The Dark Heart: A True Story of Greed, Murder, and an Unlikely Investigator

by Joakim Palmkvist

  Both landowners refused to back down, but with the help of a local mediator, a deal was eventually struck to split the parcel into two equal parts. At least that was the most widespread story about the origin of the feud between the Lundblad and Törnblad families.

  An additional factor adds spice to the narrative: Göran Lundblad’s grandfather Knut, the adventurer, at one point purportedly promised to gift part of his forest to an older member of the Törnblad clan, as thanks for services rendered. The Törnblad man cared for the Norra Förlösa land as a kind of forester, and Knut Lundblad wanted to compensate him somehow. But when the time came to convey the land, Gustav Lundblad controlled all the Lundblad properties, and he reneged on his father’s promise.

  “It’s the kind of thing that would stick in the craw, I reckon,” said Mats Råberg, a Norra Förlösa farmer who rented his land from the Lundblads. “It’s partly about money, partly about being stabbed in the back.”

  In the Lundblad family, it is said that it was an older aunt of Gustav’s who owned the forest in question. After she was moved into a nursing home, her neighbor Karl-Oskar Törnblad would visit, ingratiating himself with coffee, cake, and silver-tongued persuasion. He wanted her to sign the property over to him. But Gustav caught wind of the scheme and managed to stop the transfer.

  The words of the foiled Karl-Oskar Törnblad later became something of a mantra for his family: “One day, Ställe Farm will be ours.”

  At the end of the 1960s, Göran Lundblad was sent away to Ireland by his father. Rumor had it that it was because of Göran’s poor performance in school. In fact, he was being ushered into the family business as an apprentice. Gustav kept his son on a short leash, according to his relatives, and neither of Göran’s parents seemed particularly caring or loving.

  Göran was to stay in Ireland for at least one year to work for his father’s pipe manufacturer, Patenta, which had a partner there. In the end, it was five years before he returned; he would later confess that he had not enjoyed his work. It was a tough time, though he did also establish a number of contacts, which he later regretted not having managed to maintain.

  Göran returned to Sweden a more experienced, somewhat “hardened” young man with an unmistakable Irish lilt to his English. The years abroad had been long but could be summarized briefly, as Göran was not the kind of person who harped on about his own experiences; rather, he would mention them only if they came up in some other context. He might then share an anecdote and conclude with a chuckle, as if to take the edge off whatever he had just said. He came across as shy and insecure at heart.

  Göran lived with his parents, working on the farm and with the pipe manufacturing. He had minimal contact with the rest of the family because of his father. At first, Gustav Lundblad and his siblings got on well. But as Knut and his wife, Signe, grew older, they wanted to divide their assets between their children.

  According to the accepted narrative among both family members and acquaintances, Gustav, Göran’s father, cheated his siblings out of their inheritance. Sides were taken; Gustav was joined by his childless sister, Stina. And thus, all connection between Göran and his cousins was severed.

  There seem to have been few women in Göran’s life, but at the tail end of the 1980s, he met a woman named Tiina Nieminen entirely by chance. At the time, she was married to a man who rented an apartment in the building in Mälarhöjden that Göran’s parents had owned since the 1950s. The building comprised eight apartments and was located on Tenngjutargränd, on a hill midway between the subway station and the water’s edge.

  The buildings surrounding the Lundblad property gradually descended the slope toward the shoreline, where one of Lake Mälaren’s bays reached into western Stockholm. The view across the water was striking: on the other side was Kärsön Island and the Nockeby Bridge leading to Royal Drottningholm on Lovön Island.

  Göran regularly spent the night in Mälarhöjden when in town on business—delivering pipes, for example—but also in order to look after the building.

  “We didn’t really know each other when we first met in the house in Mälarhöjden and started going out,” Tiina Nieminen said.

