The brutal murder of Agneta Westlund.

In 2008, an elderly woman called Agneta Westlund was out walking her dog in a quiet part of Sweden. In the peaceful forest near her small home village, amongst the greenery and shy elk, she should’ve been as safe as houses. Unfortunately, the opposite proved to be true as she was battered to death.

Her husband Ingemar (pictured above) was the one to discover her body, and called the police straight away. However, they determined that nobody else could feasibly have committed the murder, and so their attentions were turned to the apparently distressed husband. Once they found out that the couple had been having frequent arguments, the police had the motive they needed to arrest him. The Swedish man was detained for ten days before the police were forced to release him, nevertheless remaining their #1 suspect for the numerous months that followed.

Loftahammar forest.

The village community shunned him for all that time, certain that he was the murderer. Then, tests were conducted on the hairs found on the wife’s clothes.

Initially they’d presumed that the hairs were from her dog, but the results proved that wrong. The hairs were from an elk. Saliva samples were took; they too were from an elk. The police were forced to go it over all again, and suddenly the story started falling into place.

What had actually happened was that whilst out walking her dog, an elk had been munching on fermented apples, something which turns to alcohol in their stomachs and causes them to become drunk. Specifically, it makes them angry drunks. Then, Agneta crossed paths with it, where it’s suspected that her dog antagonised it. Instead of running away as it would when sober, the sloshed elk became angry and turned on Agneta instead, bludgeoning her to death.