Mailmen disappeared without a trace - new book tries to solve the riddle

It was the colleagues at the post who reported Bosse Jansson disappeared. After a few days, the police chose to enter the apartment at Folkungagatan 63 in Stockholm. There, police found Bosses Jansson's wallet, passport, home keys and bank books. Only one jacket, a pair of shoes and an address book were missing. A pair of slippers lay thrown in the hall - an unusual sight in the otherwise very decent Bosse Jansson's home.

On Folkungagatan 63, the Cultural News also meets Anders Sundelin, a journalist and author of the disappeared Brevbäraren, in which he seeks the answer to the riddle of the trackless disappeared letter carrier.

- No one has seen anything, no one has heard anything from him. Everything is left in the apartment, Anders Sundelin tells Culture News.

Bosse Jansson was an unknown, seemingly ordinary postman, but history has never ceased to fascinate people. The case has appeared in newspaper articles and in a radio documentary, been a publisher of fiction and generated over 9,000 posts on the Flashback internet forum.

In The Mailman who disappeared, Anders Sundelin tries to gather all material about the case that is available, from interviews with Bosse Jansson's family and colleagues to the many theories on Flashback. There is also room for a number of new theories in the book.

Why is the interest in the case so great? Anders Sundelin believes that this is partly because a trackless disappearance opens up for very free interpretations.

- The other is that he moved in special environments. We have Albania, we have extreme left circles. We also have the 1970s that may also fascinate, he says.

There are several factors in Bosse Jansson's history that many have chosen to engage in. Among other things, the police, for a start, stripped away the entire investigation. Convinced that it was a suicide, they ignored things like asking their neighbors what they had seen or heard. But perhaps the main reason for the interest in the case is that there are some question marks around the person Bosse Jansson.

According to Anders Sundelin, Bosse Jansson was quite secret, lacked close friends and few had access to his privacy. He was also quite wealthy after receiving a legacy from his grandfather. At the same time, he was an active communist, spoke fluent Albanian and was involved in the Swedish-Albanian Association. He also made several, for now, unusual trips. All of this has resulted in Jansson being identified as a spy.

- It invites speculation, this with him traveling so much. That he traveled along the iron curtain. And his interest in Albania, which was a totalitarian dictatorship. He was practically in Albania once a year, from around 1969-1970, says Anders Sundelin.

So what does Anders Sundelin think? Was Bosse Jansson a spy who ended up in disgrace, or did he choose to disappear himself?

- He may have killed himself, he may have been in an accident. He may have been spun up by a foreign security service and has therefore for some reason gone up in smoke.