All cases

Harlow County, Oklahoma, June 14, 1952. District Attorney Curtis Mabry is shot with a shotgun on his own front yard, the evening after a raid on the gambling house in Langley. No one is arrested, the witnesses stay silent, and the file is put in a drawer. In 1959 it is pulled out again, along with a tape recording no one wanted to hand over. The file was closed without charges. Three witnesses were deposed in 1952 and are dead: the mother in the house by the shed, the pump attendant at the filling station, and the hired hand who swept around the pumps, and two of their children now sit on the other side of the table. The voice on the tape calls himself a man from Vinita, and whoever follows the tape straight through ends up at the assistant district attorney. One sentence about sawdust at the edge of a tire track appears in three files and explains the rest.

about 4 h · 4–6 players

Mossbo crown homestead in the Alfta Finnish forest in Hälsingland, 1 May 1892. Crown sheriff's officer Albert Gawell and constable Olof Norén went up to the notorious liquor farm to seize the spirits and did not come away whole. Four men of the same family stood behind the shots, and only one of them held the rifle. A real case from Swedish legal history: the real investigation, the real interrogations and the real verdict. Everyone involved has been dead for more than a hundred years, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources accompany the case.

about 2 h · 1–4 players

Greenbrier County, West Virginia, 1897. Salt and coal merchant Cyrus Blackwood was found one March morning behind his barn with his skull crushed, and the sheriff wrote the death off as an accident in the dark. A spirit medium in Lewisburg claims a spirit witness has spoken from beyond the grave, but the truth lies in a left-behind leather glove, a sack of salt that was never weighed, and a hoof pick that someone carried with them.

about 2 h · 1–4 players

Atlanta, Georgia, March 1912. Ambrose Kern, a cotton merchant, was shot in his bedroom at night and died of the wound a week later. His wife Lyla Kern was accused of drugging him and shooting him for the insurance money, but was acquitted on August 3, 1912, and the file was closed without a verdict. Now the folder is on the table again: the docket number is still on the cover, and two old papers still bear a signature no one will own up to. Three witnesses were deposed and died: the cook in the house, the stableman at the club, and the seamstress. The cook's son weighs cotton in the firm's warehouse, the coachman's son drives the firm's wagon, and the telegram that seemed to come from Macon has a sender. One sentence in black ink on a right cuff appears in three acts, and whoever follows the household's trail straight ahead ends up in the kitchen while the answer lies in the firm's two ledgers.

about 4 h 15 min · 4–7 players

Sundsvall, 4 October 1907. The pharmacist Herman Ekdahl is found dead at the desk of the pharmacy on Storgatan with his coffee cup before him, and in the dregs lies a white powder. Under the sink stands the cash book with a last line written in another hand, a page has been cut from the prescription book, and in the town sit a city physician and a retired pharmacist who both had something to gain from the pharmacy changing owners. The pharmacist's sister, Miss Hildur Ekdahl, is his only surviving relative and carries her own key to the gate, and from the society archive in Stockholm is requested the paper on what the business was really worth. No one in the house wants to remember who carried up the coffee.

about 2 h 30 min · 4–5 players

Skogs parish in Ångermanland, the days around Christmas 1859. The crofter Pehr Zetterlund comes home from a visit to his wife and falls ill; a few days later he is found dead in his bed with vomit on the floor. She denies it and the cottage is empty of traces — but in the snow behind the house lies an envelope that no one will admit to knowing. A real case from Swedish legal history: the real investigation, the real witnesses and the real verdict. Everyone involved has been dead for more than a hundred years, and everything in the file comes from public records and contemporary press, whose sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 15 min · 1–4 players

Gästrikland, summer 1850. The farm owner Per Ersson of Lindåsen lies ill for months while someone poisons his coffee, his food and at last his drink, and the arsenic takes his life. Four people are arrested in the forests between Gävle and Hedesunda, and two of them are sentenced to beheading and executed on 16 July 1851 at the parish boundary toward Östervåla.

about 2 h · 1–4 players

The agent for the estate of master Anders Widmark was found drowned in the hammer pond at Mörkvik ironworks in August 1897, with a wound to the back of the head and the works' rowboat moored two ells from him. The case was closed as an accident, but when the estate's papers are brought forward again the times do not add up: a solemn letter is dated before anyone knew the man was dead, a deed of gift lies tucked inside the bar-iron ledger, and the strike settlement was paid with iron from the works' stock. Two of those who saw him that evening were deposed and died before the case was reopened.

about 3 h · 4–5 players

Attarp farm in Bankeryd parish, Småland, early summer 1845. The inspector Per Ludvig Ekwall and the maid Maja Stina Forsberg fall ill with severe stomach pains and die, and the provincial medical officer finds arsenic in their bodies. What remains is a family in which each accuses the other, and a daughter who in the end takes the blame upon herself. A real case from Swedish legal history — the same investigation, the same suspects and the same verdict. All those involved have long been dead, and everything in the file comes from public records; the sources accompany the case.

about 2 h · 1–4 players

Hammarnäs, 13 November 1993. The auctioneer Egil Norrback, who ran the town's auction house together with his valuer, was found dead on the floor of the house's vault the morning after the winter auction, with the auction gavel under a packing cloth twelve steps away. No one was arrested and the house was closed down; in 1996 the file is reopened by a new lead investigator. What remains of the evening is an alarm that was armed at 21:40, a phone call to Stockholm at 21:10 and a backing board that someone cut loose from its frame. The question is not who was in the house, but who painted what was sold.

about 4 h 15 min · 4–6 players

Sotholm hundred in Södertörn, New Year 1829. At the boatswain's croft in Gudö in Österhaninge, the farmer Olof Jansson is found beaten to death with an axe, and suspicion falls on his son-in-law, the young man of the house. On 26 June 1830 the condemned man is beheaded and quartered at Sotholm hundred's execution site at Galgstenen in Jordbro — the same place where the hundred's condemned have lost their lives since the Middle Ages, and an ancient monument numbered Österhaninge 502:1. A real case from Swedish legal history: the real investigation, the real suspects and the real verdict, with the sources in the file.

about 1 h 30 min · 1–4 players

Gamla stan, 14 November 1948. Master baker Henning Wåhlin is found dead in the bakehouse at Österlånggatan 27, the same night a fire breaks out in the flour store in the cellar. The bakery lived on ration cards, the bundle in the till was full of coupons, and a debt to wholesaler Malmberg at Mältorget fell due in December. No one in the building will own up to why the fire took only the room where the papers were kept.

about 2 h 30 min · 4–5 players

On the night of 1 September 1874, two men lie in ambush by the road north of Malmköping to rob the mail coach bound for Eskilstuna. Instead, engineer Reinhold Agrell's carriage stops, and he is struck by a blast of buckshot in the chest while the driver escapes. The mail chest is found two days later, broken open in a field, and of the four people who were nearby that night, one of them carried papers from an auction house in Stockholm.

about 2 h · 1–4 players

Vargfjället, 5 February 1987. The lawyer Krister Rhen, trustee in bankruptcy for Vargfjällets Stugby AB, is found dead in cabin twelve, where he had been sleeping during the inspection of the estate, with the gas heater burning in the room. The village calls it an accident: a stove that soots up and a man who fell asleep without airing the room, and that explanation is close at hand. But the stoves in the cabin village have changed places since the inventory list was written, two chains meet in a single man, and the explanation that lies closest is the one that is wrong. The estate was sold in April and the file was sent to the county archive without anyone being held to account.

about 3 h 15 min · 4–5 players

Skåne, the evening of 28 November 1881. At the Bessinge farm in Östra Sallerup parish, the farmer Ola Månsson sat by the window reading his Bible when a shot came in at an angle through the pane and he fell dead to the floor — while his wife and the farmhand sat at the malt kiln in the neighbouring village brewing beer with witnesses around them. A real case from Swedish legal history: the same investigation, the same suspects and the same verdict. Everyone involved has been dead for more than a century, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources are included with the case.

about 1 h 45 min · 1–4 players

Detroit, February 20, 1919. Foreman Walter Knapp (43) is found crushed in press 34 in the assembly hall, and the factory's own form says accidental death before the doctor has even seen him. But the time clock has punched out his card at a quarter past nine, a quarter of an hour after, according to the body, he was already dead, and the assembly hall's time book is missing half an hour that no one wants to explain.

about 2 h · 1–4 players

A parcel bomb kills the contractor Karl Sjöberg in the stairwell on Upplandsgatan in Vasastan. The package had been left in the entrance during the afternoon, the detonator was hand-built and the timing was set to the victim's routines. Six people circle the victim, and all of them have reason to lie about where they were when the package was left.

about 3 h · 4–6 players

Memphis, November 3, 1924. Cotton broker Ellis Grant is shot in his office chair on the second floor of the brokerage house on Front Street, the safe locked and untouched and the office door open to the stairwell. For three days he had been comparing the bale weights in his own book with the figures from the weighing room, and that same evening the season's weigh-in book presents different numbers than the press's record. The case sits unsolved in the archive until 1961, when the file is reopened and everyone who saw anything turns out to be dead.

about 4 h · 4–7 players

On the night of 14 April 1989, five farms outside Stenberga in Vetlanda Municipality catch fire, and eleven seats of fire have to be fought at once. At Hagagården the farmer Elof Sandgren, 76, is found dead in the burnt-out dwelling house, and it is first assumed that he was surprised by the flames. The forensic pathologist finds a shotgun wound in his chest, and the fire investigation shows that fires were set in several places in the house. The question is whether the fire was meant to conceal a murder or to make a murder look like an accident.

about 2 h · 1–4 players

Norrköping, 4 March 1943. Firefighter Sven Ekvall is found dead by the cellar stairs after a cellar fire on Fabriksgatan, the hose nozzle still in his hand and his watch stopped at 01:47. The fire had three seats in a room with no electrical fault, a steel wire was strung across the passage and the cellar was insured far beyond its value. Firefighter Albin Norén, the first through the north door, lost two days' pay after a report in January that no one will acknowledge, and the incident order for the night is written in two copies and nowhere to be found.

about 2 h 30 min · 4–5 players

Arboga, 14 November 1968. After the evening's pairs tournament at the bridge club on Vasagatan 7, the chairman Hilding Ström (62) is found dead in the playing room, with the challenge cup back on the shelf and the desk drawer forced open. Four tables played seven rounds, the last round ended at 21:40, and everyone except the chairman went home before ten. Missing from the briefcase on the desk is a document: the will that was to be shown to the notary in Örebro the following morning, dated in June and witnessed by a man who died in May. The club's treasurer is missing three thousand kronor in the cash book, and the chairman's sister-in-law lives in the flat downstairs.

about 2 h 15 min · 4–5 players

Hälsingland in June 1979. The Norén brothers ran the dairy farm by the river together, until the morning after Midsummer's Day, when Hjalmar Norén was found dead under the tractor out in the hayfield. The neighbours called it an accident, and the funeral was held before anyone had a chance to ask questions. Three years later, the farm's paper archive lies open: a rotary-dial telephone, a loan ledger in a chest with a combination lock, and a letter that was never posted. The witnesses along the road are dead and their records do not agree, and whoever follows the tool straight ahead gets the wrong man. Which of the six on the farm and in the village made sure the tractor stood out in the hayfield?

about 4 h · 4–6 players

Ironmaster Gustaf Ahlgren was found dead on the stone floor below the manor stairs at Lövsta ironworks in November 1893, in the middle of a strike and with a new will commissioned from the district judge. The pocket watch lying beneath him had stopped at 23:40, and that time became the case's truth for eight years. No one noticed that half the town kept to the sun and the other half to the railway, or that the most courteous document in the file is dated before anyone knew the man was dead. Two of those who saw him that evening were deposed and died before 1901.

about 3 h 30 min · 4–6 players

San Francisco, November 14, 1899. Recruiter Dan Crowley is found dead on the pier at Pacific Street, the back of his head caved in and an oak barling in the water beside him. The brig Petrel waits for the morning tide with a crew mustered three days earlier, and in the recruiter's commission book stand nine entries whose money none of the men have seen. The tavern keeper was in debt, the pilot saw a sloop in the fog, and the quartermaster had a future aboard to lose.

about 2 h · 1–4 players

Master brewer Henrik Vallström was found dead in his office at Vallström Brewery in Kungsholmen, Stockholm, on a November night in 1905. The glass on the desk was empty, the cash box stood open, and the telephone crank had been used after midnight. The brewery was insolvent and several of the partners were in debt. Was it an accident, a robbery, or someone after the master brewer's inheritance?

about 2 h · 1–4 players

The censor Arthur Ljung, 55, was found dead on the floor of the mail inspection room at the Marvik post office on the morning of 4 March 1942. He had a round, smooth wound on the back of his head, the letter press's mallet lay under the desk, and the door was locked from inside with the key in the lock. Wartime paper shortages kept the file brief, and in May it was closed without a suspect. In the autumn of 1945 the postal board opened a review of international reply coupons, which during the war could be sold as currency, and requested the records from Marvik. Two persons recorded in March and April 1942 died during the war. One man claims he was home asleep, a clock stopped at 21:42, and a mailbox was emptied three hours early.

about 3 h 45 min · 4–6 players

On October 12, 1969, publisher Edith Calloway is found dead in her boathouse at Lake Merced, south of San Francisco. The desk in the house has been searched, the door to the lake stands open, and in her clenched hand is a yellowed newspaper clipping. The case is investigated without a computer: just paper, tweezers and an opened envelope. Which of the four on the property killed her, and what did the cipher say that she hid in the box on the desk?

about 2 h 30 min · 1–4 players

Boulder Canyon, Nevada, April 4, 1933. Cashier Ray Hollis is found dead on the floor of his barracks at the dam construction site, struck on the head, with the window open and the office cash box pulled out and empty. The case with the week's pay envelopes stands untouched in the pay shack next door, and nothing in the barracks suggests anyone took money with them. Foreman Gus Brennan kept the payroll list and counted the envelopes on the evening before the payout.

about 2 h · 1–4 players

Åsele market square, winter 1842. A farmer's son from Västra Gensjön is found murdered in a boathouse on the north side of the river, and a farmhand from the rectory was last seen crossing the ice in his company. The village has one dead man, one man in custody, and a hammer that someone has washed clean in the snow. A real case from Swedish legal history: the last execution in the Lapland region of Västerbotten, investigated through interrogation records, parish certificates, and a verdict recorded in public documents. The sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 15 min · 1–4 players

Broadway, Los Angeles, the night before 31 August 1947. During the evening's last screening at the Rialto Theatre, owner Vincent Marchetti is found dead in his office above the lobby. The projector is still running, the door is locked from the inside, and in the wastebasket lies a torn receipt from streetcar line 7.

about 2 h 15 min · 1–4 players

Folkets hus in Sjöhaga, 8 March 1957. The travelling company Norrskenet premiered 'The Countess and the Shadow' to a full house, and when the curtain fell after the third act the prompter Henning Ståhl was found dead in the prompt box beneath the stage with a blow to the back of the head. The scenery weight in the left wing hung back on its hook, the trapdoor was screwed shut, and all eleven members stood on stage during the applause. The file was placed in the strongbox at Folkets hus and only came to light in 1964: interrogation records, the prompt book with the evening's entrances, the light cue sheet, and an envelope with an advance that had gone missing from the till. No one is missing from the house, no one has seen anything, and whoever reads the cast list on the poster straight through gets a judge who does not exist.

about 3 h 15 min · 4–6 players

Bergslagen, 2 October 1801. The ironworks owner at Kloten is travelling home from the district court in Kopparberg when two shots fall from the edge of the forest at the Bergsgård clearing and he collapses in the carriage. The driver drives on, and at the scene are found traces of a planned wait: several men had stood at their respective roads and one of them had been paid to shoot. A real case from Swedish legal history: the real investigation, the real names and the real verdict, taken from the records of the Svea Court of Appeal. All those involved have been dead for more than two hundred years, and the sources accompany the case.

about 2 h · 1–4 players

Stockholm, August 1920. Seamstress Siri Lindvall (22) was found dead in bed in the caretaker's kitchen at Banérgatan 2, with the blind half raised and the door unlocked. The chief constable, who was her closest friend, was on the scene before the ambulance arrived, and the file was shelved when the court could not establish a cause of death. Now it has been brought out again.

