Swedish Nanny Murdered In Boston 30 Years Ago, Case Remains Unsolved

BOSTON, MA — Just months after Swedish nanny Karina Holmer came to America, the top half of her strangled body was found in a Boston dumpster.

That was 30 years ago this week. Her murder remains a mystery.

"She was strangled, washed, bisected, discarded," Crime of the Truest Kind said of Holmer, who was only 20 when she was killed. "Only part of Karina was returned to her family in Sweden. The other part of her has never been found."

"In March of 1996, Karina Holmer won 10,000 crowns on a lottery ticket," according to Cold Case New England. "The 20-year-old immediately knew what she would spend her prize money on. She hastily made arrangements to travel abroad to America."

Holmer landed a job as a nanny with a family outside Boston but the new venture apparently didn't work out as well as she had hoped.

"Turns out that the responsibility of caring for someone else's children with the added job of cooking and cleaning wasn't what she wanted to do," Who Killed Karina Holmer? put forth. "She told friends she planned to return to her family in Sweden in the fall, adding an ominous message that something had happened but no one knows what that meant."

And no one would ever find out, at least not from Holmer.

" A homeless man searching for whatever treasures might be found on the city streets of Boston or in one of its large, dirty dumpsters happened upon a bound black trash bag," Detroit Legal News Reported. "When he opened it, an arm popped out. When the police opened it more fully, they discovered the unclothed upper half of a body."

The story noted that the bottom half of Holmer's body was never found.

The Boston Police Department lists Holmer's death among its 1996 unsolved homicides.

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