  A concise description of a fairly sensitive situation—committing adultery with the landlord’s son. When she divorced her husband at the end of October 1987, she was two months pregnant with Göran’s child. On May 13, 1988, she gave birth to a daughter, Sara. That same year, Göran turned thirty-nine. He never married Tiina, and she didn’t stay long with her new man and baby.

  “Stigtomta was no good, no good at all,” she said many years later. “I was miserable. They worked me like a serf, and I never had any money of my own. When I asked to be paid for the work I did, Göran said his mother regularly transferred money to his account. And Göran was tightfisted.”

  Tiina took part in the family’s pipe manufacturing. The pipe wood was delivered from Italy, then stems and shanks had to be cast, shaped, and buffed. Göran’s mother oversaw quality control, scrutinizing all individual parts and assembled pipes. Tiina handled the polishing of the pipe bowls. She said, “I was put to work assembling shipping boxes and bagging filters and things like that. No breaks. I felt like a slave. I had no life of my own.”

  Things quickly went from bad to worse for Tiina in Stigtomta.

  “I was so miserable, I started secretly drinking beer. And it got worse from there. I became an alcoholic,” she admitted.

  A neighbor across the road offered stronger things than beer, and Tiina found herself trapped in the terrible cycle of substance abuse. She never registered residency in Stigtomta, retaining instead her Stockholm address until a few months before giving birth. After Sara’s birth, she was soon forced to leave her daughter behind.

  “They arranged for me to emigrate,” she said. “Göran told me to just sign the papers. I was supposed to go back to Åland, Finland, at least on paper. There was something about him being a single father, that there were financial benefits to doing things that way.”

  Speaking about her unhappy time in Stigtomta awakened a lot of emotions for Tiina. Her experiences were also indicative of the Lundblad way of life.

  “They were terrified I might somehow get my hands on their money. They were constantly talking about money. Göran even told me: ‘I suppose you wish Sara would die now, so you could get the money.’ He had no idea how I felt. I wasn’t allowed to see her after I moved away. Göran told her I was dead.”

  Tiina describes a tragic relationship, doomed from the outset because she was unable to adapt to the Lundblad way of life, which made her feel like chattel. The Lundblad family refused to accommodate her needs in any way, preferring to continue undisturbed along its charted course: work, grow the fortune, save, invest. She eventually left her baby daughter and her daughter’s father in Stigtomta and moved back to Åland, where she remarried in 1991.

  With an eighteen-month-old daughter at home on the farm, Göran started looking for a new life partner. There must not have been many forums for such things in and around the farm country of Rogsta and in Stigtomta. The online dating of today certainly didn’t exist when Göran was on the prowl in the early 1990s.

  Instead, he placed an ad in a Russian magazine. An Uzbek woman, Irina, saw his picture and information there and reached out to him. They married in July 1993. Göran then served as his new wife’s “sponsor,” which is to say that their marriage made it possible for her and her brother to move to Sweden. Her brother was later hired by Göran’s father and developed a good relationship with Göran. Irina also brought a daughter from a previous marriage, and Irina and Göran’s daughter, Maria, was born in 1994.

  The Lundblad family was at that time still living in Stigtomta, in a kind of multigenerational setup across two farms. In addition to Rogsta, Göran’s father, Gustav, had acquired Tängsta, a few hundred yards down the road. Gustav still ruled supreme in Stigtomta. Göran was his serf, dispatched to fields and forests to drive the tractors and forestry vehicles. He also
did property maintenance and manufactured pipes, all without being paid.

  “My parents just gave me an allowance,” he told one of his tenants.

  Just like Tiina Nieminen, Irina described a tough life under the thumb of a very demanding patriarch. The picture Irina paints of life in Stigtomta consisted of working, having virtually no privacy, and not spending money. Everything revolved around money—keeping what you had and making more, working hard, minimizing costs. Even at that point, despite the fact that Göran had recently turned forty, his mother was still in charge of all his finances.

  Irina described going to the supermarket: she would write a list of the groceries needed and Göran would bring it to his mother, who would give him money. Cash. Always cash. The Lundblad family did not trust banks.

