62 | Dark Underpass: The Murder of Nella Olander

On July 27, 2018, in Fagersta, Sweden, a cyclist discovered a semi-nude woman, Nella Olander, lying in a dark underpass, fatally stabbed. Soon after, 14-year-old Thomas confessed to his mother that he and a man twice his age Johan Fallqvist, had attacked her.  What brought Thomas and Fallqvist together in this toxic partnership? 

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Music:
Epidemic Sound – Maximum State "Echoes of Time v2" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

Sources:
I huvudet på en mördare, 2019
In the Mind of a Murderer, Swedish Documentary, S3 E6, December 2019
Wikström, Mattis, ‘Sexualmördaren vill våldta – tvingas bort’, June 2021, Expressen, https://www.expressen.se/nyheter/krim/sexualmordaren-vill-valdta-tvingas-bort/
Zabielski, Julia, ‘Så lever Johan Fallqvist idag – efter mordet i Fagersta: "Stolt", May 2022, Nyheter24, https://nyheter24.se/nyheter/inrikes/1030864-sa-lever-johan-fallqvist-idag-efter-mordet-i-fagersta-stolt

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
When a cyclist on his way to work one sunny
morning spotted a purse lying on the tarmac near the
underpass he traveled through every day. He didn't think anything
of it, but moments later he saw an abandoned item
of clothing and at the edge of the underpass exit,
a semi nude young woman lay motionless on the gravel path,

(00:24):
who would die before the emergency services arrived. For Gerst,
there was a small and relatively safe Swedish city known
for its mining heritage, cultural history and hiking trails, and
the inhabitants were shaken by the brutality and randomness of
the attack on twenty eight year old Nella Olander. The

(00:48):
culmination of a sadistic fantasy imagined by two men who
joined together in a toxic partnership. Hello and welcome to

(01:13):
Prassua's Murder Map. I wanted to thank you for all
the support you've shown. I really appreciate all of your comments,
kind messages and donations. I'd like to ask you if
you could take a brief moment to give me a
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wider audience. I'll leave the details of all the ways

(01:35):
you can support me down in the show notes. Thank
you for listening. The sun was already up by five
am on Friday twenty seventh of July twenty eighteen in Fagusta,
a small Swedish city one hundred miles northwest of the
capitol Stockholm. These were some of the longest days of

(01:58):
the year, with almost eighteen nails of sunlight, so visibility
was good. When a man on a bicycle approached the
underpass that he always traveled through on his way to work,
he paused for a moment when he saw a purse
lying on the tarmac, but thought little of it and
continued cycling. Occasional vehicles rumbled across the bridge overhead, but

(02:24):
there were few people about at this early hour of
the morning. As he neared the underpass exit, his attention
was caught by an item of clothing on the ground
that looked like a pair of trousers. He thought this
was peculiar, but it wasn't until he emerged into the
daylight on the other side that he realized where they

(02:47):
had come from. Just at the edge of the tunnel
was a half naked young woman bleeding on the gravel path.
He slammed on his brakes and rushed over to check
her pulse. It was very weak. He tried to speak
to her, but she was already unconscious, and she appeared

(03:10):
to have been stabbed multiple times. He called the emergency
services and waited anxiously for them to arrive, continuing to
reassure the dying woman in the hope that she might
be able to hear him and would fight to stay
alive until help came. But it was too late. She

(03:31):
died before the ambulance arrived, and after the passer by
had given his statement, he returned to his bike to
continue his journey. He stared at the blood on his
hands and wept, but the red stains he left on
his handlebars would wash away far more quickly than the
memories of the terrible discovery he had unsuspectingly witnessed. That morning,

(03:58):
the police set up cort around the area, the blue
and white crime seen tape fluttering in the breeze as
officers and snifferdogs combed the area for clues and appealed
for information about the murder. A for gusta woman named
Camilla Ohlander was on holiday in Greece at the time,
but always kept up with the news from home, and

(04:20):
was horrified to read that a young woman had been
violently killed. Although the article didn't name the victim, Camilla
was struck with a haunting sense of foreboding. Telling herself
to be calm and avoid jumping to conclusions, she sent
a text to her twenty eight year old daughter Nella
and asked her to call to put her mind at rest.

