The quaint town of Salisbury, North Carolina, isn’t typically associated with violent crime. This made the influx of international journalists surprising when they arrived to cover the separate homicides of an elderly local woman and a Swedish man pursuing a fresh start, leaving the communities in Watauga and Rowan Counties in shock.

Could these two unrelated murders be linked to the ruthless assassination of Sweden’s prime minister? A special two-hour premiere of Buried in the Backyard Season 6 explores this intriguing question.

A body in the snow

Situated within the Appalachian Mountains, Deep Gap, North Carolina, lies approximately 100 miles north of Charlotte and 80 miles away from Salisbury. It was there, on January 7, 1994, that snow blanketed the isolated region, leading to icy road conditions.

Despite the snowy conditions, a land surveyor for the Department of Transportation was able to spot bare feet pointing up from the snow.

“We could see the outline of the body underneath a blanket of snow,” Detective Sergeant Paula May of the Watauga County Sheriff’s Office told Buried in the Backyard. “It was evident that the body had been there for some time.”

The nude body of an unknown man soon took form, wearing nothing except a cygnet ring and a watch. Gunshot wounds to the left temple and right side of the neck, made by a .22-caliber firearm, proved to be the cause of death for the victim, identified as 40-year-old Swedish national Victor Gunnarsson. 

According to Swedish friend Daniel Johansson, Gunnarsson moved to the United States in 1993 as a proficient polyglot and “globe trotter.” 

“I think he saw America like the Land of Opportunities,” said Johansson. “He wanted to live the American Dream.”

Johansson described the language tutor as an affable guy who “never considered people strangers … just friends that you didn’t know.” Johansson met several of those friends in the late fall of 1993 during a visit to Gunnarsson’s hometown of Salisbury.

Victor Gunnarsson meets Kay Weden

On November 23, 1993, during Johansson’s visit, Gunnarsson met single mother and high school English teacher Kay Weden through a friend at a local café. The pair hit it off immediately.

“I thought Victor was the best-looking thing I’d ever seen,” Weden told producers. “He had dark hair and beautiful blue eyes; so charismatic … he was nice, and somebody so entirely different.” 

Even Johansson said he recognized the “instant attraction” between the two. 

Gunnarsson and Weden continued seeing one another, even after Johansson returned to Sweden on December 3, 1993 — the last day any of Gunnarsson’s loved ones saw him alive. That evening, he’d accepted an invitation to join Weden and her mother, 77-year-old Catherine Miller, for dinner. Weden said they had “a really nice, nice time.”

The romantic pair made plans to look for a Christmas tree, but Gunnarsson never showed. On Dec. 5, 1993, Weden and a friend stopped at Gunnarsson’s apartment, but he was not there. Oddly, despite the cold, the door was slightly ajar.

Weden then feared that Gunnarsson had ended their budding romance, unaware that, back in Sweden, Johansson and the missing man’s parents were growing concerned when unable to reach Gunnarsson. 

“Nothing makes sense,” said Weden. “My feelings were hurt. I thought it was over.”

A murdered grandmother

Feelings of rejection went to the backburner when, on Dec. 9, Catherine Miller’s boss went to Weden’s high school to tell her he couldn’t get ahold of the elderly widow.

Soon, law enforcement officials forced their way into Miller’s home, finding her dead inside, according to Assistant Special Agent in Charge (A.S.A.C.) Don Gale for the North Carolina’s State Bureau of Investigation. 

“Mrs. Miller was propped up against her refrigerator inside of her kitchen,” said Gale. “She was covered in blood.”

Beans on the stovetop indicated she was killed around dinnertime the previous evening.

A post-mortem examination proved she died of two gunshot wounds to the head, made by a .38-caliber weapon. Miller’s jewelry and guns were still in place, and overturned tables and drawers pulled from the dressers appeared to be a “poor attempt” at staging the scene as a robbery. 

“This was a 77-year-old, defenseless, older person,” Gale said. “Whoever did this is just filled with evil.”

Kay Weden, overwhelmed by her mother’s shocking homicide, did not connect the tragedy to Gunnarsson’s abrupt absence days earlier. 

“Kay did not tell us initially about missing person Victor Gunnarsson. It’s completely understandable; she was so extremely upset about her mother’s death,” A.S.A.C. Gale said. “She’d only dated Victor for a few days.”

Soon, agents working on Miller’s case turned their attention to Weden’s son and Miller’s grandson, Jason Weden. 

In the days and weeks preceding Miller’s death, an unidentified person put the Wedens in a state of fear, claiming Jason owed them thousands of dollars in drug debt. Red paint sprawled on the garage door, reading “F— Jason,” as well as recorded phone threats and violent letters — both published by Buried in the Backyard — were only a few menacing ways the purported drug dealer threatened the son. 

In March of 1994, someone went as far as firing a gunshot into the Weden home. 

“We interviewed [Miller’s] grandson, Jason, several times at great length and in great detail,” A.S.A.C. Gale said. “He didn’t know who sent threatening letters or shot at the house. Jason admitted to using marijuana, but he said that he did not owe anyone any money for drugs. He was always forthcoming with his information. Jason and Kay Weden, their alibi[s] completely checked out. They were not suspects in the murder of Catherine Miller.”

