Late on a March evening in 1906, haulage contractor Bäckström made
a gruesome discovery on the road between Haparanda and Kalix.
A horse-drawn mail sleigh stood still in the snow, without its horse,
near the village of Säivis. At first it looked as if the driver was sleeping,
slumped forward in the sleigh, but Bäckström soon found out that the
man, mail coach driver Zakarias Abrahamsson, had been killed by
a shot to the head, and that all the money he was delivering had been
taken. Bäckström went off to raise the alarm, and a kilometer or so
away he found the driver’s seventeen-year-old helper, Oskar Arvid
Hermansson-Harrioja, dead on the road with his skull shattered.
The murderer was arrested the following day, and made a full
confession. His name was Karl Emil Åberg, aged twenty-five and
himself a postal employee, working as a postman in Haparanda.
This made the robbery and the murders an inside job. He had not
only shot his victims, he had also bludgeoned them with an axe,
leaving blood all over the snow at the scenes of both crimes.
The takings from this robbery, around seventy thousand Swedish
crowns, were the equivalent in modern money of about four million.
Karl Emil Åberg was sentenced to death, but his sentence was soon
commuted, as he was judged to be insane. Instead he was committed
for the rest of his life to Saint Sigfrid’s mental hospital in Växsjö,
where he remained until his death.
lyrics
Postrånet vid Säivis
Text: Okänd; Melodi: Trad efter Franz Robert Brunström, Kusön Överluleå
O hör min vän
och lyssna till min sång,
den är helt enkel
och ska ej bli lång.
Den handlar om
ett hemskt och ruskigt dåd,
som hände uti
Säivis högt i Nord.
Den första mars
till Harrioja hann,
en postskjuts som
man utan körkarl fann.
Med skräck och fasa
helt snart man såg,
att postiljonen
med krossat huvud låg.
Och längre norr
på vägen snart man såg,
skjutsgossen som
med krossad panna låg.
Men mördaren
var borta med sitt rov,
sjuttiofyra tusen
han från posten tog.
Men icke länge
fick han ha sin skatt,
ty dagen efter
fick man honom fatt.
Karl Emil Åberg
så var rövarns namn,
vid postkontoret
var han tjänsteman.
Han bekände snart
det hemska brott,
som han på kvällen
dan förut begått.
Att han kört före
posten till den skog,
där han med yxan
sin de arma slog.
O arme man
som lät sig bländas så,
att han för guldet
kunde mord begå.
Nu med sitt livs
förlust han böta får,
och tyngd av fjättrar
han mot döden går.
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