Sigvard Thurneman
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Sven Emil Sigvard Nilsson-Thurneman (November 14, 1908 in Sala, Sweden – July 11, 1979 in Bromma, Sweden), was the leader of the so-called "Salaligan" (The Sala gang) during the first years of the 1930s. Thurneman, a young office clerk, was said to have formed his assumed name upon an anagram from the English word "manhunter", although this proved to be false.
Thurneman was known to speak English, but he spoke German much better. When he was applying for a name change, he gave two suggestions: "Thurneman" and "Turneman". Both names were variations of a common German surname.[1]
Apart from Thurneman, the Sala gang consisted of Bror Hedström, Åke Rangvald Lindberg, Roland Abrahamsson, and Karl Herbert Jansson. The gang perpetrated robberies with murder. When discovered in 1936, Salaligan had committed five murders. Thurneman was interested in mysticism, which had a great influence on the gang members, who called themselves Den magiska cirkeln ("The magical circle", abbreviated "DMC"). Thurneman had his fellow accomplices inhale incense from different herbs, claiming this to make them cold hearted and "willing instruments of murder" ("villiga mordredskap"). Thurneman claimed the murdering of a human not to be an unjust act, but rather an act imposing a transition of the person's physical state.