(04:44):
The phone rang fifteen minutes later, but it wasn't her daughter,
it was the police. Her maternal instincts had been prophetic,
and it was Nella Ohlander who had died. Camilla immediately
bordered a plane and returned to Sweden, where her first

(05:05):
action was to visit the spot where her daughter had
been fatally attacked. She stood and gazed quietly at the dark,
graffiti covered underpass for as long as she needed to,
then turned around and swore she would never return there again.
The most important thing now was to care for her

(05:26):
five year old granddaughter, whose mother had been cruelly snatched
away elsewhere, and for Gusta. A fourteen year old boy
named Thomas was anxious. His mother was usually less than
attentive to his needs. But even she couldn't fail to
notice that he was extraordinarily jumpy and uneasy that day.

(05:52):
What's the matter with you, she finally asked, unsympathetically. You
look like the weight of the world is on your should.
Thomas swallowed hard. Mum, I've got something to tell you,
he whispered. His next words tore through her heart. I
raped a woman last night. Then my friend stabbed her.

(06:16):
It happened near the underpass. His mother had heard the
news of the murder and was sickened to learn that
her son was involved. She had previously had concerns about
his attitudes towards women, but she had never dreamed that
he would act on them. She demanded to know the

(06:37):
name of his friend, assuming it was one of his
peers from school. Thomas reluctantly admitted that the killer's name
was Johannes Fouquist, and he wasn't a classmate. In fact,
he was twenty eight years old, double Thomas's age. His
mother reached for the phone and dialed one one two.

(07:04):
Johann Fouquist was born in nineteen ninety in the city
of Farlun and was the youngest of four siblings. His
father oscillated between moments of calm and outbursts of rage
for no apparent reason, and his mother frequently backed down
and kept quiet to avoid triggering his volatile temper. The

(07:28):
atmosphere at home was tense, and the children continually tiptoed
around their dad, fearful of the constant threat of his anger.
As a result, Johannes suffered from delayed speech development and
struggled to communicate verbally until the age of six. He
was immature for his age and still played with toy

(07:50):
cars and stuffed animals at the age of thirteen in
a way that would be expected from a toddler. He
was perceived by class mats are strange and was the
victim of psychological bullying, which included name calling, teasing, and
pretending that he was invisible. He was rarely invited to

(08:12):
join in with playground games, and he felt just as
isolated at school as he did at home. On a
few occasions, the other children hid his clothes during gym class,
forcing him to run after them in his underwear. Some
of the more hardened and mercenary tormentors promised to leave

(08:32):
him alone if he gave them money. He reluctantly agreed
and bought himself a few precious days of peace. At
the beginning, he had yearned for people to notice him,
but now it felt like he had won the lottery
on the days he was mercifully ignored. Johann left high

(08:54):
school age sixteen and was offered a place at a
nursing college, where he managed to make a few friends
and was no longer bullied. It seemed that he was
finally making a new start, but it wasn't to last.
Johannes had started fantasizing about hurting people, and when he
let this slip to some of his acquaintances, they distanced

(09:16):
themselves from him. He confided in his sister about his
dangerous thoughts, and she warned him that nothing good would
come of them and advised him to stop worrying about
things and move on. But it was far easier said
than done, and Johan's preoccupation with taking a life led

(09:37):
him to purchase an air rifle. During break time one morning,
he crouched behind some shrubbery outside the college and waited
for a victim to emerge from the building. A female
classmate was the first to walk past, and he barely
hesitated before pulling the trigger and shooting her in the hair.

(10:01):
She only suffered minor injuries that the act was a
symbolic one. Until then, his desire to kill had lived
only inside his mind. Now he had taken the first
step towards making it a reality. Nobody found out who
had fired the shot, so Johanne was free to continue

(10:23):
his inevitable escalation. Falcus's anger and resentment grew when he
was rejected by the female students he approached, and he
was frustrated that he had never had a girlfriend. He
decided that most of them were self centered, arrogant, and

(10:43):
unworthy of his attention, but there was one girl in
his class whom he liked to the point of obsession.
He spent hours constructing a romantic letter, imparting his feelings
for her, and then waited in the corridor for the
right moment to slip it into her locker. His dreams

(11:03):
were shattered when she read the private note in front
of her friends and not only rejected his advances but
laughed at its contents. Fauquist felt furious and betrayed. He
seethed and fumed for the rest of the day, fighting
the urge to smash his fist into the brick walls

(11:26):
of the school and bring the building crashing down around them.
That night, he wrote her a second letter. This time
it was filled not with love but with vitriol, and
expressed in no uncertain terms his desire to harm her.
I'm going to release your skin from your body. Then

