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On a cold and snowy day in January of 1994, a land surveyor for the North Carolina Department of Transportation parked his car at the edge of Highway 421 in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina.
After walking just a few yards away from the side of the road, he was already swallowed up in the deep woods that stretched for miles into Waitaga County.
Given the cold air and snow underfoot, the surveyor was paying close attention to where he was walking and hoping that the job would not take long and he'd be back inside his warm vehicle before his toes actually froze.
That was until the man glanced ahead at the fallen tree ahead of him and before he saw something he just couldn't make sense of peeking out of the snow in the shadow of the upended roots.
Squinting.
The man took a few more steps closer just to make sure his eyes weren't playing tricks on him.
A moment later he dropped the hard plastic case that contained his surveying equipment and nearly fell backward as he scrambled to get away from the mound of snow in front of him.
Then looking desperately through the thick trees for the other members of the survey team.
The calm around him was shattered as he started yelling for help.
But before we get into that story, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark and Mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right podcast, because that's all we do, and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday.
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When they were in the fourth grade and rocked a sweet bowl cut.
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41-year-old Victor Gunnarsson looked out the window of a small apartment in Salisbury, North Carolina.
It was Wednesday afternoon, December 1st 1993, and another mild winter had settled over the Tar Heels state.
Even though Victor had lived in America now for almost eight years, the onset of what passed for cold in this part of the world still brought back sharp memories of the country where Victor was born and where he had expected at one time to spend his entire life.
If Victor were waking up today in Sweden, 4500 miles to the north and east of where he stood right now, he'd be welcoming the start of the coldest month of the year, with freezing temperatures that were nearly 20 degrees lower on average than where he lived now, and days so short that the sun would be setting by 3pm in the afternoon.
In Sweden, Victor would be piling on wool sweaters and overcoats.
Here in Salisbury, he hardly ever had to wear anything warmer than his leather bomber jacket.
Turning away from the window, Victor gave himself a small mental shrug.
He felt lucky that he didn't miss his homeland more than he did, because for Victor, leaving Sweden had been a matter of necessity, not choice.
Back in 1986, Victor's big talk about his anti-communist views, along with his right-wing activism, had gotten him in so much trouble that he'd basically been driven out of his politically liberal homeland.
And even if he went back to Sweden's capital city of Stockholm, where he used to live, Victor knew he would not be any more welcome now than he had been eight years earlier.
What still surprised the tall, handsome Swede with the dark hair and intense blue eyes was that he finally felt okay about all of that.
When he'd had to leave Stockholm.
He'd chosen the US because he'd enjoyed the time he'd once spent vacationing in sunny California, but he'd wound up settling not on the west coast but here in central North Carolina, where the weather was warm, cost of living was reasonable and where the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains were within a day's drive of the Lakewood apartment complex that Victor now called home.
And here in the south of the United States, Victor's conservative views didn't raise so many eyebrows, and his naturally gregarious personality had meshed seamlessly with the region's legendary southern hospitality and friendliness.
And it hadn't taken Victor long since he'd arrived, before he'd put his ability to speak nine different languages to good use.
Within weeks of getting settled here and advertising his services as a language tutor, Victor began to get so many requests for help that he'd had to start putting prospective students on a waiting list.
Now earning 50 an hour, which would be the equivalent of about 100 today.
Victor wasn't rich, but he did feel financially comfortable.
Victor had also very quickly found his niche in Salisbury as a ladies' man.
From the second he had arrived, Victor made no bones about how much he enjoyed female company in every size, shape and age.
And even after the short but passionate affairs that Victor favored ended, he almost always remained on very friendly terms with his former lovers.
The South was also a place where Victor, who liked to exaggerate when it came to describing his life experiences, found a willing audience.
In addition to his magnetic personality, the fact that he was from Sweden and spoke so many languages gave him an exotic and cosmopolitan gloss that women and men found very interesting.
Now opening up one of the kitchen drawers and picking out a sharp paring knife.
Victor thought about the latest woman in his life and smiled.
Reaching for the fresh tomatoes that were piled on the counter in front of him, he put one of them on the cutting board and then looked down at his gold watch to check the time.
Just five days ago, on the Friday after Thanksgiving, Victor had met a local high school teacher named Kay Whedon, who was housing a foreign exchange student from Denmark.
