Peyton Moreland (14:22)
Truecrime work management platforms ugh. Endless onboarding IT bottlenecks admin requests but what if things were different? Monday.com is different. No lengthy onboarding, beautiful reports in minutes, custom workflows you can build on your own, easy to use prompt free AI huh? Turns out you can love a work management platform. Monday.com the first work platform you'll love to use. Allegedly, Sarah had tried to attack Alexandra with a hammer and Alexandra managed to escape unharmed. But Sarah was kicked out of the church entirely. Obviously kicked out of the house, lost her job as the nanny. And honestly, it seemed like eerie foreshadowing for what was to come. Now, she had failed to kill Alexander once, but we know she would come back to try again. And the next time, In January of 2004, she succeeded. But even with that revelation, the police still don't quite understand this story. They didn't understand the why of it all. Boot hated Alexandra so much that he had urged Sarah to make attempts on her life. However, the investigators did have a key clue on top of Sarah's confession, and that was her phone. Now, Sweden doesn't have the same privacy laws that we have in the United States, so it was very easy for them to look through her messages and learn everything about Sarah's life. It took them no time at all to identify the phone number that God was using to text her. Any guesses? Any. Any? Three, two. One. Helga, the pastor. Now, Helga had been sending those texts from his main phone number. He had used a secret second line, one that Sarah didn't know about. But it was easy enough for police to track. The entire time that he was tricking Sarah into thinking he was God, he had also been communicating with her as himself, which made sense because she was a friend and the nanny of his children at the time. So they did need to be in touch. Except when the police looked at the exchanges between Helga and Sarah, they found that they'd been talking way more than you usually would with a co worker. They'd texted more than 2,000 times from mid November to January alone. 2,000 texts in about two months. When police dig into these texts, the nature of these messages were romantic. Helga had clearly been having an affair with Sarah, the woman who had just come in and confessed to murdering his wife. So it had begun right around the time that Sarah actually came to live and work with him as a nanny. Apparently, the new job had coincided with a time when Helga became very sick with a mysterious illness. And according to him, demons had made him ill. They were attacking him because he was just so holy and such a good Christian. Now, Helga had told Sarah that she was the only person who could help him battle the forces of hell. Specifically, she could serve God and oppose evil by having sex with Helga. And then when she had moved into his house, she also moved moved into his bedroom. Now, as I mentioned before, Helga's wife, Alexandra, slept in a separate room, and that's because her husband, Helga, literally kicked her out of their former room so that Sarah could come in and sleep with him every night. And I want to make this obvious that it doesn't seem like he was hiding this affair from his wife, but he still told Sarah that he wished he could be with her openly and live with her as husband and wife in front of everyone else. But in his position as a church leader, he was not allowed to get a divorce. Oddly enough, while his religion banned divorce, it was apparently okay with adultery, or at least it was okay with men who committed adultery, because around 2001, the news of their affair became public. I'm not sure how the secret got out, but suddenly everyone at Canute be Philadelphia church knew that Helga, their pastor, was cheating on Alexandra, his wife, with Sarah, the nammy. And who did the congregation blame? Sarah. Pretty much everyone saw her as this evil woman who had moved in and broken up a marriage. So Sarah was forced out of her position and her authority. It all ended with her becoming an outcast within the church community. And then again, she was kicked out of the church entirely after the incident where she attacked Alexandra with the hammer. Now, meanwhile, the people of Canute be Philadelphia treated Helga like he was just a blameless victim of Sarah's seduction, which is a very unfair way of looking at things. The double standard aside, according to Sarah, she did not fully consent to her affair with Helga. Apparently, she only got together with him in the first place because the other pastor the woman had told her to. Supposedly, there was some kind of divine mission that the two of them were meant to achieve, and it required Sarah and Helga to sleep together. And then once Sarah was living with Helga and having sex with him, he made all the calls. He controlled her finances. He controlled her housing. He allegedly refused to let her leave, Except a lot of the time, she didn't want to believe. I mean, again, Sarah believed that God wanted her to be with Hilda. This was her pastor, as she put it. Quote, helga's word was my law, and by the grace of God, I had to be his slave. That's a direct quote. Now, Helga had his own choice words to describe his relationship with Sarah. He said that while they were together, quote, Sarah became less and less Sarah and more of a shadow. So basically, allegations said that Sarah was in a very unfair situation. While Helga had come