She loves her father but will never allow him role in her children’s lives future/ Image: Youtube screengrab
Jamie-Lee Arrow, the daughter of Swedish murderer Isakin Drabbad, known as the “Skara Cannibal,” has spoken publicly about why she continues to love her father more than a decade after he murdered and ate his girlfriend, Helle Christensen. Drabbad was convicted of the killing in 2010 and later committed to psychiatric care, a case that became one of Sweden’s most notorious crimes.Arrow has since described her upbringing and the aftermath of the murder in multiple interviews, including television appearances and in the true-crime series Evil Lives Here: The Killer Speaks, where she confronts her father directly, speaks to him face to face about his crime, and recounts the psychological abuse she endured as a child, including his claims that they were “angels sent from hell”.
The crime and its aftermath
In 2010, Isakin Drabbad murdered his girlfriend, Helle Christensen, in Sweden and consumed parts of her body. The case earned him the nickname “the Skara Cannibal” and became one of the country’s most notorious crimes in recent history. Drabbad, a self-proclaimed Satan worshipper, had been experiencing visions of demons and evil spirits in the period leading up to a fight with Christensen, which ultimately ended in her murder. Following his conviction, he was committed to a psychiatric institution in 2011 and, in 2020, was moved to outpatient care and given an apartment in Katrineholm. Arrow, who was a teenager at the time, has said she first learned of Christensen’s death from her mother. Speaking on This Morning, she recalled: “My first reaction was, ‘was it dad?’ And she said ‘yeah’.” Arrow said she only grasped the scale of what had happened when she saw media coverage describing her father as a cannibal. “It didn’t make sense to me,” she said. “I didn’t find out the full story until my dad told me myself.”
The final warning from her stepmother
In interviews with LADbible Stories, Arrow described a conversation she had with Christensen shortly before the murder, during a meal the two shared together.
Her father murdered and ate his partner Helle Christensen after years of psychological instability documented/ Image: Youtube
“The last time I met Helle, she had cooked me food and as she served the food, she said, ‘enjoy your meal, cause this is the last time I’ll ever cook for you because Isakin is going to kill me’.” Arrow said the comment frightened her at the time. “I was so scared at that point. And she said it like she really, really meant it. And she wasn’t even upset about it,” she said. “She said it in a calm, direct way. And I just went, ‘No, don’t say that. Don’t say that. It’s not true. Stop it’. And she said, ‘Yeah, it’s true. I’m not gonna lie to you’.” Christensen was killed soon afterwards. Drabbad was arrested and later confessed to both the murder and the cannibalism.
Loving him, but cutting him off
Despite the crime, Arrow has repeatedly said she has been unable to stop loving her father. Speaking on This Morning, she said: “I believe it’s pretty much impossible to stop loving your parents.” “And I know that now, he could do whatever in the world and I would keep loving him, but that doesn’t mean he can be a part of my life, and that doesn’t mean I agree with anything that he’s doing.” She expanded on that separation in an interview with PEOPLE, after appearing in the Investigation Discovery series Evil Lives Here: The Killer Speaks. Arrow said she had visited her father several times after filming, but eventually ended contact. “We had some really long and deep conversations, and I did let him know that I love him and I forgive him,” she told PEOPLE. “But then something happened. He sent me a long, twisted, sick text message where he basically threatened me and my family if I ever reached out to him again.” She said the message brought a form of closure. “It gave me the closure I needed. It was like I needed that to understand how sick it all is.” Now a mother of two, Arrow said she no longer has any contact with her father. “I just have to accept that I love him but he can never, ever in a million years be a part of my life, and definitely not my kids’ lives,” she said. “It hurts loving someone that is so bad for you.”
Rebuilding her life
Arrow has also spoken about what it was like growing up around her father before the crime. She has said that visiting his home felt like “stepping into a horror movie”, an experience that stayed with her long after childhood. Arrow explained that when Drabbad first met Christensen, they were happy together, but that the relationship later became extremely toxic. After years marked by trauma, she has said she struggled with addiction and left school at 15, before gradually turning her life around. Now 23, she is raising two children and is set to marry her long-term partner. Speaking about her own parenting, Arrow has said: “I wanna give my kids everything that I never had. I wanna give them safety and unconditional love. I never want them to be introduced to any kind of darkness.” “My kids came here as love and light and as love and light, they will go.” In a separate interview with The Sun, Arrow said: “Just because your childhood sucked doesn’t mean your entire life has to. We have the power over our own lives and we can create something beautiful even if we came from something ugly.” Go to Source
