Sala gang

The gang's leader was Sigvard Thurneman (claims have been made that his assumed last name originated from the English word manhunter and he had relocated the letters) who had founded a spiritual organization with a very strict hierarchy, from which he recruited the members that would make up Salaligan.

The circumstances surrounding the murders and other crimes performed by the gang are not fully known and there are many stories about astonishing plans that were never executed.

[citation needed] Considered well below average in Swedish and mathematics and also physically weak, he left school and began working at his father's store, a gentlemen's outfitters.

Calling himself mästaren (the "master"), he introduced Thurneman to a movement named Den magiska cirkeln ("The magic circle"), which he was the leader of in his native country.

Each member had to sign a contract where he obliged "to perform every action he could be prescribed" and that failure to do so would be punished by death after a decision by the "Triangle".

Hypnosis, Thurneman explained, to make the defector lose his memory or commit suicide, could be a suitable punishment instead of actually killing him.

After cab driver Sven Eriksson, who turned forty years old the same day, had arrived and picked up Thurneman outside the café, they made a stop at a gas station to fill up before they continued.

Thurneman had managed to kill the taxi driver and steal his car, but he had failed to take the money of the man before he was thrown into the water.

A couple of years later, an attempt was made, using fake police uniforms, to rob the dairy man, but he realized the scam and barricaded himself from the men and their guns.

The two men and another member of the gang, Roland Abrahamsson, made plans of how they would use their fake police uniforms to get into the cabin.

At the night to the 5th of September, 1933, they stole a car and headed for the location of the cabin, where Thurneman and Abrahamsson masqueraded as police officers.

Jansson rushed in to show the room of the maid, who managed to fight Thurneman for a while, before Abrahamsson shot her twice from close range.

This was from his share in the murder with robbery and the reason for the regular payments was that Thurneman was afraid that the friend might start talking in an intoxicated condition.

This time they wanted to avoid using guns, although they had brought them, and since Abrahamsson had heard of how one could kill rats by gassing them, they had come up with a plan.

After finding a disappointing six kronor and fifty öre, and discovering that the bags spotted by Abrahamsson contained a lot of worthless items and no money, the three collected furniture and material in a pile.

After the fire, which completely devastated the building before any help reached the location, the police was a bit suspicious considering what had happened in the area in the recent years.

However, when the coroner reported that Blomqvist had died of carbon monoxide poisoning, it was assumed that the fire was a genuine accident caused by a crack in the chimney wall.

This would kill hundreds of people and was meant to cause the entire police force of the city to engage in the investigations.

A bomb consisting of 15 kg of dynamite was constructed and at several times, the plan was nearly put into action, always failing at some detail, for instance not enough members of the gang showing up at the day of the execution.

At lunch time that day, Elon Pettersson was riding his bike towards the lime mill bringing the workers' wages.

The perpetrators fled into the woods where they hid the car and continued in another one, previously stolen by the gang and watched by Åke Lindberg.

He would only need to watch a car and the details he had received made him convinced that Hedström was involved in the murder with robbery.

He became good friends with Swedish forensic scientist Erik Karlmark who hired him as his assistant during the work on his thesis.

Around the end of the 50s and beginning of the 60s, Karlmark, who was one of many to believe that Thurneman was no longer a dangerous man, tried to get him released, but the media coverage and the public outcry made it impossible.

[4] Most sources are confident that the gang were involved with smuggling of such drugs and Wikström and Wrangnert writes that it's possible that Thurneman acted in the outskirts of a Stockholm-based organization.