Keillers Park murder
The man, who had been shot twice with a pistol, was identified two days later as Josef ben Meddour[a] (aged 36), a homosexual and Algerian national, who had been living in Sweden for many years.
[3] Nödtveidt and Vlad, who were members of the satanic cult Temple of the Black Light, had on several occasions discussed performing human sacrifices before they murdered Meddour.
On 23 July 1997, at around 4.30 pm, a sixteen-year-old boy discovered the body of a man, lying face down, at the base of an old water tower in Keillers Park, in downtown Gothenburg.
[sr 1][lo 1] No identification was found on the corpse, but a police officer recognized the man as someone who was often seen in the area of Svingeln square and who, with his curled hair and sunglasses, looked like Swedish singer Magnus Uggla.
[lo 3] The investigators then learned that on the evening of 22 July, Meddour had received the visit of militants of the GIA, an Algerian Islamic organisation.
She also told the police officers present that Vlad had once confessed to her that he was, along with his friend Jon, the perpetrator of the Keillers Park murder.
[lo 5] Alerted, police investigators in Gothenburg could only acknowledge that observations made on the crime scene matched the woman's account of the events.
[lo 6] The two suspects at first denied any involvement in Meddour's death, but after he was remanded on probable cause, Nödtveidt eventually made a confession, also naming Vlad in the story.
Next to a park locally known as a meeting place for gay men, they were accosted by a stranger, who at the sight of their clothes, asked them if they were Satanists, and told them he wanted to learn about this cult.
[lo 10] His body was found by the band's leader, Øystein Aarseth, who instead of calling the police immediately, left to buy a disposable camera, and came back to take photographs of the corpse, which were eventually used for the bootleg live album Dawn of the Black Hearts (whose creator, Mauricio Montoya Botero, died in 2002 by suicide).
[5][sr 10] Aarseth also picked up fragments of his friend's skull, which ended up on a display shelf at the Helvete record shop in Oslo.
[sr 11] The following year, Bård "Faust" Eithun, a co-worker of Aarseth, stabbed a homosexual man in a park in Lillehammer.
During the weeks that preceded the murder of Josef ben Meddour, Vlad had been more and more extremist in his speech, and the idea of performing human sacrifices, followed by a mass suicide, was discussed at length.
According to criminal inspector Lars Ohlin, who led the police investigation, Nötveidt stated during interrogation that the murder was a "sacrifice to Satan", but later retracted the statement.
[6] According to Ohlin, there is no denying that Nödtveidt and Vlad's acts were made on a background of Satanism, but homophobia was also a clear factor, and the Keillers Park murder was registered as a hate crime by the Swedish police.
[sr 14] On 6 July 1998, Nödtveidt was sentenced by the Gothenburg district court to eight years in prison for accessory to murder and illegal possession of a firearm.
Satanistmordet i Keillers Park An article written by criminal inspector Lars Ohlin, who led the investigation, originally published in the book Nordisk kriminalkrönika 1999.