And the attraction between Victor and Kay, who was 40 years old and, like Victor divorced, had been immediate and very strong.
The two of them had been brought together by a mutual friend who had told Kay that Kay's exchange student Mikkel, who was there attending the local high school, might enjoy talking in his native language with Victor.
Since that first meeting, Victor and Kay had spent a few more evenings with one another, and while their relationship was still purely platonic, Kay had asked Victor over to her house for dinner tonight so he could meet Mikkel and also Kay's 15-year-old only child, a son named Jason.
Victor had been thrilled and he'd told Kay not to worry about cooking, that he would provide the food spaghetti with the homemade sauce he was now in the process of making.
And if all went well?
Victor thought as he moved through the steps of a pasta recipe he knew by heart maybe he and Kay, a smart and attractive woman who taught high school English and drama, would become more than just friends.
On Friday, December 3rd, Victor got his wish.
Victor's homemade spaghetti dinner two evenings earlier had been such a success that Kay was eager to move their relationship forward.
Victor had hit it off right away with both Mikkel and Jason, and now Kay wanted Victor to meet one of the most important people in Kay's life Kay's 77-year-old mother, Catherine Miller.
Even though she was 12 years past retirement age, Catherine was still working hard as an accounts clerk at WA.
Brown, an industrial refrigeration company that had been a local fixture in Salisbury for more than 80 years.
Now a widow, Catherine devoted her spare time to church and volunteer activities and to playing a very big role in the lives of her grandson Jason, and her only daughter, Kaye.
And ever since Kay had moved to Salisbury after her divorce six years ago, Catherine had kept a very protective and lately a very worried eye on her daughter's love life.
Catherine had heard all about an earlier date.
Kay had gone on back in November with a man named David Sumner, who Kay had met through a quote.
Reputable dating agency end quote.
Their first get-together at a local lunch spot was promising, but the dinner date that followed a few days later, had turned out to be a disaster.
So when Kay had started talking about this intelligent and good-looking man named Victor, who was so different from Kay's expectation that a Swede would be pale-skinned and blonde, Catherine was very interested in meeting the new person in Kay's life.
And when Kay had asked Catherine to join Kay and Victor at the Blue Bay Seafood restaurant that night of December 3rd, Catherine hadn't hesitated even a second before saying yes.
And now, as the three of them sat at a table for four near a window at Blue Bay and placed their dinner orders, Catherine thought that overall, Victor seemed friendly and courteous.
He was definitely a talker, except when it came to exactly why he had left his home in Sweden's capital city of Stockholm eight years earlier.
But then again Catherine thought to herself everyone had their secrets, and Catherine wondered how much Kay had told Victor about the problems that Kay had been having in her own life.
It wasn't until the end of the meal when Victor took his last bite of his baked potato and motioned to the server that he was ready for the check.
That dinner hit one small sour note.
That was when Victor took the money that Catherine had offered to him to cover the cost of her own meal.
But instead of giving Catherine any change or refusing Catherine's offer, Victor used Catherine's money to pay the entire tab, and the only contribution he made was to take a few dollars from his pocket and tuck them under his plate for the tip.
A few minutes later, as Catherine, Victor and Kay stood up and put on their coats before heading out the door and into the cool night air to the parking lot Kay, who had also noticed this telltale sign that Victor was very likely tight with money, gave her mother an embarrassed shrug.
Maybe Catherine thought, as Victor held the car door of Kay's car open, for Catherine to slide in before he stepped away to get into his own car to drive back to Lakewood Apartments where he lived.
Victor didn't hate the welfare state which is how he described Sweden quite as much as he said he did, because he certainly didn't mind taking from the person who was supposed to be his guest.
But later that night, when Kay and Victor were sitting outside in Kay's yard next to the fire pit, Kay at least had put that single awkward moment at the restaurant out of her mind.
After dropping her mother off at 118 Larch Road and reminding her mom to make sure her alarm system was on for the night, Kay had headed back to her own house to wait for Victor, who had wanted to go to his own apartment and change into more comfortable clothing before coming back to join Kay.
When Victor arrived at Sycamore Road, Jason and Mikkel were out with friends, which meant Kay and Victor had three hours alone together.
When Jason and Mikkel got back to the house at about 10 pm, Kay and Victor joined the teens and a few of their friends out in the side yard to enjoy a fire in the fire pit.
