Secrets of the body on the beach
On 4 December 2005, a lifeless young woman was found face-down on a Scottish beach. It was the start of a controversial case that still refuses to give up its secrets, almost 15 years on
At first, the man out walking his dog on Prestwick beach thought it was a sunbather. Then logic kicked in. It was 8.30am on a cold December morning – who on earth would be sunbathing at that time of year?
But there was no doubt that someone – a woman – was lying face-down on the sand, motionless, that Sunday morning.
She was Annie Kristina Börjesson, a Swedish national, aged 30. Her jacket and rucksack – which included her passport and purse – lay beside her.
The discovery of Annie’s body sparked a mystery that still baffles, almost 15 years on.
Within hours, before even a post-mortem was conducted,
police decided that there ‘were no suspicious circumstances surrounding her death’. In other words, it was a cut-anddried case of suicide.
But Annie’s family, friends and many others disagree, so much so, the case has become a cause célèbre, most recently the subject of a Sky News Storycast: What Happened to Annie?
Annie’s mother, Guje, has campaigned for years to get crucial evidence released that has been declined so far ‘on the grounds of public interest’. She says: ‘I cannot lay her to rest until I know. Who did it and when she died. My husband feels the same. This is so important to us.’
Described as a bubbly and vivacious young woman, Annie had everything to live for. Beautiful, sporty, fluent in six languages and a talented musician, she’d fallen in love with Scotland after moving there in late 2004 and was living in Edinburgh, working for a whisky company.
So how did she end up lifeless on a cold, deserted beach 80 miles away in Ayrshire?
The day she died, Annie was planning to fly out of Prestwick airport to go home to Sweden. She’d booked a hair appointment, arranged to see her best pal for Christmas shopping and paid the next month’s rent on her apartment.
Were these the actions of someone planning to take her own life?
One of the last sightings of Annie was at Prestwick airport where she visited the short-stay car park, after which she was seen looking ‘angry and agitated’. Was this a rendezvous that went wrong?
There was no CCTV in the car park, like so many of the routes Annie took that day. Her family are concerned that there’s been no attempt to piece together the time between 4pm on the Saturday when she was last seen on CCTV and when her body was discovered over 16 hours later.
It’s one of many mysteries that dog this case. There was no suicide note, either.
A mystery man she’d met in a nightclub – who claimed to be a famous ex- Scottish rugby player, then turned out to be an impostor, was never traced. According to Annie’s best pal, Maria Jansson, he later turned up unexpectedly at the swimming pool she used and really spooked her: ‘She said he gave her a look that scared her, a really nasty glance.’
Fears of foul play – not suicide – were raised when ‘significant bruising’ was identified on Annie’s body by the funeral company who transported her back to Sweden, also by the Swedish undertaker who saw her. Huge chunks of her beautiful, waist-length blonde hair had been ripped out.
There was heavy bruising on her head and body, and what looked like thumb impressions on her neck – blue and black marks. Home Office forensic pathologist, Dr Stuart Hamilton, has said: ‘This is the most concerning aspect of the whole thing… Bruising could only happen before she drowned. Is it possible she came to harm before?’
Other odd things came to light. Tests showed that tiny ‘water skeletons’ in Annie’s bone marrow failed to show any evidence of her being in salt water. The family wanted another test on her lungs to prove whether Annie died in the Prestwick seawater, but they were refused. Annie’s emails in the run-up to her death had been wiped – along with her phone call records. Her Filofax – ‘she always had her Filofax journal,’ says Maria, ‘we used to joke it was an extension of her’ – remains missing. Annie was acting strangely in the weeks before she died, going out to use a phone box on winter nights and telling family not to call her on the phone in her apartment. In her last phone call from her mum, at 6.15pm on the Friday before she died, Annie told her: ‘ You have to respect this, but I have to take care of myself,’ in response to her raising the family concerns over her.
‘Maybe it was just a jealous boyfriend… I have no idea. Annie’s dead… so anything is possible,’ her mother has said.
One theory is that Annie was mistaken for an American journalist with a similar name who was investigating the CIA at the time. It was the height of the War on Terror when secret rendition flights of European and Middle Eastern terrorists from Prestwick airport to places like Guantanamo Bay were going on.
Could Annie have been murdered this way? Her family think not – but they remain convinced she was murdered, that it wasn’t suicide or an accident and are demanding answers.
In response to the renewed claims that police didn’t follow protocol in its handling of the case, detective superintendent Paul Livingstone, from the specialist crime division, said in December: ‘Annie’s death was fully investigated at the time and has also been subject to review.’
‘Bruising could only happen before she drowned. Did she come to harm before?’