Additionally, investigators looking into Miller’s homicide found Kay Weden had once been engaged to Lamont Claxton “LC” Underwood, a nearly 20-year veteran of the Salisbury Police Department. Weden described her ex as someone who questioned her “every move,” prompting her to call it quits in the summer of 1992. 

Gunnarsson previously charged with P.M.’s assassination

The early 1994 identification of Gunnarsson’s body reached the Swedish press, and given the murder victim’s background, it became a sensationalized story. In Stockholm — unbeknownst to most in his North Carolina hometown — Gunnarsson was once charged as a suspect in the shocking February 28, 1986 assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme.

According to Staffan Thorsell, former managing editor for Expressen, Palme and his wife were reportedly leaving the cinema when a lone gunman shot both in Stockholm’s old city, leaving the wife injured and the “controversial” politician dead. 

“Such things were not supposed to happen in a country like Sweden,” Thorsell said. “To compare it with the American experience, it was like the [John F.] Kennedy murder.”

Gunnarsson’s name had been mentioned during intensive interrogations, and Thorsell described him as “one of the Palme haters,” later found with anti-Palme literature in his home. Known in the media as “the 33-year-old,” he became the subject of heavy surveillance and interrogation without representation.

“It took [about] three years before they finally realized he had an alibi for the crucial hour of that murder night,” Thorsell said. 

Still, the damage was done, and after leaving Sweden to escape the scrutiny, he finally found his way to North Carolina, where he eventually died.

Following his murder, Det. May wondered if a “Swedish hitman” was to blame for Gunnarsson’s death, and soon, Swedish media had descended onto Salisbury. But when it came to a possible connection between Gunnarsson and Miller, May said Kay Weden was the “common denominator.” 

A look into LC Underwood

Kay Weden reported last seeing Gunnarsson for dinner on Dec. 3, 1993, with Miller joining to meet her daughter’s new man. According to A.S.A.C. Gale, they’d joined Jason Weden and his friends at the Weden home when Underwood was spotted driving by. 

Det. May said an “extremely jealous” Underwood had “wanted to get back together” with Weden. At one point, Catherine Miller reportedly urged her daughter to get a restraining order against Underwood. 

Underwood’s three ex-wives told Det. May that Underwood was “very possessive, very jealous, and he would become very controlling, very violent.” He allegedly beat one of his wives so badly that she wound up in intensive care. 

On the night of Dec. 3, 1993 — the last night anyone saw Gunnarsson — Underwood claimed he’d been on a date with a local woman. The date told authorities that Underwood made up a story about having to stop by a cop friend’s house to investigate cheating allegations against the friend’s wife. But, authorities later learned, Underwood had actually driven by the Weden home during Gunnarsson’s visit. 

The date claimed Underwood had taken down the license plate number of Gunnarsson’s vehicle.

Still, despite all efforts, there was no physical evidence tying Underwood to the murders, and the case stalled for about one year. Even forensic searches of Underwood’s vehicle had proved fruitless. 

Threatening calls break the case

To drum up leads, on the first anniversary of the murders, authorities released the threatening phone calls made by a purported drug dealer in hopes that someone would recognize the caller’s voice. It worked when a probation officer recognized the voice as belonging to convenience store clerk Rex Keller. 

Keller admitted Underwood had enlisted him to make the phone calls, purportedly to veer homicide investigators from their course. Then, in October 1995, forensic experts reexamined the trunk mats of Underwood’s vehicle, and this time, they found hair belonging to Gunnarsson. 

It was finally enough to charge Underwood in October 1995 with first-degree murder and first-degree kidnapping in connection with Gunnarsson’s murder. Prosecutors from the Watauga County District Attorney’s Office — believing he was also responsible for Miller’s homicide — sought the death penalty. 

“We felt that LC Underwood could not accept the breakup of the relationship with Kay Weden, and he was insanely jealous of Victor Gunnarsson,” D.A. Tom Rusher told Buried in the Backyard. “He felt that Catherine Miller was an impediment. He felt that Victor Gunnarsson was an impediment. Therefore, they had to be destroyed.”

During the 1997 murder trial, prosecutors alleged Underwood went to Gunnarsson’s home, kidnapped him, placed him in the trunk of his car, and shot him to death after forcing him to his final resting place. Underwood’s extensive law enforcement background was thought to be why he later stripped Gunnarsson of his clothes. It was also why, they believed, he staged Miller’s crime scene to look like a robbery gone wrong, although he was never charged with the latter’s murder. 

Weden said she “was never so happy” as she was on July 24, 1997, when a jury found Underwood guilty of Gunnarsson’s murder. 

The defendant was sentenced to life for the murder charge and 40 years for the kidnapping charge. He died behind bars in 2018, at age 67, having served 21 years of his sentence. 

The assassination of Prime Minister Olof Palme remains unsolved. 

Don’t miss all-new episodes of Buried in the Backyard, airing Saturdays at 8/7 on Oxygen.