Lars-Inge Svartenbrandt

Lars-Inge Andersson (5 May 1945 – 15 April 2016), best known as Lars-Inge Svartenbrandt, later Lars Patrick Ferm and even later known as Lars Patrick Carlander, was a Swedish criminal. Svartenbrandt spent almost 40 years combined in prison for several robberies, violent crimes, and prison escapes. He was described as the "most dangerous man in Sweden". Svartenbrandt described himself as an "uncurable psychopath".

Early life

Lars-Inge Svartenbrandt was born on 5 May 1945 in Grytnäs Parish in Avesta Municipality, Dalarna County, Sweden. He grew up under unstable conditions. At twelve years old, he was placed under protective public care order (skyddsuppfostran) and ended up in juvenile detention school. In May 1961 he celebrated his 16th birthday by escaping from a juvenile detention school. The following year, 1962, he broke into a military armory and received his first prison sentence but escaped the following year. In 1967, he received his first detention sentence (interneringsdom) for grand theft (grov stöld) and threat to public servant (hot mot tjänsteman). In 1969 came his first conviction for armed robbery when he was sentenced to four years in prison.

1970s and 1980s

Svartenbrandt first came to public attention in connection with the spectacular mass escape from the Kumla Prison in August 1972. He had managed to hide in a saucepan cupboard in the security department and the guards had not noticed that he was missing when they locked up the prisoners for the night. Svartenbrandt crawled out of his cupboard after a few hours and unlocked his fellow prisoners' cell doors using counterfeit keys. The escapers included Lars-Inge Svartenbrandt, Bo "Bosse Dynamit" Wickman, Jan Holger "Nisse Pistol" Nilsson, Karl Bruno "Kalle Kanon" Karlsson and the Yugoslav Embassy murderers Miro Barešić and Anđelko Brajković. Together with 15 other hard-hit interns, including terrorist Miro Barešic, he climbed over the "fugitive walls" from what which was called Europe's safest prison, and disappeared. Svartenbrandt was arrested a week later in Lindesberg. The following year, in June 1973, he escaped along with three other prisoners in a garbage truck. Svartenbrandt and "Nisse Pistol" and two other companions jumped over the fence and hijacked the garbage truck by threatening the driver with a weapon they came across. They rammed the prison gate and disappeared. After two months on the run, Svartenbrandt was captured in Rörsås, south of Mariestad. Svartenbrandt was granted leave in October 1979 from Hall Prison to visit a doctor in Uppsala. Instead he freed his friend Benny Lilja who along with other prisoners had gone to the bathhouse in Södertälje. Svartenbrandt was waiting outside the bath house in a black Jaguar and Lilja got into the car and the two drove off.

Svartenbrandt and his companion Benny Lilja parted ways on 22 November 1979, when Svartenbrandt would help an acquaintance to collect a debt in an apartment on Kungsgatan in Stockholm. This ended with the two men getting murdered. Svartenbrandt confessed seven years later that he stabbed one of the victims with a hunting knife, but argued that his companion, who was now dead, fired the fatal shots. The day after Svartenbrandt and Benny Lilja rushed into the post office on Döbelnsgatan in Stockholm with rubber masks depicting Elvis Presley and John Travolta over their faces and AK 4's in their hands. During the escape Svartenbrandt fired 19 shots into a police van from the Östermalm police where officers Christer Backman, Gunnar Andersson and Dick Gunnelöf were sitting. All of them were injured and Gunnar Andersson was hit by seven shots. A doctor described it later as "an incredible luck that he survived". Seven people were taken hostage during the escape. These were released a few hours later. The two robbers managed to get to Gothenburg. The police tracked down their hideout on Viktoriagatan 15 and during a nighttime police raid the police sprayed tear gas into the apartment whereupon both gave up. Svartenbrandt was sentenced to twelve years in prison for attempted murder, aggravated robbery (grovt rån) and unlawful deprivation of liberty (olaga frihetsberövande).

