She Fell Madly in Love with a Monster Who Killed Two Babies and a Lady in Broad Daylight
She sent him around 100 love letters too.
During a rock concert in July 2008, Angelina Elander, a Swedish artist, met a young Belgian boy named Kim de Gelder and was immediately attracted to him.
But she ignored her feeling — which she called a ‘very strong feeling from the heart’ — as the long-haired boy was much younger than her, and there was nothing particular about him.
But nobody knew that things would take a different turn real quick.
Six months later, on January 23, 2009, twenty-year-old Kim de Gelder took his bicycle and went to the Fabeltjesland nursery at Dendermonde, Belgium with a heinous intention.
It was around 10 in the morning.
He parked the bicycle and entered the nursery through an unlocked back door. When stopped by one of the childminders, he said he was looking for some specific information and had some questions to ask. So, the minder let him enter the nursery.
What happened afterward is beyond anyone’s worst nightmare.
Kim entered one room after another and attacked little children mindlessly. He stabbed a 54-year-old nurse to death and killed two babies aged below one year while seriously injuring six others.
Only nine of the 18 children managed to escape from his vicious attack.
Before the arrival of the police, Kim quickly ran away, leaving his bicycle at the crime scene. Later, police managed to arrest him from a nearby city named Lebbeke.
After investigation, what they found shocked everyone.
They found that Kim planned to attack two more nurseries aiming to kill at least 75 victims. In his apartment, he planned the attacks in much detail.
Not only that — just a week before this attack, he stabbed a 73-year-old woman to death in her home in Beveren.
The news of this frenzied attack on innocents spread like wildfire. People were dumbfounded seeing this unimaginable atrocity by a young man of only twenty years of age.
This is when Angelina, through a Swedish newspaper, came to know about the news and quickly recognized the boy for whom she felt a ‘very strong feeling from the heart’ six months earlier.
In the documentary ‘In Love With a Killer’ published in 2021, Angelina admitted that she had no such tendency to fall in love with mass murderers, and it’s just a separate incident in her life.
“I don’t have a tendency to fall in love with mass murderers in general… It’s a separate incident in my life and that’s affected me a lot,” she explained.
But what she did after recognizing the boy on the news might shock you.
Feeling that strong connection again, Angelina started writing provocative letters to Kim, who was in prison, letting him know about her love. She even mentioned in the love letter that murdering children is a courageous act, and it made Kim fascinating in her eyes.
She continued writing love letters one after another though he barely got any response from Kim.
When asked how many love letters she’d written to Kim, she replied, “I must have been sent around 100 letters. Two or three letters per week.”
In response to her hundred letters, she received only two responses from Kim, which she later thought was kind of ‘unfair.’
Angelina said the entire experience of feeling the connection with Kim was emotionally ‘overpowering’ and ‘beautiful’ to her then.
“We were like one and the same person that we had telepathic contact. It got very psychotic everything like was entered another dimension where we could talk to each other about everything,” she explained. “You have to have a spiritual belief if you want to understand that sort of communication.”
When the news of her love for a mass murderer reached the public through newspapers, everyone around her started hating her and calling her crazy.
She said it impacted her life severely.
She was also denied regular jobs because people treated her like a criminal. But according to her, all she was doing was writing letters to a person she loved.
You might wonder, What did happen to Kim de Gelder?
Kim confided that he had been troubled by depression as a teenager and heard voices in his head though later he admitted that his lawyer told him to say so.
He told the court that he had a strained relationship with his parents that went out of control when he moved into his own apartment in October 2008. So, his plans to kill people were created out of desperation to get rid of his parents.
However, it was confirmed by The College of Psychiatrists that Kim was in control of his actions while committing the murders.
On March 22, 2013, a jury found him fully accountable for his actions and guilty of four murders — therefore, sentenced him to life imprisonment.
Angelina moved on in life.
She published her first book, a pseudo-autobiographic psychological thriller titled “Epic Suffering: The Horror” in 2016.
According to her website, she now works in many mediums, such as traditional art, music, and writing.
She holds a master’s degree in environmental sciences and a bachelor’s degree in media and communication sciences and cares deeply about animal rights, human rights, equality, the environment, and space exploration.
I’m not judging Angelina because I know love is blind, and we should hate the sin, not the sinner.
But at the same time, I fail to comprehend how on earth a woman could say, murdering innocent children is an act of courage!
No matter how blind anyone is in love, I will never accept that.
Let me know what you think!
Sources: BBC, HuffPost, Wikipedia, Documentary: In Love With a Killer, Reuters
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