Christina Johansdotter

Case record: Christina Johansdotter

Background

Christina Johansdotter (died 1740) was a Swedish murderer who killed a child in Stockholm with the purpose of being executed.

She was an example of those who sought suicide through execution by committing a murder. The motive was tied to religious beliefs about suicide and execution.

The offence

Christina Johansdotter murdered an infant of a friend by decapitating it with an axe.

She had often contemplated suicide. She stated that if she committed suicide, she would go to hell and would never see her fiancé again, because he was surely in heaven.

She therefore decided to commit a murder so that she could confess, repent, and be executed in order to reunite with her fiancé in heaven.

With this intent, she went to a friend and asked her to lend her the infant in order to show it off to an acquaintance on a visit from the country. She then took the infant outside and chopped its head off with an ax.

Investigation

The case was brought before the court Södra Förstads kämnärsrätt in Stockholm in 1740. She was accused of having murdered the infant of a friend by decapitating it with an axe.

Trial

In 1740, the case was heard in Stockholm before the court Södra Förstads kämnärsrätt.

Christina Johansdotter freely admitted her crime and openly declared that she was guilty of what she was accused of. She explained her motive to the court, including her feelings of being deeply in love with her fiancé, his death, and her loss of all will to live and desire to follow him in his grave.

She said that she was at a loss as to how to solve her predicament until she witnessed the decapitation of a woman sentenced for infanticide. She took that execution as the solution and concluded that decapitation after confessing and repenting would allow her to go straight to heaven.

She also stated that while the murder of a grown-up did not always lead to a death sentence, the murder of a child always did. She explained that after confessing and repenting, even murderers were forgiven for their sin.

Sentencing

The punishment for the murder of a child in Sweden at this time was decapitation. After decapitation, the corpse was to be publicly burned at the stake.

Outcome

Christina Johansdotter was executed by decapitation in 1740. After the execution, the corpse was to be publicly burned at the stake.

Aftermath

The religious logic behind suicide-executions was described as follows: suicide was believed to send the soul to hell, while an executed person who confessed and repented was believed to go straight to heaven.

Children were described as being used as victims because they were believed to be free of sin and did not have to receive absolution before death in order to go to Paradise. It was also described that children were seen as easy preys due to their disadvantage in size and strength.

In 18th century Sweden, a desire to commit suicide was described as the most common reason for murdering a child, second only to unmarried women suffocating their newly-born infants after their secret birth. These “suicide-executions” were described as having developed customs and culture.

Executions in Stockholm at the end of the 17th century were described as having a theatrical character: condemned people and their families bought special costumes to escort the condemned to the place of execution at Skanstull. The authorities disapproved of these performances because the purpose of an execution was to put fear in people, a purpose said to be destroyed by theatrical performances that gave the audience sympathy for the condemned, especially if the condemned were female.

A new law was issued to abolish this execution culture and restore the intended deterrent effect of executions. The new law was put into effect in 1754, fourteen years after the execution of Johansdotter and in the middle of this execution culture.

After that law, everyone suspected of committing murder with the motive of committing suicide by execution was to stand on the schavott for two days with the crime stated on a board and whipped, and was taken to their execution blindfolded. It was stated that this did not have much effect in reality, and it was stated that King Gustav III contemplated replacing the death sentence with life in prison for female child murderers because they were given such sympathy at executions that the punishment did not have the intended deterrent effect.