about 4 h · 4–6 players

Stockholm, Christmas Day, 25 December 1947. Inside the Italian legation Villa Oakhill on Djurgården, Minister Alberto Bellardi Ricci is hacked to death in the middle of a Christmas lunch, and the man seized at the scene is Giuseppe Capocci — balloon seller, patient at Långbro Hospital and out on his first leave in several years. A real Swedish case: the same investigation, the same documents and the same verdict. Everyone involved is long dead, and the sources accompany the case.

about 2 h · 1–4 players

Stockholm, 20 March 1650. In the executioner's own house at Stigberget, a man lies dead in the doorway, with a wound only an edged weapon could have made. The master of the house is the city's executioner, known as Master Mikael, and no one else was in the room when it happened. He says the guest ran onto his sword by accident — and the court must decide whether an executioner's word weighs heavier than the sword in his own house. A real case from Swedish legal history: the same investigation, the same suspect, the same verdict. All those involved are long dead, and the entire record rests on public documents — the sources follow the case.

about 1 h 15 min · 1–4 players

The artist Erik Sterling is found lifeless in his studio on the island of Grisslan in the Stockholm archipelago in October 1934. A thick fog has isolated the island since midnight, the lighthouse has been dark and no boat has been able to land. Five guests slept in the house. Who put out the lighthouse, poisoned the host and slipped into the studio?

about 3 h · 4–6 players

September 1937. Farm owner Ossian Grönlund, who holds the mining rights beneath his homestead, is found dead on his jetty at Svartlidstjärn with a wound to the back of his head and one oar missing from the rowboat. It looks like an accident: a man who slipped on his own planks. But the tobacco in his pouch is dry, his coat tails are wet to the waist, and the mining company has made an offer to buy out the mining rights before the lease expires at the district court.

about 3 h · 4–6 players

A count is found shot in the castle's locked library during a raging thunderstorm in 1978. No one heard the shot, and every guest has a seemingly watertight alibi. Count Birger Sture, 71, lay on the rug in front of the desk at Sturehof Castle with his own pistol beside him and a bullet hole in the windowpane; the door was bolted from inside and the electrical panel had been knocked out by the storm. A cold case that demands cooperation among all four investigator roles.

about 3 h 45 min · 4–7 players

Uppsala Castle and Skuttunge parish in Uppland, 1855. Erik Buhr sat in the prison tower, sentenced to death for drowning his father in a forest lake. For a long time it looked like an accident — the father had fallen overboard when the boat capsized, and no one had seen the son at the lake. Much later he went to the county sheriff himself and gave himself up, and on his own confession he was sentenced to lose his life by beheading. A real case from Swedish legal history, known through prison chaplain Bernhard Wadström's account: the real investigation, the real verdict and the real execution on 10 November 1855. Everyone involved has been dead for more than a century, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 15 min · 1–4 players

Estate owner Elin Vinge is found dead in the study at Sundby Manor the morning after a dinner with her closest circle. The door was locked from the inside, the medicine cabinet stood open, and the evening's dosage had been rewritten in a different pen. Only the family doctor and the housekeeper had a key to the cabinet, and four people had something to gain from the estate changing hands.

about 2 h · 1–4 players

Åker parish in Småland, Christmas 1764. The farmer and neighbour Anders Johansson of Härsköp is found slain, suspicion falls on the farmhand at the neighbouring farm, and in the autumn of the following year the condemned man is taken to the moor east of Åker church. The motive was never written down — the record bears names, dates and the verdict. A true case from Swedish legal history: the real condemned man, the real victim and the real execution, with the sources in the record.

about 1 h 15 min · 1–4 players

Brunflo parish in Jämtland, winter 1835. In the village of Gärde a wife is found dead in her own home, and suspicion falls on her own husband — a poor labourer driven away to work in Ragunda in the year of crop failure. The case comes before an extraordinary court session in January, and before the year is out the sentence has been carried out on the boundary between two parishes. A real case from Swedish legal history: the real investigation, the real verdict and the real execution. Everyone involved has been dead for generations, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 15 min · 1–4 players

Naum parish in Barne hundred, 27 September 1828. At Lunnegården in Kedum the former soldier Lars Roos is killed with a knife, and suspicion settles on the crofter at the farm. He sits in custody in Mariestad for nearly two years while the inquiry drags on, and on 22 June 1830 he is beheaded at the execution site at Hillestorp in Naum. A real case from the records of Barne hundred and the Göta Court of Appeal: the real investigation, the real weapon and the real verdict. All those involved have been dead for generations, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 15 min · 1–4 players

Länna parish in Åker hundred, Södermanland, February 1785. The maid Maria Jacobsdotter is found murdered one morning, and suspicion falls on the farmer at Vretstorp; he is brought before the Åker hundred court and in the autumn of the same year taken to the hundred's old execution site at Biarhällsmon. The motive was never written down — the record bears the name, the date and the sentence. A real case from Swedish legal history: the real convicted man, the real victim and the real execution, with the sources in the record.

about 1 h 30 min · 1–4 players

Lyrestad in Vadsbo hundred, 5 January 1857. At the farmstead in Anderstorp, the farmer's mother-in-law Stina Jonsdotter is found dead in her own home, strangled, and the son-in-law Anders Carlsson is arrested and brought to trial. By the end of the year he stands on Fägre moor to lose his own head. A true case from the Vadsbo hundred court records: the same strangling, the same verdict, the same execution.

about 1 h 15 min · 1–4 players

Lindås in Madesjö parish, summer of 1847. The farmer Olof Johnsson is set upon and robbed on the road between his home and the church village, his skull crushed, and he dies a few days later. The barometer soon points to a neighbour, and on the neighbour's shirt there is blood that no washing has got out. A real case from Småland's legal history: the same investigation, the same suspect and the same verdict. Everyone involved has been dead for more than a century, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources follow with the case.

about 1 h 15 min · 1–4 players

Matarengi in Övertorneå parish, Norrbotten, July 1833. Two deserters have fled from the 45th Russian Jaeger Regiment in Vasa and are terrorising the countryside around the Torne River. When the farmhand Per Johansson Pitkä sets out to arrest them, he meets his death by a knife — and a year later the man taken into custody is brought out to a temporary execution site at the foot of Mount Isovaara. A real case from Swedish legal history: the real investigation, the real knife wound and the real verdict. Everyone involved has been dead for more than a hundred years, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 30 min · 1–4 players

Stora Malm parish in Oppunda hundred, Södermanland, May 1805. The farmer Anders Andersson, known as Anders of Lilla Högen, is strangled to death above Prästtorp, and suspicion falls on the soldier of the Tible rote, who had served with the Life Company since 1797. Half a year later, on 13 November 1805, the condemned man is taken to Heby moor and beheaded. A real case from Swedish legal history: the real investigation, the real convicted man and the real execution, with the sources in the file.

about 1 h 15 min · 1–4 players

Stockholm, 1630. On Gråmunkeholmen, the island where the Grey Friars' monastery once stood, a man loses his life at another's hand. The town court tries the case under the manslaughter code, convicts a boatswain of the killing and has him executed. A real case from Stockholm's town records, where the registers carry the names, the place, the crime and the sentence.

about 1 h 30 min · 1–4 players

Villola village in Viksjö parish, Ångermanland, September 1770. Two farmers are arrested for killing their neighbour Micael Ersson, and the court sentences them to beheading and quartering. The sentence is carried out on 12 September 1770 on the hill by Källbäcken in Häggdånger — the execution site that then serves the district court for almost a hundred years. A real case from Swedish legal history: the real investigation, the real verdict and the real execution. Everyone involved has been dead for more than two hundred years, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources are included with the case.

about 1 h 30 min · 1–4 players

Mönsterås in Småland, autumn market 1824. Two men fall to quarrelling inside a tavern, and when the evening is over the crown pilot lies beaten so badly that he dies a few days later. Suspicion settles on the young former naval artilleryman, and four years later he is taken to Kuggås — the old execution site of Stranda hundred. A real case from Swedish legal history: the real convicted man, the real victim and the real execution, with the sources in the file.

about 1 h 15 min · 1–4 players

Stockholm in July 1630. Outside the Rosenkrans cellar a stranger lies dead on the floor, and the town court hears witness after witness about a drinking bout that got out of hand. The cloak, the knife and a cellar boy's word point to one of the men — but two brothers are already in custody for the killing. A real case from the Stockholm town records: the same investigation, the same witnesses, the same verdict. Everyone involved has long been dead, and the whole file rests on public documents — the sources are included with the case.

about 1 h 45 min · 1–4 players

Stockholm, the evening of 6 August 1827. In a house on Kungsholmen, a discharged artilleryman and tinsmith strikes his landlord on the head with his wood axe, and the man dies within a few hours. The two had been on good terms, and that same morning he had treated the landlord to a dram — but a quarrel in the entryway ended it all. A real case from Stockholm's legal history: the same interrogations, the same verdict and the same punishment. Everyone involved has long been dead, and everything in the record comes from the condemned man's own account and contemporary print — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 30 min · 1–4 players

Arbrå parish in Hälsingland, winter 1780. On the ice of Kyrksjön, the smith Anders Enqvist of Änga is found beaten to death, and the trail leads to the inn at Torön, where he had been accused of theft that same evening. Three men were taken to the castle jail in Gävle and two of them were sentenced to death by the court of appeal — but only one went to the block at the execution site. A real case from Swedish legal history: the real investigation, the real verdict and the real execution. Everyone involved has been dead for more than two hundred years, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 45 min · 1–4 players

Adelöv parish in Norra Vedbo hundred, the evening of 23 September 1836. On the road home from the market, the farmer Johannes Jansson of Flisby is set upon and beaten so badly that he dies two days later. Two brothers from the district are arrested and brought to trial, and the King's judgment follows a little over a year later. A real case from Swedish legal history: the actual trial, the actual names and the actual verdict. Everyone involved has been dead for more than a hundred years, and everything in the file comes from contemporary press and public records — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 30 min · 1–4 players

Arbrå parish in Hälsingland, autumn 1816. The discharged veteran Olof Olsson Smed from Östansjö is struck by a shot and dies on the spot, and three people from the district are brought before an extraordinary court at Arbrå: the crofter Eric Larsson Gråberg of Mörtsjö, the widow Margta Jonsdotter of Östansjö, and Barbro Ersdotter. Two of them go to the block on the scaffold between Arbrå and Bollnäs on 26 June 1818, while the third dies in custody before then. A real case from Swedish legal history: the real investigation, the real verdict and the real execution. Everyone involved has been dead for more than two hundred years, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 45 min · 1–4 players

Svenstorp in Starrkärr parish, Ale hundred, the night of 15 April 1853. The general store by the road to Älvängen stands open and two women — mother and daughter — lie dead, one with her throat cut. The trail leads to the young crofter's son who was keeping watch in the house. A real case from Swedish legal history: the real investigation, the real witnesses and the real verdict. Everyone involved has been dead for more than a hundred years, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 15 min · 1–4 players

Öland, April 1841. In a cottage in Stenåsa parish, the two lodgers Jöns Olsson and his wife Brita Olsdotter are found beaten to death with an axe, and two chests stand broken open beside them. Suspicion first falls on a crown tenant farmer in the neighbouring village, but the tracks point to a young farmhand from Mysinge who went around the area offering small goods. A real case from Öland's legal history: the actual investigation at the Öland Southern Hundred Court, the actual verdict and the actual execution at Rösslösa gallows hill in Kastlösa in March 1842. Everyone involved has been dead for more than a hundred years, and everything in the file comes from parish archives, court records and public documents — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 30 min · 1–4 players

Stockholm, the night of 17 September 1881. The cargo boat »Anna« lies moored in the harbour; aboard sleep the owner Anders Jacobsson, his partner Elna Maria Sanden and a young crew boy. Before dawn the moorings are cast off and the sails are set — when the boy runs to the police on Myntgatan the next morning, two people are gone, one of the men already arrested aboard and the other on the run towards the archipelago. A real case from Swedish legal history: the arrests, the inquest and the only double execution on Långholmen in 1882. Everyone involved has been dead for more than a hundred years, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 30 min · 1–4 players

On the night of 3 November 1976, the drying shed at the Skogsbo furniture factory burns to the ground. The factory owner, Evert Skoglund, is found dead in the ashes, and the fire chief calls it an accidental fire. But the forensic pathologist in Örebro finds a blow to the back of the head, and the factory's cash book is missing from the desk drawer in the office.

about 2 h 15 min · 1–4 players

Grimsta in Spånga parish, the fourth day of Christmas 1766. The old district court judge Erik Mattson comes home from the church service and steps out of the sleigh, and at that same moment a shot falls from the guest house. He lies face down by the farm gate with his mittens still on his hands and the whip in his hand, but speak he cannot. In the guest house his son has locked himself in with a loaded gun. A real case from Stockholm's older legal history: the inquest in the Spånga parish hall, the witnesses, the weapon and the verdict are in the records of the Sollentuna district court. Everyone involved has been dead for more than two hundred years, and everything in the file comes from public documents — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 15 min · 1–4 players

Karlskrona, 4 November 1958. Prison guard Ragnar Hedin of Kronohäktet is found floating in the harbour basin below the prison's boathouse with a crushed wound to the back of his head, two hours after he went off his shift with the prison's cash book under his arm. The cash book lies open on his kitchen table with its last page torn out, and a boat hook belonging to the boathouse is missing from the guard corridor. Four people had something to lose from his evening reckonings.

about 2 h · 1–4 players

Stockholm, 20 June 1810. Crown Prince Karl August's funeral procession passes through the city, and the Marshal of the Realm follows it according to protocol. An angry crowd believes he is behind the crown prince's death; the riots grow, stones whistle around the gilded carriage, and at last he lies beaten to death in Riddarhustorget — while the guard stands drawn up without intervening. A real case from Swedish legal history: the real investigation, the real interrogations and the real verdict. Everyone involved has long been dead, and everything in the file comes from contemporary documents and public sources — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 45 min · 1–4 players

New York, January 1955. Financier Milton Rask is found strangled on the floor of his bedroom on Fifth Avenue. The front door was locked, no window broken, and five people slept under the same roof. The time of death is set between half past two and half past three in the morning. Someone in the house had a key he should not have had — and a reason to use it.

about 2 h · 1–4 players

Kramfors, 19 May 1954. Log-driving foreman Gustav Ljungberg is found dead in the Ångerman River below the sorting works, wedged among the logs in the last bundle of the night's marking, with a blue marking stamp on his chest and an abandoned boat hook at the water's edge. His stamp is missing from the loggers' hut, and in the works' shed lie receipts from a dealer in Sundsvall. Nineteen bundles of logs are stamped on a bank where the crew never worked.

about 2 h · 1–4 players

On a November night in 1957, vicar Birger Sandell is found dead at the office desk in the Ljunga parish hall. The telephone is connected and seemingly undamaged, but the mark around his neck is anything but an accident. The church council's audit was due the next day, and four people had a key or business in the house.

about 2 h · 1–4 players

Malmö, 12 November 1957. The photographer Henning Wallin is found dead on the floor of his darkroom at Södra Förstadsgatan 31, an iron plate from the enlarger stand beside him and the red darkroom lamp still lit. The enlarger stands loaded with a negative from the order book, entry 417: an enlargement that was paid for and was to have been collected on 9 November, but that no one came to take. The front door was unlocked, the cash box untouched, and the neighbour upstairs heard a crash at a time that does not match his own clock.

about 2 h 45 min · 4–6 players

Örskär off Uppland, 21 November 1929. The lighthouse keeper Emil Hallgren is found dead on the rock below the lighthouse, with one boot left up on the edge and a smashed lantern at his feet. The lighthouse lamp burned all night, the assistant kept watch, and the lighthouse's logbook for the year is missing from its cupboard. The papers were never brought together: they lay in a cupboard in Norrtälje until 1957, when an official cleared out an archive and found the diary, the oil book and the draft of a letter that was never answered. The witnesses have long been dead, and whoever follows the keeper's own papers straight ahead gets the wrong man.

about 4 h · 4–7 players

A prominent geologist was found dead at the bottom of a disused mine shaft in Bergslagen in 1992. What was first written off as a fall accident turned out to be a cold-blooded murder. Can your team crack the mystery with the help of old maps and seismic surveys? On the night of 8 October 1992, geologist Erik Berg, 47, Nordmalm Mineral AB's man at the Silver Mine, left the mine last of all. Two days later he was found at the 62-metre level below mine shaft 4 with his geological hammer at his side and a skull injury that could not be explained by the fall. In the archive from Malmtorp lie seven people, an elevator log, a PLC control card and a mineral bid, and two of those who saw something that evening were deposed and died before the case was reopened. The witnesses contradict each other, a time shifts when the evening meal is corrected, and a line about the time clock stands in four acts without anyone paying it any heed.

