Sex-and-God trial in Sweden yields pair of convictions

Sara Svensson, a former nanny seen in this undated file photo, was sentenced on Friday to psychiatric care for two murders and an attempted murder. PHOTO: AP

In perhaps the final chapter of a Swedish murder mystery of Agatha Christie caliber, a nanny and a Pentecostal minister were found guilty of murder and incitement to murder on Friday.

Helge Fossmo, 32, was sentenced by an Uppsala court, north of Stockholm, to life in prison for the incitement to murder of his second wife, as well as of incitement to murder of his neighbor. He was cleared of charges that he had killed his first wife.

Sara Svensson, 27, who the court had previously deemed mentally ill, was meanwhile sentenced to psychiatric care for the attempted murder and later murder of Fossmo's second wife and the attempted murder of his neighbor.

Ever 23-year-old Alexandra Fossmo, Helge Fossmo's second wife, was shot to death in her bed on Jan. 10, and her next-door neighbor Daniel Linde was shot and injured in his bedroom minutes later, Swedes have been glued to tabloids and TV sets in anticipation of what could happen next. They have not been disappointed.

Just day after the shootings, Svensson, who had cared for Fossmo's three children from his first marriage, confessed to the crimes.

The image of a delusional nanny on a lone, murderous rampage through a small, idyllic Swedish town was soon shattered by revelations that the Pentecostal minister had not only been sexually involved with her, but also with at least one other woman -- the injured neighbor's wife, who would come on nightly visits to his house while Svensson slept on the sofa and his own wife slept in the guest bedroom.

And there was the minister's fist wife, 27-year-old Helene Fossmo, who died in what looked like a bathtub accident in 1999.

Following Alexandra's murder, police reopened the case, revealing that the blow to Helene's head may not have been caused by a fall, and finding that she had the drug Dexofan in her system when she died.

The Uppsala court on Friday ruled that it had not been proved that the minister had anything to do with his first wife's death.