Autopsy report - Blake Sawton
Full name: Blake Balthazar Sawton
Birth date: December 20th, 1965
Age at time of death: barely 27 years old
Cause of death: 27 stab wounds in the back
Body found in the backyard, near Leo's and Balthazar's bodies.
Murder weapon: never found
A few hours before his death, I called Blake.
I was concerned for Leo and him, for there had been rumors that Dante Stavig, Malediktum's leader, was looking for Blake and had been sending him death threats for the past few days. Stavig had been known to assault other bands’ members in the past, and he saw Blake as his nemesis.
Blake wasn't comfortable staying at Sawton Manor that night. He tried to convince Leo to leave several times.
I wish they did. I really do.
Autopsy report - Leo Sölvi
Full name: Leo Oskar Sölvi
Birth date: July 23rd, 1968
Age at time of death: 24 years old
Cause of death: 1 gunshot wound in the heart
Body found in the backyard, near Blake's and Balthazar's bodies
Murder weapon: small caliber revolver
The last time I saw Leo, he asked me to help him choose the engagement ring he would propose with.
When they found Leo and Blake's bodies, both were wearing their ring, meaning they probably died a few moments after the proposal. How can such a pure moment of joy be tainted forever by death?
Leo was a promising writer and led the biggest musical zine in Northern Europe at the time. His legacy still lives on amongst fellow musical journalists.
Autopsy report - Balthazar Sawton
Full name: Balthazar Enrique Sawton
Birth date: November 28th, 1933
Age at time of death: 59 years old
Cause of death: 1 stab wound, straight to the heart
Body found in the backyard, near Blake's and Leo's bodies
Murder weapon: never found
From what Blake and Aurelia told us about their father, he was a violent, abusive man. When Aurelia was 16, and Blake, 14, Balthazar became physically violent towards his wife, Daya, and their three children, Aurelia, Blake, and Finn. The older sister, Aurelia, decided to flee the family home, along with her younger brother Blake. Finn chose to stay.
Balthazar was against his son's lifestyle: he didn't like the music, thought it worthless. But, most importantly, he couldn't stand Blake's homosexuality. He once said he would rather have a dead son, than a gay one.
Autopsy report - Finn Sawton
Full name: Finn Huxley Sawton
Birth date: December 20th, 1965
Age at time of death: supposedly 27 years old
Finn's body was never found, but he has been missing since the day his whole family died. His personal effects were still at the manor, and so was his car.
Several “psychics” came to Sawton Manor, and pretended they could hear faint cries for help coming from a strangely human-shaped, burned tree trunk in the middle of a meadow, in the forest near the manor. They said the tree looked like a man praying for mercy, and that it had “blood stains” on its face.
For my part, I don't believe in the supernatural, but I think he is the one who killed Blake, hence the numerous stab wounds in his back. Blake told us about his twin brother's lifelong envy. Finn was the first born of the twins, and had light, blond hair. Balthazar, who had black hair, thought Daya had cheated on him, and never recognized Finn as his son. Blake, on the other hand, was seen as the one and only heir. He hated his twin his whole life, and when Aurelia and Blake left when he was 14, he hoped to finally gain his father's approval. He never did.
Autopsy report - Daya Sawton
Full name: Daya Olivia Sawton
Birth date: May 8th, 1938
Age at time of death: 54 years old
Cause of death: suicide (?), hanging
Body found hanging on the living room's chandelier, 4 meters above ground, in the same room as Ramona's body
Murder weapon: rope, the same used to tie Ramona up
Aurelia and Blake always described their mother as quiet, enduring her husband's violence in silence. When they decided to leave, she didn't try to stop them, and instead, helped them the best way she could - by pretending not to see them run away that night.
The strangest thing about Daya's suicide is how her body was found: hanging several meters above ground. To get that high, one would need a ladder - but none was found on the property.
Moreover, one would expect death by hanging to be violent and damage the chandelier - but it was intact. It's as if Daya's body had been hung there after her death, in a macabre scene.