about 3 h 45 min · 4–7 players

Silbodal parish in Värmland, autumn and winter 1864. Poor relief weighs on a poor forest district, and now and then an old and sick person dies shortly after the vicar has visited them with communion; in the death register age and cause are entered. Only when relatives of the former merchant Anders Lysén request exhumation and autopsy does it become clear that several of the dead carried arsenic in their bodies. A real case from Swedish legal history: the same investigation, the same suspects and the same verdict as in 1865.

about 2 h · 1–4 players

Östra Sallerup parish in Skåne, December 1860. The farmer Anders Persson comes home from a journey and grows steadily worse; he dies in his home at Årröd no. 2, and the priest writes in the death register that he was done away with by his wife by means of arsenic poisoning. Once she is arrested, she also confesses to another murder, that of her first husband. A real case from Swedish legal history, in which two men died by the same hand. Everyone involved has been dead for more than a hundred years, and everything in the file comes from death registers, prison journals, contemporary press and local heritage research, whose sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 15 min · 1–4 players

Glommersträsk in Arvidsjaur's Lapland, November 1824. The farmhand and settler's son Petrus Larsson Vikberg, twenty-seven years old, is found dead in his bed after several days of violent stomach illness, and soon the village whispers that the death was not natural. Half a year later the body is dug up from the churchyard and the doctor in Skellefteå finds arsenic and sulphuric acid in his internal organs — and two women close to him are brought to trial. A real case from Norrland's legal history: the same records, the same witnesses and the same verdict. All those involved have long been dead, and everything in the file comes from preserved documents — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 30 min · 1–4 players

Småland, late winter 1833. In the crofter's cottage at Judhult in Göteryd parish, a jug laced with arsenic was set out, and Johanna Jonsdotter died of the poison. Four years later, two women from the district stood at the execution site in Ljungby and were burned at the stake. A real case from Swedish legal history: the same investigation, the same accused, and the same verdict. Everyone involved has been dead for more than a century, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources are included with the case.

about 1 h 30 min · 1–4 players

In May 1856 the miller's wife Maria Elisabet Ruckman lies dead in her home at Häljakvarn in Kölaby parish, and the doctor finds arsenic in her body. The miller Gustaf Benjaminsson is arrested and convicted, while the maid at his side is questioned and released without sentence. In April 1858 he is taken to the execution site Knallen in Redväg hundred, where he is beheaded. A real case from the judgment books of the Göta Court of Appeal: the same poison, the same wife, the same verdict.

about 1 h 30 min · 1–4 players

Hammenhög no. 4 in Skåne, spring 1820. The farmer on the farm fell into severe agony after eating food in his own house, and died on 4 April without anyone suspecting foul play at first. Only when the guilty themselves sought comfort from their priests and confessed did a chain of arsenic unroll through the village. A real case from Swedish legal history: the district court's inquiry, the priests' record of the confession, and the execution on the gallows at Toarp. Everyone involved has been dead for more than two hundred years, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 30 min · 1–4 players

Småland, Sunnerbo hundred, May 1817. At the farm in Kvänarp in Berga parish the peasant Bengt Torsson was poisoned, and suspicion fell on his wife. Six years later his widow stood at the Sunnerbo hundred execution site, sentenced to lose her right hand, be beheaded and burned at the stake. A real case from Swedish legal history: the same investigation, the same accused and the same verdict. Everyone involved has been dead for more than a century, and the sources follow the case.

about 1 h 15 min · 1–4 players

Halland, the Christmas days of 1786. The maid Maria Mathisdotter of Vilshärad wanted rid of her betrothed's father, old Jöns Andersson at Skee mill, and obtained arsenic through the woman at Bjeret. Porridge was set out on 19 December, and two days later the old man was dead. In July 1788 one of the two accused was beheaded and burned at the execution site at Kvibille. A real case from Swedish legal history: the same investigation, the same accused, and the same verdict. Everyone involved has been dead for more than two centuries, and everything in the record comes from public documents — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 30 min · 1–4 players

Lyby parish in Frosta hundred, Skåne, August 1767. The farmer Bengt Mårtensson's wife, Brita Olofsdotter, falls ill at her own table and dies. The house is small and few lived there — yet it takes time before the poison in the drink is given a name. A real case from Swedish legal history: the actual investigation and the actual judgment from the Frosta hundred court. Everyone involved has been dead for more than two hundred years, and everything in the record comes from preserved parish registers — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 30 min · 1–4 players

Fransåker farm in Odensala parish, Uppland, 28 August 1828. The wife Anna Nilsdotter, 66, falls ill at breakfast with severe stomach pains and dies that same evening; the provincial doctor finds arsenic in her stomach. Suspicion soon falls on the maid at the farm. A real poisoning case from Uppland's legal history: the real trial, the real verdict and the real execution at Svartkärret in 1829. Everyone involved has been dead for nearly two hundred years, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources are included with the case.

about 1 h 15 min · 1–4 players

Onsjö in Västanfors parish, Västmanland. The farmer Anders Andersson falls ill and dies on 3 December 1843; the parish death register gives consumption, but the court sees something else. A little over a year later his widow, Stina Andersdotter, stands at the execution site in the forest between Norberg and Västanfors parishes. A real case from Västmanland's legal history: the investigation, the conviction and the execution on 26 August 1845. Everyone involved has been dead for more than a hundred years, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources follow with the case.

about 1 h 15 min · 1–4 players

Amnehärad parish in Vadsbo hundred. Two people at Råglanda fall ill and die after taking arsenic in food and drink, and suspicion falls on a couple at the same farm. The trial takes them to Vadsbo hundred court, and in the summer of 1862 both are taken to the execution site at Fägre moor, where the executioner beheads them. A true poisoning case from the court records: same poison, same verdict, same couple.

about 1 h 30 min · 1–4 players

Koppetorp in Frödinge parish and the gallows hill at Skillingarum, 1819–1820. A maid who had served in the widower's household and stood close to him is spurned when he turns to another woman. She puts arsenic in the sausage she hands him, and he dies. The verdict is passed, and she is taken to the gallows hill at Skillingarum to be beheaded and burned at the stake. A real case from Småland's legal history: the actual verdict and the actual execution. Everyone involved has been dead for more than a century, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 15 min · 1–4 players

The vicarage at Varv in Aska hundred, autumn 1784. The curate of Varv and Styra fell suddenly ill and died in the night of 28 October, and the physicians' examination found signs that did not belong to the disease. Suspicion fell on his own wife, and the Aska hundred court sentenced her to lose her right hand, be beheaded and quartered. A true case from the Linköping diocese clergy register and the records of Aska hundred. All those involved have been dead for more than two hundred years, and everything in the file comes from the sources accompanying the case.

about 1 h 15 min · 1–4 players

Glumserud in Väse parish, Värmland. In 1839 a young son finally stands trial for putting poison in his parents' food: the mother died, the father in the house survived. The district court sentences him to death, two clemency petitions soften the sentence, and in November he is taken to the Väse hundred execution site. A real case from Värmland's legal history: the contemporary newspaper report, the guilty verdict, the pardon and the beheading. Everyone involved has been dead for more than a hundred years, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 15 min · 1–4 players

Halland, 1856. In the house at Ängarna under Hjörne in Veddige parish an old woman dies, and only two years later does it become clear that she had been poisoned with arsenic. Her daughter-in-law has by then been arrested and convicted of murder, and in April 1858 she is taken to Varberg Fortress, where she is beheaded within the fortress walls. A real case from Swedish legal history: the same investigation, the same verdict and the same punishment. Everyone involved has been dead for more than a century and a half, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 30 min · 1–4 players

Vibo, Tegelsmora parish, the night of 14 February 1844. The tax-paying farmer Olof Olsson sits down to breakfast before driving the cartload of wood to Uppsala — grain sausage, smoked pork and lutfisk with milk sauce. Before midday he lies dead on the sofa in the cottage, and the doctor finds arsenic in his body. His wife Stina Pehrsdotter, whom the parish calls Vibo-Stina, had shortly before bought arsenic for twelve shillings. A real case from Uppland's legal history: the inquest, the witnesses and the verdict come from the sources, and everyone in the record has been dead for generations. The sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 15 min · 1–4 players

Stockholm, 1756. The shoemaker and syringe-maker Abraham Guntlack is found dead in his house on Norrlandsgatan, and it is said that poison did him in. His wife and a guardsman are under arrest, and a maid in the city is found dead shortly thereafter. A true case from Swedish legal history: the same investigation, the same names and the same verdict. All those involved have been dead for more than two hundred and fifty years, and the sources accompany the case.

about 2 h · 1–4 players

Stockholm, 1590s. In the Stockholm town court book it is written how a woman of German descent and her husband's employer three times tried to take the cooper's life — twice with poison in his food and once with mercury in a butter-fried lamb's brain — before they crushed his head and stabbed him in bed. A real case from the town court's inquest: the same arrest, the same interrogations and the same verdict, all from public records. Everyone in the case has been dead for more than four hundred years. The quarter, the poison and the royal command to torment the condemned before execution are in the town court book; it is from that record the inquest in the room is built.

about 1 h 30 min · 1–4 players

Estate owner Axel Holmer was found dead in his car in a ditch outside Norrköping in March 1948. The engine was still running, the ration coupons were left in the glove compartment, and his own ledger was missing. The estate was in debt, the inheritance had not been divided, and the car had been seen at the edge of the ditch already before midnight.

about 2 h · 1–4 players

Malmberget, 20 March 1903. Mine foreman Axel Renberg is found dead in a drift ninety metres underground, his head against the grey rock and an extinguished lamp at his side. The drift is missing the charge that should have gone off at six o'clock, the blasting supervisor opened the explosives store that same evening, and two weeks earlier the foreman had found a shortfall in the store that no one could explain. The receipts in the explosives ledger are written in the same hand and the same ink all month, which no miner finds plausible.

about 2 h · 1–4 players

Chicago, May 1897. Marta Kellermann, wife of the owner of a packing house by the south branch of the river, disappeared on the night of May 1. Her husband says she took the night train to a sister in Bremen, but there is no ticket, no body has been found, and the watchman has changed his account of the night. In the cookhouse stands a cauldron that no one will claim.

about 2 h · 1–4 players

Anvil Creek at Nome, January 14, 1911. Claim owner Eli Vance (47) is shot down in his cabin during a snowstorm, with buckshot in the doorpost and a staking pin beside him. The storm buries all tracks that same night, no one is arrested, and the file is shelved in Nome. It is pulled out again in 1934, when a tin coffin in the shed by the creek is broken open: two extortion letters in the notary's hand demand Vance's share of claim no. 47, and whoever follows the papers straight through ends up at the notary. Two witnesses who were recorded in time are dead, a coachman remembers the wrong name, and a single sentence about a hole in a snowdrift recurs in three files.

about 4 h · 4–7 players

Stockholm, March 1626. A smith lies ill in his bed in the workshop by Munkbron when a hammer strikes him in the head. At the gaming table the master smith's apprentice and a servant had been playing cards for a jug of beer, and in the dark the blow fell. A real case from the Stockholm City Court Book: the same inquiry, the same man arrested, the same sentence and the same execution at Järntorget on 12 August. Everyone in the case has been dead for nearly four hundred years, and the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 30 min · 1–4 players

Handen in Österhaninge, on the night and morning of 9 January 1967. Two police officers are watching a loading dock at the newly built shopping centre in the town centre, where a theft ring is suspected of operating. At the dock they come across three men and grow suspicious of them — and the men draw a submachine gun and a pistol. THREE people are shot dead: Detective Inspector Uno Helderud, police officer Lars Birger Wikander and the security guard and dog handler Nils Bertil Nilsson. The investigation thus concerns three dead, not one, and a total of 34 shots were fired. One of the three men is later arrested in Strängnäs and confesses. A real case from Swedish criminal history: the same investigation, the same suspects and the same verdict as in reality. The convicted men and the three dead can be checked against the sources, which are included with the case.

about 2 h 15 min · 1–4 players

Railway hotel owner Viktor Norén is found dead in room 214 the morning after the night train stopped at the station. The door was locked with the security chain from the inside, the key card was left on the nightstand, and the window onto the fire escape stood ajar. Four people moved through the building that night, and all four have something to hide.

about 2 h · 1–4 players

The village of Felestad in Skåne, late summer 1745. The tenant farmer on the homestead had married his neighbour's widow, but the farm fell into ruin and he turned to the bottle ever more often. On the evening of 28 August he beat his wife so badly with a stake that she died the following day, and the district court found the blow to have been deliberate. A real case from Swedish legal history: the district court's inquiry, the Göta Court of Appeal's confirmed judgment, and the execution at the gallows hill in Annelöv on 5 March 1746. Everyone involved has been dead for more than two hundred years, and everything in the record comes from public documents — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 30 min · 1–4 players

Gustaf parish in Skåne, spring 1815. A lodger from Räfstad has with deliberate intent taken the life of his third wife, after a marriage the sources call discontented and unhappy. He is taken to the castle prison in Malmö, sentenced by His Royal Majesty to lose his right hand, be beheaded and quartered, and the death sentence is carried out at the execution site in Vemmenhög hundred. A real case from Swedish legal history: names, place, verdict and punishment come from the church register of Malmö castle parish, and every detail in the file follows the sources. The sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 30 min · 1–4 players

Skeda parish in Östergötland, Twelfth Night 1830. The farmer Anders Jönsson of Löfsätter and his wife Ulla Andersdotter had lived on the farm for many years. On the sixth of January she vanished from the house — and not until March was she found dead. He was arrested, convicted by the Göta Court of Appeal and taken to the Valkebo hundred's execution site, where his right hand was struck off, his head was severed from his body and the body was laid on the wheel. A real case from Swedish legal history: the real investigation, the real verdict and the real execution. Everyone involved has long been dead, and everything in the file comes from parish registers and archival records — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 30 min · 1–4 players

Gustavsberg, 2 March 1932. Thure Bäckström, a retired manager at the porcelain factory, was found beaten to death in his villa by Mörtnäsviken after three neighbours broke in through the kitchen window. One room in the house stood locked with the key still in the dead man's trouser pocket, and in the kitchen lay sand-mixed soil that someone had carried in on their shoes and peeled potatoes after an interrupted meal. The Stockholm criminal police never let go of a short iron pipe, and no one in the district can explain why the front door's safety chain was lying on the inside.

about 2 h · 1–4 players

The night train to Gothenburg makes an unscheduled stop at Falköping station in March 1924. In sleeping car no. 12, wholesaler Hjalmar Lind is found dead with strangulation marks on the back of his neck, the compartment window stands ajar toward the embankment, and the washbasin bears scratches from a sharp blade. Four people were aboard that night, and only one of them carried the broken penknife in his pocket.

about 2 h · 1–4 players

Högsby, 19 December 1928. The owner and publisher of the Högsby-Posten, Hedvig Rosendal, 63, is found dead in her chamber with the proof of the Christmas issue under her elbow and her evening coffee cold at her hand. The house is at full pressure to get out the year's biggest issue, the typesetters have given notice of a strike after the New Year, and on the desk lies an undated draft of a will that would take the paper from her only blood relative.

about 3 h · 4–5 players

On the night of 18 May 1962, stevedore foreman Halvar Sundin, 58, fell into the harbour basin at Quay 4 in Hamnvik. The quay edge had no railing, the man's blood alcohol was 1.8 per mille, and the case was written off as a fall from the quay. Five years later the pile drivers hammer into the mud for the new container quay, and out of the mud at Quay 4 come a hand lever and a weight log. Four of those who were in the harbour that night are still alive and can be interrogated; two who saw something were recorded before they died. A clock aboard a British steam freighter runs one hour behind the harbour clock, and a line about empty packaging appears in three records without anyone paying it any mind.

about 4 h · 4–6 players

Stockholm, Maundy Thursday, 19 April 1962. Dentist Robert Aspelin, a loner known as an eccentric about town, vanishes without trace after a visit to the bank. His account at Handelsbanken turns out to be almost emptied, and the cashier who handled his affairs becomes the investigation's only lead. A real, closed case: the same investigation, the same verdict — the sources come with the case.

