It was an impossible cold case

The Breakthrough is a wild Swedish miniseries on Netflix that took the top 10 charts by storm. What you might not have known is that the story is actually based on a real story that has haunted Europe since 2004. After 16 long years, the double murder which took place in Linköping was finally solved after using some wild detective techniques. The shocking true story behind Netflix’s The Breakthrough is actually worse than the series, so here are all the real details the show left out.

The real crime was grizzly

via Netflix

On the morning of 19th October 2004, the Swedish city of Linköping awoke to the devastating news that an eight-year-old boy called Mohammed Ammouri was brutally stabbed by a masked killer. Anna-Lena Svensson, a 56-year-old witness, tried to stop the attack but was also murdered.

The murders were shocking not only for their brutality but also because nobody could figure out why. There was no connection between any of the victims or any motive for the crime. There was an intense investigation which even got DNA evidence from the crime scene, but nobody could identify the killer. The DNA did not match anyone nationally or internationally. Therefore, the case went cold.

The case soon became infamous in Sweden and the victims’ families were desperate for answers, but they wouldn’t get those for another 16 years.

So, what was the breakthrough?

via Netflix

In 2020, forensic genealogy was an up-and-coming detective technique, but it became the answer to solving the case. Forensic genealogy had already gained traction in the USA, which used samples to trace a suspect’s family tree through publicly available genealogical databases.

What does The Breakthrough Netflix series do differently?

The Breakthrough is a fictionalised retelling of the murders, and the director Lisa Siwe has opened up about how she tried to balance the intensity of a crime thriller with the sadness of the true story. The real story is so much worse because all that real human pain you see in the Netflix series was intensified, and left hurting for 16 years.

Lisa expressed the show’s focus on the human aspects of the tragedy during an interview with Netflix.

“Though this is a fictional drama series about a crime, it is, above all, a depiction of a human tragedy—where we place our focus on the victims and the investigation rather than the perpetrator,” Lisa said.

The story unfolds in two timelines: The immediate aftermath of the murders in 2004 and the new investigation in 2020. Peter Eggers plays John, based on the real detective Jan Egon Staaf who refused to give up on the case, and Mattias Nordkvist plays Per, inspired by the genealogist Peter Sjölund.