Now, as Kay and Victor sat next to one another, their fingers entwined, Kay noticed the glint of a small diamond set in the heavy gold signet ring that Victor always wore on his left hand.
When Kay asked about the ring, Victor took it off and told her that the three letters engraved around the diamond meant strength and courage.
As their eyes met over the ring, Kay's heart skipped a beat, especially after the hours that she and Victor had just spent alone.
Kay hoped that there would be many more evenings just like this in the months ahead.
Those thoughts were interrupted a few minutes later, when Kay was startled by the sight of a car pulling into the end of her driveway.
But a moment later, when she saw the car was just using her driveway to turn around and head back the way it had just come, she forced her shoulders to relax.
An hour later, at about 1115, Victor gave Kay's hand a gentle squeeze, then leaned over and told her that it was time for him to go back to his own apartment.
And ten minutes after that, while Jason and his friends were still enjoying the fire, Kay was standing just inside the front door of the house saying goodnight to Victor.
After a long kiss, Victor stepped back, smiled, and promised Kay he would call her the next day.
Then, as Kay watched, the big man with black hair and intense blue eyes shoved his hands deep into his pockets, walked down the porch steps and back to his car.
35 days later, and 100 miles northwest of Salisbury, a land surveyor working with a North Carolina state highway crew up in Waitaga County was picking his way through the dense woods off Highway 421 near the summit of one of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
The highway department service vehicles were parked about 300 yards away, alongside the edge of an entrance ramp leading onto the Blue Ridge Parkway, a scenic route through the mountain range that was closed at the moment due to uncleared ice and snow.
As soon as the surveyor had stepped out of the warm vehicle, the cold mountain air and wind hit him like a fist.
But after just a few steps, he had entered the relative shelter of thick trees.
As he moved through the snow, the man's eyes swept back and forth across the ground just ahead of him.
He didn't want to take any chances that he might miss the iron property marker he was looking for.
After making his way around a large clump of mountain laurel, the surveyor stopped for a second to look up and take stock of his surroundings.
Directly in front of him was a huge pine tree that had fallen or been knocked over by the wind.
Facing the surveyor were the upended and snow-covered roots of the tree.
And in the indentation in the earth where all those roots had once dug into the ground, the surveyor suddenly noticed something out of place in the snow just a few steps in front of him.
The surveyor squinted, sure that his eyes were playing tricks on him.
Then, moving much more slowly now, the man took one more step closer and then froze.
Sticking out of the white snow immediately in front of the surveyor were two bare human feet.
The toes and flesh of one foot had been chewed down to the bone by small animals, but the big toe on the left foot, large with a bristle of black hairs a man's foot was still intact.
Suddenly gagging the surveyor, stumbled backward, then turned and ran a few yards back along the path he had just made through the snow.
Then, pausing to catch his breath and looking over his shoulder again at the fallen pine tree, he dropped his case of equipment into the snow, opened his mouth and yelled for help.
By 2 pm, the entrance ramp to the Blue Ridge Parkway was crowded with law enforcement vehicles and personnel.
In response to the 911 call that had come in a few minutes earlier from the state highway crew reporting that what appeared to be a man's dead body had been found in the woods.
Two patrol cars from the Waitaga County Sheriff's Department had been first on the scene, where they were soon joined by members of the Blue Ridge National Park Service.
By the time Detective Sergeant Paula May from the Division of Criminal Investigations in the Waitaga Sheriff's Department had arrived, the area around the fallen pine tree was taped off, and the surveyor, who had discovered the body under a mound of snow in the shadow of the upended tree roots, couldn't wait to give his statement to police and then get out of the woods and back into a warm car as fast as possible.
Detective May couldn't blame him.
The temperature, already well below freezing, was dropping steadily.
And this was only the beginning of what the six-year veteran with the Sheriff's Department knew would be a very long and very cold night.
But in this case the investigator also knew that in this situation the cold and snow might work to the advantage of law enforcement.
The large body that was clearly buried, except for the feet, under a mound of snow near the fallen pine tree had probably been well preserved by the recent cold temperatures, and if decomposition had been minimal, then the body might yield valuable clues about the identity of this person, along with the cause and time of their death.
But aside from her assumption, based on the feet and the size of the body under the snow, that the victim was a man, the fact that the victim appeared to be naked raised more questions than answers.