(11:48):
i will take your flesh away from your bones. Then
I will break every bone in your body. Then at
last I will release your head from your body. This shit,
I really mean. If you take this as a joke,
I will hang you by your feet and take out
your teeth one by one. I really mean this. You

(12:10):
cannot play with me. If you still think this is
a joke, then I'll take you down. When you're going
home someday, I'm going to rip your head off. If
you show this to the police, then I will rape you.
I will rape you until you don't breathe anymore. The

(12:32):
young woman at the receiving end of his fury, was
terrified by the threatening letter and took it straight to
a teacher, who called the police. It was evident that
Falquist was particularly agitated by the idea of people failing
to take him seriously, as he mentioned the word joke
twice in the aggressive note, suggesting a sense of powerlessness

(12:55):
and frustration that people didn't listen to him. He had
been so incensed by being rejected by the object of
his desires that he felt compelled to communicate his feelings
on paper, conveying the intensifying threats in a disorganized way
which lacked the structure of a logical, more mature mind.

(13:17):
The police charged him with unlawful threat and he was
sentenced to seventy five hours of community service and forced
to continue his education at home, which only served to
reinforce his sense of isolation. At this point, he finally
lost all contact with any remaining friends. Fouquis's three siblings

(13:40):
were all academic high achievers and were moving out of
the family home into independent lives and successful careers while
he was left behind to deal with his father's temper.
One of fauquis brothers noticed his youngest siblings deteriorating mental
state and urged him to see professional help. Fouquist heeded

(14:03):
his advice, booked an appointment with a therapist, and unburdened
some of his difficult feelings. He explained that his father
had punished him for the smallest of transgressions throughout his childhood,
and even as an adult, he continuously put him down.

(14:24):
He also told the therapist that his anger extended towards
his sister, and relaid a story about a time when
they had gone for a walk together. A barely perceptible
facet of her behavior had suddenly made him see her
as pompous and overbearing, reminding him of the girls at
school who had rejected him. He saw red and started

(14:49):
shouting uncontrollably, pushing her away and threatening to smash the
window of her parked car if she didn't unlock it
and allow him to retrieve his bag so he could leave.
His sister had calmed him down, and he eventually regained control,
but not before he vented his fury by hurling a
metal pole into the nearby woods to unleash his rage.

(15:16):
By now, Fouchust had abandoned his nursing studies and spent
much of his time playing video games, stuck in a
repetitive and mundane existence, with no desire to get a
job and little experience that would have helped him to
secure one anyway. One weekend in twenty eighteen, his brother

(15:38):
visited the family home and found Johan tucked away in
his bedroom. As usual, his hands were glued to a
game controller and his eyes were transfixed by the screen,
where a distorted reflection of himself was just visible. His large,
pale face sat awkwardly atop a bulky body, and his
blonde hair and beard were unkempt. His unblinking eyes were

(16:02):
framed by square, black roomed spectacles, and he seemed to
be blocking out all stimuli from the outside world. It
took his brother a few attempts to catch his attention.
Fearing that it would soon be too late to rescue
him from his internal prison, he bought a flat for
his younger sibling in Fegusta, fifty miles south of their

(16:26):
hometown in Farlun, and encouraged him to make a fresh start,
generously giving him some money to get him on his feet.
Valchuist enjoyed his new independence, but still contended with feelings
of profound loneliness and emptiness. He tucked himself away in
his apartment during the day, then wandered the darkened streets

(16:49):
at night, hunting for something he needed but couldn't yet
name one evening, he passed a football pitch where some
younger boys were kicking a ball about. Foulquis struck up
a conversation with them and found them easy to talk to.
Most of the boys were about fourteen, but a few

(17:12):
were as young as ten. After a while, he started
inviting them to his apartment, where he offered them cigarettes
and alcohol and allowed them to stay the night, taking
on the role of a cool older brother who let
them do forbidden things away from their parents' scrutiny. One night,
he showed them the collection of guns and knives he

(17:34):
had been amassing over the last few years. He asked
them if they wanted to see something fun, then unlocked
a secret drawer in the wardrobe while the boy stood
around holding beer cans, intently watching their mentor. There was
a gasp as Fouquis proudly showed them his knives. Some

(17:56):
of the kids reveled in the sight of the weapons,
but one or two hung back with expressions of concern.
The twenty eight year old turned the conversation round to
a macabre theme, asking if you were to be killed,
which method would you prefer. A knife to the chest
or neck, or maybe getting shot there was an uneasy silence,

