40 years ago, a woman was found dismembered under a highway in Stockholm. It was the beginning of what would become Sweden's strangest and most controversial legal process: the Catrine da Costa case. The two doctors Teet Härm and Thomas Allgén were identified as guilty of the dismemberment. But how did the legal system actually come to the conclusion that they were guilty?
Catrine Beatrice da Costa, born Bäckström, was a Swedish woman who was brutally murdered in June 1984. She was married to the Portuguese Jose da Costa with whom she had a son. They lived in Coimbra, Portugal, and Stockholm, Sweden. Catrine da Costa was last seen on Malmskillnadsgatan in Stockholm on June 10, 1984. One week later, on June 18th, the dismembered parts of her body where found in plastic bags, spread out far apart. How she died has not been established, since vital organs and her head has not been found.