It basically ruled out two of the more common causes of death out here in the woods suicide or an accident.
And that left the third option, that what she was looking at here was likely a homicide.
And that would open the door to a very complicated investigation, because murders could be committed for all kinds of reasons and by all kinds of people.
And unless police found the man's clothing and some form of ID, there was also the challenge of finding out who this victim was.
Detective May knew at the moment there were no active reports of missing people in Waitaga County and even before she left the woods later that evening.
She also knew that one of her first tasks would be to check on missing person reports outside of the county, both in the larger region and statewide.
Within a few hours of Detective May's arrival, the Waitaga County Sheriff had already made a call to the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation asking for help.
And not long after that, the area around the snow-covered body began to fill with members of a state crime tech unit and an agent assigned to work closely with Detective May.
It wasn't until after the scene was photographed, sketched and processed that the medical examiner oversaw the removal of the body.
And after one small scoop of snow at a time had been lifted off the corpse, investigators finally got their first look at the nude adult white male who lay underneath the mound of snow.
The bare skin of the man's back was frozen to the ground.
His wide open mouth showed a set of straight white teeth.
In his left temple, just below the line of dark hair that still covered what was left of his scalp, investigators could see a clearly defined circle where a bullet had been fired into his skull.
And on the right side of the man's neck, there was a second bullet hole.
There was no sign anywhere of the man's clothes and no shell casings from the rounds that were fired, but the body was not completely stripped.
On the man's left wrist was a gold watch, and on his left hand he wore a heavy gold signet ring with a small center diamond.
The only other physical item left at the scene of what investigators now knew had to have been a murder was a 16-inch long strip of electrical and masking tape, the same kind of tape that investigators would later find had been used to bind the man's hands and ankles.
If you're anything like me, you love a good story that has twists and turns and moments that make you stop and think like how is the story even real?
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By the next morning, when the medical examiner was preparing to conduct an autopsy on the body found in the woods the night before, Detective May had already made much more progress on the case than she had believed possible when she had first laid eyes on the dead man.
In fact, she now believed she had identified their John Doe.
The young detective had spent the night before at her office putting out a statewide call for active reports on missing adult middle-aged white males and within hours she had gotten a call from the police department in Salisbury, North Carolina, 90 miles to the southeast.
The lieutenant told her about a 41-year-old Swedish national named Victor Gunnarsson who had been reported missing by his landlord 23 days earlier, on December 15 1993.
Victor's physical description 41 years old, six foot two inches tall, 225 pounds, matched what Detective May had seen in the woods.
But it was the recent photograph attached to the missing person's report from Salisbury that made the investigator's heart beat faster.
The man in the photo with the dark hair and straight white teeth was wearing a gold watch and a heavy gold signet ring that looked exactly like the jewelry she had seen on the dead man in the woods.
But it was what the Salisbury investigator told Detective May next when she asked what else the officer knew about Victor Gunnarsson.
That literally took Detective May's breath away.
Because, as Detective May was about to find out, Victor Gunnarsson was no ordinary Swedish citizen.
Victor Gunnarsson was, in fact, a major player in a political assassination that had taken place eight years earlier, an assassination that was still unsolved and still the subject of international intrigue and speculation.
That assassination had taken place on the evening of Friday, February 28th 1986 in the capital city of Stockholm Sweden, when the country's popular prime minister and his wife, unescorted by bodyguards, were walking home from an evening out at the movies.
The assassin had walked up behind the couple and fired two bullets at close range.
The first hit Olaf Palma in the back, killing him almost instantly, while the second bullet grazed and slightly injured Palma's wife Lisbeth, and among the first suspects in that high-profile homicide was Victor Gunnarsson.
Known at the time to Swedish police for his right-wing extremist views, Victor had been spotted earlier that same evening in a nearby bar where he had been heard ranting about the prime minister's socialist economic and foreign policies.
Within hours of the shooting Victor, who was then 33 years old, was picked up for questioning and then let go, only to be brought back into police custody two more times for detention and interrogation.
He was finally released after an eyewitness to the assassination could not positively identify Victor as the shooter.
But being released from police custody was not at all the same thing as being cleared of suspicion.
As long as the case went unsolved, Victor remained a person of interest.
As the target of continued surveillance as well as public mistrust.