During this sentence, he made several unsuccessful attempts to escape. In 1981 Svartenbrandt tried to escape by stabbing a guard with a sharpened toothbrush. Two years later in 1983 his wife tried to rescue him from the Hall Prison which failed and the result was another ten months to his sentence. The same year he was transferred to Säter's Mental Hospital in Dalarna. In May 1986, during a leave from prison to visit his mother, he escaped. He stole a car and went to Uppsala, where he robbed a post office. After his arrest, Svartenbrandt was sentenced to an additional 7.5 years in prison. A few years later he moved to the regional unit at Säter Mental Hospital where he got his own apartment, and the ability to move freely.

1990s

At midnight on Friday the 2 March 1990 he robbed at gunpoint a gas station outside Borlänge. He stole 4,000 SEK and forced a customer to help him escape. During a burglary of an officer's home in Falun, Svartenbrandt had stolen the gun and at the same time come across an assault rifle, two smoke grenades, two hand grenades, and large quantities of ammunition. The same month, he held his new girlfriend hostage in his apartment in the hospital for six days without anyone noticing it. While on leave on 22 March, he was arrested and confessed to all the crimes. In June 1992, Svartenbrandt was freed and then changed his name to Lars Ferm. After a few days he robbed Handelsbanken at Sankt Eriksplan in Stockholm dressed in a women's wig, fake mustache and a plastic gun. He came across some 100,000 SEK and fled on a bicycle through Rörstrandsgatan to Karlberg Palace Park, and was arrested in the bushes at Pompe's grave (dogs owned by Charles XII of Sweden). The reason for the robbery was according to Svartenbrandt that he had been promised to borrow 18,000 SEK from a friend, but who backed out. He was then forced to rob a bank to afford to start a new life and work as a stonemason. He was sentenced to four years in prison for the bank robbery. Svartenbrandt tried after the arrest to commit suicide at Kronobergshäktet in Stockholm, but the guards managed stop him and he should afterwards "have been healed through salvation," which is something he wrote about in his autobiography Svartenbrandt (1995).

After the arrest, he applied to the non-conformist LP Foundation (LP-stiftelsen), was baptized and was admitted to a theological education in Örebro and said, after getting out from prison in February 1995, that "I'm going to be a driver's license holder and taxpayer." He released an autobiography and set up a stand-up show that he acted in. Large back taxes and a quarrel with his wife in Linköping made, however, everything burst and Svartenbrandt robbed on 11 January 1996 the nearest post office in Linköping with a toy gun. During the robbery a cashier had recognized him despite his mask. He fled to Germany after the robbery where spent all the money from the robbery in the casino. He made it to the Canary Islands where he let himself be interviewed on the beach but was later arrested by the Spanish police in Playa de las Américas on 23 January 1996 and was taken from the police station to the island's central prison, Tenerife II. He was then transferred to the Spanish central Carabanchel Prison in Madrid where he remained for three months. He was extradited to Sweden in May and sentenced to four years and six months imprisonment. He was released from Norrtälje Prison in early February 1999 and then left his family in Linköping and was living with his new girlfriend at a friend in Stockholm.

On 8 June 1999, he and a 20-year-old companion committed a robbery and a shooting at a police car outside the Linköping University Hospital in Linköping. During the night of Tuesday the 8 June, shortly after half past three in the morning, three police officers were called, two men and one woman, to the parking lot outside Linköping University Hospital. It would check an ongoing car break-in, and was then subjected to heavy fire. A police officer was hit in the shoulder. The event was connected to the Malexander murders that occurred two weeks earlier. Andreas Axelsson, one of the perpetrators at the Malexander murders, was admitted to the Linköping University Hospital at that time. The day after Svartenbrandt was taken into custody after he was found at a staircase in the hospital. He was then taken by the police to the psychiatric clinic. On 30 June, he decided himself to go to Linköping and hand him over to the police because he felt singled out in the media for the shooting, but was released. He then denied any involvement. On 13 July, he was arrested at a McDonald's restaurant in Upplands Väsby after having been shadowed by the police since Länna south of Stockholm. At the time of his arrest he was also suspected for a bank robbery in Helsingborg on 6 May but was acquitted of these charges. He was convicted, however, for the other offenses to a six-month prison sentence.