(18:21):
which reminded him of how his school friends had reacted
when he first admitted that he wanted to hurt people.
Had he pushed it too far, He didn't want to
ruin the easy relationship he had with the boys. Later
that night, some of them told their parents about their
older friend. Their families were so unsettled by the idea

(18:45):
of his weapons collection and his familiarity with children half
his age that they contacted the police, but no action
was taken. A couple of the boys fell away and
stopped coming to see him, But by June twenty eighteen,
Faucus had enrolled in a judo class where he met

(19:06):
a fourteen year old boy named Thomas. Like him, Thomas
had endured a turbulent upbringing, and they found they had
much in common. They would talk for hours and share
their deepest, darkest thoughts. Thomas admitted that he often thought
about raping someone, and Fucus finally felt he had a

(19:28):
kindred spirit, someone who had a deviant fantasy life like him.
Thomas wanted to rape and Faucus wanted to kill, and
over the course of a few more conversations they solidified
their intentions and combined their efforts to make both a reality.

(19:50):
They spent days discussing how to choose their victim and
how to carry out the attack, and they brought balaklavas
to hide their identity. Thomas was initially interested in sexually
assaulting a man, but Fuquis convinced him that a woman
would be easier to subdue. Although this was undoubtedly not

(20:11):
his only reason, he had harbored a hatred for females
ever since high school, and this was his chance to
finally exert his power over a woman. On the evening
of Thursday, twenty sixth of July, the unlikely pair were
watching a movie at Faulquist's apartment while finalizing their ominous plan.

(20:37):
Both agreed that this would be the perfect evening to
try it, and the hope that fate would provide them
with a suitable victim. At eleven forty pm, they took
to the streets and wandered to a bar on the
outskirts of Fergusta, thinking that they might find an intoxicated
woman to attack. There was nobody around, and after pumping

(21:03):
themselves up all evening in anticipation, they were desperate to
release their destructive energies, so they vandalized the building in frustration.
Thomas had been drinking all night and felt ill, so
he laid down on the street to stop his head spinning.
Falchus angrily told him to shape up and stick to

(21:24):
the plan. At that moment, a woman appeared. Nella Olander
was twenty eight years old and had enjoyed a rare
night out with friends while a relative took care of
her five year old child. She had a heart shaped
face framed with dark hair, a gentle smile, and her

(21:47):
restingly bright blue eyes. But he didn't notice her beauty,
nor did he wonder about her back story. The only
thing he saw was a potential victim. The clock had
ticked over past midnight, and it was now the early
hours of Friday, twenty seventh of July. Fouquist threw caution

(22:10):
to the winds and approached her with a ruse to
catch her off guard. Excuse me, my friend is sick.
Can you help me get into the hospital, he gestured
to Thomas lying on the pavement. Nella shook her head
and continued to walk home. Sensing that something was not

(22:32):
right about the situation, Fouquist rushed back to his friend
and slapped him in the face to bring him to
his senses, warning him that their target was getting away.
The teenager expressed uncertainty and told Falquis that he didn't
want to go through with it anymore. It had been

(22:54):
fine in theory, talking big from the comfort of Fouquist's
apartment with a beer can in one hand and a
cigarette in the other, but now they were out on
the street with a real human being in front of them.
Thomas didn't feel capable of attacking someone in cold blood,
and he feared going to jail. Fouquist told him angrily

(23:15):
that it was too late, reminding him that he would
be charged with helping him to plan the attack anyway.
Thomas reluctantly agreed to continue with the assault, but said
he would play no part in killing the woman. Fouquist
and his teenage helper pulled on their balaclavas and followed
Nella to safe distance. They tried to go unnoticed, but

(23:40):
there were people about, even at this late hour, who
thought it odd that the men were dressed in black
from head to toe and wearing balaklavas on a warm
summer evening. Fouqus gestured to Thomas to go the long
way round, while he took a shortcut to get ahead
of the woman so that he would be waiting for

(24:00):
her when she emerged on the other side of the
dark underpass. When Nella stepped out of the tunnel, she
was startled to see Foulquis blocking her path and pointing
a gun at her. He told her to stay still
and be quiet if she wanted to live, just as
Thomas caught up and appeared at his mentor side. Together,

(24:25):
they forced Nella back into the tunnel, but quickly realized
that any sounds would echo and might alert someone to
what was happening, so they dragged her back out to
the end of the underpass and threw her onto the
gravel path. Thomas sexually assaulted her, while Fouquis kept his
gun trained on her, reminding her that he would shoot

