On May 14, 1932, the body of Nicholas Palsson was found in one of the apartment buildings in the Atlas district of Stockholm. During his lifetime, it seemed, he was an unremarkable man, who a year before had arrived from America to the homeland of his ancestors, without work, livelihood and practically no prospects.
By the time of the discovery, his corpse had been lying in a tightly closed apartment for about a week. Next to the body was a revolver, from which, apparently, Palsson shot himself, and on the table lay the Aftonbladet issue of May 8. A note was circled with a chemical pencil in the newspaper describing the investigation into the brutal murder of a local prostitute, committed shortly before.
Atlas maniac
Lilly Lindstrom was also not an outstanding daughter of the Swedish people. She took odd jobs and was engaged in prostitution. Death made her famous. On May 4, Lindstrom's body was found in an apartment she rented in a poor area of Stockholm.
Lilly was killed by three blows of a heavy sharp object to the head. The apartment was in order; the police did not find any traces or fingerprints. But there was a ladle next to the body, half filled with the victim's blood. And it was noticeable that someone was drinking from this bucket.
Layout of Lilly Lindstrom's apartment and crime scene evidence on display at the Stockholm Police Museum
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For quiet and calm Sweden, such passions were something unheard of. All police forces in the capital were involved in the investigation. But the catch was small: perhaps a colleague.”Lilly testified that on the day of her death, her friend picked up a good client - judging by the reprimand, a foreigner. The police soon became interested in Palsson, already deceased. There was a version that he was the maniac from the Atlas. Like, the man could not stand what he had done, read the note, circled it with a pencil, and shot himself in the temple.
The case was about to be closed when one meticulous forensic investigator guessed to turn over several newspaper pages. On one of them, in the same pencil and Palsson's hand, it was written in English: "Illinois vampire." They were seriously interested in the personality of the deceased.
It turned out that he had been fired from the Rockford, Illinois Criminal Police the year before. American colleagues telegraphed to Europe that Palsson was a good cop, but got burned while investigating a series of mysterious murders. He was so immersed in the search for a maniac that he drank, began to take some Indian shamans to the station and pestered the authorities with conversations about Indeed, in the apartment of the former cop there were practically no personal belongings, but all kinds of crosses, amulets, a bunch of dried garlic were found in abundance, a rare Bible, and even revolving cartridges with silver-plated bullets.
So he was the murderer of the prostitute? Not at all! From mid-April to May 6, Palsson, whose family moved to Rockford from Sweden in 1882, stayed with distant relatives in the village, as confirmed by dozens of witnesses. And by the way, he told all sorts of stories about his service in the police. Catching a real vampire was central to his bikes.
In the end, the version of Palsson's guilt was dismissed as unpromising, and the investigation gradually died down. And in 1954 the case was closed due to the statute of limitations. Lilly Lindstrom's killer, of course, was never found.
Police insanity
But it turns out that the capture of an unknown maniac cost not only Palsson, but also several Illinois police officers. In 1926, an elderly William Stockton was recruited to one of the police stations in Rockford. He immediately became a participant in the investigation of a terrible crime. A local pastor was found dead in his own home. His corpse was suspended by his legs from the ceiling beam, and from a huge wound on his head, blood was flowing into a bucket that was placed there. Moreover, the priest did not die immediately. On the tea table was a glass from which, apparently, the killer drank the victim's blood.
The recruit was not a newcomer to the police, before that he had served for a decade and a half in the sheriff's office of the provincial town of Collinsville. Stockton immediately began to tell his colleagues that something similar had already happened in his backwoods five years ago. For over a year, the police have been looking for a serial killer with the same style. And the local Indians assured that the brutal massacre was the work of a vampire, devoid of fangs and trying to quench his thirst for blood in such an unusual way.
Stockton was laughed at and the case was passed on to another inspector. But the village cop was seething and pounding the doorsteps of the authorities. He even asked for a leave of absence and brought documents from Collinsville, signed by the then sheriff. But the sheriff turned out to be a patient of a psychiatric clinic, where he was forcibly placed. It turns out that he not only believed in the story of the vampires, but also tried to take action. For example, he organized round-ups all over the town and sprinkled all residents with holy water. In general, a complete clinical picture. So they were in a hurry to fire Stockton.
