Hoffmann is arrested at Biljardpalatset and taken to Aspsås

Piet Hoffmann’s arrest at Biljardpalatset begins his transfer from a prepared public encounter into the controlled world of Aspsås Prison. The police arrive on an anonymous tip, but the scene also shows Erik Wilson waiting to observe the transport, while Hoffmann makes himself visible and does not try to escape. His arrest is followed by a fast-track conviction, a heavily guarded transfer, and the first steps of establishing himself among the prison’s inmates.

The arrest at Biljardpalatset

The police had been told by an anonymous, untraceable caller that a serious wanted criminal would be at Biljardpalatset that morning. Hoffmann was at the pool hall, watching the time and checking that the knife he usually carried was absent. He went to a window overlooking Sankt Eriksgatan and pretended to speak on his mobile phone until he was sure the people in the patrol car had seen him. The officers entered with weapons drawn. Hoffmann did not run; he turned toward them with his hands visible.

The encounter nevertheless became violent. Hoffmann was ordered down, struck by officers, and handcuffed. He insulted one officer, spat at him twice, and later threatened him with future violence. An officer responded with force while nearby colleagues looked away. The sequence makes the arrest more than a routine apprehension: Hoffmann performs open hostility, and the police treat him according to the dangerous-criminal identity presented in the warning and records.

It took eight specially trained officers thirty-five minutes to locate and arrest him. Wilson watched from a car opposite the entrance to the garage beneath Kronobergparken as police vehicles moved in and out. After the vans had passed, he entered the garage, showed his identification, and waited in a steel enclosure by the elevator to the remand prison. From there he could observe the transport vehicles. His vigil places the arrest within a wider operation, though the account does not spell out every arrangement behind it.

From custody to Aspsås

Ten days after the arrest, Hoffmann was being moved from the Kronoberg remand prison to Aspsås Prison. The wardens had read the documents describing him as one of Sweden’s most dangerous criminals and knew of the incident at the pool hall, including his threat against an officer. The transfer was conducted with four guards, two more than usual; Hoffmann wore handcuffs and leg irons, while the staff considered but did not use a waist restraint. The precautions show how the police encounter continued to define him in the eyes of prison staff.

Before the transfer, Hoffmann had admitted possessing three kilos of amphetamine in the trunk of a rented car. He arranged for the prosecutor to confirm that he had acted alone and bore sole responsibility, then accepted the judgment and signed it so that it would not have to wait to enter into force. The swift legal conclusion cleared the way for his movement into the prison system, while fixing a criminal account of the case that he had chosen to accept.

As the bus entered Aspsås, Hoffmann crossed a boundary he had previously studied from the outside. He had mapped the buildings from the church tower, examined the bars on the windows, and, with Wilson’s help while on remand, learned about the inmates and staff in the corridors of Block G. Yet this was his first time inside the high-security prison. The leg irons restricted his movement; after entering through a separate security door, he was searched, issued loose-fitting clothes, and left in a sterile waiting room without speaking.

Establishing a place in the unit

After ten days, the narrative describes Hoffmann’s confinement in a cell for twenty-three hours a day, in a five-square-metre space without visitors, newspapers, television, or radio. The account emphasizes the institution’s control of time, movement, and contact: isolation is not merely a locked door but a routine designed to make a new prisoner compliant. Hoffmann’s fear that Zofia might no longer be there for him gives that enforced separation a personal consequence as well as a practical one.

When two guards eventually told him that G2 Left would be his home at the start of his long sentence, they escorted him through passages, a camera-controlled door, and steep stairs to Block G. The unit would remain empty for three hours while the other prisoners were at work, the library, or the classroom. A principal officer showed Hoffmann the routines, including where to use the toilet and the time for lock-in. He then had time to sit in his cell and confront the fact that the prison was now his home.

Before the other fifteen prisoners returned, Hoffmann positioned himself in the television corner where everyone would see him enter the unit’s social space. He sat in another prisoner’s favored chair, took marked cards, and began playing solitaire at someone else’s table without asking. These calculated breaches of informal etiquette announced that he would not hide or wait to be invited into the group. He was also watching for Stefan Lygas and Karol Tomasz Penderecki, two Wojtek members he knew as allies in removing competitors and taking over the prison drug market—and as men who could become his executioners if his identity as Paula were exposed.

At supper, two older prisoners demanded to see his papers. Hoffmann allowed them to ask their questions while Stefan and Karol Tomasz held back. The groundwork for his reception had already been laid: the two men had circulated information about his arrival, the charge, his associates, and his standing with eastern European criminal groups. Through Stefan’s lawyer, they had obtained copies of police criminal records, the criminal-intelligence database, prison records, and Hoffmann’s latest judgment. His entry into Aspsås was therefore not an encounter with strangers alone; a documentary version of his identity had arrived ahead of him.

Significance of the transfer

The arrest and transfer expose the difference between entering a prison physically and gaining a position inside its social order. Hoffmann had studied the buildings and learned the names and backgrounds of prisoners, but only after arrival could he use posture, visibility, and carefully chosen breaches of etiquette to make himself known. The police dossier and the information circulated by Stefan and Karol Tomasz make official and inmate knowledge converge around him, each shaping how others assess the newcomer.

The episode also frames imprisonment as a tightly managed environment in which survival depends on reading its rules. Hoffmann is moved under guard, separated from ordinary contact, and introduced to routines that regulate the smallest parts of a day; at the same time, he begins to work within the prison’s informal hierarchy. His calculated visibility in G2 contrasts with the enforced isolation that precedes it. The transfer thus marks both the end of his passage through remand and the beginning of the prison operation he has prepared to enter.