out on top, he still got to be respected as a church leader, and he got to cheat on his wife without getting judged for it. But apparently, that wasn't enough for him. He wanted more. He wanted Sarah to murder his wife so he could get out of his marriage without having to go through a divorce process. But remember when Helga sent Sarah those texts ordering her to commit the murder, he didn't only tell her to attack Alexandra, he wanted her to kill the next door neighbor, Daniel, too. So there's a whole other part to this. And his motive, once again, police learned, came down to an affair. Helga had also been cheating on his wife, Alexandra, with Daniel's wife. Also, this isn't necessarily relevant to the investigation, but I do think it's worth mentioning. Daniel's wife, AKA Helga's second mistress, was related to Helga by marriage. You may remember the female pastor I mentioned earlier, osa. Well, Daniel was married to her husband's sister, and held his wife was Osa's sister. So to summarize, he was married to the other pastor's sister, cheating on her with the other pastor's sister in law, all while running a church with her. On top of it, there are also reports that at one time, Helga and the other pastor were sexually involved with each other, too. So on top of the fact that everyone lived next to each other, were going to the same church, and had basically positions of power, they were all sleeping with one another, and they all were kind of related. So anyway, it was looking like Daniel had basically pretended to be God in order to manipulate Sarah into killing his wife and his other mistress's husband all in one go. Which would have been shocking if not for the fact that Helga apparently had a history of deadly violence against his spouses. Now, to be clear, there actually is a lot of controversy around that claim and Helga's past, and many allegations haven't been proven. But it is still worth mentioning that Alexandra was not Helga's first wife. Before their marriage, Helga had been with a woman named Helene, and they were married in 1994 and stayed together for five years. In December of 1999, Helene allegedly slipped in the shower, fell, and hit her head and died. Except during her autopsy, the coroner thought that her head wound was not consistent with falling to the ground. And even more alarming, her toxicology reports show, showed a fatal dose of cough medicine in her system. So to be clear, she would have needed to take a lot of the medication to overdose on it. And interestingly enough, there were no traces of the drug in her stomach or digestive tract, meaning she hadn't swallowed it. So the police believed someone had dosed her with the fatal poison by shoving it into another orifice. And her killer may have struck her on the head in the process. Now, in the immediate aftermath of Helene's death, the police had just one suspect, and that was her husband, Helga. It didn't help that he married his second wife, Alexandra, just nine months after Helene had passed. And it's also worth mentioning that by this time, Helga was 27 years old, while Alexandra, his second wife, who would go on to be murdered by his mistress, well, one of them was just 20 years old. Except there wasn't enough evidence at the time to charge him with anything or even to rule his first wife's death a murder. Still, fast forward to now, the second wife's death. The investigators kind of remember the suspicion, and five years later, they begin to see the pattern. And there's one other detail that wasn't a smoking gun in its own right in this case, but it is still very incriminating. You'll remember that Helga claimed that he was asleep when Sarah shot and killed his wife, Alexandra. Now, according to him, he dozed right through the gunshots, which honestly seemed impossible to police. No matter how heavy of a sleeper you are, no matter if you're in another bedroom, you will hear a gunshot right down the hallway. So after the investigators had gathered the text messages, the suspicious details around Helene's death and Sarah's outright confession, they arrested Helga. And once that happened, it was like the floodgates opened in this town. Before this point, the police had been having difficulties getting anyone from Canopy Philadelphia Church to talk on the record. But now the people of the church seemed a lot more willing to talk openly. It appeared that they lost their faith in their pastor Helga, not only because he was apparently a murderer, but also they already knew he had been cheating on his wife. Remember, they seemed okay with it before, but now that they knew that Daniel's wife was in the mix as well and he had been having an affair with her, it was harder to paint Helga as an innocent man who had simply been tempted by evil women. Instead, it was becoming clear that the consistent problem across the board was Pastor Helga himself. It also seemed that some people were almost more bothered by the affair than by the homicide. Now, multiple church members were coming forward to the police, and they helped fill in the gaps that the investigators hadn't known before, particularly about how another pastor at Knutby, Philadelphia, OSA might have played into all of this. OSA had been working for the church since 1992, and interestingly enough, she lived right next door to Helga. So his neighbor on one side was Daniel and his wife, who he would end up having an affair with. And then on the other side were his co