Guy Lochhead, 30/08/10
The Sala gang was a group of five Swedish men who committed at least five murders and several thefts, burgalaries and arson attacks between 1930 and 1936. The gang was based around their leader Sigvard Thurneman’s formation of a Swedish division of ‘Den Magiska Cirkeln’, a cult based on strict hierarchy and a belief in an immortal soul that permitted murder amongst its members. The gang was pretty useless, as gangs go. It’s sort of interesting for the fact that members had to sign a contract that allowed themselves to be killed, but there are more shocking, wider-reaching, extreme examples of this blind obedience if I did want to include that sort of thing (which I don’t think I do). Horrible stuff.