Peter Lundin

The murder of Anna Schaftner Lundin took place around April 1, 1991 (the exact date has never been established with certainty). Peter Lundin was 19 years old, and there had been chaos in the family for a long time. Both of them often being drunk, Peter and Ole were violent towards Anna. The situation had previously been so serious that the family's neighbors had called the police several times, but no report came out of the police's visit.[14]

It is suspected that a quarrel caused the murder. Anna Lundin wanted to cut off her son Peter's long hair, causing him to choke her. Together with his father, they drove the body to the city of Buxton and buried her on the wide sandy beach of Cape Hatteras.

On November 1, 1991, some passers-by who were on a walk on the beach near the lighthouse at the Outer Banks in Buxton discovered the body of a woman which had been washed ashore.[11] The body was wrapped in a blue blanket, covered with black plastic and wrapped with tape and a yellow rope.[15] Peter and his father had since fled to Canada, but on June 6, 1992, they were both arrested at a Toronto hotel room.

In July 1993, Peter Lundin was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment in Dare County. At the same time, his father Ole was sentenced to 2 years as an accomplice.[11] Both were ordered to be deported to Denmark on completing their sentences. Ole finished his sentence and was deported, while Peter appealed both the length of the sentence and to the expulsion. He failed to overturn his conviction, but on February 16, 1995 his sentence was reduced to 15 years, which he served at Brown Creek Correctional Institution.[16]

In 1994, Lundin was interviewed by Danish TV channel "TV 2" during his stay in prison. The broadcast by Nordisk Film TV for TV 2, and it was organized by the television journalist Jesper Klit. The broadcast was called The American Dream and was about how young Danes had gone across the Atlantic. It was by chance that Lundin took part in the program. The Danish TV folks randomly browsed in a newspaper and it was there that they came across the story that a Danish citizen named Peter Lundin had been convicted of murdering his mother.

Organizer Jesper Klit then wrote a letter to Lundin and asked if he would participate in an interview for Danish television. Lundin replied that he would like that, and the formalities with regard to the TV recordings were then arranged with the American prison authorities, who had a very liberal attitude towards interviewing inmates.[17]

During the broadcast, he colored one part of his face black and the other white, to symbolize "good and evil".[11] After viewing this interview, a renowned Swedish psychiatrist, Professor Sten Levander, awarded Lundin 39 points (of a possible 40) on the Psychopathy Checklist.[18][19] The documentary was broadcast on TV 2 on December 14, 1994.

Lundin was released after barely serving half of his sentence. The state of North Carolina at the time had a desperate lack of prison capacity. The serious lack of space was due, among other things, to a very large number of prisoners from the US Army, who were convicted of wife abuse and murder. Most of these convicts came from the huge military base of Fort Bragg. The authorities therefore had chosen to halve the penalties for anyone who was imprisoned after a certain date and the law at the time did not allow convicts to serve in another US state.[20]

On June 4, 1999, he arrived at Copenhagen Airport, where he had been escorted by four US police officers.[11][4] After arriving in Denmark, Peter moved with his wife Tina Lundin (whom he had married in 1996 during his prison service) and her teenage daughter in Måløv.

In the fall of 1999, during a violent attack on his wife and her daughter, which resulted in him being thrown out of the apartment, Peter moved into the Men's Home in Nørrebro. While living there, he visited a brothel on Fasanvej 239 in Copenhagen, where he subsequently met Marianne Pedersen, an employee of the brothel.[4]

Marianne Pedersen (1963-2000) was 36 years old, an early retiree and had been a widow for a year. Her late husband was a former painter, and even before his death, they started a massage clinic (a small brothel) at Fasanvej, where she earned money as a sex worker.[21] Pedersen and her two sons, Dennis and Brian, lived in the Copenhagen suburb of Rødovre. Lundin and Marianne subsequently became lovers.

On July 3, 2000, Pedersen and her sons were declared missing by her older step-son. He contacted police because he was worried that he could not reach Pedersen or the boys on their cellphones. He had found a note on her front door that said they had gone on a vacation. The note was unusually worded, and thus alarmed, the stepson went into the house to look for the family. He found the home in disarray with the furniture moved away from the walls, trash lying around, vomit in both toilets, and a strange smell in the basement.

After filing a missing person’s report, police began investigating the disappearance. Upon an initial search of the house, it appeared there were discrete blood stains scattered around the house. Further investigation revealed blood stains in Pedersen’s bed, her car and in the cellar, traces of blood between bathroom tiles and even on a chopping board and a blender in the kitchen. Meanwhile, Police went to Lundins home address and searched the premises. Lundin claimed that they were on holiday and he had agreed to paint their house. But on July 5, 2000, Lundin was arrested and detained for four weeks, charged with murder. Further studies of the house led to the conclusion that Pedersen and her two sons had been killed and dismembered. The first dismemberment had taken place in the basement, while the other two in the garage. A recently cleaned freezer located in a shed at the Pedersen property also had traces of blood inside. Deputy Chief Inspector Niels Kjøller from Hvidovre Criminal Police told the press: "Both places looked like slaughterhouses, even though Peter had tried to erase his tracks by cleaning up."[4] From remnants of human tissue, the police technicians were able to observe that Lundin had used an angle grinder in the garage and there were about 100 visible cutting marks on the floor, revealing that he had used an axe.

