The case with the Rock musician and his manager

Nowadays, some culprits are very clever and many of them know that unidentified bodies can be identified by means of their teeth.

In the following case, the culprit murdered a pop musician and divided the body after his deed into several parts. He even extracted the teeth, though not in any professional way, some roots and even a couple of teeth remained. But the police, succeded anyway in establishing a correct identity, in cooperation with us.

The surroundings for the start of this awful drama are a small village in the countryside of the middle of Sweden. Some deer-hunters made a strange discovery when they were out hunting. At the shore of the village's lake several big black plastic bags were floating. They became interested and captured one of them. When they opened it they had to step back, something that looked like a human leg with a lot of hairs was seen inside. One of them immediately contacted the police, which soon arrived.

It proved to be two human legs in the plastic bag and in the other bags, a head and other the body parts were found. The head was divided from the body and only the upper jaw was still there. The mandible was never found.


Most of the teeth are missing, it can be seen that they are extracted postmortem (figure 1). Probably by the same person who has divided the body. The remnants are taken to the nearest Department of Forensic Medicine and an autopsy is made. It can be established that the body parts belong to a male with an approximate weight of 65 kilograms and a length of about 175 cm. The hair in the head is cut and most of the soft tissues had been removed. A slight smell of ether comes from the body parts.

The first step of the investigation is to determine the victim's identity. We try to estimate the age of the victim together with the forensic Medicine physician. We both agree, that it is a young person, according to attrition and the wisdom teeth he must have been between 20 and 30 years old.

A couple of weeks later the Police in Stockholm get a message from the Finnish Police in Helsinki. The Interpool section there has a young male, let's call him Pekka registered as missing. He disappeared in Copenhagen recently. He is of Finnish origin, but is today living in Sweden, playing in a Swedish band. When he disappeared he was travelling to West Germany together with the manager of the group.

When the police in Sweden start the interrogation with the manager, they become suspicious. He seems to be a rather unreliable person and he also lies a couple of times.

The police also make an investigation of the Pop bands rehearsal room to secure some fingerprints, which later on can be compared with the victim´s. Also available are some written dental records from Finland, which also includes an antemortem radiograph (a bitewing). See figure 2. We can see that one of the premolars has two roots and is rotated almost 90 degrees. But how to compare this finding with the postmortem ones, when all premolars have been extracted? Of course it is possible to evaluate the anatomy of the roots by filling the socket with a radiographic contrast agent (barium powder). This is made (figure 3) and we get a very strong indication that the victim is Pekka. At the same time the Police reports that the fingerprints are in accordance and an identity is established.

Having the identity established the Police intensifie the interrogations with the manager. He says that he and Pekka were supposed to have a meeting with a record company in Berlin. A contract should be signed for the Band. They make a stopover in Copenhagen and according to the manager Pekka disappeared one evening. The manager says he reported this to the Police. The manager is gay and the Police suspects that he was attracted to Pekka. Before he had also advertised in magazines looking for male partners. He has also been condemned earlier for some crimes. Once he pretended to be a British Physician and advertised for young boys. When one of the interested boys comes for an employment visit, the manager suddenly has a knife in his hand, forced the boy to the bathroom where he anesthetizes him with ether. But luckily the boy woke up and succeded in escaping from the flat.

Now, during the interrogations, several of his statements prove to be lies. 

Police technicians also make a house investigation in the managers flat in Stockholm. In the bathroom, which recently has been restored, some blood was found, of the same blood type as Pekkas'. This is a rather unusual blood type, only a couple of percent in a Swedish population belongs to this.

The proofs against the manager become stronger and finally he is condemned in the court, though still denying the crime of murder. The punishment is institutional psychiatric care.