Pray, Obey, Kill

The five-part documentary series Pray, Obey, Kill revisits a complex Swedish murder case from 2004 that gained global attention. On a cold night in January 2004, gunshots rang out across the remote Swedish village of Knutby, home to a small, tight-knit Pentecostal congregation, leaving a young woman murdered in her bed and her neighbor suffering from multiple bullet wounds. Attention soon turned towards the community: the victim’s husband (also the sect’s pastor), the victim’s 26-year-old nanny, and the sect’s leader known as “The Bride of Christ.” The case gained instant international notoriety when the nanny confessed within days, claiming she was told to commit the acts of violence through a series of text messages from God. What soon emerged, however, was a tale of a scandalous love triangle and details of another suspicious death that had occurred years before. Behind it all were the mysterious actions of the sect’s leader who exerted an increasingly powerful pull over her congregation. Tracing the chilling events of January 10, 2004, and the resulting police investigation, criminal trial, and its aftermath, Pray, Obey, Kill highlights investigative journalists Anton Berg and Martin Johnson’s meticulous re-examination of the case. Their investigation includes in-depth interviews with journalists and police investigators who covered the crimes, as well as former members of the Pentecostal sect, some of whom are speaking for the first time about the psychological and physical abuse they suffered.