The Atlas vampire

The Atlas Vampire is the nickname given to a killer who struck in Sweden in the 1930s and who is still unknown.

The facts

Lilly Lindeström was 31, a prostitute, and lived in a small one-room flat at 11 Sankt Eriksplan, in Stockholm’s Atlas district. Her friend Minnie, known as Mimmi, also a prostitute, lived on the ground floor.

On April 30, 1932, Walpurgis Night, Mimmi was at Lilly’s when, around half past six, the phone rang. An unknown male voice asked if he was speaking to Lilly Lindeström: the man wanted to come up and said he was nearby. Lilly agreed and Mimmi went back to her flat.

Shortly after seven Lilly came down to borrow a condom from Mimmi. Later she came back to borrow another one. Mimmi noticed she was completely naked under her coat. It was the last time she saw her alive.

At nine Mimmi rang Lilly’s doorbell to ask whether she wanted to go to Djurgården with her, but no one answered. She assumed her friend had gone out with a client. In the following days she kept looking for her without success until, on May 4, very worried, she went to the police.

The crime scene

The officers entered the flat and found Lilly dead, face down on a daybed. She had been dead for two or three days. The whole flat had been meticulously cleaned. Lilly’s clothes had been neatly folded and placed on a chair, and the sofa cushions had been carefully stacked on her body, under a neatly arranged bedspread.

It was clear that Lilly had had sex before she was killed, since a condom was found inserted in her anus.

So it was assumed that her last client was also her killer. Lilly had been killed with three violent blows to the head with a blunt object, which had crushed her skull. The most brutal detail, however, is this:

much of Lilly Lindeström’s blood seemed to have been drained from her body. This would explain the stained gravy ladle found near the body, which police believed the killer had used to drink the victim’s blood.

When this detail became public, the killer became famous as the “Atlas Vampire” and the crime as the “vampyrmordet”, the vampire murder.

The mystery of the Atlas Vampire

Thinking the killer might be a client, police questioned Lilly’s regular clients and went through her address book, but no one was ever charged. Fingerprints were found in the flat, but it was impossible to establish whether any belonged to the killer.

It was also thought the killer might be a police officer, which would explain how he managed to clean the crime scene so thoroughly of any important clues.

Although various body fluids were present at the scene, the techniques of the time could not analyze them. Eighteen years later, an Aftonbladet journalist visited the now retired investigator John Berg for a series of articles on unsolved crimes. Berg took out a cardboard box: inside were a kitchen towel with reddish-brown stains and the dented ladle, with the same stains on its bottom.

In 1957 the statute of limitations on the crime expired. It is still one of Sweden’s greatest unsolved mysteries.

Vampire or not?

In 2012 the case was discussed on the Swedish TV program Veckans brott by criminologist Leif G. W. Persson. In his view Lilly probably knew her killer and, with modern DNA analysis of the condom, police could almost certainly have identified him.

Persson also pointed out that it is not at all certain the stains on the ladle were blood, and that the crime probably had nothing to do with vampirism or cannibalism.

So perhaps the Atlas “vampire” was just a very methodical killer. But the question remains: could an analysis with today’s scientific methods finally put a face to Lilly’s killer?

Sources

• Atlas Vampire – Wikipedia
• Atlasmordet – Wikipedia (Swedish)