware that her actions would mean the victim’s death,” the Gävle District Court wrote in the verdict.

The victim, 49-year-old Ingemar Wallin, was found dead at the end of June in his house in Högbo, near Gävle in eastern Sweden.

His 42-year-old girlfriend had alerted police and told them what had happened after returning to her home in Södertälje, south of Stockholm.

After a rocky relationship followed by a brief separation, Wallin and his girlfriend had reunited and were in the process of moving in together at his new house.

The night of the killing, the couple were celebrating the Midsummer together with two of the woman’s young children.

However, at some point during the night, Wallin’s arms were slashed by a blade and he was violently stabbed in the chest.

The woman has claimed during the trial that she acted in self-defence when she severed the main arteries in Wallin’s throat and arm.

However, the examples of his violent side that she provided the court were few and not very clear, according to local paper Gefle Dagblad.

Meanwhile, a witness for the prosecution, a former colleague of the woman, said that she had spoken about the deed as if it was planned.

The 42-year-old had said that she was “biding her time” until Wallin had gone to bed before she struck, according to the witness.

The forensic analysis showed that Wallin was lying down when he was stabbed and according to the witness, the 42-year-old woman had given a detailed account of what she had done after returning home.

The woman slashed Wallin some 30 times, several stabs which constituted fatal wounds, but most were injuries he had received while trying to fight her off.

According to the witness, the woman had mentioned using a filleting knife she had received as a gift from work:

“Isn’t it great that the Christmas present finally came to use,” she had said, according to the witness statement.

Police said during the investigation that there was no clear motive for the murder but that the girlfriend’s testimony indicated that a large amount of alcohol had been consumed over the course of the evening.

Apart from spending the next 15 years in prison, the woman was also ordered to pay damages amounting to 135,000 kronor ($20,300) to Wallin’s grown-up daughters.

The Local/rm
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