Eva Persson Retracts Her Testimony and Says Hökberg Acted Alone

Eva Persson’s retraction changes the apparent account of Johan Lundberg’s murder while raising a more urgent question: how could she know that Sonja Hökberg would never be able to contradict her? Persson now denies taking part in the planned robbery and assigns its planning and execution to Hökberg alone. Because this version emerges just as Hökberg has been killed, the reversal is not merely a dispute over guilt. Its timing makes Persson a possible link to the person responsible for Hökberg’s death.

The new account

When Ann-Britt Höglund tells Kurt Wallander that Persson has changed her story, Wallander initially needs time to grasp the significance. The new version rejects the earlier account of a robbery: the girls had not been going to rob a taxi driver, had not been heading to Rydsgård, and Hökberg had supposedly suggested instead that they visit an uncle in Bjäresjö. Höglund checks that detail directly. The uncle says he has not seen his niece in five or six years, leaving the proposed visit unsupported by the person who could have confirmed it.

Persson offers an explanation for why she did not give this version before: she says she had not wanted all the blame to fall on Hökberg because they were friends. In effect, the explanation presents her earlier confession as an act of loyalty and the new account as a belated correction. But it also puts the entire responsibility on an absent person who can no longer answer. Wallander sees the practical advantage of that change: Persson can now blame Hökberg without fear of contradiction if she knows Hökberg is dead.

Why the timing matters

The crucial sequence is not simply that Persson retracts her confession, but that she does so before the news of Hökberg’s death is public. Höglund says Persson could not have known Hökberg was dead when the questioning began. Wallander and Höglund therefore consider how the new story could have been shaped around Hökberg’s inability to dispute it. One possibility is that Hökberg contacted Persson after leaving the station and said she planned to kill herself. Neither investigator finds that likely. The alternative is that Hökberg contacted someone else, who later told Persson she was dead.

That possibility makes Persson important for two linked inquiries. If she learned of the death from the person who killed Hökberg—or from a witness—she may be able to identify that person. Wallander does not treat this as proof that Persson knows the killer; he recognizes it as an inference to test, and the cause of Hökberg’s death still awaits the autopsy. Yet the timing leaves the investigators with a specific question: who could have supplied Persson with knowledge that had not been released?

A contested story in public

The retraction also reaches the case through the press. In an interview with reporter Törngren, Wallander hears that Persson now says she was forced to confess by the officers who questioned her. Martinsson rejects the allegation of coercion, while Wallander avoids discussing the classified investigation or declaring whether Persson is lying. He explains his own account of the confrontation with Persson but refuses to let the interview turn an incomplete inquiry into a public verdict. The exchange shows how the competing versions acquire consequences beyond the interrogation room: each can shape how the case, and Wallander’s conduct, is judged before the evidence is settled.

The investigation’s response

At a meeting, Viktorsson urges serious consideration of Persson’s version—that Hökberg alone planned and carried out the assault. Wallander opposes accepting it and lays out the sequence that makes the reversal suspect: both girls initially confessed, their accounts were consistent, and weapons were recovered; Hökberg then escaped from the police station and was found dead about twelve hours later at a Sydkraft power substation. A preliminary report identifies fractures consistent with a heavy blow to the back of the head, possibly the cause of death or at least of unconsciousness, before she was thrown among the power lines. The report confirms that the investigation must proceed as a murder inquiry, though it does not yet establish who killed her or why.

Wallander argues that Persson’s change of story is the hinge between the two cases. Because Hökberg is dead, her alleged role in the robbery cannot be checked against her testimony; because the death was not public when Persson changed her account, the source of her knowledge may point toward the killer or a witness. Wallander calls Persson the key to understanding what happened and assigns Höglund to question her, while he withdraws from that interrogation. The retraction thus changes the direction of the inquiry: instead of treating Persson’s revised account as a settled explanation, the investigators must establish how she learned of Hökberg’s death and whether that knowledge connects her to its cause.