Victor had trouble keeping a job and living a normal life.
So, after receiving a settlement for wrongful detention from the government, Victor decided it was time to leave Sweden and start a new life in America, where he eventually settled in Salisbury, North Carolina.
Within days of Detective May's discovery, Swedish officials were able to confirm that the fingerprints taken from the man found in the North Carolina woods did match those of Victor Gunnarsson.
By that time, the autopsy report had also come back.
The contents in Victor's stomach, which included bits of potato skin, showed that he had probably eaten dinner about four hours before his death.
The medical examiner had also determined that Victor had been bound with masking and electrical tape and confirmed that Victor had been killed execution style with one bullet to the head and one to the throat.
The cause of death immediately ignited speculation in the US and in Sweden that Victor himself had become the victim of an assassination and that his death must be related somehow to the 1986 murder of the Swedish Prime Minister.
But as detectives in both Waitaga County, where Victor's body was found, and in Salisbury, where Victor lived, began to work the homicide case together, what increasingly drew their attention wasn't just Victor's link to an 8-year-old political assassination.
It was Victor's link to Salisbury resident and high school teacher, Kay Whedon.
What made that link interesting to detectives was the fact that Victor was not the only recent homicide victim who had lived in Salisbury and been a part of Kay's life.
By now.
Results from Victor's autopsy, coupled with information detectives had gathered from Victor's friends and neighbors and from Kay herself, had helped police narrow the date of Victor's actual death to early December.
Probably around December 3rd, which was when Victor had gone out to dinner with Kay and eaten the baked potato, bits of which were later found inside of his stomach.
And it was just a few days after December 3rd, on December 9th, that Kay Whedon's mother, 77-year-old Catherine Miller, had also been murdered.
And like Victor, she had been shot twice in the head at close range.
So, even as Detective May and law enforcement from the state and Salisbury Police Department continued to track down any information they could about Victor's political activities here in the United States, investigators also focused their attention on finding out all they could about Kay, the one person who represented the strongest link between two very similar, brutal homicides that claimed the lives of two Salisbury residents.
By the time Detective May joined forces with Salisbury investigators in mid-January, Salisbury police had already discovered that Kay herself also appeared to be in potential danger.
Since Victor's disappearance and the death of her mother Kay and her son Jason had both become the targets of telephone calls and letters accusing Jason of involvement with local drug dealers and threatening both mother and son with physical violence.
When Kay sat down with investigators to tell them about her relationship with Victor, she told detectives that she had been crushed when Victor had not followed through on his promise to call her the day after their dinner together at the Blue Bay restaurant on December 3rd.
But any worry or hurt Kay had felt about Victor's sudden silence and apparent disappearance and any concern over the apparent stalker or stalkers who had started sending these awful letters and calling her and her son at all hours to threaten them, had been totally blotted out of her mind when she received the terrible news on December 9th that her mother had been murdered.
That was the morning that Catherine's body had been found by a co-worker from W.A.
Brown, who had been so concerned that Catherine was late to work that he went directly to her home on Larch Street to make sure she was okay.
When the co-worker had stepped into Catherine's kitchen, he'd been horrified to find Catherine slumped in a seated position on the floor, her back against a white refrigerator and the top of her head blown off.
After ruling out both Kay and her son Jason as suspects, police concentrated first on interviewing Catherine's friends and co-workers.
Even though Catherine's house had a security system installed, there was no sign of forced entry, which made police believe the older woman must have known her attacker and opened the door to let them in.
But after finding zero evidence that anyone close to catherine would want her dead, police turned their attention again to k, thinking that catherine's murder might be connected to something going on in k's life or to someone close to k.
People of interest had included k's former boyfriend, a salisbury police officer named lamont claxton underwood, who worked as a resource officer at salisbury high school, as well as other men like david sumner, who Kay had dated after she broke up with Officer Underwood and before she met Victor Gunnarsson.
But no matter how hard they probed, detectives couldn't find any physical evidence to link anyone in Kay's circle of friends and acquaintances to the murder of Catherine Miller.
But after the discovery of Victor's body, investigators in Salisbury had additional leads to follow.
It looked to Detective May and Salisbury's lead investigator Don Gale.
Like Victor Gunnarsson, must have been kidnapped from his home in Salisbury and transported, probably by car, up to Waitaga County, where he was actually killed.