Lundin changed his explanation after three weeks. He explained that he heard screams from the basement at night between June 16 and 17, 2000, and there he found the two boys lying on the floor - killed with a knife by Marianne. She was supposedly unconscious after taking drugs. He then began to beat her because she had killed the boys, and according to his explanation, he struck her "not seriously" and she died shortly after. He did not call the police as he thought they would not believe his story because of his past, and instead decided to dismember the bodies. On October 10, 2000, he confessed to killing them. He explained that Marianne and him had a quarrel because she "had spoken sweetly" on the phone with another man. Subsequently, they all got up to fight on her double bed in the bedroom, and there he broke all three's necks with his bare hands. After the murders, he placed the bodies in the house's freezers. This story was not quite corroborated by the forensic evidence, however, as it was reasonably determined that one of the boys had died in the basement, and investigators found it unlikely that he had broken their necks the way he claimed.

On June 19, 2000, Lundin went shopping at a Metro in Glostrup, where he bought an axe, rubber glove, plastic bags and cleaning agents, after which he dismembered the bodies. Lundin put the body parts in plastic bags, which he placed for bulky waste outside the house, which was thus driven for incineration. He then probably drove further around Zealand in Marianne's Ford Mondeo and placed smaller body parts in various waste containers. About 10,000 tonnes of slag were investigated at Vestforbrænding, as well as a waste site in Holme-Ostrup near Næstved, and with the help of the Danish Emergency Management Agency, the entire Vestvolden was searched. The bodies of Pedersen and her two sons have never been recovered.

Peter Lundin insisted that he did not mean to kill his victims, but the jurors did not believe him. They sentenced him as guilty of intentional murder and manslaughter. As a detail, he was also convicted of theft, from the house at Norregardsvej. Prosecutor Attorney General Erik Merlung said soberly and calmly in his criminal record procedure: "The circumstances, nature and extent of the crimes committed by the defendant are in a state of horror and fright. One can only respond to these as a society and take the right security measures by imposing a lifetime sentence."[24]

Lundin's lawyer Bjørn Lund Hansen made a vigorous effort to get the jurors to sentence his client a timed penalty of approximately sixteen years. Lund Hansen called his client's actions "obnoxious" and "creepy", but nevertheless appealed to jurors and judges to settle for giving Lundin 16 years imprisonment for the murders. He compared Lundin's three murders to the case of the doctor Elisabeth Wæver, who was sentenced to life for a murderous arson attack against his lover's wife and two children: "Killing by fire is an aggravation. It is an expression of a carefully planned crime, while my client's actions are spontaneous and impulsive.", said Bjørn Lund Hansen without much conviction.[24] Before the jurors retired to testify to the length of the punishment, Lundin had the opportunity to say the last words to the jurors and he took advantage of it: "We must all have peace now. We must have peace in our mind and in our soul."[25]

The judges and jurors eventually chose to listen to the prosecutor. On March 15, 2001, after ten days of court hearings, the three country judges Niels Johan Petersen, Ejler Bruun and Hans Christian Thomsen delivered the verdict on Peter Lundin - life imprisonment. The sentence of lifetime was unanimous and came after only 10 minutes of voting. All 24 votes were given for life imprisonment. (In a jury trial, the 12 jurors each have one vote and the three professional judges every four votes when the punishment is met.) Lundin asked for some time to think, and even though he had the opportunity to appeal the sentence to the Supreme Court, he did not.

The father, Ole Lundin, was not convicted of complicity or involvement in the disposal of the three bodies. However, he was convicted of theft of several of Marianne Pedersen's personal belongings, which the police found during a search on his residence at Strandvejen 201 in Hellerup. Judge Jes Schioler believed that even though Ole Lundin, due to his age and other personal circumstances, would normally only be in a conditional punishment or community service, the circumstances of the theft were so serious that it had to be reflected in the punishment.[26] He was sentenced to 4 months of unconditional imprisonment on June 7, 2002.[27]

In the spring of 2001, "The National Association of the Execution of Peter Lundin" was founded by the former convicted smuggler and heavyweight boxer Mark Hulstrøm, and other anonymous people. The association did not demand reinstatement of the death penalty in the criminal code, but that the Folketing adopt a special law that would give the death penalty exclusively to Peter Lundin.[28]

Lundin apparently believed that there was death penalty in Denmark at the time, explaining this on a cassette tape in the prison, which Ekstra Bladet came into possession of in 2008. Due to this belief, he also thought he could not be convicted of murder if he disposed of the bodies.[29]

While he was in custody on July 27, 2000 in Vridsløselille Prison, he was attacked by several inmates. He was struck with an iron tube, which broke his nose.[35][36]

In February 2002, he was attacked again when he was beaten by fellow inmates with a frying pan on his head.[37] He filed a case and demanded $10,000 in compensation for the harm done. On April 16, 2002, he was awarded DKK 510 in compensation by the Østre Landsret.[38] In 2007, he was transferred to the top-secured State Prison of East Jutland.[39] However, he has subsequently been moved back to the Institution of Herstedvester again.

