Sonja Hökberg and Eva Persson’s accomplice relationship

Sonja Hökberg and Eva Persson’s accomplice relationship is central to the taxi-driver case and to its shifting accounts of responsibility. Hökberg initially says that she devised the plan and that Persson agreed to take part; later, after Hökberg has died, Persson recasts the attack as Hökberg’s lone act and herself as innocent. Their friendship is therefore both the setting for their joint crime and the reason their testimony becomes difficult to trust.

Friendship and Unequal Ages

When questioned, Hökberg describes Persson as a friend she had known for a few years. Persson was five years younger, but Hökberg says that she looked up to her. That claim offers a glimpse of an unequal bond: Hökberg presents herself as the older, admired figure, though the account comes from Hökberg herself and is not independently confirmed. She also insists that the friendship explains why they went out together; in her telling, the pair were not merely two girls thrown together for the evening.

Their outing begins with drinks at a restaurant. Hökberg says they had a beer, ordered another, and then called a taxi. The difference in their ages is consequential: Persson was fourteen, while Hökberg, born in 1978, was nineteen and legally an adult. The pair’s closeness thus sits alongside a sharp difference in their legal status and age, a distinction that later shapes how the case is handled.

The Attack and Hökberg’s Account

Hökberg’s first account gives her the leading role. She says the idea of robbing a taxi driver was hers and that Persson had no objection. She places the discussion at the restaurant, while also describing a plan for the journey: Persson would sit beside the driver, then move to the back, giving them an opportunity to make him stop. Hökberg says they chose Rydsgård as a destination simply because it was the first place that came to mind.

The account contains a telling tension. Hökberg portrays the decision as made at the restaurant, but says she always carried a hammer and Persson always had a knife, ostensibly for self-defence. She explains that the weapons were already with them, not gathered for this specific attack. She also says they might have tried to entice a younger driver to stop, but that because this driver was older, they used the weapons instead. Wallander hears these explanations as inconsistent with an entirely unplanned decision; the girls’ possession of weapons and the stated seating arrangement make the boundary between preparation and improvisation uncertain.

Hökberg says she struck the driver in the head while Persson stabbed him. She does not give a definite number of blows, saying only that she hit him a couple of times, and shrugs when asked whether she understood that the wounds could be fatal. They took his wallet and mobile phone, divided the cash, and discarded the wallet. Hökberg says they needed money but could name no particular purpose. Wallander suspects that this explanation is incomplete, a doubt that keeps the relationship relevant beyond the act of robbery itself: the pair’s shared account does not settle what brought them to violence.

Persson’s Reversal

The apparent agreement between the two accounts collapses after Hökberg’s death. Persson changes her story, saying that there had never been a plan to rob a taxi driver, that they were not heading to Rydsgård, and that Hökberg alone hit and stabbed the driver. In this version, Hökberg had suggested visiting an uncle in Bjäresjö, although the uncle says he had not seen his niece for five or six years. Persson explains that she had previously withheld this account because she did not want all the blame to fall on Hökberg, since they were friends.

That explanation makes loyalty plausible, but the timing alarms the investigators. Persson’s reversal begins before she is known to have been told that Hökberg is dead. Ann-Britt Höglund reports that Persson appears sad when she learns of the death, though not convincingly; Höglund thinks she is in fact shocked. Wallander and Höglund consider whether someone may nevertheless have informed her, and whether that would mean she knows who killed Hökberg. They cannot establish that from the evidence available. The friendship may explain Persson’s stated wish to protect Hökberg, but it cannot by itself explain how she could be certain that Hökberg would not contradict her new account.

Concealed Knowledge and Unresolved Trust

A second discrepancy concerns the restaurant. Wallander learns that Hökberg changed seats to get a clear view of an Asian man who had been sitting there. When Höglund asks Persson about the man, Persson denies seeing anyone like him and says they moved because Hökberg complained of a draught from the window. Höglund judges the answer a lie, while Wallander treats the denial as evidence that the attack was not simply spontaneous. The scene does not establish what either girl knew about the man, or what connection he had to them; it does show that their explanations of the evening remain at odds with details under investigation.

The relationship consequently shifts from an apparent partnership into a contested bond whose private loyalties cannot be separated from possible concealment. Hökberg’s first account implicates both girls while claiming initiative for herself; Persson’s later version protects her own position and assigns the violence to her dead friend. Her stated motive is friendship, but the investigators’ doubts about the timing and the restaurant account leave open whether loyalty is the whole truth. Neither the girls’ closeness nor either confession resolves what they intended together, and Hökberg’s death removes the possibility of testing Persson’s final version against her.