about 1 h 45 min · 1–4 players

March 1889. At Mårtensgården, half a mile outside Hörby, the farmer's wife Elna Mårtensson, 24, is found dead at the foot of the cellar staircase. Her husband Truls and his mother Bothilda say she slipped in the half-dark with the bucket in her hand, but the district constable notes bruises around her neck and that the stairs were dry. Four people were in the house that evening, and two of them had reason to wish Elna had never come to Hörby in April.

about 2 h · 1–4 players

On the night of 14 June 1969, 24-year-old factory worker Karin Sundvall is found dead on the path between Tvetabergsvägen and the gravel pit in Södertälje. She had left the dance floor alone shortly before 11 p.m. On the ground lies a cut piece of cassette tape, and four people close to her all have something to hide.

about 2 h · 1–4 players

Kansas City, October 1909. Cornelius Draper, landowner and benefactor, died after a short and violent illness in his sister-in-law's house, with his niece's husband, Doctor Ellis Marrow, at the bedside. Three months later the casket was dug up, and the autopsy found both strychnine and cyanide in the organs. The doctor inherits part of the fortune and swears he only gave what a dying man himself asked for.

about 2 h · 1–4 players

Ås hundred in Västergötland, 1820 and 1830. A travelling pedlar is found dead under an oak at Falskog with a rope around his neck, and ten years later the gentleman at Hökerum manor is found stabbed to death in his own home. The traces point to the same man: the farmhand from Klämmestorp in Rångedala, whom the trading folk called Klämma-Sven — sentenced to death and executed. A real case from Swedish legal history: the real investigation, the real witnesses and the real verdict. Everyone involved has been dead for more than a hundred years, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 15 min · 1–4 players

On the night between 25 and 26 July 1965, Inga-Britt Malmberg, 47, is found dead in her bed in the terraced house on Söndagsvägen in Hökarängen. The first patrol writes it up as suicide and leaves the scene with an empty sleeping-pill glass on the bedside table. But the water glass she always carried with her to bed is gone, the papers in the desk have been moved, and in the dust under the bed lies a fine white powder that no one can explain. The investigation must determine whether she was sedated and died, or took her own life.

about 2 h · 1–4 players

Delsbo, Hälsingland, 19 May 1889. The farmer Jon Larsson of Norrväna was found hanged from a post in a meadow, and the district sheriff wrote the incident down as suicide. A year and a half later the silence broke, and the former constable Per Mathias Johansson — known as the Knife — confessed that he had killed on commission, at a fixed rate: seventy-five kronor for a woman and at least a hundred for a man. A real case from Swedish legal history: the real investigation, the real interrogations and the real verdict. All those involved have been dead for more than a hundred years, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources are included with the case.

about 2 h 15 min · 1–4 players

Station hand Halvard Svedin, 58, was found dead in the coal cellar beneath the goods warehouse at Ramsjö station in Ångermanland on the morning of 15 September 1943. He lay on his side by the coal hatch with a crush injury to the back of his head and coal dust on his clothes, and the investigation was written off in October as an accident during the blackout. No one was charged and the file was placed in the basement of the county prosecutor's office. In January 1945 the rationing authority went through the station's freight papers and found waybills for goods that had never appeared in any goods declaration. That same week the file was reopened. Three men carried keys to the goods warehouse, a freight train was fifty-two minutes late that evening, and two persons recorded in November 1943 died before the case was reopened. The case is cold, but the waybills remain.

about 4 h 30 min · 4–6 players

Storfjäll, 14 January 1986. Manager Halvard Norén is found dead in the snow below the summit station, the day after Storfjälls Skidlift AB was declared bankrupt in the middle of peak season with the winter sports holiday ahead. The locals call it an accident: the slope is icy, the man had been drinking, and a bankruptcy is no reason to go up a slope after dark. The autopsy says otherwise, the lift log says a third thing, and whoever follows the money straight ahead ends up with the wrong man. The case was set aside when the facility was sold at executive auction in March, and the file has lain untouched until today.

about 4 h · 4–6 players

Viggö in the Hälsingland archipelago, 8 July 1997. Art dealer Victor Asplund was found floating by the boathouse jetty the morning after the summer exhibition's opening night at the inn, his skull crushed and a tape still spooling in his pocket. The police wrote it off as a case in the dark and a man who had been drinking, and the file was closed that autumn. But the chest was empty, and on the tape a woman's voice is heard saying one sentence. Left in the house is a painting that has hung in the dining room for eighteen years, and a receipt from an auction in Norrköping in 1978.

about 3 h 30 min · 4–6 players

Winter 1931. August Hedenström, treasurer of the Järnbäck cooperative trading association, is found dead in the office behind the counter on the morning of 12 February. The safe stands open, the day's takings of 1,240 kronor are reported missing, and in the village everyone knows who was in debt to the treasurer. The manager of the mining company has called an audit, and the treasurer wrote down every item for himself — in the cash book, on the carbon copy, in a hand that was not his own.

about 3 h 30 min · 4–6 players

Villa Kullaliden on Kullaberg, the night of 24 August 1974. After the crayfish party, sea captain Sture Wallin (61) is found dead in the wicker chair on the glass veranda with a glass in his hand, and the household agrees that his heart gave out. The district doctor refuses to sign the death certificate, under the collar sits a thin mark no one wants to explain, and at the flagpole on the hill the line hangs freshly spliced and the flag does not reach the top. That same evening the host had said the loan would go to the bailiff on Monday.

about 2 h 15 min · 4–5 players

Niagara Falls, November 30, 1905. At six in the morning, machine engineer Owen Marsh is found on the floor of Turbine Hall 3, an oily wrench a few steps away and scorch burns on his back. The hall was locked overnight, the meter boards stood still in the load report, and the night shift says no power crossed the river to Clifton. Three men in the house are dead within six months: two who had managed to write down what they knew about the boards, and a coachman who saw a man at the gate and remembered the wrong name and the wrong hour. Some twenty-seven nights at full load and a coat on a hook point in opposite directions, and whoever follows the numbers straight ahead ends up at the wrong man.

about 3 h 15 min · 4–6 players

On 4 November 1975 the tower crane at Sköndals allé 19 drops a concrete beam onto the formwork, and the formwork carpenter and safety officer Ingvar Blidberg, 44, is struck beneath the load and dies the same afternoon at Södersjukhuset. The investigation closes the case in five days: the last line of the crane log gives the beam's weight as 2.4 tonnes, the beam weighed more, and the crane operator had misread it. Four years later the state inspector reopens the file, and two things do not add up: the lifting yoke that raised the beam was painted after the day it failed, and the man who called in the safety officer under the load appears in the record with a folder that no worker had. What is requested is the crane log page for the fourth of November, the inspection certificate, the safety round minutes of the twenty-ninth of October, the tool register in the workshop shed, the packing list for the lifting yoke and slings, the casting record for beam B-14, the scrap receipt from Hammarby and the receipt for the green paint. A fitter who saw the crane in October exists only as a statement in the file; he died in a traffic accident in 1977.

about 3 h 15 min · 4–6 players

Måsö in Stockholm's northern archipelago, 13 August 1991. Rune Svedberg, owner of the island's restaurant, was found floating by the restaurant's jetty with a crushed back of the head, the morning after a crayfish party that ran late. No one was arrested, the witnesses kept silent and the investigation was closed in November. Three years later two of those questioned are dead, the restaurant has changed owners and the dining-room clock's forty minutes remain in no investigation. What is left of the night is the till rolls, a note with four code numbers and a chef's IOU.

about 4 h · 4–6 players

The Crown's assayer Elias Wallin was found on 22 October 1912 in the lake by the Vikhamn shore, with gravel in his boots and his portmanteau still at the inn. The first report was written that same evening and called it an accident: the man had been drinking, the bank was slippery, and he had gone out alone in the dark. Follow the report straight through and you end up with the smith, who sat with him on the last evening, or with the fishing crew, who threatened him over a confiscated weight. But whoever instead reads the comparison book and counts the weights in the trade book arrives at a different man, and the sentence that settles the matter is a single courtesy in his own protocol: he knows a number that stands only in a book no one else has read. Requisitioned: the trade book at the Vikhamn harbour shop (code 'tradebook'), the mill book for the mill by the dam (code 'millbook'), the inn's house book (code 'housebook'), and the seizure document for the confiscated weight (code 'seizure'). Further, the medical examiner's statement on the lungs (code 'lungs'), the technical examination of the mill dam (code 'dam'), the profiling of the weights (code 'weights'), and the alibi table for the evening (code 'times'), as well as the recorded testimony after the maid (code 'maid') and after the mill hand (code 'millhand'). Four red herrings are requisitioned in particular: the threat from the fishing crew (code 'threat'), the lakeweed in the boots (code 'weed'), the clock at the inn (code 'houseclock'), and the note in the portmanteau (code 'note'). A photograph of the jug in the attic office is requisitioned (code 'jug').

about 3 h 30 min · 4–6 players

Brandywine, Delaware, September 14, 1903. Chemist Joseph Trent is found dead in the ruins of the laboratory at the powder works after an explosion tore down the north wing, and at first everything suggests he was standing at his own batch when it blew. The autopsy instead shows he was already dead when the fire came, and that the powder that went up had been laid on the floor around him. Foreman Frank Osgood counts the powder every morning and signs for every barrel that leaves the yard.

about 2 h · 1–4 players

Stockholm, the night of 17 March 1792. During a masked ball at the Opera, men dressed in black press close to the King in the crush and a shot falls at the stroke of twelve. The doors are barred, every mask is forced off and every name is written down — but the perpetrator wore a white mask over a black domino, and anyone could have worn it. A real case from Swedish legal history: the real investigation, the real weapons and the real verdict. All those involved have been dead for more than two hundred years, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources follow with the case.

about 2 h 15 min · 4–5 players

Skåne, 1922–1929. The mill in Veberöd burned to the ground on the night of 2 September 1927, and two months later the housekeeper Elna Sjöqvist was found buried in a grove near Ilstorp. Around the mill are four people who all stand to gain from the fire and the woman being explained away as an accident.

about 2 h · 1–4 players

Finance director Elisabeth Vinge disappears from the Norrköping paper mill on 19 December 1986 and is found nine days later floating in the ice-cold harbour basin. The case sits cold in a box in the police station attic — until a cassette unit with her voice lands on the investigators' desk.

about 4 h · 4–6 players

Dana Whitfield, 29, a secretary in the governor's office in Dover, disappears on June 27, 1996, after a dinner in Philadelphia with the lawyer Philip Kessler. No body is found, but in the house Kessler rented in Wilmington there is blood on a sofa that someone has hauled away, and out at sea a fisherman has pulled up a cooler box with a bullet hole in the lid.

about 3 h · 4–6 players

Gävle, the night of 24 August 1833. District constable and bailiff Carl Jacob Ekstedt is set upon and beaten to death with stones, and the trail leads to two naval reservists from the village of Alborga in Valbo and a third man from Sunnanås. At the extraordinary district court of Hille and Valbo two of them are sentenced to lose their right hand and be beheaded, and on 20 August 1834 they are broken on the wheel at the Årsunda/Valbo execution site — the county's last breaking on the wheel. A real case from Swedish legal history: the real investigation, the real verdict and the real execution. Everyone involved has been dead for more than one hundred and eighty years, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources are included with the case.

about 1 h 45 min · 1–4 players

Småland, near Kalmar, 3 March 1863. On the road between Träknivsmåla and the village of Sävsjö, a young travelling pedlar heading south meets a farmhand who offers to show him the way — and the murder becomes the last in the district to lead to an execution. A year later the farmhand was beheaded at the execution site in Vassmolösa, while the district kept silent about an axe, a share of the loot, and a stepfather who called him into the cottage. A real case from Swedish legal history: the same investigation, the same accused, and the same verdict. Everyone involved has been dead for more than a century, and the sources come with the case.

about 2 h · 4–5 players

Stevedore Melker Ågren, 41, left the evening shift at Quay 4 in Hamnvik on 12 April 1963 and never came home. Three weeks later, when hold three of the M/S Bjurön was opened in Rotterdam, he lay at the bottom of the hold among the bundles of corrugated cardboard, with his own cargo plan in his jacket pocket and a pencil note saying forty-seven bundles were counted and forty-six stood in the hold. The investigation was written off as a case of the room. In 1968, when the stevedores' shed is torn down for the container quay, the piecework slips for April 1963 come out of a box, and on the last line stands a bundle of seventy-eight kilos that no cargo list recognises. Eleven men in the gang kept silent for five years, and one of them took his story with him to the grave.

about 4 h 15 min · 4–7 players

March 1934. Shift boss Oskar Lind is found dead at the foot of level 2 at the Storliden mining company, his skull crushed and his wedge gone from his belt. Everything looks like an accident in the dark — until it is noticed that the snow on the platform railing lies undisturbed and that the wound is full of coal dust. A dead night watchman's notebook points to a coal carrier, and a shift in a ledger points away from him.

about 3 h 45 min · 4–7 players

Löderup, by the railway station, on the night between 4 and 5 December 1898. A general store is broken into, the cash desk is looted and the house is set on fire — in the flames the young shop assistant Katarina Romare, twenty years old, dies. In the ashes one thing stands clear: someone got in through the cellar window, and someone knew where the money was kept. A real case from Swedish legal history: the trial in Ystad, the psychiatric examination and the death sentence that was confirmed in 1900. Everyone involved has been dead for more than a hundred years, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 45 min · 1–4 players

Överklinten in Bygdeå parish, Västerbotten, September 1785. The farmer Lars Persson is found dead in the brook, and the death is first written off as a horse-kick wound by the ear. But at the funeral ale one of the guests says the man was murdered — and then word begins to spread through the district. A real case from Swedish legal history: the real inquest, the real hired murder and the real verdict. Everyone involved has been dead for more than two hundred years, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 45 min · 1–4 players

Malmö, the night of 8 May 1819. Fortification Commissary Hans Henrik Malmborg, known in the city as a rich and harsh moneylender, is found dead and cut to pieces in his own bed; his coins and watch are gone and no door is broken. A city in terror searches for strangers in the night, while the trail points inward through the house — toward those who knew where the money lay. A true case from Swedish legal history: the same house, the same investigation and the same verdict as in the contemporary records. Everyone in the case has been dead for generations, and everything in the case is in the sources — the sources come with the case.

about 1 h 45 min · 1–4 players

Late in the evening of 31 August 1874, shots rang out at a gate on the country road north of Malmköping. The civil engineer Herman Mauritz Upmark and his coachman Johan August Larsson had happened to get in the way of two men lying in ambush for the mail coach — who never got away with any loot. A real case from Swedish legal history: the same investigation, the same suspects and the same verdict, the one that led to Sweden's last public executions in May 1876. Everything in the file is drawn from contemporary newspapers, court records and serious historical writing — the sources follow with the case.

about 2 h · 1–4 players

Los Angeles, 1949. Alton Ridgeway, owner of Ridgeway Materials, was found embedded in the freshly poured cement form at a construction site on Clay Street. Police wrote the death off as a drunk-driving accident and filed the case away in October 1949. Now the white-coated forensic technicians have reopened the file, and a delivery note for a load of cement is still missing. Two witnesses were deposed in 1949 and died: the night watchman at the gravel yard and the cement tester, and the night watchman's son today carries evidence in and out of the police property room. Whoever follows the truck's route straight through ends up at the driver with 02:10 on his own delivery note; the decisive detail lies in a line in the driving log written in different ink and in a sentence about the left hand that appears in three acts.

about 4 h 15 min · 4–7 players

On 24 November 1971 a DC-8 lifted off from Seattle with a man aboard who was not on the passenger list. At 20:13 he opened the rear ramp over the Cascade Range and jumped with a parachute and a bag. Nine days later, when the forest-fire season had finally died down, he was found dead in a firebreak outside Castle Rock. The investigation wrote 'accidental death' and closed the file before the bills' serial numbers had been checked. Do you have the nerve to open it again?

about 3 h · 4–6 players

Stockholm, 1987. A young Finnish guitarist in the hard rock band Shock Tilt leaves his rehearsal room with the group's new manager and disappears. Almost two months later his dismembered body is found in black plastic bags in the Dalälven river at Gysinge. The man who built identities as a manager, record producer and doctor finally stands trial — but never confesses. A real, closed case: the verdict came in 1988 and the convicted man died in 2007. The people, places and verdict come from public records, and the sources are included with the case.

