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

by Joakim Palmkvist

  North of the main house, on the surrounding land, by the foot of the hill, is a dilapidated wooden barn, uninsulated—nothing more than plank walls and a roof, functional and simple. It was intended as a temporary parking lot for the machines, to keep the worst of the rust off, though there are a few smaller adjoining rooms inside as well. Across from the barn, on the other side of the farmyard, is a newer machine shed, with metal walls and roll-up doors. Sturdy padlocks on the doors protect the expensive vehicles, equipment, and cars inside. A gravel path winds up to the farm from the intersection that, according to the map, is Norra Förlösa proper.

  The Lundblad property is located a mile or so west of the E22 highway, in what urbanites would call the dark heart of Småland.

  Rural communities, forests, farms. The densest forests start slightly farther west still, stretching virtually uninterrupted from there all the way across the county border to Kronoberg and the Växjö diocese, from which the expression “dark heart of Småland” originates, a reference to the social conservatism and high church Lutheranism of the capital of Kronoberg County.

  Considering the tangled web of history between the residents of Norra Förlösa and the nagging, long-standing conflict over five acres of land, it is an apt expression in this context too.

  In Norra Förlösa, people keep an eye on each other. If you were to exit Ställe Farm through the main entrance and walk around the corner, you would be looking at Mats Råberg’s farm. There are several neighbors in between, but Mats’s farm is slightly raised above the others on a small hill. He has farmed land rented from Göran Lundblad for decades.

  Åke Törnblad’s meat and dairy farm can be seen farther to the west. That, too, is on a hill. To the right, in the northwest, is a field with a strip of forest at its northern end. Behind it, more fields stretch out like an asymmetric patchwork quilt to the north.

  If Sara were to start her red pickup as she usually would and set off toward town, it would be noted in the village. The same is true of Göran and his gray Chrysler, the car he took wherever he was going, even if it was just a few hundred yards.

  Social control in its purest form. And it applied to everyone.

  If Mats Råberg were to look out his window, he would see any movements over at Ställe Farm. If there were strangers there, for example, which is not inconceivable even in such a remote location, he would notice. There were plenty of stories about robbers and burglars going after isolated farmers, so people tended to pay close attention to newcomers in these parts.

  Mats has an unobstructed view of the Törnblad farm as well. The Törnblads can, in turn, easily keep track of the comings and goings at the two other farms. Everyone knows who lives here and is familiar with the movements of their neighbors, though it is debatable how much store to put in the information they give. What is fact and what is fiction? Extrapolated assumptions, based on various movements, sounds, and lights, about the happenings in and around Norra Förlösa can hardly be taken as conclusive, can they?

  The Lundblad family harvester could often be heard roaring through the forest. It was a tractor-like, articulated vehicle, with robust wheels capable of traversing the uneven forest floor. At the front was a boom, like on an excavator, which the driver controlled from the cab.

  The machine was designed for felling trees. The head of the boom is placed around a tree, which is cut through by the built-in blade—a bit like a remote-controlled chainsaw. The tree is then de-limbed as sharp metal rollers feed it past the de-limbing knives. The finished logs are left on the ground as the harvester moves on to the next tree.

  A thirty-foot tree ready for felling weighs around three thousand pounds, give or take. It’s obvious that the harvester is a powerful machine, though simply constructed. In the wrong hands, it would turn into a terrible tool that could be used to demolish a building, blow by blow, if anyone were crazy enough to try it.

  The harvester can snap a tree in half, or, for that matter, crush a person. A death of that kind could easily be registered as a logging accident. Because who would be able to prove otherwise? Would there be any witnesses? Modern, small-scale forestry is more often than not solitary work, though you could bring an employee along to assist you. Maybe a relative—a son or a daughter.

  Five people die in forestry accidents every year in Sweden, most in conjunction with tree-felling. But Göran had survived all these years. He was the one who operated the harvester in the family’s forests. His daughter Sara followed behind in the boom logger, the forwarder, gathering up the logs and transporting them to the landing area. Anyone who has ever driven through Småland will have seen piles of such logs stacked by the side of the road. The timber is then picked up by agreement with a suitable sawmill, pulp factory, or other similar industry.

  It is, of course, also possible to use your legs to get around the forest and to fell trees manually, with protective gear and a chainsaw. But this is only for light thinning, to keep the forest healthy and let the best trees grow unimpeded. If you want to make money from the venture, traipsing about on foot and felling by hand would take too much time and effort. The Lundblad family had the required equipment. Granted, the vehicles were by no means new, and the forwarder was uncomfortable to operate. Both were also fairly small. But they fit in Ställe Farm’s garage, and when luck was on their side, father and daughter could make it through several workdays without having to repair them.

  Göran owned around two hundred fifty acres of forest around Norra Förlösa. Down the road in Balebo, he owned a slightly larger tract, plus another one hundred fifty acres up in Stigtomta. Certainly enough to put food on any entrepreneur’s table.

  The duties were varied, but the days regimented. Some entries from Sara’s notebook detailed the weekly schedule:

  Tuesday

  10:00 a.m.–2:00 p.m. Repair forwarder, service, plan, drive

  2:00 p.m.–4:00 p.m. Walk the forest, check on potential areas for felling, thinning, clearing, etc.