(24:49):
if she screamed. Afterwards, Falulchus grabbed her roughly by her
hair and pulled her head up towards him, relishing his
power as he to that he had never intended to
let her live. He pulled a long knife from his
pocket and plunged it into her neck three times as

(25:11):
she lay bleeding to death on the ground. He went
through a bag and removed her mobile phone before running
from the scene. Back at the apartment, Fucus wiped the
phone cleaner fingerprints, then threw it into some bushes at
the side of the road. He would explain later that

(25:32):
he didn't really know why took it, but he had
seen it happen in movies and thought it would be
a cool thing to do. Thomas was shaken by the
night's events and suggested they avoid seeing each other for
a while. His luster killed temporarily sated Falquist willingly agreed.

(25:53):
The following evening, the twenty eight year old walked to
the crime scene and sat on a bench, drinking a
bottle of water as he really the murder. A police
car drove past, and the officers stopped to check on
his well being, thinking he might be a worse forwear
customer from a local bar. He was perfectly sober, and

(26:16):
they chatted for a couple of minutes. Faucus mentioned that
he had read about the terrible underpass murder in the
newspaper and that he felt sorry for the woman who
was killed. The police officers told him to take care,
and Fuchus replied that he would. Waving to them jauntily
as he said, I'll see you soon. The following day,

(26:42):
Foucus called Thomas, who told him he wasn't feeling well
and that it made him sick to think about what
they had done. Fucus went for another aimless walk as
he mulled over the events. He didn't feel at all
sorry and couldn't understand why his young accomplice was regret
As he was walking, he heard a couple of car

(27:03):
alarms going off, which inexplicably annoyed him. He couldn't see
anyone suspicious nearby trying to break into a vehicle, but
he phoned the police to report it. Fauchus returned to
his apartment, unaware that by this time Thomas had told
his mother everything. There was a knock at the door

(27:25):
the following morning. He was surprised to see the police
standing outside and assume they were following up about the
car alarms, but he couldn't have been more wrong. They
were there to arrest him for the murder of Nella Olander.
He made a desperate break for freedom, but the officers
were ready for it and got him on the ground

(27:47):
with his hands behind his head, then cuffed him and
escorted him to the station. Johann Fouchuist was charged with
first degree murder. His first question to the instigators was
whether the prosecutor would be a woman. When he was
informed that it was a man, he visibly relaxed and

(28:08):
told them that he didn't want any women in the courtroom.
He was found guilty and sentenced to life at Nautolier Prison,
while Thomas was handed over to social services and placed
in juvenile detention. The community was shocked by the brutality
of the random killing, and the words Carma will find

(28:31):
them appeared on the cold, gray concrete walls of the underpass.
For the next two years, Fauchust made a nuisance of
himself in prison and was frequently placed in solitary confinement
due to his persistent bad behavior and repeated threats against staff. Eventually,

(28:54):
he was moved to a facility in tider Home, where
they were better equipped to deal with difficulty in dangerous prisoners.
Fauquist wanted to stay in Autolia because he had friends there,
but his request was denied. It seemed that he had
found it easier to make friends in jail than at
school or any other normal setting, perhaps because for the

(29:18):
first time he was among others who were like him.
The victim's mother, Camilla Orlander, spoke to the media about
the situation. This is the rough translation of her words,
originally spoken in Swedish. I'm not at all surprised this

(29:40):
is not the last time he will need to be moved.
It feels very nice that he's transferred against his will.
He has no idea what it means to adapt and
follow rules, and I hope he gets hell wherever he
ends up. We have that as relatives of Nella every day.

(30:01):
Talking about the trauma of Nella's death, Camilla said, my
brain knows what has happened, but I just can't take
it in because it hurts so bad. The pain is excruciating,
and I feel it. She expressed a willingness to meet
Thomas and Foulquists face to face to make them aware

(30:23):
of the devastating consequences of their actions, but a meeting
has not yet been arranged to date. Even if her
wish to confront them is granted, she knows that it
will not bring her daughter back, and she must continue
to live with a gaping hole left by her loss
as she navigates heartbreaking conversations with her grandchild about what

(30:47):
happened to Nella. Thank you for listening to this episode
of Pressure's Murder Map. If you enjoyed it, please don't
forget to leave me a comment or review on whichever
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(31:08):
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(31:28):
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