Peter Lundin


Peter Kenneth Bostrøm Lundin, who later renamed himself to Bjarne Skounborg and most recently Thomas Kristian Olesen, is a Danish serial killer who, on March 15, 2001, was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Østre Landsret for a triple murder. The night between June 16 and 17, 2000, he killed and then dismembered his cohabitant Marianne Pedersen and her two sons, Dennis and Brian, in their house at Nørregårdsvej 26 in Rødovre.
On March 15, 2001, he was found guilty of having caused Marianne Pedersen and her two sons' deaths, but claimed that it was an accident. His lawyer Bjørn Lund Hansen also argued in court that it was an accident, and when Lundin was found guilty, he asked for a timed sentence of 16 years in prison. State Attorney Erik Merlung, who represented the case as a prosecutor, had always thought that Lundin should be sentenced for murder, and he demanded life imprisonment. Despite the Retslægerådet's recommendation - and eventual success - in granting the prosecutor's request for life imprisonment, the country's highest judicial and medical experts had recommended the prisoner remain in custody.
The case is one of Denmark's most horrifying and most talked about murders in recent times. Lundin is currently serving his life sentence at the Institution of Herstedvester.

Early life and upbringing

Peter Lundin was born on February 15, 1972, at Roskilde Sygehus, as the son of Ole Bostrøm Lundin and the German-born Anna Lundin. In 1950, Ole Lundin and his brother had moved from Canada to the United States, with the purpose of joining the United States Army, where they could keep their Danish citizenship, unlike in the Canadian army. The brother was sent to Korea, where he died from a virus, while Ole was stationed in West Germany. While serving in West Germany, Ole met the young German girl Anna Schaftner. They married and later settled in Denmark.
Ole was employed as a bricklayer and built the couple's house on Fuglesangsvej in Solrød Strand. In 1979, the master builder Lundin developed a blood clot that incapacitated him, and coupled with the family's financial struggles, their house was foreclosed. Following this, they decided to emigrate to the United States with their 9-year-old son Peter. They bought a house on Essex Drive in the town of Ormond Beach, Florida, where they ran a motel.
In 1984, the family moved into a newly acquired house in Maggie Valley, North Carolina. A few years later, Ole decided to leave his wife Anna, taking his son with him. Together, they initially settled in Los Angeles, where they stayed for a few weeks. They then moved on to New York City and, later, Boston. Their journey ended in Miami, where Ole found an apartment and work as a bricklayer again. However, Ole and Anna got together again, with the father and son bringing Anna down to Florida from North Carolina. In the meantime, the 14-year-old Peter had started studying at a school in Miami.
During his school time in Miami, Peter worked various jobs in his spare time, including as a waiter at a restaurant. On the day he turned 16, he left school and instead began work as a bricklayer with his father. It was during this period that he first became acquainted with drugs such as cocaine and marijuana. However, the family moved back to Maggie Valley again, where he started studying at the local high school. At this time, Peter started selling cannabis to his classmates.

First conviction

Murder of his mother

The murder of Anna Schaftner Lundin took place around April 1, 1991. Peter Lundin was 19 years old, and there had been chaos in the family for a long time. As both of them were often drunk, Peter and Ole were violent towards Anna. The situation had previously been so serious that the family's neighbors had called the police several times, but no report came out of the police visits.
It is suspected that a quarrel caused the murder. Anna Lundin wanted to cut off her son Peter's long hair, causing him to choke her. Together with his father, they drove the body to the city of Buxton and buried her on the wide sandy beach of Cape Hatteras.
On November 1, 1991, some passers-by who were on a walk on the beach near the lighthouse at the Outer Banks in Buxton discovered the body of a woman which had been washed ashore. The body was wrapped in a blue blanket, covered with black plastic and wrapped with tape and a yellow rope. Peter and his father had since fled to Canada, but on June 6, 1992, they were both arrested in a Toronto hotel room.
In July 1993, Peter Lundin was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment in Dare County. At the same time, his father Ole was sentenced to 2 years as an accomplice. Both were ordered to be deported to Denmark upon completion of their sentences. Ole finished his sentence and was deported while Peter appealed both the length of his sentence and his deportation. He failed to overturn his conviction, but on February 16, 1995, his sentence was reduced to 15 years, which he served at Brown Creek Correctional Institution.

''The American Dream''

In 1994, Lundin was interviewed by Danish TV channel TV 2 during his stay in prison. The broadcast by Nordisk Film TV for TV 2 was organized by the television journalist Jesper Klit. The broadcast was called The American Dream and discussed young Danes across the Atlantic. It was by chance that Lundin took part in the program. While randomly browsing a newspaper, Danish TV employees came across the story of Danish citizen Peter Lundin, who had been convicted of murdering his mother.
Organizer Jesper Klit then wrote a letter to Lundin asking if he would participate in an interview with Danish television. Lundin agreed, and the interview was arranged with American prison authorities who had a very liberal attitude towards media interviewing inmates.
During the broadcast, Lundin colored one part of his face black and the other white, to symbolize "good and evil". After viewing the interview, renowned Swedish psychiatrist, Professor Sten Levander, awarded Lundin 39 points on the Psychopathy Checklist. The documentary was broadcast on TV 2 on December 14, 1994.

