Karina Holmer, a young woman from Sweden, was found murdered after a night out with friends just months after moving to Boston, Massachusetts. Her case remained unresolved for over 27 years.
Karina E. Holmer was a 19-year-old young woman from Skillingaryd, Sweden. She buys a lottery ticket and after she wins $1,500, Karina decides to use the money to move to the United States where she works as an au pair.
In March 1996, Karina worked with an unlicensed agency to enter the United States on a tourist visa. Karina moved to South Boston, where she lived in a basement apartment on A Street, where she was responsible for caring for her two children, who lived in Dover. She Karina often spent her free time exploring new homes and making new friends working as an au pair. She also wrote frequently to her family in Sweden.
On July 21, 1996, the Summer Solstice, also known as Midsummer, began. This is a popular celebration in Sweden and the United States, so to celebrate, Karina went out to the theater district, famous for its numerous bars and nightclubs, with three of her friends. Karina was incredibly drunk and was last seen at a now-closed Zanzibar nightclub around midnight.
The next day, around 1:30 p.m., a homeless man was rummaging through a dumpster behind an apartment building at 1091 Bolyston St. when he made a gruesome discovery. Inside the trash can was a woman's torso wrapped in a black trash bag. The woman's body was cut from her waist. The lower half of the woman's torso has not yet been found. Her cause of death was determined to be her strangulation, as evidenced by the ligature marks on her neck.
The body was soon identified by friends as 19-year-old Karina Holmer. Police withheld her identity from the public until her family in Sweden was notified. Upon learning of her daughter’s gruesome murder, Karina’s father Ola asked the lead detective: “What can I get back?” Regarding her remains. The detective answered: “You are holding her upper body. You’re getting her beautiful face.”
Investigators believe that due to the gruesome nature of the crime, the easy access to the dumpster and the fact that Karina was new to the area, her killer must have known or been familiar with her. Several people were investigated, including Karina's host family who worked at her workplace. Investigators had difficulty with this problem because the family did not speak or provide any information about Karina. This led some to believe that her father, Frank Rapp, may have had more to do with Karina's murder, and that a secret relationship may have developed between the two, but nothing has been confirmed about this.
It was also revealed that the ultra-wealthy family had secured at least six nannies through unlicensed au pair agencies before hiring Carina. This raised the question of why, if the family was so wealthy, they used this illegal agency to find multiple au pairs. A video from The Misery Machine (linked below) covering Karina's case addresses the issue, explaining that these unlicensed agencies are borderline human trafficking, and that many of these au pairs are brought into these homes where they are often treated horribly and even abused. Raise it. Because they work through these illegal organizations, they are not documented, and there are no records of them actually working for legal organizations. Unfortunately, for women like Karina who work in these situations, it can be very dangerous. If she had not been found, she would have remained missing and her family in Sweden would not have known.
Karina's case is closed, but investigators are still looking for evidence and tips about who did this to her.
resource-
https://www.bostonherald.com/2022/03/30/from-the-archive-body-identified-as-swedish-nanny-karina-holmer/amp/
https://coldcasene.org/f/karina-holmer