The 31-year-old woman who drowned her two young children told a police hearing how she took them out to a jetty by the lake, and pushed both into the water at the same time.
– Elias said, “Mom, I want to go home, I do not want to swim,” she explained.
Four-year-old Elijah and his eight-year-old brother, Tevin, were found dead in the water at Munkholmen in Sigtuna on 19 September 2011. The day before, Elijah’s father, Carl-Gunnar Wiman, reported the two missing children.
“I could not take it anymore”
The boys’ mother was arrested the same day on suspicion of having killed her sons. On Wednesday this week, she was charged with murder.
During the first interrogation, she denied the crime and said she only heard a splash in the water, but had nothing to do with the children’s death. But then one day, the 31-year-old woman decided to admit.
– “I could not take it anymore. When we got to the jetty … the idea was that we were all going to die”, she said.
Could not care for them
The woman told how she had fought with her mother during a trip to Kenya and thereafter, began to increasingly feel mentally ill. At home in Sigtuna, debts piled up and the Swedish Enforcement Authority (Kronofogden) demanded payment for her apartment’s rent arrears. The telephone was disconnected and it became increasingly difficult to afford buying food. She lost her job in April and all her money had run out.
– “I felt that I could not take care of them. It would be easier if we all died. I had “Let Them Down.” I had lost all hope of taking care of them,” said the woman in police interrogations.
On 18th September 2011, at seven o’clock in the evening, she took the kids out for a walk. “I said that we would just look at the water.”
“Cried for ages”
First, she pushed the two boys from a jetty at the lake, but where they got hold of its edge and clung, she picked them up. She then took the two wet boys to another jetty.
– Elias said, “Mom, I want to go home, I do not want to swim,” she said in the interrogation.
From the jetty under which the children were later found, the mother pushed them both at the same time, into the water. During the hearing, the mother said that neither she nor the children could swim.
– “Tevin did not scream but Elijah cried for a long time. It was loud and he was screaming no, no, no,” said the mother. “I just stood there and cried. The idea was that I would jump in, but I did not dare.”
The 31-year-old woman has undergone a major psychiatric examination. The result shows that she was suffering from a severe mental disorder at the time of the killing, and even today, her situation is the same.
This is likely to mean that if the 31-year-old woman is convicted of murder, she will be sentenced to psychiatric care, and not prison.
Linda Hjertén
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