Catrine da Costa

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Catrine da Costa (born 1956 in northern Sweden - died 1984) was a Swedish woman found dead in Solna, north of Stockholm, in the late summer of 1984. Her body had been dismembered and left in plastic bags that were found on two occasions, July 18 and August 8, a kilometer apart. The case is mostly known as Styckmordsrättegången (English: The dismemberment murder trial). Her cause of death hasn't been established due to vital organs and her head not being found.

1 Background
2 The trials
3 Books
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Background

Da Costa had been working as a prostitute in Stockholm during the spring 1984. During Pentecost, June 10, she disappeared and it wasn't until July 18 that the first parts of her dismembered body were discovered beneath a highway overpass just outside of Stockholm, in the neighboring municipality Solna. The body was identified by fingerprints. The head, internal organs, one breast and the genitalia had been removed and has never been found. No cause of death could be determined from the body parts found.

Shortly thereafter, a pathologist working at a forensics station nearby, was suspected of the crime. He was known to have met prostitutes on several occasions and his workplace was situated in between the two places where the victim's body was found. He was arrested and subsequently released.

During this time the wife of a General practitioner alerted the police that their 17 months old daughter could be the victim of incest, exams by pediarticians found no evidence of any abuse however. The GP and his wife separated in late 1984. Later in 1985 the wife contacted the police again with the news that the daughter had begun talking about being witness to a dismemberment. As the pathologist and the general practitioner knew each other the police soon connected the cases and much of the following trials were based on the (at the time of the examination) 2½ year old child's stories as the mother of the child interpreted them together with an evaluation by a child phycologist and a child psychiatrist.

In 1986 the resources of the police following the murder of PM Olof Palme was streched thin and the dismemberment case was placed on hiatus until 1987. The two physicians was arrested in the fall of 1987 and was brought on trial in January 1988.

[edit] The trials

The first trial was declared a mistrial after a lay juror of the court had been interviewed in Aftonbladet on March 9, 1988 and commented on the court's justification that would be used for the judicial decision. In the new trial, the lower judicial court asked the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare to investigate the circumstances in the case and they found that the cause of death could not be established. Therefor the two men were found not guilty since it could not be established that she hadn't died of natural causes. In the verdict however, the court wrote that it found that the two defendants actually had dismembered the victim's body, but since the statute of limitation for that crime had passed they were acquitted.

Om May 23, 1989, the national authority for medical negligence assessment, decided to recall the two doctors' right to work as such, which was later, in 1991, finally decided after appeal. The two men have since sought appeal at several instances, including the Supreme court, the Supreme administrative court (Regeringsrätten) and the European Court of Human Rights, which all have decided not to grant them their wishes.

The case has been the focus of several books and investigative article and television documentaries. The journalist Per Lindeberg published his book Döden är en man in 1999 where he questioned the entire police investigation and believed that the two men had been victims of a miscarriage of justice, partly caused by the enormous coverage in media. In 2003 another journalist, Lars Borgnäs, published his book Sanningen är en sällsynt gäst which took the opposing side of Lindeberg's and theorized that the murder was done by a serial killer.^[1]

In 2006, the two men demanded 35 million kronor in damages^[2] for lost income during the years they couldn't practice their profession and for the ordeal they've gone through. Their demands were later turned down when the Chancellor of Justice, who handles questions of voluntary damages, answered that a large monetary claim like this should be handle by the courts.^[3]

On April 3, 2007, the two men's legal representative registered their claims for 35 million kronor in damages at Attunda lower judicial court.^[4]