pastor OSA and her husband. Now almost everyone who met this female pastor said she was beautiful. She was very charismatic. She was a great preacher and a lot of people gave her the credit for helping the congregation grow so rapidly. The people of Canopy just wanted to be in church hearing what she had to say. Except the things she preached were out of step with mainstream Pentecostalism. Nordstrom brings you the season's most wanted brands, Skims, Mango, Free People and Princess polly. All under $100. From trending sneakers to beauty must haves, we've curated the styles you'll wear on repeat this spring. Free shipping, free returns and in store pickup make it easier than ever. Shop now in stores and@nordstrom.com Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile with a message for everyone Paying Big Wireless Way Too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop with Mint. You can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying. No judgments. But that's weird. Okay, one judgment anyway. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment of $45 for three month plan equivalent to $15 per month required Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See full terms at Mint Mobile. OSA was obsessed with the end of times, and she believed that the Apocalypse was going to come any day now. She also believed that the tiny town of Canopy was going to play a key role in the end times, like God had personally handpicked this tiny town in the middle of nowhere to be especially important. Osa's beliefs were so extreme that other Pentecostal groups had distanced themselves from her and from Knutby, Philadelphia. In spite of that, she thought it was very important for her congregation to act a certain way, and they did exactly what she asked. After all, this female preacher was preaching that she was married to Jesus. Around town she had a nickname, the Bride of Christ, and in her mind that meant she understood better than anyone else how to follow God's will. So she told the people who they were allowed to date who they were allowed to marry. You'll remember how earlier I mentioned that the Manny turned shooter Sarah went through a divorce. It was around the time that her affair with Helga began, and according to Sarah, she had only married her husband because OSA had ordered her to. The reason the marriage had failed was because the two of them had never actually been in love in the first place. And then afterward, OSA forced Sarah to get together with Helga. Remember now, this female pastor denied those allegations. But the other people at Canute be Philadelphia said this was exactly the kind of thing she would force people to do in the church. She seemed almost obsessed with other people's love lives and sex lives and with dictating who could pair off with whom. OSA even told people how to decorate their homes, how to dress. She micromanaged every detail of her congregation's lives. So of course, some people have wondered how involved she may have been with the murder. There were rumors going around that Helga had been planning to run away with one of his mistresses. And if the gossip was to be believed, osa, the female pastor, couldn't handle the thought of anyone defying her or leaving her. The story went that she killed Alexandra, her own sister, just to punish Helga and to guarantee that he'd never defy her again. Now, one of the biggest proponents of that theory was Helga himself. In an interview, he said that he actually blamed her for both of his wives deaths. So far as Helene, the first wife, went, Helga said it was possible that she could have taken her own life. But he argued that it was just as possible that OSA had either murdered Helene or sent someone else from the church to do it for her. And as for his second wife, Alexandra's murder, Helga claimed that Oso was the one who had written all of those texts from God. It wasn't him, that she had sent them to him and then ordered him to forward them to Sarah. He only did what she said because he was afraid of what she might do if he didn't. So basically he's like, yeah, yeah, okay, I did send the God messages to Sarah, but I had no choice and I wasn't writing them. Now, I know this is something we see a lot. If someone is suspected in a murder, they will often find a way to deflect blame and say someone else was responsible, even responsible for their part in the murder. But I do have to acknowledge there were certainly signs that the whole plot was much bigger than what the police had already uncovered. It began with some holes in the confession Sarah gave to police at the beginning of this story. See, Sarah claimed that on the morning of January 10, she began by killing Alexandra. She said she did it alone and with no one's help because God had told her to via text message. She shot Alexandra twice in her bed while she was asleep. And then she walked into the next house over and broke into Daniel's home. Sarah made it all the way to his bedroom, but couldn't go any further because his bedroom door was locked. So her next move was just to knock. And when Daniel got out of bed and answered, she shot him in the face, chest and neck. Now, that is consistent with the ballistics evidence, which showed that both Alexandra and Daniel were shot at point blank range. Here's the problem, though. When Sarah gave her confession, the police also asked her to reenact the shootings, and they filmed it. The idea was for her to