After the airing of The American Dream on TV 2 in 1994, many Danish women contacted Peter Lundin and in 1996 he married one of them, a woman named Tina.[11]

On September 28, 2008, he was married to Mariann Poulsen in Statsfængslet Østjylland, but after 11 days filed for divorce when she claimed that he had lied to her about another woman whom he was lovers with while they were married.[40][41] She told this on October 9, 2008, when she appeared on GO 'Aften Danmark.

On May 26, 2011 Lundin married a woman named Bettina.[42] They were together from 2009 until 3 October 2017.[42]

On August 21, 2006, he was sentenced to 40 days in prison by the Court of Glostrup for holding 92.7 grams of cannabis in his prison cell.[43]

He was again sentenced to 10 days in prison by the Court of Glostrup on April 23, 2012, for having 8.5 grams of cannabis and four amphetamine pills on July 26, 2011.[44] Lundin was accused in September 2012 to be behind the smuggling of cannabis and other substances in the Institute of Herstedvester.[45]

In November 2011, Lundin changed his name to Niels Schaftner, but this was later changed to Bjarne Skounborg.[1][46]

A journalist on the Danish newspaper Information, Kristian Ditlev Jensen, called Peter Lundin a psychopath by writing the sentence "We are, basically, not clinical psychopaths in the Peter Lundin category" (Danish: Vi er, kort sagt, ikke kliniske psykopater i Peter Lundin-klassen) in an editorial not otherwise about Peter Lundin.[47] This prompted Lundin to file a lawsuit. The lawsuit was settled in court, clearing the journalist by explaining that the "sentence should be taken as a statement that the plaintiff is a clear-cut example of a psychopath in the sense of a deviating person" (Danish: Sætningen skal forstås som en udtalelse om, at sagsøgeren er et klart eksempel på en psykopat i betydningen karakterafvigende person).[48]

On November 18, 2008, the then Danish People's Party chairman Pia Kjærsgaard commented on Peter Lundin on the breakfast show Go' morgen Danmark, where she said: "He is simply as callous as you possibly can be" (Danish: Han er jo simpelthen så afstumpet, som nogen kan være). In February 2009 this got Lundin to sue Kjærsgaard for DKK 100,000 for defamation. Lundin's lawyer Peter Hjørne stated to the press that she has called him as callous as anyone can be, and that it was against all citizens of the country who are protected.

At the Court in Lyngby on March 4, 2010, the court dismissed Lundin's claim for DKK 100,000 in compensation and Kjærsgaard was acquitted. The judge emphasized that the Dansk Sprognævn had stated during the case that synonyms for the word "afstumpet" (~"callous")[49] are insensitive, brutal, emotional, rough and raw. In addition, the court also emphasized that the statements by Kjærsgaard were made in a public television debate in a breakfast show and as part of a more general criticism of the media's coverage of persons convicted of serious crime. In addition, the court also emphasized the nature of the extremely serious crimes that Lundin was convicted of.[50]

On February 28, 2014, he sued the Cavling Prize-nominated DR host Line Gertsen and the host Kim Bildsøe Lassen for libel. In concrete terms, Lundin believed that the DR duo went far beyond the line, when they in a feature in the TV newspaper in September 2012 accused him of being behind the hash deal in Herstedvester prison, where he was imprisoned.[51] Lundin's lawyer Tage Siboni stated that; "Some wrong allegations have been made in the TV newspaper against two people - Bjarne Skounborg (Peter Lundin) and an unnamed woman. It has been called for rectification by the DR, but they refuse. Therefore, we have created a case."[51]

Prior to the feature mentioned, the TV newspaper was in possession of a report which allegedly revealed that Lundin was the man behind the cannabis sale in prison. The law of defamation took place at the Copenhagen City Court. Here, Lundin demanded compensation of DKK 25,000 and correction of the news piece.

On March 28, 2014, Line Gertsen and Kim Bildsøe Lassen were acquitted of libel against Lundin. At the same time, the court decided that Peter Lundin and his wife had to pay all the costs within fourteen days, corresponding to DKK 20,000.

The verdict was as follows:

"This is known for right: The defendants Line Gertsen and Kim Bildsøe Lassen are dismissed. The applicants and Betinna Brøns must pay jointly within fourteen days to pay the costs of the defendants Line Gertsen and Kim with DKK 20,000.

[52]