about 1 h 45 min · 1–4 players

Lake Mälaren, the night of 17 May 1900. The steamer is running from Arboga toward Stockholm with some twenty passengers aboard when a traveller rises in the dark and begins going from cabin to cabin with knife and revolver. Five people die and eight are wounded before the din falls silent and the perpetrator rows ashore in a lifeboat. A real case from Swedish criminal history: the real investigation, the real victims and the real verdict. Everyone involved has been dead for more than a hundred years, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 45 min · 1–4 players

On the night of 14 April 1896, furnace master Johan Vinge was found dead on the floor in front of the blast furnace at Marbacka ironworks, in the middle of a strike that had split the works town in two. The head wound was written off as dizziness and heat, and the case lay dormant for five years. When the papers from the bankruptcy auction are brought out again, they are not in order: a payroll ledger pays dead men, the night watchman has bolted a door he should not have had the key to, and at the edge of the crime-scene photograph lie prints that no one in the furnace house wore. The two who saw him that evening were deposed and died before the case was reopened.

about 3 h 45 min · 4–7 players

Skara, 12 April 1949. Dairy manager Elna Sandahl is found dead on the stone floor of the dairy's cheese room with a crushed wound to the temple and an overturned milk churn at her feet, after staying behind to write in the cash book. The last page of the book has been torn out, the dairy's car is still at the loading dock with a warm engine, and in the car's toolbox hangs a combination padlock that no one on staff will admit to knowing. The book shows that milk has been missing from the accounts ever since last autumn.

about 2 h · 1–4 players

On an autumn evening in 1889, widow Hilma Segerstedt is found dead in her study at Sundby Manor, with arsenic in her port glass and the door bolted from within. Two days later, a new will was to have been read aloud to the notary.

about 2 h · 1–4 players

Småland, the night between 30 and 31 October 1845. At the Järngallra croft in Döderhult parish, thieves broke in and murdered the elderly couple Sven Månsson and Lisa Hemmingsdotter, and carried off the loot. Four years later, Nils Jonsson Ågren was beheaded at the Kuggås execution site outside Mönsterås — the last person executed there, convicted both of the murders at the croft and of poisoning the farmhand Anders Nilsson at the church. A real case from Swedish legal history: the same investigation, the same accused, and the same verdict. Everyone involved has been dead for more than a century, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources are included with the case.

about 1 h 45 min · 1–4 players

Burträsk parish in Västerbotten, the night of 5 March 1821. The farmer Olof Rönnberg of Åbyn no. 9 is beaten to death near his farm after a drinking party, but before he dies he manages to say the name of his killer. Two soldiers had an old grudge against him over the rote allowances, and only one of them confesses in the end. A real case from Swedish legal history: the actual investigation, the interrogations and the verdict. Everyone involved has been dead for more than two hundred years, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources are included with the case.

about 1 h 30 min · 1–4 players

Västmanland, winter 1841. At the tenant farm of Bjärby in Sankt Ilian parish, the tenant farmer Johan Scherlund died of the injuries inflicted on him by his farmhand. The farmhand Johan Erik Andersson was arrested, convicted of murder, and beheaded at the Tuhundra hundred execution site on 18 January 1842. A real case from Swedish legal history: the same investigation, the same verdict, and the same execution. Everyone involved has been dead for more than a century, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 15 min · 1–4 players

Sund in Börstil parish, Uppland, 10 November 1789. The farmer Hindric Andersson is found dead in the well on his brother's farm, with three severe wounds to the head — and his brother Erik Andersson first says he fell into the water himself. The district court convenes, suspicions diverge, and only after almost two years does the verdict fall. A real homicide from the legal history of Roslagen: the real investigation, the real verdict and the real execution at Skogsänget in 1791. Everyone involved has been dead for more than two hundred years, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 15 min · 1–4 players

On Tuesday, 2 May 1865, the crofter's wife at Edsåker village in Ljustorp parish was shot through the left breast, and her husband had been away all day. Four people were taken into custody: a travelling tailor, the victim's husband, his housekeeper in the neighbouring house, and a boatswain who worked as a smith in the village. Discord had long prevailed between the spouses, and according to the court it was reasons of money and revenge that drove the deed. A real case from Medelpad's legal history: the verdict in July 1865 led to the last execution in Västernorrland, at Kallbäcken in February 1866.

about 2 h · 1–4 players

Everöd, Skåne, September 1849. Ola Hansson, husband of Botilla Trulsdotter, loses his life in the village, and his wife and the goldsmith's apprentice Jöns Theodor Marcussen are arrested and brought to trial for his murder. The court sentences both to death, and on 15 January 1851 they are beheaded at the Herrestad execution site before thousands of spectators. A real case from Swedish legal history: the people, the place, the verdict and the punishment are recorded in public documents and the contemporary press, and the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 30 min · 1–4 players

Bjuråker in Hälsingland, 23 January 1706. On the Svågabron bridge over the Svågan, a wandering Westrogothian pedlar is beaten to death with an axe; the body is shoved into the stone chest and his horse and sledge are sunk in the current. His goods and money are loaded onto another sledge, and his dog follows the one who did it. Suspicion falls on a twenty-three-year-old farmhand from the area, and at the market in Skalberget he confesses to the parish priest.

about 1 h 15 min · 1–4 players

Gotland, autumn 1831. The old retired farmhand Hans Andersson Tejnungs walks toward the forest land at Hangvar and does not come home again; he is found dead among the trees, and the tracks lead to the people of his own parish. The farmer of the homestead, his wife, the parish shoemaker and his apprentice are brought to trial, and on 16 January 1833 the sentence is passed at Endre backe — but one of the four escapes. A real case from Gotland's legal history: the real investigation, the real sentence and the real execution. All those involved have been dead for more than one hundred and eighty years, and everything in the record comes from church archives and public documents — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 45 min · 1–4 players

Gotland, autumn 1829. At the Hejdegårda farm in Hejde parish, the tenant farmer Jacob Olofsson is shot dead on his own land, and the one who held the rifle is no villager but a hired man. The investigation must keep apart the one who fired and the one who paid for the shot — two hands, one death. A real case from Gotland's legal history: the real investigation, the real verdict and the real execution at Stenkumla slope in February 1832. Everyone involved has been dead for nearly two hundred years, and everything in the record comes from church archives and public documents — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 30 min · 1–4 players

Hössjö village in Umeå parish, Västerbotten, August 1852. The farmer Olof Olofsson is expected home from the Nybygget Håknäs but never arrives; he is found beaten to death on the footpath with the household's own axe. In the house live his daughter and her husband, and the dispute over the homestead and the division of the estate has run high for several years. A real case from Swedish legal history: the real investigation, the real confession and the real verdict. Everyone involved has been dead for more than a hundred and fifty years, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 15 min · 1–4 players

Skåne, the night of 8 April 1746. The farmer Jöns Simonsson of Möllegården in Järstorp disappears from the village road and is found the next morning dead in the Verkeån, with a hole in his temple. Blood trails lead from a stile down to the water, and in the house lives a widow who for many years has borne hatred toward her son-in-law. A real case from Swedish legal history: the actual investigation, the actual interrogations and the actual verdict. All those involved have been dead for more than two hundred years, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 45 min · 1–4 players

Öland, 21 February 1835. At Crown Farm No. 8 in Kolstad, the farmer's wife Lisa Nilsdotter lies dead and bloody in the yard, and her husband is missing. He is arrested the following morning on a forest road and at first denies everything — but the household had quarrelled for years, and the axe was left lying in the front hall. A real case from Öland's legal history: the real investigation, the real verdict and the real execution on Köping's cliff on 17 August 1836. Everyone involved has been dead for nearly two hundred years, and everything in the file comes from the parish register and the district court records — the sources are included with the case.

about 1 h 15 min · 1–4 players

Kopparnäs village in Piteå rural parish, Norrbotten, autumn 1815. The farmer Jon Jonsson is found shot dead on his own land, struck by a shot from a rifled gun. Behind the shot stands the village blacksmith, and the one who ordered him is the son of the house — father and son have for years disputed a piece of newly broken land and the inheritance. A real case from Swedish legal history: the real investigation, the real verdicts and the real executions. All those involved have been dead for more than two hundred years, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 30 min · 1–4 players

Kragsta in Vassunda parish, Uppland, 29 September 1800. The maid Maria Andersdotter, twenty years old, disappears from the farm and is found dead in a bay of Lake Mälaren. The investigation centres on the servants at the same farm, and suspicion soon falls on a young woman who belonged there. A real murder from Uppland's legal history: the real inquest, the real verdict and the real execution at Grönslätt in 1801. Everyone involved has been dead for over two hundred years, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 15 min · 1–4 players

Kvallan in Huddunge parish, Västmanland, 1 June 1878. The farmer Anders Larsson kills his wife Anna Kristina Ersdotter; she is pregnant, and he sees no way to support both her and the expected child. He is sentenced to death, and under the 1877 law executions are thereafter carried out within the walls: on 13 February 1879 he becomes the first in Sweden to be beheaded behind the prison gates. A real case from Swedish legal history: the trial in Västmanland, the death sentence and the first execution no longer permitted to be seen by the people. All those involved have been dead for more than a hundred years, and everything comes from public records — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 30 min · 1–4 players

Lund, the night of 8 September 1829. Outside the university rector's house on Adelgatan lies a battered body, and a trail of blood leads across the street to the student barracks on the corner of S:t Annegatan and Adelgatan. Inside sits a theology student, covered in blood, with the dead man's key and wallet in his room, and only in the afternoon does he confess that he beat his comrade to death. A real case from Swedish legal history, judged by the university's own consistory while academic jurisdiction still applied; the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 30 min · 1–4 players

Falbygden, the night between 26 and 27 September 1819. At the Lunnagården farm in Bjellum, the servant girl Anna Andersdotter is found dead on the kitchen floor with her head crushed, and the master of the house, Hans Gunnarsson, is missing. Only after three days is he found in the forest, and the following year the axe is raised on the gallows hill at Billingen. A real case from the court records of Valle hundred: the same master, the same carving axe, the same verdict.

about 1 h 15 min · 1–4 players

Södra Fornbro, Ekeby parish in Oland, 26 February 1828. Anna Maja Wahlström is beaten to death with firewood in her own yard, and more than one man was in the house that morning. Two years later, the lodger Matts Jansson is beheaded and quartered at the execution site at Marma. A real case from Uppland's legal history: the district court's inquiry and the executioner's proceedings are the sources, and everyone in the record has been dead for generations. The sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 15 min · 1–4 players

Bölsåkra in Jonstorp parish on the Kullen peninsula, Skåne. The skipper Bengt Nilsson Hall loses his life, and his wife Kerstina Nilsdotter is convicted of the murder together with the farmhand Jöns Andersson. On 22 August 1792 both are executed at the Mörarp execution site in Luggude hundred. A real case from Swedish legal history: the people, the place, the verdict and the punishment are recorded in public documents, and the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 30 min · 1–4 players

Mossebo parish in Kinds hundred, Västergötland, October 1850. The watchmaker Anders Johansson from Näs in Båraryd sets out with his farmhand Erik Johansson for the Svenljunga coaching inn to change money, and on the path between Bållsjö and the crofter's cottage Sandbrinken he disappears. The farmhand says his master went on toward Halland — but the white gloves are bloodstained, and the bundle of banknotes moves. A real case from Swedish legal history: the actual investigation and the last execution in Svenljunga in 1853. Everyone involved has long been dead, and everything in the file comes from public records and contemporary newspapers — the sources are included with the case.

about 1 h 30 min · 1–4 players

Motala parish in Östergötland, the night of 23 September 1833. Through a hatch in Carlstén's shed a fatal shot is fired at the farmhand Jaen Jonsson Elg, and a known vagrant is sought in the district. Barely half a year later the final sentence falls at the gallows in Motala, and the widow is held to account for what she knew and kept silent about. A real case from Swedish legal history: the real parish register, the real newspaper notice and the real judgment. Everyone involved has been dead for more than a hundred years, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 30 min · 1–4 players

Nätra parish, spring 1818. The maid Lisa Grönqvist is found dead at Östersel, struck down with a hay-rack hook, and her fiancé is arrested shortly afterwards. Jealousy is said to lie behind it, and in September of the same year the condemned man is beheaded at the old execution site in Skuleskogen. A real case from Swedish legal history: the investigation, the verdict and the execution are recorded in public documents and in the executioner's register. The sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 30 min · 1–4 players

Öland, the night of 27 March 1844. The farmer and former churchwarden Olof Larsson of Övra Bägby is not in his bed, and the household says he has gone away — but no one in the village has seen him leave. At the end of May his body is pulled from the Calmar Sound, sunk with a stone and struck with an axe in the barn. The following year two of his sons stand on Bägby gallows hill, and at their side in the judgment stands the mother of the house. A real case from Öland's legal history: the real investigation, the real judgment and the real execution on 11 September 1845. Everyone involved has been dead for more than one hundred and sixty years, and everything in the file comes from church archives and public records — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 45 min · 1–4 players

Tjusta torp in Skånela parish, Uppland, 13 March 1803. The smith Carl Olsson Hjelmberg and the crofter Erik Olsson had been drinking brännvin together when they fell to quarrelling; the smith was thrown out and struck on the head with a small knobbly club, and died on the spot. Eight months later the perpetrator was beheaded at the hundred's execution site. A real murder from Uppland's legal history: the real death register, the real judgment and the real execution of 1803. Everyone involved has been dead for more than two hundred years, and the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 15 min · 1–4 players

Gotland, July 1851. The labourer Jacob Ringström leaves Tofta and does not return; he has disappeared in unknown circumstances and his body is never found. Years later the bones are found in the forest, and the trail leads to another labourer in the same parish. Four years after the disappearance, the verdict is handed down. A real case from Gotland's legal history: the real investigation, the real verdict and the real execution on Lixarve land in Tofta on 23 May 1855. Everyone involved has been dead for more than a hundred years, and everything in the file comes from parish archives and public records — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 15 min · 1–4 players

Uppsala County Jail in the castle, winter 1848–1849. A prisoner already sentenced to flogging and life imprisonment for theft attacks those who are to put a new set of irons on him, and a guard, the servant Widlund, is stabbed with a knife and dies after several days of agony. The prisoner is known throughout the city as Dalpelle — the master thief and escape artist from Mora. A real murder from Uppland's legal history: the real investigation, the real verdict, and the last public execution in Uppsala, on 28 March 1849. Everyone involved has been dead for over a hundred years, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 15 min · 1–4 players

Vadsbro in Södermanland, 1818. The farmer Lars Persson of Vreta is found murdered in his home, and suspicion falls on the two closest to him: his own wife Maria Gabrielsdotter and the soldier Hans Wret, quartered on the very rote where the farmer lived. Both are convicted of the murder and executed on 12 August 1818. A real case from the Oppunda company's soldier register and the Vadsbro parish archive. All those involved have been dead for more than two hundred years, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 30 min · 1–4 players

Vindfälle in Skåne, 7 January 1852. The carpenter Jöns Julius Lindvall is found dead, and the trail leads to his own family: his mother in the house, her two sons and one more man. Four people are brought before the district court in Annelöv for the murder, and two of them cannot be saved from the axe. A real case from Swedish legal history: the real investigation, the real interrogations and the real verdict. All those involved have been dead for more than a hundred years, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 45 min · 1–4 players

Vomb parish in Skåne, summer 1821. A former corporal of the army fleet's squadron in Gothenburg has taken the life of his wife Bengta Olsdotter in the village, and he is brought to the castle prison in Malmö to be prepared for death. His Royal Majesty's judgment confirms the sentence — loss of the right hand, beheading and quartering — and at Åsum on 25 July the sentence is carried out. A real case from Swedish legal history: everything in the record comes from the parish register of Malmö Castle Parish and the condemned man's own preparation, and every name is a public document. The sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 30 min · 1–4 players

Borås, the night of 29 December 1724. The travelling merchant Anders Boberg is found dead in his bed by the open hearth, and everything looks like an accident — but the barber-surgeon who examines the body says a fall could never have struck such a blow. In the house live his young wife, her lover, a cunning boatswain's wife and a maid, and all four soon stand trial. A real case from Swedish legal history: the real investigation, the real interrogations and the real verdict. All those involved have been dead for three hundred years, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources accompany the case.

