Metta Fock

Metta (or Mätta) Charlotta Fock, née Ridderbjelke (10 June 1765 - 7 November 1810), was a Swedish noble and sentenced murderer. She was executed for murdering her spouse, son and daughter in order to marry her lover.

Metta Fock was the daughter of quartermaster noble Axel Erik Ridderbjelke and Helena Margareta Gripenmark. In 1783, she married the noble sergeant Henrik Johan Fock (1757-1802). The marriage was arranged. The couple had several children, four of whom, two daughters and two sons, were alive by 1800.

The couple lived on the estate Lilla Gisslaved in Trevattna parish in Västergötland. It was a small farm with only one tenant, and their economic standard was very low for members of the nobility. The mental capacity of Henrik Johan Fock was restricted. He was described as "very foolish, though not insane", which was reportedly why he never advanced from the rank of sergeant: he was not able to manage the affairs of the farm, and Metta Fock therefore had her husband placed under the guardianship of her brother and took over the management herself.

Metta Fock was rumored in the parish to have a lover, the married sergeant and game keeper Johan Fägercrantz, who often visited Lilla Gisslaved and to whom she often sent letters. The messengers she sent to deliver the letters were always illiterate, but later claimed to have showed them to a major, who read them and later testified that they included love poems. Gossip also claimed that Johan Fägercrantz had abused Johan Fock physically during one of his visits.

In June 1802, Metta Fock's eldest son, the thirteen year old Claes, her three year old deaf mute daughter Charlotta, and finally her spouse Henrik Johan, all died within a couple of days after having experienced violent vomiting, temporarily improvement, followed by a hasty death. After their death, Metta Fock left home and spent a couple of days with her eldest daughter's fiance and then at the Norwegian border, before she returned. This caused rumors that she had murdered her spouse and her children in order to marry her lover.

These events, coupled with the rumors of her love affair, resulted in a suggestion from the local länsman to have an autopsy performed on the remains of her spouse. This demand was denied because it was deemed unnecessary, and the funeral was conducted. However, the governor gave order that the autopsy was to be conducted anyway and that the corpse was to be exhumed. The doctor, however, only looked at the corpse in the coffin and decided that it was impossible to conduct the autopsy because of the decay. After this, baron Adam Fock of Höverö, the patriarch of the Fock family and her late spouse's cousin's nephew, had an autopsy performed by a doctor from Skara. He did so without asking for permission from the authorities, and offered the doctor a sizable sum if the result of the autopsy proved poisoning.

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