'My dad is a cannibal killer and his victim's final words will always haunt me'
For Jamie-Lee Arrow, daughter of Isakin Jonsson, dubbed the 'Skara Cannibal', family reunions bring back nightmarish memories.
Jonsson earned his chilling moniker after he murdered and cannibalised parts of his girlfriend, Helle Christensen.
Jamie-Lee, Jonsson's daughter, has spoken out about the profound effect her father's gruesome actions had on her life when she was only nine years old.
The young girl endured a traumatic ordeal when the woman she viewed as a second mother was savagely killed; this followed her parents' divorce when she was just a toddler.
Jonsson's barbaric crime of cutting Ms. Christensen's throat, beheading her, and consuming parts of her remains is one of Sweden's most horrifying murder cases, reports the Mirror US.
After being sentenced in 2011, the deranged killer was placed in a psychiatric institution. Jamie-Lee has recently opened up to Live Mint about the horror of being ensnared in her father's grotesque reality.
"My dad definitely brainwashed me and has done since I was three years old," she told MailOnline.
"He has always exposed me to the dark side, with the devil and demons and evil spirits, and that has always been a part of my reality – a part of my everyday life.
"He was preparing my brain for it for as long as I remember because he wanted me to be him. He always said that 'you are me, you are a better version of me'."
Jamie-Lee was raised in two starkly contrasting homes, which to her felt like night and day.
While her mother's residence was warm and normal, her father's abode presented a dark and troubling environment for a child.
Jamie-Lee recounts Jonsson indulged in horror films and crafted unsettling voodoo dolls. She constantly tread on eggshells as her father oscillated between being an ideal parent and abruptly rejecting her.
She remembered believing Helle had love for her father, yet it seemed Jonsson did not reciprocate these feelings towards her step-mother.
According to Jamie-Lee, the couple shared laughter at times but also engaged in frequent arguments. She observed her father losing his grip on reality, with the household's joyful moments becoming increasingly scarce.
This behaviour escalated to what Jamie-Lee describes as the 'worst' weekend of her life, an experience she will always remember. Shortly before Helle's murder by Jonsson, she imparted words to Jamie-Lee that would be their last exchange.
The chilling account has been featured in the true crime series Evil Lives Here: The Killer Speaks on Discovery.
Jamie-Lee said: "She [Helle] cooked some food for us. As she served it, she went, like, 'enjoy your meal because this is the last thing you'll ever eat from me because your dad is going to kill me.' That's one of the last things I ever heard her say."
It turned out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy for Jamie-Lee, who never encountered Helle again. At the tender age of 13, she came to grips with the meaning of 'cannibal', feeling deceived by her father.
On reuniting with her father, Jamie-Lee initially experienced an emotional and heartfelt meeting but soon recognised he had been manipulating her since she was a child.
She gradually grasped her dad had crafted an image of virtue for himself while casting his girlfriend as the baddie; she was duped into accepting this narrative and it dawned on her slowly what the reality was. Upon reaching adulthood, her father chillingly inquired if Jamie-Lee wished to hear how he'd slain his partner.
"He showed no remorse. He almost said it with passion. And, I was sitting there wanting to throw up. He almost had a smirk on his face," Jamie-Lee recalled.
"That's the first time I truly felt in my body that my dad was not well. This man is sick," she conveyed.
Jamie-Lee has been combatting the shadows of her past including depression and substance misuse which stemmed from Helle's murder at her father's hands.
Now 23, a mother herself and in a nurturing relationship, she's pledged, for her children's welfare, to cut ties definitively with her murderous father.
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