Release and deportation

Lundin was released after serving barely half of his sentence. At the time, the state of North Carolina had a desperate lack of prison capacity. The serious lack of space was due to, among other things, a large number of prisoners from the US Army, most of whom came from Fort Bragg. North Carolina, therefore, chose to halve the sentences of prisoners imprisoned after a certain date. State law at the time did not allow convicts to serve sentences in other US states.
On June 4, 1999, Lundin and a 4-person US police escort arrived at Copenhagen Airport. After his arrival, Peter moved in with his wife, Tina Lundin, whom he had married in 1996 while serving his sentence in North Carolina, and her teenage daughter in Måløv.

Second conviction

Triple murder

In the fall of 1999, after a violent attack on his wife and her daughter resulted in him being thrown out of the apartment, Peter moved into the Men's Home in Nørrebro. While living there, he visited a brothel on Fasanvej 239 in Copenhagen, where he subsequently met Marianne Pedersen, an employee of the brothel.
Marianne Pedersen was 36 years old, an early retiree and had been a widow for a year. Her late husband was a former painter, and even before his death, they started a massage clinic at Fasanvej, where she earned money as a sex worker. Pedersen and her two sons, Dennis and Brian, lived in the Copenhagen suburb of Rødovre. Lundin and Marianne subsequently became lovers.
On July 3, 2000, Pedersen and her sons were declared missing by her older stepson. He contacted police because he was worried that he could not reach Pedersen or the boys on their cellphones. He had found a note on her front door that said they had gone on a vacation. The note was unusually worded and alarmed the stepson, who then went into the house to look for the family. He found the home in disarray with the furniture moved away from the walls, trash lying around, vomit in both toilets, and a strange smell in the basement.
After filing a missing person's report, police began investigating the disappearances. Upon an initial search of the house, it appeared there were discrete blood stains scattered around the house. Further investigation revealed blood stains in Pedersen's bed, her car and in the cellar, traces of blood between bathroom tiles and even on a chopping board and a blender in the kitchen.
Police went to Lundin's home address and searched the premises. Lundin claimed that Pedersens were on holiday, and that he had agreed to paint their house while they were away. However, on July 5, 2000, Lundin was arrested, charged with murder, and detained for four weeks. Further investigation led to the conclusion that Pedersen and her two sons had been killed and dismembered. The first victim had been dismembered in the basement while the other two were dismembered in the garage. A recently cleaned freezer located in a shed at the Pedersen property also had traces of blood inside.
Deputy Chief Inspector Niels Kjøller from Hvidovre Criminal Police told the press: "Both places looked like slaughterhouses, even though Peter had tried to erase his tracks by cleaning up." From remnants of human tissue, the police technicians were able to observe that Lundin had used an angle grinder in the garage, and there were about 100 visible cutting marks on the floor, revealing that he had used an axe.
Lundin changed his explanation after three weeks. He explained that he had heard screams from the basement at night between June 16 and 17, 2000. In the basement, he found the two boys lying on the floor. They had been stabbed by Marianne, who he claimed had ingested drugs and was unconscious. He then began to beat her because she had killed the boys. He said that, although he had not struck her "seriously," she died shortly after. He did not call the police as he thought they would not believe his story because of his past and had instead decided to dismember the bodies.
On October 10, 2000, he confessed to killing them. He explained that he had quarrelled with Marianne because she "had spoken sweetly" on the phone with another man. Subsequently, Lundin fought with Pedersen and her sons on her double bed, where he broke their necks with his bare hands. After the murders, he placed the bodies in the freezers located in the home. This story was not quite corroborated by forensic evidence; however, as it was reasonably determined that one of the boys had died in the basement, and investigators found it unlikely that he had broken their necks the way he claimed.
On June 19, 2000, Lundin went shopping at a Metro in Glostrup, where he bought an axe, rubber gloves, plastic bags and cleaning agents. After dismembering the bodies. Lundin put the body parts in plastic bags, which he then placed in bulk waste containers outside the house. These were then taken for incineration. He probably drove further around Zealand in Marianne's Ford Mondeo and placed smaller body parts in various waste containers. About 10,000 tonnes of refuse were investigated at Vestforbrænding, as well as at a waste site in Holme-Ostrup near Næstved. In addition, with the help of the Danish Emergency Management Agency, the entire Vestvolden was searched. However, the bodies of Pedersen and her two sons have never been recovered.