Five teens guilty over Swedish taxi driver’s murder
Four teenage brothers and a 15-year-old girl have been sentenced by a Swedish court over the murder of a man she had accused of rape.
The victim, a taxi driver, was found hanged in a nature reserve in central Sweden in March.
The court in Uppsala found that because of the earlier allegations involving the girl he had been lured there with the promise of sexual favours.
He was then overpowered and his body was not found for another week.
The eldest brother, aged 18 at the time, was given a life sentence.
The four others, all minors at the time of the events, were sentenced to between three and four years in a young offenders’ institution.
The three older brothers were found guilty of murder. But the girl and her boyfriend, who were 15 when the murder took place, were found not to have been at the scene and were convicted of aiding and abetting the murder.
The taxi driver’s body was found hanged from a tree. The court concluded that his killers had sought to disguise the death as a suicide.
Although the five teenagers all denied involvement, the court convicted them on circumstantial evidence put forward by prosecutors.
Evidence including messages between the teenagers was presented by the prosecution as proof of a murder plot.
On 20 March, four days before the victim disappeared, the girl wrote to a friend: “His brothers are going to meet my rapist.”
One of the brothers wrote: “We should do Friday [the day of the murder],” to which another brother replied: “OK.”
After the killing, one of the brothers used the victim’s mobile phone to transfer money from his bank account.
The girl denied knowing that the brothers intended to kill the man, saying she had only thought they would beat him up.
But Lars Holmgard, president of the Uppsala District Court, ruled that the brothers had planned to murder the man at least from the time that they purchased the rope found where he died.
“The plan must have been for [the victim] to be hanged from the rope, in our opinion.”