  Irina was also expected to care for Göran’s older daughter, Sara.

  “She was a very reserved girl when we met. She was shy and would run and hide between her father’s legs. When she called me Mom for the first time, it was a big occasion for me,” Irina said.

  As the new millennium approached, Göran and Irina’s relationship collapsed. One day, upon coming home after work, Göran found an unknown man standing around the yard.

  “Who are you and what are you doing here?” he asked.

  “I’m an assessor,” the stranger replied. “Your wife has hired me to evaluate these properties.”

  Irina had gone behind her husband’s back to get his money, or at least to find out how much she could make off with in a divorce. Very quickly, it was made apparent that she had outstayed her welcome in Stigtomta. At least, this was the story the Stigtomta locals told.

  According to Göran’s elderly aunt Stina, Göran told her Irina was taking Swedish classes and had become infatuated with one of her teachers there. This, Stina claims, was a decisive factor in Göran’s decision to file for divorce.

  The divorce was formalized on September 18, 2001, but the two continued to celebrate high holidays together with their daughters. There was no custody battle over Maria, who initially lived with her mother only. Later, during her school years, she also lived with her father and sister.

  In the 2000s, after Göran had moved down to Norra Förlösa and both his parents had passed away, his and Irina’s relationship improved. Although Stigtomta was some 180 miles north, a nearly three-and-a-half-hour drive from Norra Förlösa, the Lundblad family retained their farms north of Stigtomta—Rogsta and Tängsta, as well as the houses on the other side of the road, which are best described as laborers’ cottages, meant for the people hired to work on the farms in the area.

  Rogsta consisted of two main houses and a couple of utility buildings set around a farmyard. On one side, there was a red wooden barn, large enough to house ten or fifteen farming and forestry machines. The second building was used as a stable and storage.

  The two main houses sat close together; a car would barely fit between them. They were stone, whitewashed. The sound of traffic was constant in the east. On the other side of the main road was Tängsta, which was not really a farm but rather a regular detached house with an annex.

  If they had been grouped more tightly, the Lundblad properties would have constituted a tiny village, and in a way, they were a universe unto themselves. As Gustav grew older, the family scaled back their farming, renting out the land instead. The houses were let as well. Upward of ten people lived in them as tenants during the 2000s, after Göran moved down to Kalmar.

  Göran stayed in the main house at Tängsta when he visited. On the first floor, at the northern end of the house, Sara’s posters were still on the walls and a toy stove sat on the floor, more than a decade after she had outgrown playing with it. On the ground floor, Göran, who was generally averse to throwing things away, collected both furniture and smaller possessions from the other houses. People who ventured inside the house at Tängsta during the 2000s were shocked to find it so cluttered, filthy, and badly kept. Göran prioritized his rental properties but barely had time to maintain them.

  Perceptions of Göran Lundblad varied depending on how people knew him or what type of exchanges they had with him—in a personal capacity (very few) or through business (a few more). Kind, lonely, quiet, sometimes gruff, family-centric, dutiful, tightfisted, submissive, his father’s servant, and a lightweight when it came to alcohol.

  One characteristic emerges clearly, however: he was secretive. A man who played his cards close to his chest and would never dream of tipping his hand. Some described him as a virtual recluse. Ultimately, it seemed that this was a result of his shyness and insecurity, the way a person can become when they grow up in the shadow of an overbearing and domineering father.

  “Gustav was in charge, and Göran never left his side. Gustav watched over everything; it seemed like he mistrusted Göran,” said Linda Björkman, who rented a house from the Lundblad family in Stigtomta in the 2000s.

  Gustav survived until 2007 and was a very active landlord and entrepreneur even in his old age, despite suffering a heart attack at the end of the 1990s. When he was in his eighties, he climbed the ladder to the barn roof to replace a shingle, only to fall down and almost kill himself. But he survived. He was a man who had difficulty recognizing limits, even the ones imposed by old age.

