Denmark's 10 Most Shocking Criminal Cases
From serial bombers to brutal family murders—the dark crimes that shook a nation
## The Rødovre Triple Murder: Peter Lundin
On the night of June 16-17, 2000, Peter Kenneth Bostrøm Lundin—a man who would later adopt multiple aliases including Bjarne Skounborg and Thomas Kristian Olesen—committed one of Denmark's most brutal crimes. He murdered his cohabitant Marianne Pedersen and her two sons, Dennis (10) and Brian (12), at their home in Rødovre by breaking their necks with his bare hands following a quarrel over a phone call.
What followed was a descent into systematic horror. Lundin dismembered the bodies using an angle grinder in the garage and an axe, leaving approximately 231 pieces scattered across the crime scene. Deputy Chief Inspector Niels Kjøller of Hvidovre Criminal Police would later describe both locations as looking "like slaughterhouses, even though Peter had tried to erase his tracks by cleaning up." Despite his cleanup efforts, remnants of human tissue remained visible to investigators.
Lundin confessed on October 10, 2000. On March 15, 2001, Østre Landsret sentenced him to life imprisonment for intentional triple murder, rejecting his claims that he hadn't intended to kill. Prosecutor Attorney General Erik Merlung described the crimes as committed "in a state of horror and fright," justifying the maximum sentence.
## The Gamma Bomber
Toward the end of the 1970s, Copenhagen was gripped by fear as a serial bomber began placing explosives in the city. The first bomb detonated near Copenhagen; a second explosion confirmed that a dangerous pattern had emerged. The case would become one of Denmark's earliest examples of extraordinary criminal investigation, though complete details of the resolution remain limited in English-language sources.
## The Odense Murder and Criminal Profiling Innovation
On February 22, 1992, an innocent girl was brutally murdered in Odense. The case would become historically significant not for the victim's tragic death, but for what it prompted: the first instance of Danish police deploying psychological perpetrator profiling after initial investigations had stalled. This marked a turning point in Danish criminology, introducing methods that would become standard practice.