But even after circling back to Officer Underwood, who had re-entered Kay's life as a friend after Kay's mother had died and who had access to firearms, police still came up empty.
All police discovered when they searched their fellow officers' home and car on February 1st, 1994, was that Lamont Claxton, LC for short, was neat to the point of being compulsive about order and cleanliness.
As for a connection between Victor's murder and the assassination of Sweden's prime minister in 1986, that lead also petered out.
Years before, Victor had apparently cut his ties to any right-wing extremist groups, and state and local police in North Carolina could not find one scrap of evidence among Victor's personal belongings or information gathered through interviews with his associates that related in any way to the death of Prime Minister Olaf Palma.
By the fall of 1994, 11 months after Victor Gunnarsson disappeared from his apartment in Salisbury, all the main characters in the unsolved murders of Victor and also Catherine Miller had started to move on with their lives.
Kay, unable to stand, being so close to the home where her mother had died, sold her house on Sycamore Road and moved to a new home five miles to the south and the harassment that had terrorized her and Jason stopped.
Both Kay and Elsie Underwood each had new romantic partners, and no one had stepped forward to claim a 50000 reward offered by North Carolina's governor for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Victor's murderer, just as no one in Salisbury or Waitaga County responded to a police bulletin asking for information about the 22 caliber weapon used to kill Victor or the 38 caliber weapon used to kill Catherine.
It wouldn't be until the fall of 1995, almost two years after Salisbury's 24000 residents had been shaken to the core by those two homicides, that Waitaga County Detective Paula May and Salisbury Detective Don Gale would get the news they had been hoping for, news that would once again shine the international spotlight on Victor Gunnarsson.
On Wednesday, October 11th, an analyst for the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation placed a call to Detective May at her office up in the northwest corner of the state.
After almost two years of reviewing the evidence and material samples that had been collected in the course of the Victor Gunnarsson investigation and finding nothing that would ID the murderer, the forensics expert had been ready to give up.
But as he packed away one particular piece of material, he made a completely unexpected discovery.
And using a brand new tool for analyzing DNA.
The agent now believed he knew who had kidnapped and killed Kay's one-time boyfriend Victor.
Based on the results of that DNA test and the information investigators had gathered over the last two years, here is a reconstruction of what happened to Victor Gunnarsson on the night of December 3rd 1993 and what happened to Catherine Miller five days later, on the night of December 9th.
It was right around midnight and the moon was covered by clouds when Victor's killer turned into the parking lot at Lakewood Apartments and spotted Victor's big gray Lincoln town car parked right in front of Unit 910.
The killer smiled at the lighted window of Victor's apartment.
That was good.
That meant the big Swede was still awake.
Pulling the burgundy-colored Monte Carlo sedan in as close to Victor's unit as possible.
The killer rolled to a stop and turned off the engine.
Before leaving the car, the killer checked that they had everything they needed.
Then there was the soft clunk as the car door closed and then the quiet slap of footsteps as the killer walked to the front door of Victor's unit and rang the bell.
A moment later there was the sound of movement inside the apartment.
Then the doorknob turned and the big friendly Swede suddenly appeared standing right inside.
But the expression of puzzled welcome on Victor's face didn't last long.
As soon as the door had opened, the killer was on the move, crowding Victor further back into the house and pulling out the 22 caliber pistol borrowed from a friend.
Before Victor even had time to wrap his mind around what had just happened and who was standing inside his home.
Victor was being forced out the door of his apartment, bands of tape covering his mouth and binding his hands tightly behind his back.
Prodding Victor ahead of him to the Monte Carlo.
The killer popped open the trunk and forced Victor to climb inside the cramped compartment, before quickly wrapping Victor's ankles together with more strips of electrical and masking tape.
Then there was another clunk as the killer closed the trunk and stepped around to the driver's side, hopped behind the wheel and turned on the engine.
The killer paused just long enough to take a few calming breaths before easing slowly out of the apartment complex.
The door to Victor's unit still open.
The drive north from Salisbury to the intersection of Route 421 and the Blue Ridge Mountain Parkway took about an hour and 45 minutes.
Coming from the rear of the car, the killer could hear the sound of Victor kicking at the top and sides of the trunk and the occasional scrape of something hard that sounded like metal on metal.