show where and how she shot each victim, how she'd held the gun, what angle she was standing at, and just everything else. But in the reenactment, the details did not match up. She was much farther away from Alexandra than she should have been when she claimed she pulled the trigger. And a few times when she got a detail completely wrong, the police told her what to do differently and then had her do a second take for the reenactment. They're like, no, no, that's not possible. You need to do it like this. And then she would redo it. So it seemed like she almost needed to be coached in order to accurately describe the shootings. And that fact alone had a lot of people thinking that maybe Sarah was not the real killer. And if she wasn't responsible, that also meant the text Helga sent her about God wanting her to kill might not have been the smoking gun that the police wanted them to be. I do have to acknowledge that Helga also blamed another member of the congregation. He never gave the person's name, but he said that a particular man had been present at the scene when both Helene and Alexandra had died. And that guy might have been the real killer, not him or Sarah. It's hard to know how seriously to take his claims and how many of them were an attempt on his part to find someone else to blame for his actions. But here's what I do know. Sarah and Helga both went to trial later that year, and they were both found guilty of killing Alexandra and shooting Daniel. Now, by this point, it was pretty clear to the courts that Sarah had serious mental health issues. She probably wouldn't have believed those texts were actually from God otherwise. So rather than send her to jail, the judge sentenced her to stay in a mental health facility, and she would be released when she was no longer a danger to herself or anyone else. Angelga's sentence was life in prison. Well, in 2011, Sarah was let go. Apparently, she was in a better place, mentally and emotionally. So even though she'd only been locked up for seven years. That was all the time she'd ever served for the deadly shooting. And as for Helga, originally, he was not supposed to be eligible for parole, but in 2014, he caught a break. The courts decided that he could, in fact, be eligible for parole after just 16 years. So that would be in 2020. Now, the reasoning was that the risk of Helga reoffending was low, and if he didn't pose a danger to anyone else, there was no reason to keep him locked up. Which was a surprising conclusion for the courts to reach, in my opinion, because so many people thought that Helga had also killed Colleen. Like this was a pattern. If he had murdered two wives already, it was hard to accept that he posed no danger to anyone else. Except Helga still hasn't been convicted of Helene's murder. The police did reopen the investigation into her death after Alexandra's homicide, but the second time around, they still didn't have enough evidence to prove that he was guilty. So, technically, he's only convicted of one murder and one attempted murder. Anyway, Helga was eligible for parole in 2020, but when he asked to be released, the courts rejected it. He sat in prison for two more years until 2022, and that time around, he was let go. So Helga is now living as a free man. He has changed his name and is married to a third wife, someone he met while he was in prison through a letter exchange program. Now, in a recent interview with the press, he said this about his current wife. She is a fantastic woman, a person I get along very well with. For the sake of her well being, I hope they are still getting along well. Now, as I wrap things up, I will note that one of the biggest questions in this case is about whether justice was served. Did the courts get it right in terms of who they charged and how much time Helga and Sarah spent behind bars? And the answer really depends on who you ask. Some people believe that Helga was a manipulative, violent murderer who tricked Sara into killing for him, all because he didn't want to go through a divorce. And if that is the case, it's right to send him to prison. But his sentence may have been too short. Others think that even though he served time for his crimes against Alexandra and Daniel, he still managed to get away with killing his first wife, Helene. So, again, maybe his sentence should have been longer or he shouldn't have been paroled. And some people think that he was actually a victim in all of this. Those people argue that the other pastor. The female pastor should have been prosecuted as well because she could have manipulated Helga, Sarah or the both of them into committing the crimes considering her history of manipulation in the church. Now I will Note that in 2020 Oso was convicted of multiple counts of sexual assault against her congregation. She was sentenced to 120 hours of community service but again she hasn't been charged with anything related to the murders or even formally investigated for them. So the details of this case may be messy and that's all before we get into the complicated controversial conversation around mental health and how it played into Sarah's actions. We might never learn exactly where the truth lies and who was or wasn't at fault. Ultimately it all comes down to what you believe and where you choose to put your faith and that is today's episode. Thank you guys so much for listening and I will see you next week as we go further into the dark together. Goodbye.
