The Real-Life Mystery Behind Netflix’s Hit Show

Ever wondered about the true story behind Netflix’s crime series, The Breakthrough? It’s a gripping tale of a double murder that happened way back in 2004 in Linköping, Sweden. The victims were an 8-year-old boy named Mohammed Ammouri and a 56-year-old woman named Anna-Lena Svensson. The case went cold for 16 long years until a breakthrough in DNA testing finally pointed the finger at the culprit. The show is based on a book written by journalist Anna Bodin and genealogist Peter Sjölund, who tracked the journey from the crime to the arrest. The crime happened on October 19, 2004, when an unknown assailant stabbed Mohammed to death. Anna-Lena tried to intervene but also got killed. The case remained unsolved for years because there were no solid leads. However, detectives didn’t give up. They used ancestral DNA in 2019, and after a year of hard work, they arrested Daniel Nyqvist, who turned out to be the killer. Netflix’s show, The Breakthrough, is a dramatized version of the real events. While it captures the essence of what happened, it also adds some dramatic twists. For instance, the DNA evidence was more helpful in real life, and the witness immediately remembered the attacker’s appearance. The timeline of the investigation was also stretched out more in reality compared to what the show depicts.