Isabella Mueller (crime writer)
Sometimes life writes the craziest scripts, which seem so unbelievable that they defy rational explanation. This was also the case with the following crime story. On 16 September 1990, a man rang the police in the Danish port city of Randers, claiming to have found a dead body in a cage. At first, the Danish police thought it was a bad joke. However, as the man stubbornly and firmly stuck to his story, a patrol car was sent to the address in question and they did indeed find a dead man in a cage there. The man was Sven N., who lived in a white villa in the Randers suburb of Kristrup. His brother Bernd had called the police. As he hadn’t heard from Sven for several days, he had driven to his house together with an acquaintance. Despite ringing the doorbell, nobody answered, even though Sven’s car was parked in the garage. He then used a spare key to unlock the house. As he entered, a swarm of blowflies flew towards him and a foul stench crept into his nostrils. Bernd searched every room, but there was no sign of Sven until he opened a door leading to the former garage. When he entered the room, he could not believe his eyes. For the secret room was a torture chamber with a leather bed, whips hanging on the walls, a St Andrew’s cross and a cage, inside which Sven lay dead, sitting cross-legged in a large pool of blood. Sven was naked except for the boots he was wearing. His genitals were bound with a cord and around his neck he wore a steel collar attached to the cage. His hands were secured with handcuffs. The post-mortem revealed that Sven had bled to death from stab wounds to the left side of his neck. Bernd testified that Sven had split up with his girlfriend Marlene shortly before his death. She was told to pack her things and move out of the villa. After Marlene had written Sven a farewell letter, she had thrown the front door keys into the letterbox and taken Sven’s dog to Bernd. When Sven failed to get in touch and did not collect his beloved dog, Bernd began to worry, so he drove to Sven’s house and found his brother dead there. Sven’s ex-girlfriend Marlene quickly came under suspicion, but during police questioning she stuck to the version of events she had also told Bernd. The investigation revealed that Sven, who outwardly led a respectable, middle-class lifestyle, was not only in close contact with a criminal biker gang but was also known in S&M circles, where he enjoyed taking on the role of a submissive slave. The number of suspects grew by the day, as Sven was also heavily in debt and therefore owed money to many people. However, one clue in the house had made the police suspicious right from the start. Next to the cage, the perpetrator had attempted to clean the bloodstains from the carpet. But why? Why would someone leave the body in the cage and the cage in the house, only to then clean the carpet? It made no sense, unless the perpetrator had a direct connection to Sven. That is why suspicion fell once again on Marlene, a 23-year-old bodybuilder who had even been Danish champion twice. After Marlene’s boyfriend had ended up in prison for drug possession, she had met Sven, with whom she had fallen madly in love. He had just been dumped by his regular dominatrix, Sanne. Despite Sven’s masochistic tendencies, Marlene began a relationship with him; his ex-dominatrix, Sanne, taught her the art of S&M. Yet Marlene secretly hoped that Sven would renounce this lifestyle, which is why arguments became increasingly frequent – during which the normally submissive Sven physically abused Marlene to such an extent that she was forced to flee to friends’ homes. Marlene, who eventually broke down in tears during the numerous interrogations on 22 November 1990, confessed to having killed Sven. She had held an SM session with Sven in the torture chamber. Sven had climbed into the cage of his own accord, where he allowed himself to be chained up and was verbally abused by Marlene. Sven loved being humiliated. But this time, he said the agreed code word quite quickly to end the S&M session. Marlene failed to hear this and continued to insult Sven, who then lost his temper. He hurled the most vile abuse at Marlene, who silenced him with a gag in his mouth and ran into the kitchen to take a tranquilliser. When she returned to Sven and removed the gag, he threatened to kill her if he were let out of the cage. Panicked, Marlene ran into the kitchen, fetched a knife and stabbed Sven several times in the throat. She was terrified for her life following the many instances of physical abuse she had suffered at Sven’s hands. It was only later that she realised Sven had bled to death. Given her history, Marlene received a relatively lenient sentence. She was sentenced to five years in prison, from which she was released after three years.
