LAKE COUNTY – A Swedish woman convicted of the murders of a Lake County Sheriff's sergeant and a Stockton restaurateur will be released in May of 2011.
Sweden's Orebro District Court ruled Monday that Annika Ostberg Deasy, 55, who has spent more than 28 years behind bars, will be set free in a year and a half.
“All I am asking for is a fair chance of making a new life for myself at home,” Deasy is reported to have stated in court last week, according to Swedish Radio International.
Deasy, who was born in Sweden but came to the United States with her mother when she was a girl, was returned to Sweden in April under the auspices of the US Department of Justice's International Transfer Unit, as Lake County News has reported.
“It's disappointing but not at all a surprise,” said Sheriff Rod Mitchell who, along with District Attorney Jon Hopkins, opposed Deasy's release to Sweden.
She was convicted of the May 1981 murders of Joe Torre of Stockton and Sgt. Richard Helbush of Lake County. Deasy was previously convicted of manslaughter in 1974 for the death of San Franciscan Donald McKay.
Deasy and her boyfriend, William “Bob” Cox – both of whom had drug problems – had met with Torre for a business deal during which Cox shot Torre to death.
Afterward, they traveled to Lake County where her young son lived with his father. Along the way, their car had a flat tire on Manning Flat on Highway 20 shortly after midnight on May 2, 1981.
Helbush, 34, was traveling from Clearlake – where he had just had coffee with a fellow deputy, Don Anderson – to Lakeport, where he was about to go off duty, when he stopped to help the couple.
He was shot three times in the back and once in the back of the head, according to Anderson, who today is a defense attorney and has written a book about the case.
After shooting Helbush, Cox and Deasy took his wallet, service revolver and patrol car, leaving Helbush's body on the side of the road.
Anderson, a California Highway Patrol officer and a reserve deputy later would apprehend the couple following a car chase and a shootout in which Cox was wounded several times and Anderson sustained minor injuries due to being hit in the leg by bullet fragments.
Cox later hung himself in jail, supposedly as the result of a suicide pact with Deasy, who would go on to face the murder charges alone in what originally was a death penalty case.
In August of 1983 she was sentenced to prison after reaching a deal with then-District Attorney Steve Hedstrom to plead guilty to two charges of first-degree murder, with each charge carrying a sentence of 25 years to life.
In Sweden, efforts had been under way for many years to bring her home to serve out her sentence. Many of her supporters held that her sentence was unnecessarily harsh, especially since Cox is believed to have been the trigger man in Torre's and Helbush's murders. Deasy's mother, Maj Britt, advocated for her release and Deasy also became the topic of a documentary.
By the time she returned to her home country, Deasy had been behind bars for nearly 28 years, beginning with her 1981 arrest, and been turned down for parole four times and had three previous transfer requests to Sweden denied.
Court rules Deasy meets criteria for release
When Deasy arrived in Sweden, she was sent to Hinseberg prison, the highest security prison for women in the country, according to officials. She later was reportedly moved to a lower-security prison, the Färingsö Institution, which is near Stockholm, where her elderly mother lives.
The Local newspaper reported that Sweden's Prison and Probation Service gave approval for the release, although the National Board of Forensic Medicine raised concerns that Deasy had a medium-high risk of relapsing into criminal behavior. Concerns also were raised about Deasy will integrate into Sweden, where she hasn't lived since she was a child.
A Monday statement from the Prison and Probation Service explained that Deasy had requested the Orebro court reduce her life sentence to a determinate amount of time, which they did, giving her instead a 45-year sentence. With the time she's already served, she then becomes eligible for release.
The district court considered several criteria in making the decision, including the time she already has served, the case facts, her risk of reverting to crime, her behavior and her ability to adapt to society. She was found guilty of only one serious prison rule violation in 1989, the agency reported.
While the court found Deasy guilty of very serious crimes, they found that the time she has served is sufficient, and that she would be able to make the transition to freedom.
By the time she's released, Deasy will be 57 years old and will have served more more than 30 years in prison.
While that's a long sentence, “I think she would have stayed longer if she would have remained in California,” said Anderson. “I think it would have been difficult for her to get parole, just because of the gravity of the crime.”
He added, “Helbush was a friend of mine and not only did they kill him, she tried to kill me.”
The decisions worked out between state and federal officials and the Swedish government to send Deasy home didn't include input from local authorities, said Hopkins.
“The unfortunate thing is that the authorities in this country and in Sweden made no attempt to get information from the district attorney or the sheriff of Lake County about the facts in the case,” he said.
“Anyone reading the transcript of her interviews at the time of the shooting of Sgt. Helbush, or the district attorney's statement regarding the charges would know that she has not taken responsibility for her part in these killings,” he said. “In fact, at her parole lifer hearings over the years, she has increasingly minimized her role.”
Hopkins said Deasy made clear at the time of the crimes that she and Cox “had a pact that they would not be taken into custody, and that's why Sgt. Helbush had to die.”
Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt claimed in April that he had a secret meeting with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in May of 2007, which laid the groundwork for Deasy's eventual release. The following month, Swedish Minister for Justice Beatrice Ask discussed Deasy with then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez.
By early 2009, the process was nearing its conclusion. Hopkins found out Deasy was being considered for release in February and sent a letter voicing his objections to the California Board of Parole Hearings.
Officials never returned any of his calls, letters or e-mails, and late the following month she was transferred to federal custody before being turned over to Sweden.
Deasy was flown to Sweden in April on a chartered jet that cost the Swedish government a reported $62,000, according to The Local.
The murder of Torre and Helbush was “so bad,” said Anderson, who added that he doesn't know if there's such a thing as enough time for those types of crimes. He said it's difficult to judge somebody when you don't really know them, but pointed to the parole board's repeated decisions to deny her release.
Hopkins said it was a “foregone conclusion” that Deasy would be released when she returned to Sweden.
“She was responsible for the deaths of three men, one of whom was a police officer,” said Hopkins. “She should have had to earn her way to freedom.”
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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