about 2 h · 1–4 players

Muskö in Sotholm hundred, the night between 26 and 27 March 1757. City treasurer Carl Mikael Söderlund is shot in his bed at Arbottna manor, struck through the window by a charge that shatters a rib and the left kidney; he bleeds to death within an hour. A nail in the window frame and a ladder set against the wall show that the shot was prepared long in advance, and two men at the manor accuse each other. A real case from the Sotholm hundred court records and the Svea Court of Appeal documents. Everyone involved has been dead for more than two hundred years, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 30 min · 1–4 players

Stockholm, the morning of 24 August 1819. In a house in the Old Town, an old journeyman tailor is found beaten to death in his chamber, and two neighbouring women have heard shouts and screams on the stairs. The police office has the outer roofs searched and for the first time brings in special expertise to solve the crime. A real case from Stockholm's legal history: the same investigation, the same verdict and the same punishment. Everyone involved has been dead for more than two hundred years, and everything in the file comes from public records and contemporary print — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 30 min · 1–4 players

Storkåge in Skellefteå rural parish, the morning of 17 January 1836. The lodger Nils Petter Persson Sandström has strangled his young wife with his bare hands and tied a rope around her neck to make it look as though she hanged herself. He himself goes off to Bonnstan as if nothing had happened — and is not arrested until he returns home that evening. A real case from Swedish legal history: the actual investigation, the interrogations and the verdict through to the execution at Bureheden. Everyone involved has been dead for more than a hundred years, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 15 min · 1–4 players

Stockholm, 1783. A soldier stands trial for killing his wife, and on 19 March he is taken to the gallows ground outside Skanstull, where he loses his right hand, is beheaded and quartered. The circumstances of the murder itself were never written down — the record bears the name, age, sentence and execution. A real case from Swedish legal history: the real convicted man, the real victim and the real execution, with the sources in the record.

about 1 h 30 min · 1–4 players

Gammalstorp in Kåkind hundred, Västergötland, 9 February 1825. Cornet Johan Gustaf Dahlman is beaten to death with an axe, and two farmhands from Gammalstorp in Forsby parish are bound to the deed. At Kåkind hundred's execution site at Ljungstorp on 5 October of the same year, both lost their right ear, were beheaded and quartered by the executioner Carl Gustaf Beckius. A real case from Swedish legal history: the actual trial and the actual execution. Everyone involved has been dead for more than two hundred years, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 30 min · 1–4 players

Gotland, autumn 1827. At the farm in Fole the master of the house, Hans Byström, is found dead, and suspicion settles on those who worked and lived on the place — the labourer Josua Englund, his wife, and her young brother. The case is shelved when no one will confess, and it is only nine years later, when one of them is arrested for a stolen horse, that the case is reopened. A real case from Gotland's legal history: the real investigation, the real verdict, and the real execution on Endre backe on 26 September 1838. Everyone involved has been dead for nearly two hundred years, and everything in the file comes from the court of appeal's records and public sources — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 45 min · 1–4 players

Malmöhus Castle, 19 September 1837. In the fortress courtyard, the prison's superintendent, paymaster Hans Canon, falls to two inmates' homemade knives — before the prisoners ordered to watch. The perpetrators are two of the institution's hardest convicts, and the investigation must determine what was revenge, what was drunkenness, and what was plan. A real case from Swedish legal history: the real investigation, the real knives, and the real verdict. Everyone involved died long ago, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 30 min · 1–4 players

Småland, December 1803. At the soldier's croft by Hökhult in Fröderyd parish, court equerry Herman Christian Tigerschiöld was found buried beneath the barn floor, murdered in the house where he had stayed the night on his way to Stockholm. The couple who had lived at the croft were missing — and were not caught until years on the run, recognized at a barn dance. Both were executed at Komstad gallows hill in September 1804. A true case from Swedish legal history: the same investigation, the same accused and the same verdict. Everyone involved has been dead for more than two centuries, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 30 min · 1–4 players

Växjö, December 1838. A young maid was found dead in a chamber by the street, struck on the head with a blunt instrument, and another maid in the same town was arrested for the murder. A real case from Swedish legal history: the same investigation, the same accused, and the same verdict. Everyone involved has been dead for more than a century, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 15 min · 1–4 players

Västra Sönnarslöv in Skåne, December 1849. The ironmonger Nils Jacobsson, known as the Wolf, is shot on the country road to Åstorp and dies in his home the following day. No one is arrested then — the murder is only solved two years later, when a gang is taken for a burglary at Mölleröd's royal manor. A real case from Swedish legal history: the real investigation, the real weapons and the real verdict. Everyone involved has been dead for more than a hundred years, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources accompany the case.

about 2 h · 1–4 players

Trånshult in Högsby parish, Småland, the evening of 28 November 1851. The next morning the soldier Jonas Boston is found beaten and with his throat cut, and in the village he and a former farmer had long been in open enmity over a ram and a testimony. Two years later the perpetrator was beheaded at the gallows hill by Ruda. A real case from Swedish legal history: the district sheriff's own report, the actual interrogations and the actual verdict. Everyone involved has been dead for more than a century, and everything in the file comes from the authorities' records and the contemporary press — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 15 min · 1–4 players

Stockholm, in the year 1546. The burgher Jörgen Asktappare has been missing for some time, and his wife claims to know nothing of where he has gone. Then one day a barrel lid is pulled up out of the water outside the city, and in the barrel lies a dismembered body. The Stockholm town court brings out the tänkebok and the axe, and the trail soon leads straight into the grieving wife's house. A real case from the Stockholm town tänkeböcker: the same inquiry, the same accused and the same verdict as in the 16th-century records. Everyone in the case has been dead for centuries, and everything in the case is in the sources — the sources come with the case.

about 2 h · 1–4 players

Vika parish in Dalarna, midsummer 1764. Two men from Sätra in Rättvik parish walk homeward along Knivstigen after hired work at Nyckelviken in Nacka — the parish man Olof Andersson and his brother's son, the discharged soldier Anders Andersson Gnola. At a small bog by the path they stop to rest, and the homecoming is delayed. Not until the following spring does a woodcutter find the bones of one of them. A real case from Dalarna's legal history: the actual trial, the confession and the execution. Everyone involved has been dead for more than two hundred years, and everything in the record comes from public documents — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 15 min · 1–4 players

Stockholm, the morning of 29 October 1841. Music teacher Anders Carlsson is found shot dead in his room on Gamla Kungsholmsbrogatan, and his silver pocket watch and clothes are gone. Suspicion falls at once on his young piano pupil, who is arrested wearing the dead man's clothes — but he names a companion, and the two accuse each other while the court weighs word against word. A real case from Stockholm's legal history: the same interrogations, the same witnesses and the same verdict. All those involved have been dead for more than a hundred years, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 30 min · 1–4 players

Örebro, 1858. Two people who knew each other drift between the town's taverns one night, and in the morning a woman lies stabbed. The man at her side is arrested, confesses and is sentenced to beheading — the last execution at Örebro's old execution site. A real case from Swedish legal history: the real verdict, the real axe and the real executioner. Everyone involved has been dead for generations, and the sources for the case accompany it.

about 1 h 15 min · 1–4 players

Länghem parish, 15 July 1827. The dean and parish priest Johan Martin Lidell is struck by a shot out on the fields and carried wounded into the rectory; he dies only nine days later. The trail leads toward Torpa manor and a former gardener who served there, and on 8 January 1828 the axe stands ready at the execution site in Svenljunga before thousands of spectators. A real case from the records of Kinds hundred and the Göta Court of Appeal: the real investigation, the real weapon and the real verdict. All those involved have been dead for generations, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 15 min · 1–4 players

Stockholm, 25 August 1667. In Södermalm, a Russian chancery official, taken into the service of the Royal Chancery after leaving Russia, falls into a quarrel with his host, the city's Russian interpreter Daniel Anastasius. The host stands in his underclothes ready for bed when he is struck by four thrusts of a narrow blade and dies two weeks later of his wounds. The accused confesses that he held the weapon but calls it self-defence, and the court must weigh his word against the host's wife's complaint.

about 1 h 30 min · 1–4 players

Stockholm and Ekerö, April 1626. A man is found "piteously" murdered at a place called Hägersteen, and the authorities appeal to the public and to the murderer himself. Soon it is known that the dead man is the unemployed tailor Hans Putestad, who had gone to a farm on Ekerö to meet a shoemaker — and that he carried his entire savings on him. A real case from Stockholm's tänkebok: the same wanted notice, the same interrogation and the same verdict, all from public records. Everyone in the case has been dead for more than three hundred years.

about 1 h 15 min · 1–4 players

Bjuråker parish in Hälsingland, January 1832. The farmer Lars Pehrsson of Avholm disappears after threatening to report a young soldier, and two days later his body floats up through a hole in the ice on Dellen off Sundsön's western point. The soldier had got hold of an axe, hidden it under his fur coat and lured him out with a promise to return stolen goods. A real case from Swedish legal history: the real investigation, the real verdict and the real execution at the boundary between Norrbo and Bjuråker. Everyone involved has been dead for well over a hundred years, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 45 min · 1–4 players

The invalid corps at Ulriksdal Palace, the night of 11 July 1832. Sergeant Carl Gustaf Fredenholm is found beaten to death in his bed, and his roommate sleeps in the same chamber. A real murder from Uppland's legal history: the real trial, the real verdict and the real execution in Danderyd in 1833. Everyone involved has been dead for nearly two hundred years, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources are included with the case.

about 1 h 15 min · 1–4 players

Franklin Township outside New Brunswick, New Jersey, September 1922. Pastor Nathaniel Ordway is found shot dead under a crabapple tree by the old lovers' lane, his calling card pressed against his shoe and love letters scattered between him and an empty patch of grass. The woman he was there with, choir singer Selma Brandt, escaped with a bullet through the shoulder and says she ran — but the scene was trampled by souvenir hunters long before the police arrived.

about 2 h · 1–4 players

Årskogen in Hälsingland, December 1849. A wandering labourer takes service with a poor crofter family at the inn and helps with the charcoal burning in the forest. Shortly before Christmas he is gone, and the neighbours hear that he has moved on — but in the spring his body floated up in the Ljungan. A real case from Swedish criminal history, known as the last execution in Hälsingland. Everyone involved has been dead for generations, and the sources come with the case.

about 1 h 45 min · 1–4 players

Blekinge, the night between 6 and 7 October 1899. The station clerk is visiting his friend, the young stationmaster, at the lonely railway station at Johannishus, and they drink punch together in the office. The next morning the host is found dead in a potato field with his throat cut, and the station safe stands open and empty — but the visitor says a stranger was along on the journey. A real case from Swedish criminal history: the real investigation, the real confession and the real verdict. Everyone involved has been dead for more than a hundred years, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources accompany the case.

about 2 h · 1–4 players

Washington, D.C., October 12, 1964. Painter Constance Rye is shot on the canal path by the C&O Canal, in broad daylight, with two shots at close range. A day laborer was arrested wet and muddy a quarter mile away, but no revolver was found. Three days later, a jogger sits in interrogation and tells of a run that no one else can confirm.

about 2 h · 1–4 players

Västerhaninge in the Sotholm hundred, the night of 31 July 1853. The tenant farmer of Näringsberg farm, assistant notary Jaedrén, had been in Stockholm over the Sunday and was driving home in the dark when he was set upon at his own gates and beaten to death with blunt weapons. In the Västerhaninge death register the priest wrote in the column for cause of death: deliberately murdered. Three men were arrested the same day — but only one of them lost his life. A real case from Swedish legal history: the real investigation, the real verdict and the real execution at the gallows stone in Jordbro. Everyone involved has been dead for more than a century, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 45 min · 1–4 players

Bjuråker parish in Hälsingland, 1772. The farmhand and settler Carl Ersson from Brändbo had gone to the home of a woman in the village who claimed to be pregnant with his child. In the morning she was found with her throat cut in her own home, and she lived yet a few hours and told what had happened. He was arrested and brought before the district court at Delsbo, and on 10 September 1772 he was taken to the execution site at Norrbo Bridge. A real case from Hälsingland's legal history: the actual trial, the confession and the execution. All those involved have been dead for more than two hundred years, and everything in the record comes from public documents — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 15 min · 1–4 players

Edsleskog rectory in Dalsland, the night of 5 July 1824. A thief breaks into the dean's house, carries off silver and brännvin, and then lies in a ditch close by. When the rectory's bailiff comes to fetch him, he draws a knife, and the bailiff dies almost at once. A few days later the thief is arrested outside Åmål and brought before Tössbo hundred court. A real case from Dalsland's legal history: the actual investigation, the actual verdict and the condemned man's own words. Everyone involved has been dead for more than a hundred years, and everything in the record comes from public documents — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 15 min · 1–4 players

Södermanland, August 1793. The steel smith at Forsbro steelworks in Gåsinge parish is found beaten to death on the footpath home toward Skeppsta ironworks, struck on the back of the head with an axe, and a neighbour is arrested the same day. A real case from Swedish legal history: the same investigation, the same suspects and the same verdict, drawn from the records of Daga hundred court and the parish registers of Gåsinge. Everyone involved has been dead for more than two hundred years, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 30 min · 1–4 players

Dalsland, the night between 27 and 28 June 1827. At the inn at Tångelanda the village farmers have drunk their way through a feast, and one of them goes out onto the slope to rest. The next morning he is found beaten to death with a stone, and suspicion falls on a farmhand who has just lost his post and who was seen leaving the house together with a comrade. A real case from Swedish legal history: the actual investigation, the actual names and the actual verdict, drawn from the last execution in Valbo hundred. All those involved have been dead for more than a hundred years, and the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 30 min · 1–4 players

November 1865. In Visnum parish in Värmland, the pauper Anders Petter Staf, 61, dies an hour after taking communion at the church. The vicar writes 'fever' in the parish register and the burial is booked, but the same word has been written about three paupers that autumn, and the county sheriff has placed the coffin in the sacristy pending an answer. Four people were in the church that Sunday, and one of them counts the parish's money.

about 2 h · 1–4 players

Sävestad in Småland, 14 November 1924. Editor Ruben Hallgren is found dead in the composing room of the Sävestads Allehanda, struck on the back of the head. He had set a notice for the next issue: a notice about the printing house's loan book at Sävestads Sparbank, from which 8,400 kronor had been taken without a receipt. Since 1 November the four compositors have been threatening strike, and in the small town each of them says he was somewhere else.

about 3 h 45 min · 4–6 players

Osage County, Oklahoma, October 1923. Elias Whitehorn, a landowner with oil rights, is found dead at Bird Creek after a day of hunting. The doctor writes heart failure, the case is put in a drawer and forgotten. When the file is opened again, one thing is clear: someone needed him dead, and someone wrote the papers for him. Four acts are called for when the file is reopened: the bundle of receipts in the grass, the hired man at the creek and the farm's clock with the two women's different hours, and the undertaker's bill and the man who smelled of carbolic and soap, are called for (code 'carbolic').

about 4 h · 4–7 players

The merchant Gösta Löfgren, a summer guest at the guesthouse in Skansviken, was found dead on 8 July 1914 in his hired rowing boat off the point. He lay in the bottom with a wound to the temple and an oar across the gunwale. The finding was recorded as an accident: he had been out on the water late, the boat had capsized in the dark and he had struck his head against the gunwale. Ruben Lagerlöf, the firm's cashier and his own travelling companion, found him shortly after dawn. Follow the report straight through and you end up with the rower, who quarrelled about his pay and was the last person seen at the boat, or with the guesthouse's manageress, who had unpaid bills and an illicit can of brännvin in the cellar. Anyone who instead compares the wind log with the oarlocks and counts the steamer's calls arrives at a different man — and the paths cross in one place only: the boat lay moored and had been rowed with two oars, while the only account of the evening speaks of one oar and a short way. Requisitioned from the guesthouse and the village: the guest book with the rooms (code 'guestbook'), the wind log kept by the rower (code 'windlog'), the telegram from the office in Stockholm (code 'telegram'), the arrival list for the steamer at Skansviken (code 'arrivals'), and the receipt book from the firm's office (code 'receipts'). Further, the medical examiner's statement on the temple (code 'temple'), the technical examination of the bow line and the oarlocks (code 'bowline'), the profiling of the cash box and the receipts (code 'cash'), and the alibi table for the evening (code 'times'). The photograph of the lime gravel by the slope is requisitioned (code 'gravel'). Four red herrings are requisitioned in particular: the debt to the landowner (code 'debt'), the missing portmanteau (code 'portmanteau'), the hint of smuggled goods (code 'smuggling') and the cashier's journey to town (code 'journey'). The notes taken from the fisherman's wife (code 'fisherwife') and from the steamer hand (code 'steamerhand') are also in the file.

