If the year of 1932 dawned fairly quietly on the unsolved murder front, by the time spring rolled around, a crime occurred that easily made up for the months-long respite, just in terms of sheer weirdness.
It was right around the first of May. Thirty-two-year-old Lilly Lindeström lived in the Atlas neighborhood of Stockholm, Sweden, working as a prostitute out of her small apartment. Her friend and neighbor Minnie Janssen, thirty-five, was also a prostitute, and lived downstairs. One evening, Lilly was entertaining a client, and partway through the appointment, she came down to Minnie’s place to borrow some condoms. Minnie obliged, and Lilly returned to her apartment. It was about nine o’clock p.m.
A couple of days later, Minnie realized that she hadn’t seen Lilly at all since that night, and she began to worry. She phoned Lilly’s flat, but there was no answer, and going up and knocking on her door produced the same troubling results. Minnie called the police.
When the authorities arrived and forced their way into Lilly’s apartment, they were met with a strange and gruesome scene. Lilly lay face down on her bed, naked, and it was clear that she had been dead for at least two days. Her clothes were found in a neatly folded pile on a chair nearby, and her head had been repeatedly bashed with a blunt instrument.
Upon closer examination, it was discovered that Lilly’s neck and shoulders were still sticky with saliva, presumably left by her final client and probable killer. A used condom was also found still lodged in her anus.
But the most bizarre detail of all was yet to come: Lilly’s body was almost entirely drained of blood.
In the bedroom, officers discovered a bloodstained gravy ladle, which they speculated had been used by the murderer to drink the unfortunate woman’s blood. However, if that was the case, then where had the killer drained the blood from, as there were no obvious wounds other than the head trauma? And how had he consumed so much of it without getting it all over the bed? These baffling questions were what led the press to dub the killer, “The Atlas Vampire.”
Indeed, it almost seemed as though the killer might have been some sort of supernatural creature, for investigators could discover no compelling suspects, even after interrogating the residents of the Atlas neighborhood, as well as many of Lilly’s clients and acquaintances. Even stranger, the vampire evidently never struck again, for no other similar crimes were henceforth reported in the area.
Had Stockholm police had access to modern DNA technology in 1932, then the case would likely have been quickly solved, for there was a wealth of physical evidence left at the scene. However, the mysterious disappearance of several liters of Lilly’s blood remains a chilling aspect of the case that practically ensured its enduring legacy in the annals of Swedish crime history.
Crime Immemorial 