The suicides of Hannah Östlund and Jessica Friberg close the immediate pursuit of two women identified as killers in several cases, while leaving the circumstances of their deaths unstated. Jeanette Kihlberg tells Sofia Zetterlund that Hannah and Jessica killed Karl Lundström and Per-Ola Silfverberg, as well as the homeless woman found in St Johannes Cavern; later, Commissioner Dennis Billing treats the perpetrators as beyond the authorities’ reach. The deaths resolve the question of access to the suspects, not every question raised by the crimes.

Disclosure and Identification

Jeanette delivers the news to Sofia during a conversation about the investigation. She says that the women’s responsibility for the murders is known and that their suicides will probably soon be reported in the papers. Her account identifies them not as peripheral witnesses but as the perpetrators in cases involving three victims: Karl Lundström, Per-Ola Silfverberg, and the homeless woman in St Johannes Cavern.

The disclosure unsettles Sofia, though she cannot bring herself to challenge Jeanette. Her response is shaped by her own knowledge of Hannah and Jessica, whom she thinks of as apathetic girls who like dogs rather than as murderers. The gap between that remembered image and Jeanette’s conclusion makes the revelation a rupture in Sofia’s understanding, even as she keeps her objection to herself.

The Cases and Their Reach

The suicides follow an investigation that has repeatedly exposed violent deaths. At Svartsjölandet, Jeanette had already concluded that the killing of a second boy was probably connected to the first, making the investigation a double murder. A third boy was later found at the boules club below Danvikstull; experts described his body as successfully embalmed. These discoveries establish the wider climate of the case, but the evidence does not say that Hannah and Jessica were responsible for the boys’ deaths, and their crimes should not be conflated with those murders.

The account of Per-Ola Silfverberg’s killing includes a line about slaughtering an animal by placing a knife at a particular angle. Jeanette considers the murder symbolic and raises the expression “capitalist pig” as a possible clue, while cautioning against settling on that interpretation. This detail shows how investigators read meaning into the crimes, but it does not establish a motive for Hannah and Jessica or explain their later deaths.

Official Aftermath

The suicides are first presented through Jeanette’s report to Sofia, with newspaper coverage still anticipated. Later, at Kronoberg Police Headquarters, Billing praises Jeanette for solving the case quickly and says that the perpetrators are beyond the authorities’ reach. His remark confirms the practical consequence of the deaths: the investigation can identify those responsible, but cannot bring them to account through ordinary proceedings.

The evidence gives no date, location, method, or stated reason for either suicide. It does not describe a final scene or indicate whether the women acted together. The event enters the narrative through other people’s statements and its effect on the investigation, rather than through an account of the deaths themselves.

Significance and Limits

The suicides produce a bleak form of closure. Hannah and Jessica are named as responsible for multiple murders, but their deaths remove them from questioning and from any further direct confrontation with the consequences of those crimes. Their identification answers who killed the victims; it does not settle the motive, clarify every connection among the cases, or repair the dissonance Sofia feels between her memory of the women and the accusation.

By withholding the circumstances of the suicides, the narrative keeps attention on what can be established and what remains inaccessible. The investigation reaches a conclusion about the perpetrators, while the women’s deaths themselves remain a reported fact rather than a narrated event.