En giftig kvinde

What is the series about?

En giftig kvinde — translated literally as A Toxic Woman — is a three-part true crime documentary seriestrue crime documentary series produced for TV 2 Play, Denmark's leading streaming platform. Released on 26 August 2024, the series investigates one of the most chilling poisoning cases in recent Danish criminal history: the 2017 murder of Claus Lykkelund Petersen, a Danish man allegedly killed by his Russian wife using a syringe loaded with Eastern European medication. The series goes beyond the courtroom verdict to ask a darker question — was Claus the only victim, or was there a pattern of deadly marriages stretching back decades?

The Case

At the heart of En giftig kvinde is a death that at first may have appeared natural, but quickly revealed something far more sinister. When Claus Lykkelund Petersen was found dead in Denmark in 2017, investigators discovered 14 needle marks on his body and traces of Eastern European medicine in his blood. These findings, reported in detail by TV 2, pointed unmistakably to deliberate poisoning — murder by syringe.

Authorities focused their investigation on his Russian wife, who had been married multiple times in Denmark. The case against her built steadily, and in 2021, a Danish court found her guilty of Claus Lykkelund Petersen's murder. She was sentenced to 12 years in prison and handed an expulsion order from Denmark — meaning she is to be deported upon release. Despite the conviction, she has consistently denied any guilt.

The documentary does not stop at the 2017 killing. TV 2's reporting and the series itself examine whether the convicted woman's earlier marriages were also connected to suspicious deaths. Two cases are brought to the foreground:

- Boris Liubimov, identified as a former husband, who traveled to Sevastopol, Ukraine, in 1999 and was never seen again.

- The woman's first Danish husband, who also died under circumstances that the documentary calls into question, though his identity has not been publicly confirmed in available source materials.

These threads transform En giftig kvinde from a straightforward murder documentary into a more unsettling investigation of whether a single woman may have left a trail of dead husbands across two continents and more than two decades. Swedish police have also reportedly suspected the woman may have planned further murders, adding an international dimension to the case.

The family of the convicted woman has publicly pushed back against the verdict. In early 2022, relatives stated that they did not believe she was guilty, and expressed a desire to have the truth established through further scrutiny. This dispute between the court's findings and the family's insistence on her innocence adds another layer of tension to the documentary's narrative.

Production

En giftig kvinde is produced by TV 2 and distributed exclusively through the TV 2 Play streaming platform. The series runs across three episodes, each building on the last to construct a fuller picture of the convicted woman's background, marriages, and the police and judicial processes that ultimately led to her conviction.

The director of the series has not been identified in publicly available materials at the time of writing. TV 2 has, however, committed significant editorial resources to the case — the documentary is accompanied by original news reporting from TV 2's crime and society desks, and the broadcaster describes the series as bringing new information to light that casts fresh mystery over the convicted woman's past.

The series sits within a broader tradition of Scandinavian true crime documentary production, where state broadcasters have invested heavily in long-form investigative journalism translated into serialised documentary formats. En giftig kvinde follows cases such as those covered in TV 2's earlier true crime programming, and its release in August 2024 was timed to coincide with new reporting from the network's journalists.

Reception

The series generated immediate public interest in Denmark upon its release, partly because the underlying case had already attracted sustained media coverage since the 2021 conviction and the family's public challenge to that verdict in early 2022. The documentary's promise of new details — and its suggestion that the convicted woman's history of marriages may have included further victims — gave it a strong news hook that amplified audience curiosity.

The IMDb listing for *En giftig kvinde* (title ID: tt33310010) confirms the series' existence and its 26 August 2024 Danish release date, though a verified audience rating is not available in current source materials.

The central controversy surrounding the series mirrors the controversy surrounding the case itself: the gap between the court's guilty verdict and the family's public denial of guilt. TV 2's decision to revisit the story and surface questions about additional possible victims has kept the case in public discussion well beyond the 2021 conviction. Critics of the documentary format have noted that raising allegations about deaths that were never prosecuted — such as the disappearance of Boris Liubimov in Sevastopol in 1999 — carries ethical weight, particularly given that the convicted woman continues to deny all wrongdoing.

The Case Today

As of the series' release in August 2024, the convicted woman remains sentenced to 12 years' imprisonment with an expulsion order from Denmark. She has not, according to available reporting, withdrawn her denial of guilt. The questions raised by the documentary about her earlier marriages and the deaths of Boris Liubimov and her first Danish husband remain, to the public's knowledge, unresolved by any additional criminal proceedings.

The case continues to attract attention from Scandinavian media beyond Denmark's borders. Swedish reporting has examined the possibility that investigators considered whether further murders were being planned, indicating that interest in the woman's full history extends across the region.

For Danish audiences, En giftig kvinde represents a rare and disturbing case in which the mechanisms of poisoning — methodical, hidden, deeply premeditated — are placed under sustained documentary scrutiny. The series asks whether justice was fully served in 2021, or whether the complete truth about a pattern of fatal marriages has yet to be told.