The corpse as artwork and self-portrait

The corpse as artwork and self-portrait is Sofia Zetterlund’s interpretive theory of the immigrant boys’ murderer: the bodies are not merely concealed evidence but deliberate creations through which the perpetrator gives form to shame and seeks recognition. Developed in conversation with Jeanette Kihlberg, the theory connects embalming and castration to the preservation of childhood, the display of an artist’s identity, and a compulsion to be seen. It remains a hypothesis rather than a confirmed account of the killer’s motives, and Sofia’s uncertainty about the perpetrator’s gender unsettles the confident language with which she first presents it.

The theory of the body as an artwork

Sofia proposes that castration and embalming belong to a single logic. Mummification, in her account, makes the young boy’s childhood permanent, preserving it for posterity. At the same time, the removal of the genitals becomes a mark through which the murderer expresses shame about sexuality. The body is thus made to carry two meanings at once: an image of childhood held outside change, and evidence of the perpetrator’s own troubled relation to sexual identity. Sofia’s explanation treats preservation not as neutral conservation but as an artistic decision that shapes what the victim is made to signify.

Her most striking formulation is that the corpses are the murderer’s self-portraits. The victims become the medium through which the killer represents an inner condition, while their preservation turns that representation into something intended to last. This interpretation does not make the boys’ deaths less real or reduce them to symbols; rather, it describes how Sofia believes the murderer converts them into parts of a private artistic statement. The self-portrait is indirect: the perpetrator’s identity is not shown as a conventional likeness but inferred from the choices made in constructing and marking the bodies.

An audience, not concealment

Jeanette’s response shifts the theory from artistic intention to public display. She asks whether the murderer wanted the bodies found, pointing out that they had not been hidden with much effort. Sofia accepts the possibility that discovery is part of the design: an artist wants attention and appreciation, and this perpetrator may want to put on a show. Jeanette’s own experience of having been married to an artist gives the comparison a personal edge, but her contribution is also investigative. The question of concealment becomes a question about the audience the crimes may be addressing.

Together, the women imagine a perpetrator who may not stop until caught, not simply because the investigation is closing in, but because exposure could fulfill an unconscious wish to be seen. Jeanette develops Sofia’s idea into a possible need to tell the world something that cannot finally be kept silent. In this reading, being discovered is not an accidental consequence of the crimes but the anticipated conclusion of the performance. The apparent failure to hide the bodies therefore acquires a double significance: it can make the investigation possible while also functioning, in Sofia and Jeanette’s hypothesis, as an invitation to witness.

Documentation and the problem of authorship

Sofia adds that the murderer may be documenting the acts through photographs, notes, and a compulsive collection. Her thought turns inward as she considers the bizarre exhibition space in her own apartment. That association does not establish that her private space and the murderer’s practice are equivalent; it shows that the theory of the collecting artist touches something she recognizes in herself. The investigative idea briefly becomes self-reflection, linking the desire to arrange and preserve material with the unsettling possibility that documentation can serve a private world of display.

Jeanette recalls a Belgian police investigation into a man who murdered his brother and was known as the Man who picks up scraps of paper. Police searching his home found piles of paper, in places reaching the ceiling. The example gives Sofia’s speculation a concrete analogue: an obsessive record may accumulate until the collected traces fill a living space. Yet the comparison is limited. The paper collector is a precedent for compulsive accumulation, not proof that the boys’ murderer keeps the same kind of archive or has the same motive. In the conversation, the anecdote makes documentation imaginable as part of a perpetrator’s habits while leaving the specific evidence about this killer unresolved.

Uncertainty and significance

Sofia notices that she has spoken too categorically about the murderer as a man. She recognizes that the perpetrator could also be a woman, but finds it easier to use the masculine pronoun. This hesitation matters to the theory: a framework built around an individual’s shame and self-presentation risks becoming too settled before the identity of its subject is known. Her insight may be compelling without making its assumptions certain. Jeanette’s questions help keep interpretation open by turning Sofia’s account into a shared hypothesis rather than a final answer.

The concept brings together several elements of the investigation without collapsing them into a single proven motive: the preservation of the boys’ childhood, the marking of the bodies, the possibility of intended discovery, and the imagined record of the perpetrator’s actions. Its force lies in the tension between artwork and crime. The language of authorship explains how Sofia thinks the murderer might want to be recognized, but it also exposes the violence at the center of that ambition: the victims are made into the means by which another person tries to communicate. When Sofia’s thought about the murderer’s collection meets her awareness of her own exhibition space, the idea of the self-portrait becomes more than a clue. It becomes a question about the boundary between studying a display and recognizing oneself in the impulse to make one.