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| Europe |
| Profile of "Bright and Articulate" Homocidal Killer |
| 2003-09-20 |
| Dubbed the NK man after the swanky Stockholm department store where he allegedly stabbed Anna Lindh, Per-Olof Svensson appears to have led a bizarre double life flitting between Swedish society’s dark underbelly and its dazzling preppy social scene. The preppy psycho was the life of the toga party scene. A social chameleon, it seems he had as many names as he had different personalities. Friends familiar with his anti-immigrant views knew him simply as "Nazi Per", his upwardly mobile drinking partners in Stockholm’s champagne-fuelled society knew him as John Amberton, while his football hooligan comrades knew him better as "Kamikaze" for his fondness for piling into fistfights without a second thought. Glad he kept his personalities straight and didn’t pile on his champagne-swilling Stockholm pummeling them with a rain of roundhouses... Actually ... "He was a man with several faces," wrote the daily Expressen. "He had an Armani suit in one wardrobe and a Nazi uniform in the other." That he flirted with Sweden’s shadowy far-right is strongly believed by police. Although there is nothing on paper police sources say he associated with some of the country’s "most notorious neo-Nazis". He appears in particular to have had links with the skinhead group Vitt Ariskt Motstånd (White Aryan Resistance). Formed in 1991 as "a vehicle for racial war" its activists have been convicted of a number of violent crimes including armed robberies and gun theft. Mr Svensson was suspected but never convicted of involvement in any such crime. Maybe jlc can give us some insight on this group. You know the by-laws and initiation rites. By all accounts he was a confirmed xenophobe. Many of his friends attest to the fact that he nurtured a hatred of immigrants since his youth in the small southern coastal town of Varberg. He would shout "Heil Hitler" before rushing into pitched battles with other football hooligans. I was unaware that Hiltler was so popular in Northern Europe. "He often talked about how black people were subhumans. He had Hitler’s Mein Kampf and many other books on the second world war," said one friend, who prefers to remain nameless. Indeed his first conviction - at the age of 17 - was for daubing a swastika on the outside of a pizzeria owned by immigrants. Friends claim he distanced himself from his Nazi past in recent years but admit that his hatred of immigrants does not appear to have dimmed. Nor do his violent tendencies. As a fanatical supporter of Stockholm’s Djurgården team as well as Chelsea - an anglophile, with an encyclopaedic knowledge of British bands, he spent a lot of time in London in the 1990s - he appears to have indulged in his love of violence both before and after matches. Glad they kept putting him back on the streets. Wouldn’t want him to have to wear pink underwear or have his human rights violated with harsh treatment. Apparently fond of imbibing vast quantities of wine before matches, he has been spotted in TV documentaries on football hooliganism rushing forward in an angry blur of kicks and punches. Sometimes he has been armed - police have confiscated a hunting knife and an iron bar from him in the past. Glad they kept putting him back on the streets, though. Wouldn’t want him to have to wear pink underwear or have his human rights violated with harsh treatment. I also call for laws to control the carrying of iron bars. "Sometimes something clicks in his head and that’s when you get scared of him," said a friend who added that Mr Svensson regards himself as "a psychopath". "The funny thing is that he can be totally crushed if an animal is run over but completely unmoved by human suffering." His violence appears to extend to his own family. He has been the subject of restraining orders sought by his divorced parents in the past and his mother claims he has punched and strangled her, often in a bid to extort money. Obviously his parents victims. Must be society’s fault. The state didn’t intervene to save him from this evil fate. We have failed him. Now he is left with the phychological scares of having brutally murdered someone. We should be ashamed. Indeed it seems that she was the one who reported her son to the police over the Lindh murder out of fear that he would try to hide out at her home. He has been a thorn in her side since he was a boy, playing truant from school before moving into credit card fraud and fencing stolen goods, an activity which landed him in jail for eight months. Records show he has not filed a tax return for 10 years and, despite the fact that he claims to be a web designer, he has only done three days work in his life (as a warehouse man) and in recent years has preferred to drift around the country living with friends. Bright and articulate There is, however, another side to Mr Svensson unknown to his long-suffering mother. He may not have been up to much at school (he said it was so easy it was beneath his dignity) but he read widely in history and philosophy in particular and is said by friends to have a bright and articulate, even sympathetic side: his secondary school form teacher thought he was odd but basically decent, and one of his childhood friends said: "My mother thought he had a good soul." His favourite novel is said to be Albert Camus’ The Outsider; some speculate that he may have been inspired by its plot in which a bored civil servant murders an Arab he meets on the beach, apparently on a whim. I recommend he review the Cliff Notes again. The part about choosing a low-profile anonymous victim seems not to have sunk in. Maybe this is all Camus’ fault. If he had only been provided with happier reading material. This fate wasn’t predestined. So many people could have shown just a little bit of caring for this deranged whacko and it all would have turned out okey dokey. There are other apparent contradictions in his complex personality. Where are these contradictions? He seems to have a mentality every bit as complex as a retarded predator swilling down Chilla Cella and kicking people in the nuts. He’s a-social sociopath. Everybody around him knew about that he was deranged and to some extent facilitated his ability to avoid accountability to an extreme extent. The the extent that there is documentation that he worked three whole days in his life. When he wasn’t causing trouble on the terraces he loved to hang out with Stockholm’s brattish upper classes - including, some say, the country’s Princess Madeleine - in the city’s ultra-hip Stureplan area. Using stolen credit cards he would frequent the area’s trendiest bars and restaurants, buying bottles of expensive champagne, making small talk with the country’s rich and famous. The British Fred Perry T-shirts he wore for his football violence would be replaced with Armani suits and, although he was reportedly rude to serving staff, he kept his fists to himself. A fantasist and a braggart, he would also regale his upper class friends with tall stories about his background. Still waiting for some complexity. Friends recall an increasingly bizarre series of claims; that he was a guitarist in the pop band the Cardigans, that he had a luxury flat in Switzerland and that his father was Scottish and dead . But they liked to have him around because he always had room on one of his many credit cards as long as you remembered to call him, Paul, Jeff, or Antoine when it was time to pay the tab. Many of them knew that his name was not John Amberton as he said, but nobody seemed to mind if they caught him lying. "He was a dreamer with big ideas about glamour and the jetset lifestyle. He liked to portray himself as a smart playboy," said one of his ex-boyfriends (Mr Svensson is bisexual). His alter ego was given a confidence boost with copious amounts of alcohol and cocaine, allegedly his favourite drug. Friends and family say they are flabbergasted that he has been arrested for Lindh’s murder but many say they are not entirely surprised. "Nothing surprises me," said his stepfather. "He is capable of anything. I have been waiting for him to do something really bad for a long time." |
| Posted by:Super Hose |
| #3 A bisexual nazi. Slightly less bizarre than a jewish nazi. |
| Posted by: Anonymous 2003-9-21 12:00:02 AM |
| #2 Sounds like a guy who should have been off the streets many moons ago. |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2003-9-20 10:31:29 PM |
| #1 Sounds like their version of Ted Bundy. |
| Posted by: Bomb-a-rama 2003-9-20 4:19:35 PM |