Girl, 16, ‘lured rapist taxi driver into woods so her brothers could strangle and leave him hanging by a rope’
A 16-year-old girl is accused of luring an alleged rapist taxi driver into the woods so her brothers could strangle him.
She is thought to have been motivated by revenge as he is said to have raped her when she was 14.
The teenage girl and her four brothers, aged between 16 and 18, are on trial in Sweden, accused of killing the 26-year-old man.
The four brothers have denied all the charges against them but the girl has admitted she lured him into the woods, thinking he would be beaten up.
The girl is said to have texted the taxi driver, who has not been named, asking him to meet her with a bottle of vodka in a car park close to the Hjälstaviken nature reserve in southeast Sweden in March, according to the newspaper Fria Tider.
The pair then met up and it’s claimed the four brothers then strangled the man and hanged him with a noose made from some rope they had brought with them.
This, say prosecutors, means the man was likely to have severely suffered in his last moments.
The taxi driver was only found several weeks later when his car was discovered hidden in a snowdrift.
Police say they found the defendants’ DNA both in the murdered man’s car and on the rope used to hang him.
Records have also revealed they had transferred money from his bank accounts to their own.
Investigators are also said to have found some of his belongings in their home, according to the newspaper report.
Sweden’s Uppsala District Court heard that the main motive for the alleged murder was revenge, as the girl has made a report about the driver allegedly raping her in February last year which is said to have not been followed up.
The brothers are also said to have told several friends that they would be killing a rapist and later told them they had done it.
The head of investigations at the Uppsala police, Andreas Pallinder, admitted the force should have taken the rape report more seriously.
He said during a press conference: “If you take it to its extreme, theoretically we could have prevented a murder.”
Prosecutors initially believed there may have been a financial motive to the killing as money and belongings were missing from his person, although this line of inquiry was later dropped as it was thought to be vague.
A lawyer representing the man’s family, Ebru Tok, previously said: “The family is in great sadness and shocked by the unique situation of such young people being suspected of the murder.
“They hope that the preliminary investigation will clarify the circumstances of the case.”