As the killer approached the entrance ramp to the parkway, they slowed down, pulled over and then parked the car.
Here in the mountains, the edges of the road gave way almost immediately to thick, dense forest.
And at this time of the year, when the parkway closed due to winter snow and ice, it could be months or never before anyone wandered into these woods.
Which was good, because that meant the killer could finish this thing without hiking more than three or four hundred yards into that black tangle of branches.
Another calming breath and the killer had gotten out of the driver's seat, closed the car door and walked to the trunk.
All the thumping and scraping had stopped.
Time to pop the trunk, cut the bindings around Victor's ankles and bring part one of the killer's plan to a close.
A few minutes later, after forcing Victor to walk ahead at gunpoint up a slight hill, the killer skirted around the edge of a thicket of mountain laurel, then ordered Victor to stop walking.
Facing them was the upended root ball of a fallen pine tree.
Backing Victor into the shallow depression.
Just in front of the snow-covered roots, the killer ordered Victor to strip off all of his clothes.
Then the killer wrapped a strip of masking and electrical tape around Victor's forehead.
Pressing the barrel of the 22 against the tape on the left side of Victor's temple, right at the hairline, the killer pulled the trigger.
Once Victor had fallen backward into the snow, the killer crouched down and quickly fired a second shot through the right side of Victor's throat.
A moment later and the killer had picked up the two spent shell casings and was pulling off the tape from around Victor's mouth and forehead and hands and adding the strips with their incriminating load of DNA from Victor's hair and skin to the pile of Victor's clothing.
As the killer's adrenaline rush started to wear off, the killer was suddenly shaky and very eager to get out of the dark woods.
With any luck, no one would ever see Victor Gunnarsson again.
The winter snow, cold and wild animals who would scatter his bones all over the forest would make sure of that.
As the killer gathered up trace evidence and stood to walk back out to the road.
The killer never noticed the 16-inch-long strip of masking and electrical tape they had dropped close to Victor's bare feet.
Five days later, Victor's killer was ready to complete the second part of their plan.
All the risks were worth it, because after this, the killer was sure that the life they had wanted and planned would finally be within reach.
So on the evening of December 8 1993, the killer knocked at the front door of Catherine Miller's house at 118 Larch Road.
The single-story brick ranch was set far back from the road, so anyone driving by would have a hard time recognizing the person who stood with their back to the street at the top of the front steps.
After the killer called out and identified themselves, the door opened.
Catherine looked surprised and not completely pleased, but she still stepped back to allow her visitor inside.
With the same wave of excitement the killer had felt entering Victor's apartment a few days earlier.
The killer now pushed quickly into Catherine's living area.
The sooner this was done, the better.
Pulling out the gun.
This time it was a 38 caliber revolver.
The killer forced Catherine through the front of her house to the kitchen out back.
There was a pan of beans for Catherine's dinner heating on the stove and a copy of that day's Salisbury Post newspaper lying on the kitchen table.
Catherine had turned and then, with no place left to go, she came to a stop with her back pressed against the refrigerator.
Then, as the killer closed the distance left between them, Catherine stumbled, slipped or simply slid down the door of the refrigerator until she was in a sitting position on the floor.
Then, standing next to her, the killer fired two bullets down into the top of Catherine's head, sending fragments of bones, scalp and hair in a spray along the floor and ceiling and leaving a fan of blood spatter against the white refrigerator door.
Stepping back and careful to avoid stepping in any blood.
The killer spent a few minutes staging the house to look like Catherine had been the victim of a robbery gone wrong.
But the only thing of any value that police would find missing was Catherine's purse.
Satisfied with their work, the killer left Catherine's house, returned to their car, started up the engine and drove away, already thinking ahead to the sequence of events that would begin tomorrow morning.
As soon as police discovered Catherine's dead body, they would inform Catherine's daughter, who lived just a few blocks away.
And that was the moment when Salisbury police officer L.C.
Underwood would be ready to reap the reward of having murdered the two people who stood between him and Kay Whedon, the woman he loved and wanted.
With Victor gone, Elsie had eliminated his chief romantic rival, and with Catherine Miller dead, Elsie had eliminated the person closest to Kay and the person who had never approved of her daughter's involvement with the police officer who had heard all about how Elsie Underwood had showed up at the restaurant where Kay had met David Sumner for dinner, threatened to hurt both of them and then dumped a full glass of iced tea right into Kay's lap.