Less than six months later, another similar murder took place in Rockford. They remembered Stockton and Collinsville history. But it was not possible to question the former policeman, since immediately after his dismissal he went to the monastery and refused to answer any questions.
In 1929, Inspector Randall, who was in charge of the case, appeared to be on the trail. Not far from Rockford 8 barn of an abandoned farm, two bodies of previously missing people were found. They were suspended from the ceiling by their legs, and the skulls seemed to have been carved with an ax. The second corpse was quite fresh, and the blood was still dripping into the bucket that had been placed there. There were no traces of people on the farm - a layer of dust lay on the floor, glass and all surfaces.
Inspector Randall decided to set up an ambush. Why the brave cop decided to take the maniac alone, he never told anyone. The next morning he was found in the same barn, completely gray-haired and speechless. The bucket of blood, by the way, was gone, and no trace of anyone except Randall could be found. Soon the poor fellow, who lost his mind, died in a psychiatric hospital.
Mound Keepers
This is where Palsson stepped in. After the next, fourth attack of the Illinois ghoul, as the murderer was called, the descendant of Swedish emigrants remembered the stories of Stockton. This time, the victim was an amateur archaeologist excavating mounds that the Indians had set up along the Mississippi in great numbers before Columbus.
The cold-blooded Scandinavian sat in the library and day after day devoured all the books in which one could find scraps of local legends and information about vampires. Meanwhile, the killings stopped. However, Palsson did not stop, continuing the investigation and methodically entering everything into his diary. It was from him that it became known about the policeman's interest in the very mounds that the murdered archaeologist was excavating.
The earthen hills along the banks of the Mississippi are virtually all that remains of one of the most mysterious cultures of pre-Columbian America. Its center was located not far from Collinsville, where there was a huge Indian settlement. The burial mounds were piled up as foundations for buildings, which during their heyday served as houses for an estimated 40 thousand inhabitants.
Not much is known about this civilization even now, since it did not leave written sources, and life in the kurgan settlements suddenly stopped by 1500, even before the arrival of the Europeans. Moreover, the Indians, apparently, took off and moved. There are no traces of wars, fires, or other disasters in their settlements. There are no traces of degradation, when everything withers and dies for tens, or even hundreds of years. Almost no traces of material culture are found in these parts. It seems that in one day people packed up their things and went home.
The Indians who now live on the shores of the Mississippi have nothing to do with the disappeared civilization - they came to these lands later and avoided incomprehensible mounds, considering them a "bad" place. The maximum that could be achieved from the locals was assurances that the earthen hills were still guarded by their builders and that nothing could be taken from the ancient settlements. Even the Redskins said that the inhabitants of the mounds "left because they got sick and ceased to be people." Palsson even went to Collinsville, where he questioned the Indians and brought one of them with him. He settled a strange old man in his house and told everyone that he was a descendant of a real shaman.
Palsson's relationship with his superiors deteriorated. Soon he was given an ultimatum: either he would stop doing devilry, or let him get out of service. In response, the policeman asked for a leave of absence for a few days and departed in an unknown direction. He never appeared at the station. The house was also empty - both Palsson himself and the mysterious shaman were gone. But in the garden, the police found a terrible find: in a hastily dug grave lay the corpse of a man. The head and hands were cut off, and the unfortunate man's chest was pierced with a short aspen stake. In addition, almost all of the front teeth were missing from the deceased. Not only as a policeman went crazy, finishing off an unknown person according to all the rules of hunting for vampires.
The question of Palsson's guilt was not in doubt, but they could not catch him - it turned out that he managed to sail to Europe. They rushed to write off the case to the archive, "hanging" all previous murders on the fugitive cop.
Several decades passed, and this bloody story was forgotten. But American archaeologists again became interested in the mysterious mounds and made amazing finds there.
They unearthed several burials from the heyday of the kurgan city. The graves contained the remains of middle-aged men. The heads and hands were cut off, and the front teeth were missing. Who and why dealt with the inhabitants of the ancient settlement in such an unusual way is still unknown, because modern science does not believe in vampires.
Boris SHAROV