about 3 h 15 min · 4–5 players

On the night of 4 March 1976, Gunnar Vestlund, 56, chairman of club 7 at Nordsvea Entreprenad, is found dead at the bottom of the shaft at the construction site at Tensta allé 22. He had left the clubhouse at Tenstagången 4 the evening before to fetch a binder from the site hut, and the investigation concluded that he had fallen and that he smelled of liquor; case file F 1976-0412 was closed in June 1976. Five years later, the association's auditor takes up the club's loan documents, and the file is reopened: in the company's safe lie five promissory notes for 240,000 kronor with his name at the bottom, and the time clock in the shaft shows that the man at the gate that night did not have that name. What is requested are the promissory notes from the safe, the company's key register, the pension fund's loan documents from 1974, the caretaker's patrol log for March, the switchboard's evening list, the site hut's binder and the concrete trucks' logbooks. Two witnesses who saw him that evening were recorded in 1976 and died before the file was reopened; their statements contradict each other about the same half hour.

about 4 h · 4–6 players

On 25 October 1967, cargo inspector Arne Vessman, 44, disappeared from the container quay at Hamnvik. Nine days later, container HLC-4471 was opened in Rotterdam, and he was inside it, beneath a load of corrugated cardboard and machine parts. The seal on the hatch was unbroken and bore number 2214, the same seal the terminal's inspector had entered in the seal log at 18:40 that evening the container was weighed at 18:35. The container weighed eighty-two kilos more than the cargo accounts for. Six people were on duty at the terminal that evening, and all six left statements that hold right up to the minute.

about 3 h 30 min · 4–6 players

Early in the morning of 29 July 1966, police in Nyköping are called to a burglary at a bicycle shop on Skjutsaregatan. Two young men get out into the yard, and one of them shoots police officer Ragnar Sandahl with a submachine gun before they disappear. The hunt for the two burglars becomes one of the most closely followed cases of the 1960s and makes one of them a household name across the country. A real case from Swedish legal history: the same investigation, the same suspects and the same verdict as in reality. The convicted man died in 2017; the sources accompany the case so that every name can be checked.

about 2 h · 1–4 players

Gothenburg, Whit Sunday, 3 June 1900. On a footpath between Ånäsvägen and the workers' housing at the Gamlestaden factories, Police Constable Johan Fredrik Hedén, 46, falls to two knife blows to the throat and temple. The man arrested, Victor Emanuel Jansson, 23, had been known to the local police since he was growing up and had been driven away from the cigar dealer's shop at the factory gate that same evening. What happened on the way home, and what does the verdict actually say about intent? This is the first police murder in Sweden in the 20th century, played as it was: the real investigation, the same suspect and the same verdict. The convicted man and the victim are named from public records, and the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 45 min · 1–4 players

Ås hundred, the night of 18 December 1851. Postilion Sven Stille rides from Gullered toward Gammalstorp with two mailbags when the horses stop at a closed gate and men out of the darkness strike him and the post-boy to the ground with bloody staves. The bags with twenty-four thousand riksdaler are robbed and the postilion dies of his wounds, while the trail leads to two escaped prisoners seized in Gothenburg with the bundle of notes behind a water barrel.

about 1 h 45 min · 1–4 players

Fjugesta outside Örebro, 3 October 1959. Elsa Bergsten, 52, who ran the general store and the potato trade by the main road, was found strangled in her bedroom behind the shop. The prosecution came to rest on circumstantial evidence: a witness who mixed up two days, burlap sacks with dog hair, and a truck whose headlights were seen on the road late that evening. The man who drove the potato load had been convicted once before, twenty years earlier, and denied it again this time.

about 2 h · 1–4 players

Torsvi coaching inn, 19 September 1954. The touring company Vinge's Stage had the night before performed 'The Pilot' to a full house, and supper stood in the dining room until after midnight. In the morning the theatre manager Olof Vinge was found dead on the road to Hovvik, run over by the company's own lorry, and the envelope with the premiere's box-office takings was gone. The papers remained in the company's chest and in the People's House until 1963, when the building was demolished and the file was taken to the regional archive: interrogation records, the cash book, the night book and a photograph from the stage. The witnesses have long been dead, and whoever follows the lorry and the quarrel straight ahead ends up with the wrong man in hand.

about 3 h 45 min · 4–6 players

Karlskrona, 9 September 1847. In the Central Prison the life-sentence inmates are locked in their cells, each alone, and in the evening the prisoner Jacob Glader is found dead in his cell, cut with a razor. No outsider could have got in; whoever held the razor blade wore the prisoner's own clothes. A real case from the legal history of Blekinge: the real investigation, the real verdict and the real execution at Vämö on 20 March 1849. Everyone involved has long been dead, and everything in the file comes from the prison roll, the death register and the contemporary press — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 15 min · 1–4 players

Pecos County, Texas, May 6, 1902. Rancher Henry Cutler is found dead in the horse pasture by the water trough, hoofprints trampled over his boot prints and a hoe missing from the tool shed. Forty head of cattle are unaccounted for in the herd count, no sale is entered in the office ledger, and a dealer in Fort Stockton has bought animals under a brand that is not the ranch's. The foreman kept the papers, the daughter waited on her inheritance, and both were somewhere else when it happened.

about 2 h 30 min · 4–5 players

Östra Göinge, winter 1854. A cattle dealer from Örkened is found dead under a pile of brushwood in the forest, struck on the head with a heavy rowan stick, and the trail leads to a young district painter who travelled through the district with his brush and his horse. He was arrested, confessed and was convicted of robbery and manslaughter; the beheading in Broby was the last in the district. A real case from Swedish legal history: the real investigation, the real weapon and the real verdict. All those involved have been dead for more than a century and a half, and everything in the file comes from archival records and local historical research — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 30 min · 1–4 players

Glanshammar parish in Närke, 18 November 1845. The maid Inga Pehrsdotter of Bredmåssen is robbed and beaten to death on the road, and suspicion falls on a farmhand from Brohammer. The following spring the Svea Court of Appeal convicts him, and in August 1846 he is beheaded at Glanshammar gallows hill, the last person ever executed there. A real case from Swedish legal history: the contemporary press notice, the actual judgment and the actual execution. Everyone involved has been dead for more than a hundred years, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources are included with the case.

about 1 h 15 min · 1–4 players

On 4 October 1864, the haberdasher Marie Lund was found dead in the shop section of her house in Hässleholm, opposite the railway station; money and rings were missing. Suspicion fell on an escaped life prisoner who was being lodged in the town, and around him was a circle of people with their own criminal pasts. Financial motives — a robbery — led him to the shop. The beheading on the Röinge hills on 25 May 1866 was the last in the district court's jurisdiction.

about 1 h 45 min · 1–4 players

The village of Lemmeshult in Örkelljunga parish, Christmas Eve 1868. A man has borrowed a pistol from his neighbours to fire Christmas salutes, but that same evening a young woman is struck by a shot during a robbery, and on Christmas Day she dies of her wounds. The district court sentences him to death, the death sentence is commuted, and after years of penal labour he is finally pardoned. A real case from Swedish legal history; the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 30 min · 1–4 players

Västmanland, the night of 15 March 1848. At the Lindsberg croft on Brunsta land in Österunda parish, the lodger Olof Tomsson and his wife Greta Olsdotter are found beaten to death, he in his bed and she on the cottage floor, and the cottage is set on fire over them. Two years later a former soldier from Brunnsta land is beheaded at the Torstuna hundred execution site for murder, robbery and arson. A real case from Swedish legal history: the same investigation, the same suspects and the same verdict. Everyone involved has been dead for more than a century, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources accompany the case.

about 2 h 15 min · 1–4 players

Nederluleå parish in Norrbotten, winter 1741. An elderly maidservant in the village of Nickbyn finds a stranger in her house; she is robbed and killed, and the trail leads to a farmer from Ängesbyn, already known to the court for theft. In the summer of the same year he is taken to the place of execution, where his right hand is struck off and his body quartered. A real case from Swedish legal history: the real investigation, the real verdict and the real execution. Everyone involved has been dead for generations, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 15 min · 1–4 players

Boge parish on Gotland, late summer 1862. One night a labourer breaks into the home of an old boatswain's widow, strikes her so that she dies a few days later, takes what he can carry and sets fire to her living room. The case passed through the district court, the court of appeal and His Majesty the King before the axe fell — and when it was to fall there was no executioner left on the island. A real case from Swedish legal history: the real investigation, the real verdict and the real execution. Everyone involved has long been dead, and everything in the file comes from public records and contemporary press — the sources follow the case.

about 1 h 30 min · 1–4 players

In February 1847 the rag collector Magnus Josephsson is found dead at Byttorp, robbed and slain, and the farmhand Johan Petter Johansson Hög from Länghem is arrested and brought to trial in Kinds hundred. Despite three petitions for mercy to the king, the death sentence is upheld. In December 1849 he stands at the execution site at Svenljunga to lose his head. A real case from the court records of Kinds hundred: the same robbery, the same sentence, the same execution.

about 1 h 15 min · 1–4 players

Stockholm, the evening of 13 January 1844. On the long, dark New Kungsholm Bridge between Norrmalm and Kungsholmen, a nobleman and public official is set upon, struck to the ground and robbed, and he dies of his wounds a few hours later. Four young men had made their decision that same evening at the brännvin table: they would rob the first person to cross the bridge. A real case from Swedish legal history: the actual investigation, the actual interrogations and the actual verdict, in which one was sentenced to death and executed and three received prison terms. The sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 45 min · 1–4 players

Stafsnäs, the night of 25 January 1845. Skipper Ola Nilsson is found lifeless, robbed of his goods, and three men are brought in for questioning: one from Vallby and two companions. The verdict is long in coming and falls in two separate rulings, nearly five years apart, and all three end their lives on the same scaffold in Lyckeby. This is the true inquest: the same suspects, the same goods, the same rulings.

about 1 h 45 min · 1–4 players

Gästrikland, 21 May 1774. The trading assistant Anders Nyberg from Söderhamn is travelling alone on the country road through the forest between Ho and Eltebo when he is set upon, robbed and killed. A discharged boatswain from Valbo is taken to the castle jail in Gävle, and three months later he stands at the place of execution in Ovansjö to lose his life. A real case from Gästrikland's legal history: the inquest in Ovansjö in 1774, the Royal Court of Appeal's judgment and the execution on 29 August of the same year. All those involved have been dead for more than two hundred years, and everything in the record comes from public documents — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 30 min · 1–4 players

Onsjö hundred, Skåne, autumn 1845. A cottager and basket-weaver lives alone at Långhaltshus and quietly hoards money; on the morning of 13 October he is found dead on the ground ten fathoms from his own door, with blows to the head, his boots pulled off and his clothes bloody. Suspicion falls on a farmhand in the neighbouring village who has taken to drink and fallen into poverty, and a debt of two riksdaler, an axe in the entryway and the stolen coins in a waistcoat pocket are at last bound together in a confession. A true case from Swedish legal history: the real investigation, the real weapon and the real verdict. All those involved have been dead for more than a century and a half, and everything in the file comes from public records and the contemporary press — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 15 min · 1–4 players

Stockholm, January 1910. Cashier Hulda Norling was found beaten to death in the exchange office at Malmtorget, the cash box open and a silver snuffbox gone from it. The manager wants the death written up as a burglary, but the cab drivers in the yard know more than they are saying.

about 2 h · 1–4 players

The country road at Norsholm in Östergötland, August 1846. Journeyman tailor Gustaf Höglund was walking south toward Malmö when he was set upon, robbed and beaten, and he died the following day. A little over a year later, the crown laborer Johan Fredrik Schultz was beheaded at the Memming hundred execution site at Borgsmon. A true case from the records of the Göta Court of Appeal and the Crown Prison in Linköping. All those involved have been dead for more than a hundred years, and everything in the file comes from the sources accompanying the case.

about 1 h 15 min · 1–4 players

Gunnarskog in Värmland, the evening of Saturday 4 February 1775. The mining man Per Andersson Bockenstår has been handed 320 riksdaler in banknotes and walks alone homeward toward Västra Haget in Treskog. The next morning he is found beaten to death by the parish road, and the money is gone. A real case from Värmland's legal history: the investigation at Jösse hundred court in 1775, the sentence and the execution at Sågmon that same autumn. Everyone involved has been dead for more than two hundred years, and everything in the record comes from public documents — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 45 min · 1–4 players

Västergötland, a dark August night in 1854. At a gate on the road between Sandhem and Hjo, two men lay in ambush for the mail coach; a shot from a rifle struck the postilion, and a club struck the coachman's boy. A real case from Swedish legal history: the same investigation, the same suspects, and the same verdict. Everyone involved has been dead for more than a century, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources are included with the case.

about 1 h 30 min · 1–4 players

In the spring of 1973, Sveab Bygg & Rivning is tearing down the old wooden houses along Vretvägen in Högdalen to make room for the concrete buildings, and the crane runs every day until five o'clock. On the fourteenth of May at 17:05 it brought down the gable of Vretvägen 14 according to the demolition schedule, and under the gable lay demolition manager Rolf Stenlund, 47, who three hours earlier had signed out his wages at the demolition office's barrack. Case file F 1973-0891 was written off as an accident at work on 8 June 1973 and placed on the shelf in Högdalen. Six years later, when the club's pension fund is audited, the file is reopened: the material card for the waste concrete is missing from its folder, and whoever follows the gable straight ahead gets the wrong man. Rolf Stenlund was found ninety metres from the desk he sat at, and no one has explained why his glasses were left lying on it. What is requested is what no one read in 1973: the demolition schedule for the fourteenth of May, the find list from the barrack and from the gable, the time clock's card, a line in the club's letter about the clock, the switchboard's call list, the tool ledger for the shed, the pension fund's cash book and the unnumbered envelope in the folder. Elsa Bergqvist at the coffee cart and caretaker Ivar Sjökvist survive only as notes in the file; both died before 1979.

about 4 h · 4–7 players

The Gästgivaregården inn in Lervik, 12 October 1951. The touring company Teatern Lyktan had played 'The Night Watch' to a full house the evening before, and the director Eufemia Falk went home before the interval with a headache. In the morning she was found dead in room twelve with a wound to the temple and the brass jug on the floor, the door bolted from inside and the window shut. The file was placed in the chest at the People's House and only came to light in 1963, when the building was demolished: interrogation records, the night book with the key board and a cash book in which someone had written in the director's name. The witnesses have long been dead, and whoever follows the key and the half-empty coffee cup straight ahead will end up with the wrong man in hand.

about 3 h 30 min · 4–6 players

At the Villa Sjövik guesthouse, room 7 stood untouched for forty-eight years after the matron Ingrid Sandell was found dead behind a bolted door in May 1978. When the room was opened during the 2026 renovation, the cold case was pulled from the archive again.

about 4 h · 4–7 players

The saltery's owner on Kållskär, Gottfrid Almlöv, was found on 14 September 1911 in the water by the saltery's jetty with a barrel caught in the railing above. The finding was drowning: the man had been drinking, the jetty was slippery and the autumn night dark. The police report was filed in the customs house archive in Härnösand and lay there for eight years. When the file was brought out again the witnesses were dead and their statements were only paper. Following the police report straight through leads to the young rower, who had quarrelled with the master that same afternoon and had his landing net lying under the jetty. Anyone who instead counts the barrels and reads the clock in the customs tower arrives at a different man, and the line that settles the matter looks like pure courtesy in both files. Requested from the steamer Almvik's papers: the logbook for the night (code 'logbook'), the crew list for the same voyage (code 'crew'), the customs station's signal log for the fog (code 'signallog') and the customs station's diary (code 'diary'). From the saltery's and the harbour's papers: the saltery's salt book for September (code 'saltbook'), the ledger at the harbour shop (code 'ledger') and the customs clearance for Almvik's call (code 'clearance'). Further requested are Hilda Styf's recorded testimony (code 'hilda') and the harbour watchman's record (code 'watchman'), the photograph of the barrel mark on the float (code 'barrelmark'), the forensic examiner's statement (code 'neckbone'), the technical investigation (code 'stave'), the profiling (code 'profiling') and the alibi table (code 'alibi'). Five red herrings also lie in the file and are requested: the paraffin lamp on the jetty (code 'lamp'), the clock in the harbour shed (code 'shedclock'), the salt splash in the cottage (code 'splash'), the letter that never came (code 'letter') and the oil rack from the saltery (code 'oilrack').