  Gustav’s methods had built the family fortune, so Göran did what his father told him to, what his father wanted, and what his father had always done, which was the way it had worked in the Lundblad family since the war.

  “Göran seemed kind, to the point of being a bit simple,” Linda said. “There was no gravitas to how he comported himself and dealt with people. He didn’t seem very independent-minded. He drove this old clunker and didn’t seem to feel a need to boast. And he never talked about money.”

  Some claimed that his tenants in Stigtomta exploited him. They were able to keep their rents low by pleading with Göran, or promising to work in lieu of rent, without ever following through, and the landlord was too kindhearted to forcibly collect debts.

  One reason for that perceived kindness may have been that the Stigtomta properties were in relatively poor condition. Over the decades, the Lundblad family consistently chose the cheapest solutions to everything, from boilers and plumbing to the quality of windows and paint. If a landlord can’t provide a certain standard, it makes sense to offer a discount to dissuade tenants from complaining or leaving. That may not have been something Gustav, who was a “devil” when it came to business, would have done. But he was in a nursing home by the mid-2000s, and his son, Göran, was a different breed of horse.

  Göran did seem to have inherited Gustav’s stinginess, in relation to both properties and forestry. When he decided to renovate one of the kitchens at Rogsta, he ripped the floor out, heaved everything out the window, drove the rubbish to the landfill, and put a new floor in, doing most of the work himself, with the help of only one of his other tenants.

  The few times he couldn’t do everything himself, he hired people, but only the cheapest labor available, primarily Polish citizens, whom he paid under the table, in cash. No visible bank transfers, no taxes, no employee benefits.

  Not even Göran’s closest relatives—cousins, aunts, and uncles—knew him very well, partly because of the feud over the division of the family properties. Aunt Stina, ninety-five years old at the time of his disappearance, was the person who’d had the most contact with him. Göran took care of her finances and saw to practical tasks after she moved into a nursing home in Nyköping, acting as something akin to an unofficial guardian when he was able to spare the time.

  “He always worked a lot, always had a lot of things to get done,” said Stina. “When he came to visit, he was always really on his way somewhere else. Usually he had been up to Stigtomta to sort something out there and was on his way back down to Kalmar. It was stressful for him.”

  Göran did have some minor business dealings with his cousin Håkan Lundblad—they owned a couple of properties together in Kalmar County for a while,
but they divided everything up around 2010. They did, however, meet up in 2011 and have a long conversation.

  They were trying to reconnect, according to another cousin, Ingela Gullstrand. Göran seemed lonely and had no one to talk to. But when the police spoke to Håkan in the autumn of 2012, he hadn’t heard from Göran in six months. Nor had Ingela seen Göran in ten years or so. She said Göran didn’t really have a social life at all, neither in Stigtomta nor Kalmar.

  “Göran didn’t have a lot of friends, none he talked about, anyway. Just one acquaintance in Stockholm,” she said.

  That acquaintance, Rodney Ahlstrand, was probably the closest Göran had to a friend. The two had gotten to know each other twice. The first time was in the early 1970s when Göran dated Rodney’s sister, whom he’d met in agrarian college. After that relationship ended, Rodney and Göran would not meet again until the late 1980s.

  Rodney was, at that time, looking for land to grow oats to make sheaves, the kind you put out to feed the birds around Christmas. He had been put back in touch with the Lundblad family and ended up renting about five acres from them. This time, he got to know Göran a bit better.

  “Göran and his dad owned a building in Stockholm and delivered pipes in the 1990s,” Rodney said. “When they were in town, Göran would come visit me in Södertälje. He and I would party a bit when we got together; we laughed and had a good time. We saw each other when it worked out, and he had business to see to in Stockholm.”

  Rodney said he normally spoke to Göran about once every other month. For the most part, Göran turned up without much notice. That seemed to have been his modus operandi: to leave off planning in case something went awry logistically. At the same time, Göran was not entirely without social skills.