Jamie Lee Arrow's story is one of the darkest and most shocking to come to light in recent years. Her father became known as the "Skara Cannibal" after he murdered and beheaded his partner in 2010, in a case that shocked Sweden.
For Jamie, this story was not just a news story in the media, but the moment that changed her life forever. Her father had separated from her mother when she was very young, but the girl had continued to maintain contact with him and had become very attached to his partner, Helle Christensen, whom she considered a second mother.
However, Helle and Isakin had a toxic, often violent relationship, and as a child, Jamie witnessed several fights between them.
Helle had placed a plate of food in front of Jamie and said: “Taste your meal… This is the last time I will cook for you, because Isakin will kill me.” Helle’s words proved true. In November 2010, Draband, who declared himself a Satanist, beheaded his partner and ate pieces of her body. In a touching interview with LadBible, Jamie told how her mother tried to stop her from learning the truth about her father, saying: “The life you knew, it didn’t exist anymore.”
“I wasn’t allowed to watch TV. I wasn’t allowed to listen to the radio, I wasn’t allowed to go to
the shops. I wasn’t allowed to go to school for a month. We kept the curtains closed because the neighbours who passed by tried to see,” Jamie recalls. As Draband’s trial progressed, the case gained momentum in Sweden. Citizens learned from newspapers that the cannibal had used a knife to cut off the body’s head and tear off its clothes. Using a saw and an axe, the killer chopped up the body and pieces of flesh from its limbs, which he fried with a garnish of cannabis leaves, according to the Mirror .
Jamie recounted how her mother tried to shield her from the truth about her father’s crimes. “One day my mother took me to the shop… And suddenly I saw my father’s face all over the front page of Sweden’s largest newspaper,” she recalls.
At the time, she didn’t know what the word “cannibal” meant. While her mother tried to shield Jamie from the horrific truth about her father’s crime, once she had access to a computer, she searched the Internet to find out what it meant. The truth horrified her. “I had to stop myself because it was so violent and disgusting,” she recalls. “I just couldn’t accept that my father had anything to do with that word.”
"The Daughter of the Grill Cannibal"
Even after being convicted of murder and sent to a psychiatric institution, Draband continued to make headlines in the media.
He also started a blog, answering questions from the public about his crimes. “Most people say at some point in their lives that they would never kill another person, but if you have, it’s not a big deal anymore,” he wrote in one of his articles. He also opened an online store, where he sold voodoo dolls, signed in blood with the words: “They call me Cannibal Skara.”
When, as a teenager, Jamie found the courage to visit her father in prison, Draband gave her one of these voodoo dolls, telling her that he would kill the kids who bullied her at school. She explains that she had a hard time at school, because of her father's reputation: "I was bullied at school because of my father. They called me 'the cannibal's daughter'. That's how everyone knew me, no one knew me as Jamie. I was just the cannibal's daughter. I left school when I was 14 and started hanging out with the wrong people and doing drugs... It got really bad and by the age of 15 I was completely addicted," she added.
“Mom, Dad sold my soul to the devil, I’m sorry.”
Jamie was visiting her father and remembers that one day she told him: “I don’t know what to do, I want to die. If something doesn’t change now, I’m going to kill myself.”
He then replied to her that there was only one solution.
“He described a ceremony to me saying that if I did it with him, everything would change. I would be happy, successful and achieve everything I wanted,” she said. According to her, it was a satanic ceremony.
“It was a ceremony where I was going to sell my soul to the devil. He told me to sit down, he held my hands and we were facing each other. While we were holding each other’s hands, he told me to close my eyes, which I did. He told me to repeat after him and he started saying words, addressing the devil. It lasted about ten minutes. And as I was saying these words, I was disgusted and thought ‘what am I doing?’”. I thought I couldn’t do this, then it was too late and I had to keep going, there was no turning back. When we finished talking, we kept our eyes closed and kept holding each other’s hands. I remember feeling like we were flying in a dark space, it was strange. My dad said to me: ‘Do you see them, Jamie? Do you see the beings flying around you? They are always here and following you. And now you can’t see them. I see them all the time, but you don’t. "But soon you will hear them and eventually you will see them. But don't be afraid, they are here to help you.' And they were like demons. I have never been so scared in my life. I knew that at any moment I would start hearing them and there was no way to stop it. It was too late, I had sold my soul to the devil," he says.
"I went home to my mom shaking and staring at the floor. My mom asked me what had happened. I remember feeling like I was underwater, I couldn't hear well. I remember sitting curled up on the couch shaking. I covered my ears, my eyes and I knew that at any moment I was going to lose consciousness and never come back. I was pulling my hair, I couldn't breathe. I started hitting my head and I kept hearing my dad's voice saying 'you're going to start hearing them, you're going to see them, they're going to be with you always,'" she added.
She then says she texted her mother to come downstairs to say goodbye.
"Because I knew I wouldn't be able to make it in the next few seconds. She came downstairs and I screamed 'Bye mom, I'm leaving, I'm not coming back.'" Jamie was emotional and continued: "She was panicking asking me what had happened because she didn't know. She was holding me in her arms and I said 'Mom, Dad sold my soul to the devil and I can't come back, I'm sorry. I'm going crazy, you have to take me to the hospital.' My mother was furious and asked me 'how can your dad say that? How can he do this to you? To his daughter?'" She held me for a long time and said, "Jamie, your father cannot make you who he is. You are love and light, you will never be the darkness that he is. You will never be able to be that. Don't be afraid, love and light are stronger than his darkness." I remember my mother telling me that night...", she recounts.
After this particular incident, Jamie describes how her relationship with her father became strained: “I didn’t talk to him for two or three weeks, I didn’t respond. Finally, I called him and said, ‘Dad, I felt bad after that ceremony, and if we’re going to keep in touch, I don’t want you to involve me in these things.’ I was surprised because he replied, ‘Jamie, I did it so you knew you weren’t going to be like that anymore. I wanted you to make your own way out of my darkness.’”
“I think it’s impossible to stop loving your parent.”
Eventually, Jamie cut off all contact with her father, as she told People magazine: “We had some really long, deep conversations and I made it clear to him that I loved him and forgave him. But then something happened. He sent me a long, twisted, sick text message in which he basically threatened me and my family if I ever contacted him again.”
The message hurt, but also relieved her: “It gave me the closure I needed. It was like I needed to understand how sick this whole thing is.” She says it’s hard to mourn a person who is alive, and when asked if she loves her father, she replied: “I think it’s impossible to stop loving your parent.”
Now, Jamie says, her mission in life is to ensure that her children will never be exposed to the horror she experienced: “I want to give my children what I didn’t have. I want to give them security, unconditional love. I never want them to come into contact with any form of darkness. My children came as love and light and that’s how they will leave.”
As for what she would tell herself in her youth: “If I could show her a video, I would show her three seconds of what was to come, three seconds, saying, ‘Hold on, things will get better.’ A little hope.”