  4:00 p.m.–6:00 p.m. Check and plan potential building repairs, what needs to be done

  7:00 p.m.–9:00 p.m. Patenta, assemble pipes

  Wednesday

  8:00 a.m.–2:00 p.m. Drive forwarder/harvester in scheduled area

  2:00 p.m.–3:00 p.m. Lunch

  3:00 p.m.–6:00 p.m. Continue felling

  Such was everyday life for father and daughter in Norra Förlösa. They worked closely together, him leading and her following. He drove the harvester, she drove the forwarder. And then there were the ever-present pipes that needed to be turned, plasticized, assembled, packed, and shipped.

  Ultimately, they were close, father and daughter. So said everyone who knew them well. Not twin souls, exactly, but she did grow up with him as her only parent and spent countless days riding around the Stigtomta fields with him, working with him in the forest for hundreds of hours. They were close.

  On a good day, when there was less to tend to, they sometimes bunked off to head over to Öland and just cruise around in the car. They might have had dinner out and talked about uncontroversial things, the kind of topics that didn’t stir up conflict. Things other than Martin Törnblad.

  “Sara didn’t really want to choose between Göran and Martin, because they both meant too much to her,” Irina said.

  Father and daughter would talk about almost anything, just not about boyfriends or anything that happened in puberty, according to Sara. She had learned a lot from her father, but she did not feel he had a right to control her. Instead, she wanted more responsibility, to know more about the company and the properties, and to learn how to keep the books.

  They started to quarrel with increasing frequency during Sara’s teenage years in the early 2000s. “Dad told me at one point when we were fighting that he was going to cut me off, but I never believed him,” Sara said. “We were in Stigtomta, fighting about my relationship with Martin. Dad didn’t want Martin to be able to get his hands on anything.”

  The fights revolved around forest
ry management, where to fell, plant, work. Sara, due to her time in forestry college, thought Göran was too conservative—that he should consider new ideas, think big, and invest in new machines to make the work easier.

  But above all, it was the Martin problem that poisoned relations at Ställe Farm. On one occasion in 2010, when Sara was twenty-two years old and Maria still lived there, Sara called Martin in tears. She wanted to run away, she told him. She packed her bags, and he turned up at Ställe Farm in his car at the appointed time. Where they planned to go—to Martin’s or just out on the road—is unclear.

  Sara was out of the house, bags in hand, and on her way to the car before Göran reacted. He caught up with her before she could get in the waiting vehicle, grabbed her by the arm, and pulled her back inside by force.

  “Can’t we at least talk about it?” was all Martin could get out before Göran slammed the car door shut and angrily waved him aside.

  That was the first and only time in the Göran Lundblad case file that anyone mentioned violent behavior between father and daughter. Otherwise, their interactions never went beyond angry words and hurt feelings.

  “Göran said Sara changed dramatically when she started going out with that urchin,” said neighbor Karl-Erik Sidentjärn. “That was Göran’s word—urchin. He said there was no talking to her anymore and that she would come and go as she pleased.”

  For example, in 2011, Sara went to Italy with her father and sister Maria for a combined business trip and holiday. An old business associate had passed away; the Lundblads were going to meet with the new one. Good relationships were crucial for upholding old agreements about the delivery of pipe bowls. But instead of accompanying her father to the meeting and participating in the discussion, Sara stayed outside with her phone pressed to her ear, talking to Martin back in Sweden.

  “She would do that constantly while they were in Italy, Göran told me,” said Irina’s brother. “He felt she was ruining the entire trip; he was furious.”

  Martin’s actions merely stoked the conflict, both indirectly through his conversations with Sara and more directly. As early as 2010, he talked openly about wanting to acquire the land Göran was leasing to his neighbor Mats.

  It was a sign as good as any that he was hoping to gain something from his nascent relationship with Sara. Leaseholds were a sensitive topic in farming communities, and it comes as no surprise that his words were soon reported back to the affected parties. The swirl of rumors only fueled everyone’s suspicion of Martin and his dark intentions.

  Around the beginning of 2012, Martin made a formal proposal to Göran to acquire that land, promising that the Törnblads would pay him more—at least two thousand kronor (240 dollars) per acre, twice as much as Mats was paying.

  That was the final straw for Göran.

  “He told me he grabbed Martin by the scruff of his neck and the seat of his pants and physically threw him out,” said Karl-Erik Sidentjärn. “He didn’t care that Martin could have been hurt. The Törnblads were going to take over that lease over his dead body.”

  Göran might have been exaggerating the physical altercation, but the message was clear—Mats and no one else would rent Göran’s land, at whatever price point Göran deemed appropriate.

  Alas, other than circumscribing Sara financially by appropriating all her properties and making himself the sole benefactor of Aunt Stina’s will, Göran was, at the end of the day, powerless to do anything about their relationship.

  He tried bribery. He offered Sara, who loved riding, a new horse worth one hundred thousand kronor (twelve thousand dollars), according to Göran. She already had one horse; now she had two. Both animals were stabled in the older of the Ställe Farm barns.