Now, with Victor and Catherine dead, not only would LC become Kay's indispensable man, LC was also the only person who could put an end to the harassment that had made Kay's life miserable ever since she had broken off her engagement to him a little over one year earlier.
That part would be easy, since it was Elsie himself who had been Kay's stalker all along, sending her those threatening letters he had typed on a typewriter at his work office.
And, arranging for an ex-convict, Elsie knew to harass Kay by phone.
Just as it had been so easy for LC Underwood to drive by Kay Whedon's house on the night of December 3rd when Kay and Victor sat holding hands together outside by the fire pit.
Turn around in the end of her driveway and take down the license number of Victor's car.
Then call up a buddy on the police force to run the plates and give LC Victor's home address.
And not only had Elsie been able to use the power of his badge to help commit murder, his job as a police officer would allow him to keep an eye on the investigation into both deaths and stay one step ahead of investigators.
But what Elsie Underwood did not expect when he killed both Victor and Catherine was that, despite his mania for cleanliness and sanitizing a crime scene, he would leave behind three critical pieces of evidence that would eventually lead to his arrest.
It would turn out that, even before Catherine Miller had been murdered, Salisbury police, who were investigating Kay Whedon's reports that someone was harassing her, had already developed evidence that Kay's own ex-boyfriend, Elsie Underwood, was also Kay's stalker.
Police had seized the typewriter ribbon from LC's work typewriter at the local high school where he was a resource officer.
That typewriter ribbon was the first piece of critical evidence that would eventually tie LC to murder.
On that typewriter ribbon police found words that appeared in the letters of harassment that Kay had shown police.
Even though Kay herself had refused to believe that LC could be her stalker when Kay's mother Catherine, was murdered LC, who had been vocal about his run-ins with Catherine, quickly became investigators' primary suspect.
But it wasn't until Victor Gunnarsson's body was discovered naked and dead up in the Blue Ridge Mountains that police were able to collect the second and third pieces of evidence that would send LC to prison.
When police searched Elsie's house back in February of 1993, almost two months after Victor's disappearance, they found a roll of electrical tape that they were later able to identify as the same kind of tape as the strip of tape that police found at the scene of Victor's murder.
And during that same search, in the trunk of Elsie's Monte Carlo there were boot prints and scratches on the underside of the lid.
And even though LC had had the car thoroughly and professionally cleaned, when detectives sent in the mats from the bottom of the trunk to the state crime lab for examination, forensic specialists would eventually recover 17 hairs embedded in the mat fibers.
The call that Detective Paula May had received on October 11 1995 was confirmation from the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation Crime Lab that DNA from all 17 of those hairs found in the trunk of Elsie Underwood's Monte Carlo were a match for Victor Gunnarsson.
On October 13 1995, one day after receiving those DNA results and just under two years after Victor disappeared, police arrested 44-year-old police officer LC.
Underwood and charged him with first-degree murder and first-degree kidnapping in the death of Swedish national Victor Gunnarsson.
Three and a half years later, on Monday, July 21st 1997, Lamont Claxton Underwood, was found guilty of both charges and sentenced to life in prison, without parole.
Although the court allowed the prosecution to present evidence from Catherine Miller's murder as part of the state's case against Elsie Underwood, Elsie Underwood was never formally charged with Catherine's murder.
On Christmas Day 2018, after serving 21 years of his life sentence, Elsie Underwood died in prison of kidney cancer at the age of 67.
In June 2020, 34 years after Victor Gunnarsson was questioned as a possible suspect in the assassination of Sweden's Prime Minister Olof Palme, Swedish prosecutors announced that they had finally solved the puzzle of who really did shoot Olof Palme.
According to prosecutors, the man who had no connection to Victor was a professional graphic designer who had put himself forward at the time of the assassination as an eyewitness to the Prime Minister's death.
As for Victor Gunnarsson, twice in his life the big talker with the big smile was in absolutely the wrong place at absolutely the wrong time.
His first piece of bad luck, when he was in a bar nearby the place where Olaf Palma was gunned down, resulted in Victor's persecution and his move to the United States.
The second piece of bad luck, when he met Kay Whedon, a woman he would date for less than a month, resulted in Victor's death.
Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin Podcast.
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