lil brat

The hypnosis murders.

This is one of those cases you can find in a lot of Danish books about mysteries and weird happenings.

In 1951 the young Palle Hardrup shot and killed two people in a bank. When the police arrested him moments later they noted that he seemed unusually relaxed, and when they asked him why he had tried to rob the bank he calmly responded that his Guardian Angel had told him it would make the world a better place.

The gun and the bike that Palle had used to get to and from the bank both belonged to Bjørn Schouw Nielsen, Palle’s old cell mate in prison. That’s when the weirdness really started unfolding.

Palle came from a middle class home and had been an avid nazi during World War II and joined the notorious HIPPO group. The nazis had arrested most of the Danish police force during their occupation of Denmark and put them in concentration camps, so HIPPO took over and acted as “police” but they mostly just terrorised and murdered people in the streets. HIPPO was made up of Danish nazis, and when the war ended they were all arrested for treason. One of those people was Palle.

He was put in a cell with the older Bjørn Schouw Nielsen. Bjørn had also joined the Danish nazi party, but not the HIPPO group. He had been in trouble with the law since he was a child and always been an impulsive opportunist. Throughout the war he jumped from one side to the other, one moment helping Jews escape to Sweden, the next joining nazi support groups, then leaving them again and joining the resistance. Whatever served his goals at the time. But people remembered his time as a nazi supporter and he was arrested for treason.

In the cell they became fast, unusually close friends. The other inmates in the prison claimed they were lovers, and together they got up to “weird things”. They had all the time in the world and no one for company but each other. Bjørn had studied eastern mysticism and taught Palle yoga and they experimented with hypnotising each other. Bjørn was released first, and when Palle was released a year later he immediately went to Bjørn.

The police arrested them both and wisely kept them apart this time. But Palle seemed to still be under Bjørn’s influence somehow and weird Xes started appearing around the police station. The police suspected that Bjørn was somehow keeping Palle in a prolonged hypnotic trance though the Xes and kept an eye on him, preventing him from making more. Palle finally seemed to come to his senses and said his guardian angel was actually Bjørn.

In court it was decided that Bjørn had hypnotised Palle to commit murder, though not everyone were convinced that you’d have to manipulate a former HIPPO member to make him commit murder. People still don’t agree if it was the right decision. Palle never denied having shot the two people and Bjørn admitted that he might have had a bad influence on Palle but denied having hypnotised him, so perhaps Palle made it up to avoid a hard prison sentence.

My 2 brain cells:

The Tattooed Man was the unidentified 5th victim of the Cleveland Torso Murderer. He died of decapitation in June of 1936. He was in his 20s, 5'10, had blue eyes and reddish brown hair, and was covered in several distinctive tattoos.

His head was found wrapped in a pair of trousers near a bridge by a group of little boys, and his body was discovered the next day by police in a separate location. He had been cleaned and drained of blood.

The police put the above chart of the man’s tattoos, as well as his death mask, on display at the Great Lakes Exhibition hoping somebody would identify him. More than a hundred thousand people saw the Tattooed Man’s face, yet he was never identified.