  Göran and Sara also discussed buying Sara that farm they had gone to look at, but only on the condition that she broke off her relationship with the Törnblad family. With Martin. She refused.

  Over time, however, something that could best be described as a balance of terror was established between father and daughter. Sara moved out, for all intents and purposes, and spent as much time as she could with her boyfriend at the Törnblad farm.

  She didn’t participate in the work there, but she shared a room with Martin on the ground floor, next to the kitchen, where her key to Ställe Farm hung on a hook. She often stayed in bed while Martin and the others rose with the sun to tend to the animals.

  Sara usually got up around nine to have breakfast, drive over to Ställe Farm to let her horses out, and then go to her father’s house. By that time, Göran had normally already left for the forest, but he would leave Sara a note with instructions. He might ask that she go over the paperwork in the study, or get in the forwarder and catch up with him to pick up the logs he had felled.

  In the evening, her work done, Sara would drive back over to the Törnblads’ to spend the night.

  When the summer of 2012 arrived, several people noted that Göran seemed to have finally given up the fight for his daughter’s heart. It was not that he suddenly accepted his intended son-in-law or that he had stopped arguing with her about him, but he seemed somehow resigned to the fact that his constant complaining was not going to change anything.

  “I’m never going to babysit,” he told Sara. “You’ll have to sort that out for yourselves. And if you’re getting married, you have to make sure there’s a prenup.”

  As always, property first. The family fortune was paramount.

  “Martin was not welcome into the family,” said Eva Sterner. “Göran never budged on that. But then, near the end, he did say that he didn’t give a shit about them.”

  Sara’s younger sister, Maria, made similar observations: “He seemed more indifferent to their relationship as the years went by, though he would never have agreed to let Martin move into Ställe Farm.”

  At the same time, it looked as if Sara’s professional future was back on track. In the autumn of 2012, she was accepted into the Forestry and Wood program at Linnaeus University, which had campuses in both Kalmar and Växjö.

  It would be a perfect degree for Sara, since she had to balance her work in her family’s forests with her studies. The program was online-based with only a handful of physical classes—labs—each term. After three years of education in close partnership with industry organizations, students had to produce a dissertation and would receive a BA. A graduate from this program would be an academically educated forest owner who could take over a profitable family business.

  Nine hundred sixty miles south of the farms and fields of Norra Förlösa lies the Swiss city of Zurich, in the canton of the same name, part of the Swiss Confederation since 1351.

  The city was founded a couple hundred years BCE as a customs station at the point where Lake Zurich turns into the Limmat River. For a long time, the Roman occupiers made money taxing the goods being transported along this waterway in northern Switzerland.

  A few hundred yards west of the river and the Munster Bridge, lie the headquarters of one of the world’s most prominent financial institutions, Credit Suisse. The bank, because it is as such that the Swiss financial services company is best known, is housed in a four-story stone palace at Paradeplatz 8, occupying one whole side of the square that serves as a hub for trams and local traffic.

  It is one of the most expensive addresses in the traditionally secretive banking nation.

  On a sunny summer’s day in 2012, the Lundblad family arrived at Paradeplatz. Göran and his daughters Sara and Maria walked through the stone archway into the lobby, where Göran issued brief instructions in German. The three were then shown to an elevator that took them up to the waiting room, before the next bank employee led them deeper into the building, to the office of their personal advisor. The entire encounter was a model of Swiss efficiency, politeness, and discretion. For decades, Credit Suisse has been known for handling rich people’s affairs impeccably. They have also never felt compelled to reveal anything unnecessarily about any of their clients.

  G�
�ran’s father had opened the account many years ago, back when the political dominance of the Swedish Social Democratic Party had been unthreatened for decades, back when there was still a wealth tax.

  For a long time, Swiss money had been synonymous with secret money. Bank secrecy was absolute, especially for anyone in possession of a numbered account, which withholds its owner’s identity from all but a handful of bank employees. All you had to do was siphon some funds off your books through creative accounting in Sweden, and you could take a bag full of cash to Switzerland.

  But things had changed. By 2012, when the Lundblads traveled to Zurich in Göran’s gray Chrysler, three years had passed since Switzerland’s biggest bank, UBS, had lost its court battle against the United States about providing the identities of rich Americans guilty of hiding large fortunes in its vaults. Several other banks had since come under similar international pressure. Step by step, Switzerland had opened up, handing over information to other countries, especially in cases where there was suspicion of criminal activity.

  Several EU countries were also putting pressure on the Swiss banking industry in an effort to repatriate smuggled money and tax it. Göran had sensed which way the wind was blowing, so he had decided it was time to make a voluntary disclosure. He had contacted the tax authorities and informed them that he had several million kronor in a foreign account.

  To be precise, Göran had capital to the tune of just over six million kronor (more than seven hundred thousand dollars) with Credit Suisse, his account statements show. The money was distributed across various investments—bonds and shares in several European countries.

  The primary reason for the bank visit in the summer of 2012 was to get an overview of the investments. At the same time, Göran wanted to familiarize his daughters with the family’s financial affairs. It seemed indicative that younger sister Maria had been brought along as well. She would be turning eighteen in a few months.