Hannah Östlund—Jessica Friberg

Hannah Östlund and Jessica Friberg are linked by a shared past and by Jeanette Kihlberg’s suspicion that they committed murders together. Their relationship matters not only as a possible motive for joint action, but also as the basis for an explanation of shared delusion that Jeanette considers while trying to distinguish an apparent solution from a convincing one.

Shared history and social ties

Hannah and Jessica are not relatives, but they grew up together, attended the same schools, and later chose to live near one another. Jeanette sees them as part of a wider school network: both were schoolmates at Sigtuna College for the Humanities of Charlotte Silfverberg, Fredrika Grünewald, Henrietta Dürer, Annette Lundström, and Victoria Bergman. The evidence establishes a common social history, though it does not describe the private texture of Hannah and Jessica’s friendship or explain how it developed.

That distinction is important. Their long familiarity and nearby homes give the police grounds to consider them as a pair, but do not by themselves establish what either woman knew or did. Jeanette’s thought that the past catches up with people frames their connection as part of a history that has resurfaced in the investigation; it does not resolve the women’s individual roles.

Suspected partnership in the murders

By the time Jeanette presents her evidence to Prosecutor Kenneth von Kwist, both women are missing. He agrees to issue arrest warrants on suspicion that they murdered Fredrika Grünewald. The evidentiary basis concerning Per-Ola Silfverberg’s murder is described as less compelling: the suspicion is at a lower level. The distinction leaves their alleged joint responsibility unevenly supported, even as the investigation begins to treat them as central suspects.

Jeanette’s working conclusion is that Fredrika and Per-Ola were murdered by two women seeking revenge. She connects the cases through the men’s abuse of their daughters, the shared Sigtuna history, and yellow tulips. The flowers offer a recurring clue: yellow tulips had been left beside Fredrika, and Karl Lundström had received them on the night he died. Jeanette wonders whether Hannah and Jessica could also have killed Karl, perhaps by giving him a morphine overdose, but poses this as a possibility rather than a settled finding. Revenge gives the suspected partnership a potential motive; it does not, in her view, explain the scale or extremity of the apparent violence.

Shared delusion as an explanation

Jeanette considers folie à deux, or symbiotic psychosis, as a way to understand how two people might share misconceptions, a sense of persecution, hallucinations, and insanity. She notes that the condition occurs almost exclusively within families, while Hannah and Jessica are not related. Their shared upbringing, schooling, and later proximity provide a possible basis for comparison, but the text does not establish a diagnosis for either woman or confirm that they shared a delusional state.

The proposed model also leaves the balance between them unresolved. Jeanette understands that, in the pattern she is considering, one person is usually dominant and the other more governed by that person. She wonders which woman, if either, drove the pair. Her hesitation—whether that distinction even matters to her work—shows the limit of the theory: it can suggest a structure for their relationship, but cannot substitute for evidence about their actions or motives.

Identification and doubt

A photograph in Hannah’s home appears to support the case against the women, but Jeanette questions what it proves. The pictures show the murder victims, not Hannah or Jessica carrying out the crimes. If the photographs were intended to make a series of murders unmistakable, Jeanette reasons, the absence of images showing the perpetrators is conspicuous. The record thus presents the photographs as both evidence and a source of doubt.

Annette identifies Hannah from a photograph connected with the caverns, but Jeanette emphasizes that the identification rests on one distinguishing feature: Hannah is missing her ring finger. When Jeanette later studies pictures of Hannah, the absent finger confirms her suspicion that the identification is significant. It strengthens the link between the woman in the image and the suspect, but does not independently prove that Hannah committed the murders or establish Jessica’s part in them.

Jeanette is also troubled by the killings of the women’s dogs and by the possibility that someone else arranged the apparent evidence. She raises these inconsistencies with Jens Hurtig after others seem ready to regard the cases as solved. The investigation therefore does not close the relationship into a simple account of two companions acting as a unit. Hannah and Jessica’s shared past makes their suspected partnership plausible, while gaps in identification and the unsettling neatness of the apparent solution leave open the possibility that the pair, their crimes, or their roles have been misrepresented.