But the girlfriend was relentless.

We are in the car driving to Umeå. I don't think I've been there since the trial. But this time I am not going to the city, only to the airport. The road is lined with walls of snow. They make me think of prison, the prisons inside our heads, the ones where we confine ourselves. There's a bite in the crisp February air. But not in the car of course, where the cranked heater is assaulting me with enough hot air so that I can remove a layer of Eskimo clothing. My dad is at the wheel. My nice dad who's always been rail-thin and exercise-prone. And his good set of genes allowed him to keep a full head of dark brown hairs. Until recently that is. Because almost over night turned silver (still with no signs of thinning). And his body started giving in to gravity and a small, but undeniable paunch settled on his mid-section.

On the radio they are airing a documentary about another highly publicized Swedish criminal case. The so-called Stureby-killing. Stureby was the well-to-do suburb in Stockholm where I had lived in a sublet before packing up my things and fleeing the suffocating self-righteousness of Sweden for Berlin.

In June 2009 15-year old Therese Johansson Rojo was found dead on the ground beneath a cluster of trees in a park. Later a boy and a girl, both 16, were arrested for murder and instigation of murder. As the story unraveled in media and on internet discussion boards it seemed that the girl and the boy had been a couple and that their relationship was a stormy and symbiotic one, and that the girlfriend for weeks had urged the boy to kill Therese. Because at one beer-fueled party a month earlier the two had shared a quick teenage kiss. Something that, when she found out, had blinded the girlfriend with fury. First she had head-butted her boyfriend so hard that he had lost a couple of teeth. And then she had sent him hundreds of text messages saying that it would be over, and that she would hate him with all her might forever and ever if he didn't kill the cute dark-haired Therese Johansson Rojo dead. He didn't want to. For the longest he tried to come up with excuses and to slither his way out of it. But the girlfriend was relentless. And in the end he complied. He searched out Therese who was partying with some friends in this park in this nice suburb with manicured lawns and shiny new cars in the driveways. He lured her into the woods and beat her and then suffocated her until life was drained from her body.
Then he sent a text message to his girlfriend: Mission completed. 

My dad and I were listening to this radio documentary and somehow my thoughts gravitated towards Juha. So I decided to ask my dad: How did you feel when I received that first letter from Juha?
And he said: I was chocked but also very curious. I wanted to know what was in those letters.
Didn't you worry about me?
Not really. I was convinced it was just a phase and that you would turn out OK anyway.

p.s picture of Therese. R.I.P