about 4 h · 4–6 players

Hälsingland, the night between 10 and 11 July 1831. A charcoal burner from Voxna has built a campfire by a flax-drying kiln in Rengsjö, and a farm owner in Österböle is told that his flax is in danger. Drunk on brännvin, he seizes a club and goes there. The man at the kiln dies the following day, and on 10 May 1832 the farm owner was beheaded on the border between Rengsjö and Bollnäs — the last execution in Rengsjö.

about 1 h 15 min · 1–4 players

Vrångö and Fotö in the Gothenburg archipelago, 1823. A Danish ship is found stranded and plundered with its entire crew murdered, and the trail leads to a poor saltery widow on Vrångö and four men close to her. The plan is said to have been made in her cottage. But the one pointed out as the mastermind behind it all denies everything, and the court has only the words of those who have already confessed. A real case from Swedish legal history: the real investigation, the real interrogations and the real verdict. Everyone involved has been dead for nearly two hundred years, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources are included with the case.

about 1 h 45 min · 1–4 players

Boston, March 14, 1908. Nurse Margaret Doyle (29) is found dead on the floor of the ward kitchen with an empty syringe by her hand, and the doctor on duty writes suicide in the book that same morning. But the door to the medicine store stands open, the morphine ledger in the store is missing twelve ampoules, and a surgeon at the house has figures in his accounts that no operation matches. She had been sitting and counting ampoules for two weeks, and someone knew about it.

about 2 h 30 min · 4–5 players

On the night of August 1901, factory owner Konrad Wallin is found dead in the summer cottage Sjöbo on Bredskär in the Stockholm archipelago. The trail of blood leads from the hall to a door no one should have gone through, and the front door facing the black water stands wide open. Four people were on the island that night.

about 2 h · 1–4 players

The logger Oskar Lind disappeared from the log-driving crew on the Ängermanälven river on the night of 2 November 1953. His axe was found at the log-driving quay, but it was not until May that the body was found in the riverbank at Sand. The log-driving crew, the inheritance after him and an old debt at the general store were left lying in the archive — until someone opened it again. In the district archive in Kramfors lie chests marked with the crew's mark and the number of the day. Two of those who saw something that evening were recorded and died within three years, and their statements contradict the file on two points. Following the forest owner's own journal straight through yields his younger brother instead, and the line that settles the matter stands in four files without anyone reading it as a rule. Five more false trails lie in the chests and are requested: the ground by the stump, which looked like a grave and was the crew's own pier work, two statements about the same midnight and the shadow in the barracks window; the receipt from Sundsvall, whose dating gave the forest owner a journey he had not made, is requested (code 'receipt'), and the shirt in the croft, which looked like blood and was tar, is requested (code 'shirt').

about 3 h 45 min · 4–6 players

Vimmerby, 12 September 1938. Schoolmistress Elin Norrgård is found dead in the schoolroom on the evening after the parents' meeting, with a broken piece of chalk by the teacher's desk and the school board's cupboard forced open. The cash book for the school building is gone, the school building fund is missing a payment that no one will own up to, and the audit was at the door. The treasurer kept the accounts for fourteen years without a single remark — and everyone in the schoolhouse had a reason to go home late.

about 2 h · 1–4 players

Ljusnarsberg parish in Närke, 5 May 1808. At Uvberg Bridge, on the road between Hällefors and Ljusnarsberg, a young man is shot and his body sunk in the Nittälven; on the heath west of the water the place is still remembered today as Murder Heath. A man from Hällefors is arrested, convicted and in January 1809 taken to the execution site at Abborrtjärn — the last execution carried out in the parish. A real case from Swedish legal history: the real verdict, the real execution and the real name of the place. Everyone involved has been dead for more than two hundred years, and everything in the file comes from public records and local historical research — the sources are included with the case.

about 1 h 15 min · 1–4 players

Los Angeles, April 1935. At 03:20 the producer Roy Ellsworth is found dead in Meridian Studios' screening room in the basement, with the projector still humming. In the corridor a guard saw only a shadow pass by. The film that was running was a rough cut no one should have seen — and someone has been in the cutting room.

about 2 h · 1–4 players

Bruks owner and multi-millionaire Arthur Axelsson, 90, is found dead at his desk in the old bruks office on Bruksgatan in Näversjö. The door and both windows were locked from the inside, the cognac glass stood half-empty, and the man looked to have fallen asleep over his papers. The only leads in the room are a cryptic safe no one knows the code to and a blinking voicemail on the answering machine: a woman's voice giving him the code and asking him to call back.

about 2 h 45 min · 1–4 players

On 13 May 2016, Henrik Wallin, 57, was found dead at his desk at the Stockholm offices of the investment firm Veritas. The time was 23:45, the whisky glass still stood there, and the death certificate was written up as an acute heart attack. The case was closed after three weeks. Now an anonymous letter lies on the investigation desk: two days earlier Wallin had received a memo about embezzled funds, and someone claims a person was inside the building after everyone else had gone home. The case is cold, but it is not closed.

about 3 h 45 min · 4–7 players

Söderhamn, 9 December 1936. The smith Gustav Ferm is found by the waterwheel of his own forge with a crushed chest and his left arm under the wheel axle. The wedge that holds the wheel lies ten paces away in the snow with a mark from a hammer claw, the December work order shows the forge had more to do than ever, and in the partner's desk drawer lies a letter from the fire insurance company mentioning six thousand kronor. The smith's brother-in-law, the miller in Norrala, held a mortgage on the wheel and was the first to say the wedge works loose by itself. No one at the forge wants to remember who put the work order in the till that evening.

about 2 h 30 min · 4–5 players

Torna-Hällestad in Skåne, 1834. The blacksmith Christian Lundblad is found dead after being struck by a file his wife threw at him in a fit of rage. She does not deny the deed, but claims she did not mean to kill him — and the court must decide whether it was murder. A real case from Swedish legal history: the real investigation, the real verdict and the real execution. Everyone involved has long since died, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources are included with the case.

about 1 h 30 min · 1–4 players

The merchant Melker Åhlin, 61, was found dead in the mill's storeroom in Kvarnbo in Västergötland on the morning of 28 October 1943. He lay on the floor by the stove with his face upward, the stove's damper open and the door closed. The doctor wrote carbon monoxide poisoning, and the investigation closed the case in November without anyone being suspected. A year later a report reached the county board that ration cards had disappeared from the board's box in the same village, and the file was brought out again. Two people were recorded in November 1943 and both died before the case was reopened. One man is said to have been at home asleep, a window in the office was lit at ten past ten, and in the mill's woodshed stands a club that no one will own up to.

about 4 h 15 min · 4–6 players

Chicago, January 1927. Behind a barbershop on South State Street lies the Blue Lantern, one of the South Side's wettest addresses. The owner, Joseph "Joe" Marchetti, is found dead on the stockroom floor after closing, with a mark on the back of his neck that no fist could have made. The liquor, the rotary phone and the streetcar on State Street all point to his own people.

about 2 h · 1–4 players

New York, the night of November 5, 1928. The gambler Morris "Moe" Feldman is found shot in room 349 at the Hotel Meridian on 55th Street, a little over an hour after a poker game he himself had called rigged. No one in the corridor heard a thing, the door stood closed but unlocked, and no revolver was found in the room — but three floors down, in the trash chute, someone else's answer is waiting.

about 2 h · 1–4 players

The night of 14 April 1989. In the countryside around Stenberga outside Vetlanda, eleven fire seats on five farms had to be fought at once, and on one of the farms a brother and sister in their seventies were found dead. At first the police believed they had been caught by the fire — but the forensic pathologists showed they had been murdered. A real case from Swedish criminal history: the real investigation, the real victims and the real verdict against Sten Johansson, known as the Stenberga Man. The sources are included with the case.

about 2 h · 1–4 players

Grönstaskogen east of Eskilstuna, 10 August 1930. Tobias Svärd, a 52-year-old crofter from Stenkvista, was found shot in the back of the neck and struck with a twenty-one-kilo boulder that lay beside the body; the corpse had also been moved. His brother-in-law had gone into the woods with him and returned alone. The witnesses are dead and their records contradict one another, one of them points to the wrong man, and whoever follows the revolver straight ahead ends up at the smith's. The suspicion never stuck, the report was time-barred on 10 August 1955, and diary 812/1930 became the only case in the Eskilstuna police district closed without prosecution. Now the file has been laid out again, day by day, from the day it was closed.

about 4 h · 4–6 players

Hedby market town, 12 January 1926. The compositors at Hedby Tidning have been on strike since 4 January, and the house is run with an imported typesetter from Gothenburg, Emil Norrström, 34, who lives in the attic flat above the composing room. In the morning he is found dead in the paper store, struck on the temple, and the money he received for his parents' farm lies untouched in the trunk. His sister is coming on the morning train to collect his things, and the whole town knows who hated him.

about 3 h 45 min · 4–6 players

Odensbacken, 15 September 1957. The clerk Henning Örn is shot through the closed windowpane of his cottage on the point south of Odensbacken, where he sits with his supper and the paraffin lamp lit. The shot came from the shore, the shotgun is gone, and in a boathouse on the opposite point stands a suitcase with a combination lock that has lain untouched since 1937. The witnesses on the road are dead and their records contradict one another, one of them points to the wrong man, and whoever follows the trail straight ahead arrives at a locked lid. The case was set aside in 1958 and has lain untouched until today.

about 4 h · 4–6 players

Jokkmokk parish in Lapland, winter 1822. At the new settlement in Kuortik, a mile west of Murjek, a woman is found dead in her home with a crushed skull, and her brother has fled across the forest on skis. A real case from Swedish legal history: the real inquest, the real autopsy and the real verdict. Everyone involved has been dead for more than two hundred years, and everything in the file comes from public records — the sources are included with the case.

about 1 h 15 min · 1–4 players

On the night between 28 and 29 September 1960, taxi driver Sonja Åkerlind, 34, is found dead in the ditch by Stuvstaleden in Huddinge municipality, a couple of hundred metres from her stationary cab 7. The till is forced open and 41 kronor are missing, and the 1960 investigation drowns in interviews without anyone being tied to the scene. The case expires on 28 September 1985, and the cold case unit has now opened the file one last time to see whether the old papers say what no one listened to in 1960. Two of those who heard and saw something that night were recorded and died within two years, and their accounts diverge about the same quarter-hour. Whoever follows the 1972 confession straight ahead gets the wrong man: the decisive point lies in a driving slip that never came back to the pile, and in a line about which day a night's driving is entered under — a line that appears in four files and that no one read as a rule. Five red herrings remain in the file and are being requested again: the coffee receipts from the kiosk's bundle, which gave the driver a companion she never had, and the outbuilding by Stuvstaleden, where the investigation looked for the man in the dark; the petrol receipt from the station in Stuvsta, whose twenty past twelve moved the murder by thirty years, is requested (code 'receipt'); the torch by the ditch, where the neighbour woman and her son contradict each other about the same quarter-hour, and the 1960 insurance letter, which gave the divorced man a motive he did not have, is requested (code 'insurance').

about 3 h 45 min · 4–6 players

On June 29, 1978, actor Dean Prescott was found dead in his rented apartment on Winfield Place in Scottsdale, Arizona, where he was performing with the touring company of the play 'Beginner's Luck'. The door was unlocked, nothing was missing, and no one in the company heard a thing. A camera tripod is missing from his own equipment in the bedroom.

about 2 h · 1–4 players

Söderhamn, Monday 1 March 1971. The 61-year-old farm owner Gunnar Bengtsson from Bergvik enters the courthouse of South-Eastern Hälsingland for a preparatory hearing in a civil case and leaves the building after shooting four people dead with thirteen shots: his former partner Cecilia Ekestang, her lawyer Ingemar Wåhlstedt, his own lawyer Olof Fagerström and the chief judge Yngve Carlson. The investigation concerns four dead, not one. The question is not who held the pistol but what six years of litigation, a harsh judgment and a Monday in the courtroom did to a human being. A real case from Swedish legal history: the courthouse murders in Söderhamn in 1971 and the trial of Gunnar Bengtsson. Records and sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 45 min · 1–4 players

Stockholm, autumn 1966. The blocks around Brunnsgatan 26 — the condemned buildings the evening press dubbed the Swamp — were home to criminals, alcoholics and prostitutes. In barely two weeks in October, three people from the circle disappear, and their bodies are later recovered from the Norrström by Vasabron and from the quay along Strandvägen. A burglar from the same circle is arrested, and in June 1967 the verdict falls. A real case from Swedish criminal history: the investigation into the Swamp murders in Stockholm and the verdict against Hans Marmbo. The sources come with the case.

about 1 h 45 min · 1–4 players

New Orleans, 1908. Shortly before dawn, cornetist Emmett Roussell was found strangled in the yard behind a house on Basin Street. Police wrote the death off as a robbery in Storyville, but a clipped ticket was missing from his coat, and in the gravel lay a thin string that no one would claim. The gas lamps burned all night, and the streetcar on Canal Street ran every ten minutes.

about 2 h · 1–4 players

Gustav Adolf parish in Värmland, the night of Pentecost, 22 May 1822. At the lonely croft of Ullfallet, the crofter Mattes Olsson and his wife Lisa Jansdotter are murdered, the house is set on fire, and the stolen goods are buried. Only a twelve-year-old herd boy escapes — and it is his testimony that convicts the two men from Gumma, who both deny it but are sentenced to beheading and quartering. A real case from Swedish legal history: the actual investigation, the actual verdict, and the execution at Kroppheden in December 1823. Everyone involved has been dead for generations, and the sources for the case accompany it.

about 1 h 45 min · 1–4 players

Minneapolis, December 9, 1935. Publisher Everett Strand is gunned down with a submachine gun in the alley behind his house, a few steps from the car where his wife sits waiting with the grocery bag in her lap. On his desk lies the next issue of the weekly paper with a finished list of twelve reasons to impeach the governor, and in the car's wake sits a garage belonging to one of the city's most powerful men. No one in the alley wants to have seen anything.

about 3 h · 4–6 players

Seattle, March 12, 1916. Shipyard owner Andrew Fellows is found in the morning at the bottom of the great dry dock, beneath a stack of oak planks that slid over the edge, his left temple caved in. He had stayed on after the evening shift to check the April saw list against the timber that had come in from the harbor, and at the inner end of the dock lies a half-finished boat that no one at the yard will own up to. Master shipwright Martin Ruff went down toward the dock shortly before Fellows's last quarter hour.

about 2 h · 1–4 players

On Twelfth Night, 5 January 1910, the cashier at Gerell's exchange office on Malmtorgsgatan in Stockholm was found badly beaten in front of the open safe; she died the same day without being able to say anything. Within a day a waiter known to the police was arrested at his father's cottage near Vaxholm, with the robbery loot in a left-behind suitcase and a steelyard in a paper parcel. A real case from Swedish legal history: the same investigation, the same suspects and the same verdict — the last execution in Sweden. Everything in the file comes from public records and contemporary press, and the sources follow with the case.

about 2 h · 1–4 players

Fjällvallen, 9 March 1984. Hotel proprietor Hjördis Malm is found dead in the drift by the back stairs, the day after the season's last evening, and the village calls it an accident: she had been drinking, she was sixty-one, and the cold takes whoever falls asleep outdoors. The cabin village next door had gone bankrupt a week earlier, the hotel was to be sold in March, and the witness who saw the most has been dead for two years and exists only as a transcript. The transcript points to one man, a letter in an estate points to another, and the sled everyone carried milk crates on has moved. The case was closed in May and the file has been shut ever since.

about 3 h 45 min · 4–6 players

Yngsjö village south of Åhus, the night of 28 March 1889. The young mistress of Möllegården is found dead in the cellar stair, fully dressed and laid out as if she had fallen and struck her head. But the village folk do not believe it was an accident, and the investigation shows she was first beaten unconscious and then strangled. A real case from Swedish legal history: the proceedings in Villand Hundred Court, the accused, and the verdict that was passed. All those involved have been dead for more than a hundred years, and everything in the record comes from public documents — the sources accompany the case.

about 1 h 30 min · 1–4 players

Autumn 1893: laborer Anders Hallgren is found dead in his woodshed on Snow Street in Fall River, Massachusetts, axe wounds across his back and the axe left in the woodpile. In the Swedish colony across the river everyone knows where the axe hangs — and no one will talk to the police.

about 2 h · 1–4 players