Stefan Lygas is shot at Aspsås prison

Stefan Lygas is shot and killed at Aspsås Prison, where he had been one of Piet Hoffmann’s allies in the struggle for control of the prison drug market. The shooting’s aftermath makes his death more than a prison-violence episode: it becomes part of a disputed chain of attacks, messages, and orders whose origin remains unclear in the available account.

Lygas’s Place in the Prison Conflict

Lygas was one of four members of Wojtek serving long sentences at Aspsås, and one of two prisoners Hoffmann specifically sought out when he entered the unit. Alongside Karol Tomasz Penderecki, he had helped Hoffmann eliminate competition and take over the drug market. Yet the alliance was conditional: if Hoffmann’s identity as Paula were exposed, Lygas and Penderecki could become his executioners. His position therefore joined protection to danger; he was useful to Hoffmann’s operation, but the secret that made the operation possible also made Hoffmann vulnerable to the men closest to it.

The prison’s informal hierarchy was already in motion when Hoffmann arrived. Lygas and Penderecki had spent several days preparing the other prisoners for his arrival, circulating information about his charges, associates, and supposed standing with an Eastern European mafia. They had also obtained copies of criminal and prison records, including Hoffmann’s latest judgment, through Lygas’s lawyer. At supper, when two older prisoners demanded to see Hoffmann’s papers, Lygas and Penderecki rose to intervene; Hoffmann waved them back and allowed the challenge to proceed. The scene shows Lygas operating as a broker of status and information before his own place in the conflict turned perilous.

The Shooting and Its Setting

The evidence establishes the outcome clearly but leaves the mechanics of the shooting largely undescribed. In a later account, Sven Sundkvist tells a witness that the police have a detailed description from colleagues of a prisoner being shot in solitary confinement during the hostage crisis. Another subsequent exchange identifies the dead prisoner as Lygas and confirms that he had been shot that morning. Together, these disclosures place his death within the prison’s emergency and isolation arrangements, without identifying the shooter or fully explaining how the shooting occurred.

That setting carries particular weight because Hoffmann had demanded transfer to voluntary isolation when he feared exposure. The unit was separated from prisoners in other parts of the prison, and a riot squad escorted vulnerable prisoners there under heavy security. Isolation could reduce immediate access by other inmates, but it did not remove the wider prison conflict or the authority exercised over transfers and visits. The shooting thus takes place within a system that manages danger by moving prisoners between controlled spaces, while leaving the source and reach of the threat uncertain.

The Lawyer’s Visit and Unanswered Orders

Lennart Oscarsson later discloses a detail that complicates the account. He says he was ordered to allow a lawyer to visit a client in Hoffmann’s unit on the evening before Grens arrived. The client was Lygas, one of the men who had attacked Hoffmann and the prisoner shot the following morning. Oscarsson notes that lawyers are often used to carry information into a prison, but the evidence does not establish what was communicated during this visit or who issued the order. When asked who had ordered it, Oscarsson gives only a fleeting smile; the source of the instruction remains unresolved.

The timing makes the visit significant without proving that it caused the shooting. Oscarsson had first indicated that other people were involved, then described an authorized route by which information could be spread inside the prison. His account places Lygas at the intersection of an assault on Hoffmann, a potentially consequential visit, and a fatal shooting, but stops short of identifying a plan or assigning responsibility. The resulting uncertainty is part of the event’s significance: official procedure and covert communication appear close together, while the decisive order stays out of view.

Death and Aftermath

Lygas’s death is later brought back into the question of responsibility for prisoners under official supervision. Oscarsson is confronted with Lygas’s name and reminded that the prisoner was in his care and is now dead. The same exchange names Pawel Murawski and Piet Hoffmann as other prisoners for whom Oscarsson was responsible and who are also said to be dead. The juxtaposition broadens the issue from one shooting to the consequences of decisions made within the prison system, though it does not by itself establish that the deaths had the same cause.

For Hoffmann, Lygas’s role had already contained a stark reversal: an ally who helped secure his position could become an executioner if his undercover identity was exposed. Lygas’s shooting makes that threat concrete but does not resolve who was responsible for it or how the lawyer’s visit figured into events. His death remains both a confirmed outcome and an incomplete explanation—a point at which prison violence, covert information, and official orders converge without yielding a fully disclosed chain of command.