A Criminal History of Mankind by Colin Wilson Page B

worked. Eriksson was a patient of Thurneman’s, and Thurneman had been treating him through hypnosis. Erikson had agreed to be the ‘inside man’ in the robbery. Then, at the last minute, he had changed his mind. Thurneman was afraid he might go to the police, or at least tell his wife. So Hedstrom, together with two other men, was delegated to kill him. From then on, said Hedstrom, Thurneman had made them continue to commit crimes that he had planned in detail. Thurneman actually took part in the robbery and murder of Axel Kjellberg - he and Hedstrom wore policemen’s uniforms (which Thurneman had had made by a theatrical costumier) to persuade the old man to open his door in the early hours of the morning. Then Kjellberg and his wife were murdered in cold blood, and the house set on fire.
    Tilda Blomqvist had been chosen because she had told Thurneman where she kept her jewels while under hypnosis. Her murder had been a masterpiece of planning. They had bored a hole in the wall of her bedroom (the house was made of wood, like so many in Scandinavia), inserted a rubber hose attached to the car’s exhaust and gassed her in her sleep. Then they had stolen the jewels and set fire to the house.
    Faced with Hedstrom’s signed confession, Thurneman decided to tell everything. In fact, he wrote an autobiography while in prison. As a child, Thurneman had had an inferiority complex because of his small build and poor health. He was a solitary, deeply interested in mysticism and the occult. At thirteen - in 1921 - he had begun to experiment in hypnotism and thought-transference with schoolmates. He also read avidly about mysticism and occult lore. Then, at sixteen, he had met a mysterious Dane who was skilled in yoga. In 1929, he claimed, he had been to Copenhagen and joined an occult group run by the Dane. On his return to Stockholm he had started his own magic circle, gathering together all kinds of people and making them swear an oath of obedience and secrecy.
    The position of cult-leader seems to have given Thurneman a taste of the kind of power he had always wanted. He used hypnosis to seduce under-age girls, and then - according to his confession - disposed of them through the white slave trade. Other gang members were also subjected to hypnosis and ‘occult training’ (whatever that meant). Thurneman was bisexual, and became closely involved with another gang member who was a lover as well as a close friend. When this man got into financial difficulties, Thurneman became worried in case he divulged their relationship - which, in 1930, was still a criminal offence. He claimed that, by means of hypnotic suggestion over the course of a week, he induced the man to commit suicide. In 1934, he placed another member of the gang in a deep trance and injected a dose of fatal poison.
    Thurneman’s aim was to make himself a millionaire and then leave for South America. The two Sala murders - of Axel Kjellberg and Tilda Blomqvist - brought in large sums of money. But the ‘big job’ he was planning was the robbery of a bank housed in the same building as the Stockholm Central Post Office. The gang had stolen large quantities of dynamite - thirty-six kilos - and the plan was to blow up the post office with dynamite and rob the bank in the chaos that followed. Thurneman had also become involved in drug smuggling.
    Thurneman was brought to trial in July 1936, together with Hedstrom and three accomplices who had helped in the killing of Eriksson and Petterson. All five were sentenced to life imprisonment; but after six months in prison, Thurneman slipped into unmistakable insanity and was transferred to a criminal mental asylum.
    The Thurneman case throws a powerful light into the innermost recesses of the psychology of the self-esteem killer. He was the kind of criminal that Charles Manson and Ian Brady would have liked to be. His dominance over his ‘family’ was complete. Men accepted him as their unquestioned leader; women