The Solna Institute of Pathology is the forensic center where the investigation of the murdered boys acquires physical evidence and, eventually, a crucial connection between victims. Through Ivo Andrić’s examinations and conversations with Jeanette Kihlberg, the institute turns bodies recovered at separate scenes into evidence about timing, chemical exposure, repeated violence, and identity. Its work also shows the limits of what forensic science can establish: some findings narrow the possibilities, while others leave the case dependent on comparison and inference.

Setting and Investigative Role

The institute is based in Solna, where the first boy’s body is taken after investigators complete their work at the scene. At noon, the body is placed in a grey plastic bag and loaded into an ambulance for transport. Jeanette’s task at the scene is over, but the investigation is not: Andrić recognizes that the more consequential examination will begin once the body reaches the pathology laboratory. The movement from discovery site to laboratory marks a shift from collecting immediate clues to testing what the body can reveal.

The institute becomes an important point of contact between forensic examination and police work. Jeanette calls Andrić when inquiries and the review of security-camera footage have failed to identify a missing child who matches the mummified victim. She asks for findings that can advance the investigation, and he has to explain what the available evidence can—and cannot—show. Their exchanges give the laboratory a practical role in the narrative: its results redirect the police’s questions, but do not simply solve them.

The First Boy and the Limits of Identification

Andrić reports that the first boy’s teeth have all been removed, making a forensic orthodontic comparison of dental records impossible. The body is extensively desiccated. He explains that a hot, dry, well-ventilated environment can dry a body quickly and prevent ordinary decay; in an extreme case, the skin may be so dried that it is difficult or impossible to remove from the skull. The examination thus identifies the condition of the remains while also showing why familiar methods of identification cannot be used.

The estimate of time since death is necessarily qualified. Andrić says it is practically impossible to determine the precise date, but that the boy has not been dead for more than six months. Because mummification itself takes time, he places the likely death between November and January. The interval is useful without being exact: the laboratory supplies a bounded period rather than a definitive chronology, preserving uncertainty as part of the case.

Chemical analysis offers another line of inquiry. Preliminary results indicate that the body contains substantial chemicals, including amphetamines detected in both the stomach and veins. Their presence suggests that the boy consumed a large quantity, while the evidence also points to injection. The distinction matters because the findings are not merely a general indication of drug exposure; they suggest more than one possible route into the body. Andrić’s laboratory results therefore broaden the account of what was done to the victim, even as Jeanette presses for information directly relevant to how and when he died.

Repeated Findings and the Second Murder

When a second boy is found at Svartsjölandet, the pathology findings deepen the possibility that the deaths are connected. Andrić reports that the boy’s genitals have been removed with the same precision as in the earlier case. Extensive bleeding beneath the skin on the back is consistent with whipping, and the medical officer says the body may also contain high levels of Xylocain adrenalin. Jeanette concludes that the police are probably dealing with the same perpetrator and therefore investigating a double murder. The laboratory does not identify an offender, but repeated features in the victims’ treatment help make the linkage a reasoned investigative judgment rather than a coincidence assumed from proximity.

A third boy is found four weeks after the first, at the boules club below Danvikstull. Experts describe the body as an example of successful embalming. This finding adds another form of deliberate handling to the pattern of preserved remains. Across the cases, investigators have to distinguish what recurs from what differs: the first boy is mummified and missing his teeth; the second displays similar precision in the removal of genitals and signs of whipping; the third is described in terms of successful embalming. The institute’s evidentiary significance lies in making these details available for comparison, not in making every difference disappear.

The Examination That Identifies Brothers

Later, Jeanette visits the pathology laboratory after nine in the morning. Andrić is waiting with two double espressos. Inside, a cloth-covered bundle rests on a metal table, while photographs of the first victim, Itkul Zumbayev, are spread across a workbench. Andrić uncovers the body of another boy. Jeanette finds the sight distressing, but the examination quickly establishes a clinical comparison: the new victim has injuries resembling those of the Thorildsplan boy, including signs of whipping, violence from a blunt instrument, scattered needle marks, and castration.

The decisive connection comes from a small anatomical feature. Andrić compares the new victim with a photograph of Itkul and notes that both boys have crooked jaws. He proposes that they may be brothers. Although the first boy had no teeth, the shape of his jaw and any dental abnormalities can still support an approximate reconstruction of how his teeth would have appeared. Jeanette recognizes the implication: the two victims are Itkul and Karakul, members of the same family. A bodily resemblance that had not seemed important during the first examination now becomes a means of restoring an identity and a relationship that the murder investigation had not yet established.

The scene demonstrates both the value and the limits of forensic comparison. The crooked jaw does not, by itself, provide a formal certainty in Andrić’s account; he presents brotherhood as a well-founded guess. Jeanette’s recognition supplies the immediate certainty for the investigation. The laboratory’s photographs, preserved observations, and ability to compare a new body with an earlier record make that recognition possible.

Evidence, Uncertainty, and the Case’s Wider Network

The institute also contributes to the investigation through an unexpected finding about the tape associated with the victims. Andrić tells Jeanette that the fingerprints on it have no papillary ridge pattern. Jeanette restates the apparent contradiction as fingerprints without fingerprints, and Andrić confirms that this is essentially what the result means. The finding is not an identification; it makes the evidence stranger and underscores that physical traces can complicate a case as readily as they clarify it.

The laboratory’s role is therefore cumulative. It provides an estimate of the first victim’s time of death, evidence of chemical exposure, descriptions of repeated injuries, observations about preservation, a clue linking Itkul and Karakul as brothers, and an anomalous fingerprint result. These contributions feed an investigation that expands beyond the crime scenes and toward a network of people connected through the Sigtuna foundation, including Bengt Bergman, Viggo Dürer, Karl Lundström, and Per-Ola Silfverberg. The institute does not establish those social connections; its work gives Jeanette the forensic basis for reconstructing the victims and the crimes, while the broader inquiry must connect that evidence to people and institutions.