Autopsy report - Ramona Ulther
Full name: Ramona Daisy Ulther
Birth date: May 14th, 1922
Age at time of death: 70 years old
Cause of death: burning
Body found tied up to a chair in the living room, next to her daughter Daya's body
Murder weapon: gasoline and fire
Ramona's body was found tied up to a chair, covered in gasoline, and burned beyond recognition. Such a barbaric murder implied revenge on the matriarch, but the question then remains: who would want to kill Ramona Ulther that violently? The older woman had peaceful, polite relationships and no designated enemy.
From what I recall about the Sawton grandmother, she was a very driven, ambitious person. She had a rough start in life - got pregnant at 16 and kicked out of her home for it. She slowly built a life for her daughter and her, later on founding an empire that allowed her to buy Sawton Manor.
Autopsy report - Aurelia Sawton
Full name: Aurelia Mae Sawton
Birth date: April 26th, 1963
Age at time of death: 29 years old
Cause of death: burning
Body found hidden in a closet in the main office, wrapped around her young daughter Ella's body, with Raziel's body found in the same room
Murder weapon: fire
Aurelia was a great mother. She got pregnant at 23, but the father refused to raise Ella with her. Instead, Blake, Leo, and their friends helped her with the child. She was strong and resilient. I sometimes think about how life would have gone, had I told her how I felt about her earlier. Things would have been different. Maybe Ella and her would still be there.
I had to repress a lot of memories from the day I was asked to identify my friends’ bodies. Aurelia and Ella's were probably the worst.
What I can only imagine is that she saw the fire around them, figured out they wouldn't survive, and made Ella go into the closet so she wouldn't understand what was happening. She then wrapped her body around her daughter to protect her one last time.
Autopsy report - Ella Sawton
Full name: Ella Mona Sawton
Birth date: March 11th, 1987
Age at time of death: 5 years old
Cause of death: burning
Body found wrapped in her mother Aurelia's body, hidden in a closet in the main office, with Raziel's body found in the same room
Murder weapon: fire
Children's deaths are the most tragic. Their innocence is what makes it so unbearable.
Ella had done nothing to deserve such an end. She was the collateral damage of adult conflicts.
A bright little girl, who loved astronomy and stuffed animals. She wanted to see the northern lights. At the time of their death, I had been saving money for several months. I wanted to take Ella and her mom to Tromsø, Norway's capital of the aurora belt.
Sometimes, when I head to Tromsø to watch the aurora borealis, I can faintly see a little girl, dancing in the northern lights.
I hope you love it up there, Ella. Rest amongst the stars you loved so much.
Autopsy report - Raziel Zared
Full name: Raziel Ruben Zared
Birth date: September 17th, 1955
Age at time of death: 37 years old
Cause of death: burning
Body found in the main office, near the closet where Aurelia and Ella's bodies were found
Murder weapon: fire
None of us knew much about Raziel, Aurelia's boyfriend of almost a year. He appeared out of nowhere, a brilliant lawyer who introduced Aurelia to his famous friends and helped her gain popularity in the art world.
Blake didn't like him much. Leo thought he had a weird vibe, he couldn’t fully trust him. Something was off about him, I knew it as soon as I met him. But Aurelia loved him, and made it clear we all had to come to terms with her relationship.
During my researches about him, I found out he had been married once, to a woman named Calypso Holden. Both came from the same orphanage in Hammerfest. Calypso died by suicide 5 years before the events of Sawton Manor. She eerily looked like Aurelia and Daya.
Spellcaster VS Malediktum
Blake and I were members of a death metal band, Spellcaster. It started gaining traction a few months before the events that took place at Sawton Manor. We were expecting to sign and release our first album in 1993. We never did.
But, before founding Spellcaster, Blake first played in a band by the name of Malediktum, with his then friend, Dante Stavig. He never clearly told me what happened between them. I suspect they both discovered their sexuality together and had a thing going on for a while.
After a while, they started having conflicts regarding the band's direction. Dante had very specific ideas in mind and acted on it. Church burning, violence on stage. He got verbally abusive towards other bands, threatened several people. Once Blake found out, he left. It reminded him too much of his father.
Dante went rogue after Blake's departure. They had this really intense relationship, and since they couldn't be friends anymore, Dante decided they would be each other's worst enemy. He would send death threats, try to assault Blake and Leo after our shows. But, of course, we couldn't call the police - they would have never helped people like us.
