The Second Arrests
It was then established that Ekwall had been poisoned by the soup he had consumed. This had been prepared by Hedvig Christina Ekwall herself. Maja Stina Forsberg had scraped and eaten the leftovers from the pot, and the little daughter had then eaten from her father's plate.
The police also discovered that the eldest daughter, Sofia Maria, had sent for arsenic from the apothecary, with the intention of removing stains from her silk-dress. Vilhelm Ekwall was then released from jail.
The everyday life of the Ekwall family was investigated. It was discovered that Per Ekwall had been an alcoholic and a domestic tyrant. He had refused to give his daughter Sofia Maria permission to marry her fiancé, which was now thought to be the motive for her to poison him. Maja Stina Forsberg and the child were believed to have been poisoned by mistake. Sofia Maria was then arrested for the murder of her father.
After having spent some time in jail, Sofia Maria made a confession. She said that she had prepared a sandwich with poison in the presence of her mother and, with her consent, given it to Maja Stina Forsberg. But she denied that her mother had taken an active part in the murders.
Hedvig Christina Ekwall was taken in for questioning, and more and more incriminating circumstances became attributed to her, but no matter how many new statements were laid before her, she refused to admit anything. She was allowed to remain free to take care of her children.
Sofia Maria then changed her mind and started to point out her mother as an active accomplice in the murders; she now claimed that she and her mother had murdered her father together. Hedvig Christina Ekwall sternly denied her daughter's accusations, and reproached Sofia Maria for trying to put the blame on her own mother.
Sofia Maria Ekwall continued her confession and said that her mother had poisoned the soup, which made her father ill and killed Forsberg, and that she had poisoned the oat soup which had killed her father in his sick-bed after he had begun to recover from the first poisoning.
Read more about this topic: Sofia Maria Ekwall
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