During the initial investigation, a nearby church was burned down, and a blonde man was seen around Sawton Manor. Blake had this notebook where he would write down song lyrics for the band. I never found it. Strangely enough, a few months afterwards, Malediktum released a bunch of songs that sounded a lot like what Blake was working on at the time. They went on to became one of the most well-known death/black metal bands of all time, thanks to these songs. Songs they fucking stole from my dead friend.
As previously stated, Finn might be Blake's murderer. But I think Dante could be another suspect. He never got over Blake, and Leo was supposed to propose that day. He might have found out about the proposal, tracked Blake down, and decided that if he couldn't have him, then no one would.
The Calypso Holden case
Amongst what I found out about Raziel Zared during my investigations, the most intriguing thing was his relationship with a woman named Calypso Holden.
Raziel Zared and Calypso Holden were both orphans. They met at Hammerfest Orphanage when they were 9 years old. Calypso had been there since her birth in 1954. She was a year older than him.
According to Raziel's file, he had been kicked out of several family homes and orphanages in the past due to “inappropriate, violent behaviour” towards others.
Strangely, he stopped showing such tendencies after meeting Calypso. A caretaker specifically wrote down that the young girl's presence seemed to cancel out his most antisocial traits.
Fascinated by her musical gift, a couple of musicians, the Holdens, adopted her when she was 15. Encouraged by her adoptive parents, she became a pianist and music teacher.
Raziel and her stayed in contact the whole time, and eventually fell in love. At 26, she married him.
Sadly, their marriage wouldn't last. At 33, Calypso killed herself. Her suicide note mentioned how she couldn't bear the idea of becoming a mother, when she herself had never known her own parents.
Two things about this seem particularly strange to me: why did Raziel never mention any of this to Aurelia? And, most importanly, why does Calypso look so much like Aurelia and her mother, Daya?
Thoughts on the satanic allegations
During the initial investigation, Sawton Manor was closed to the public. It didn't stop many people from violating the property.
At first, only religious groups would show up at the gates. The protests were led by the community of the church that Dante had presumably burned down a few hours before the fire at Sawton Manor.
Back in the 1990s, satanic panic was strong. Us alternative and queer people were often subjected to wrongful accusations. The media loved it. So, obviously, when the local church put blame on Blake and Leo for “sacrificing the Sawton family during a satanic ritual”, it only made it worse.
“Psychics” and “exorcists” started showing up at Sawton Manor, pretending they could sense supernatural activity. One of them took this picture as “proof” of a demonic presence. They called it “Alastor”, supposedly a demon linked to revenge and family feuds.
Teenagers would dare each other to enter the ruins. Several of them came back traumatized by the experience, but wouldn't tell what happened.
While I wouldn't agree with most beliefs surrounding the manor, I have to admit that I felt uneasy going there since 1992. There's this eerie, uncanny feeling to the place - like being constantly watched by an invisible figure.
What I know to be true
I can only tell you what I know to be true, and hope that it will lead you to understand a bit better what might have happened that night.
What I know to be true, is that my friends were good people. They loved their family and friends dearly.
Blake strove to be the best uncle possible to Ella. Leo and him did all in their power to ensure this little girl's happiness. Since her birth, they worked hard to make sure she would have anything she might need. I refuse to believe that they would have done anything to hurt her.
What I know to be true, is that my friends couldn't trust many people around them. Some envied them. Some threatened them.
Dante Stavig. Finn and Balthazar Sawton. Raziel Zared. Their murderer has to be amongst them. I am sure of that.
Finally, what I know to be true, is that innocent people died that night.
A young, starry-eyed little girl.
Her mother, a promising artist.
Her uncle, a rising metal legend, and his lover, the voice of a new generation.
And that, I will never forgive it.
About me
My name is Tim Arnesen.
From 1984 to 1992, I used to be the bassist of Spellcaster, a death metal band from Norway.
On December 21st, 1992, Blake Sawton, our lead guitarist and vocalist, and Leo Sölvi, his boyfriend, were found brutally murdered on the property of Sawton Manor, along with Blake's entire family.
The media accused my friends of orchestrating this massacre as part of a satanic ritual.
But I know who my friends were.
They worshipped no devil.
I am dedicated to discovering the truth.
