Groggily regaining consciousness in a soundproof underground bunker 350 miles away from home, Isabel Eriksson realised her second date with a handsome doctor had turned into a living nightmare.
Martin Trenneborg, 38, had seemed like the perfect gentleman turning up to her door in Stockholm, Sweden with flowers and strawberries.
But unknown to Isabel the doctor had hatched a plan to abduct her, lacing some of the chocolate-covered strawberries he’d brought for them to share with Rohypnol.
He had secretly marked the ones that were drug-free so he knew which ones to eat.
She was driven 350 miles to a house close to Kristianstad in southern Sweden where she was locked up in an fortified underground bunker for six days.
He used masks to pretend to be a rescuer before revealing himself to torment his victim (Swedish Police)
Isabelle Eriksson’s story of survival is depicted in the new Amazon series The Bunker.
Recalling the moment she finally came round Ms Eriksson told the documentary: “I’m dazed. My mouth is dry, and I slowly open my eyes.
“I look straight up at the ceiling. It smells bad. I don’t know what day it is or what time of day. I realise I don’t know where I am.
“I’m lying under a blanket wearing a pair of jeans and a pink jumper. My body feels slow and it aches. When I turn over. I couldn’t feel any underwear under my jeans. It’s cold…”
She gazed over and saw her date who calmly told her from now on she would be his girlfriend – and that he might let her go in a couple of years.
Ms Eriksson said she tried to attack him and escape but Trenneborg shackled her to a bed. She said he used masks to pretend to be a rescuer before revealing himself to torment his victim.
“He said that if I try again he would fix me up in chains in bed and feed me only with crispbread. I was completely panicked. I felt powerless.”
Police move in as the doctor casually drinks in the police station waiting room (ViaPlay)
On the fifth day, Trenneborg appeared in the cabin with a loaded gun in his hand.
“At first, I think he’s going to shoot me. Maybe someone has found him out. But instead he says he’s had it in his mouth, but not dared to pull the trigger.
“He gives me the gun, forces it into my hands. I’ve never held a gun before. He says, the doors are unlocked. I just have to shoot then I’m free.
“He was the only one who knew I was there. Nobody would find me. It was horrible.
“I’m freaking out. My hands just shake, even if it’s my way out, I don’t dare. I cry. I give him back the gun.”
She said: “Every time he came I didn’t know what was going to happen, whether he would rape me or torture me or murder me.
“At one point he told me that if I were to try to escape, he would punish me by chaining me to the bed and I would get nothing to eat but crisp bread.
“He only said that he would keep me there a few years and that he would release me after that.”
Trenneborg drugged Ms Eriksson with strawberries spiked with a sedative in Stockholm, before taking her to a bunker in his isolated house in southern Sweden (Getty Images)
She also said he planned to bring another woman to the bunker “possibly a celebrity” or her own mother.
But his horrific plan unravelled when Ms Eriksson began to play along with his girlfriend fantasy and convinced him to return to Stockholm to get some more clothes from her apartment.
With police sealing the property shut he brazenly took her into the local police station to convince officers she was staying with a friend and to call off the search. There, finally left alone with one officer Isabel seized her chance and told him everything – he was arrested in the waiting room.
Documents found on Trenneborg’s computer showed he had been planning to hold her for a decade and had scouted out at least ten women before settling on his eventual victim.
He told officers: “She was supposed to be my girlfriend for years, that was the purpose. But now that I am imprisoned she will not be my girlfriend in the ordinary sense, even I can understand that.
The harrowing story of the Swedish national echoes that of Josef Fritzl, the Austrian who raped and held his daughter captive in the basement of his family home (Getty Images)
“She was not supposed to be a punching bag or something. We were supposed to be kissing, hanging out, having sex and stuff that normally people do”.
In Stockholm’s District Court, Trenneborg was sentenced to ten years in prison for kidnapping, while he was acquitted of aggravated rape.
Martin Trenneborg had his sentence shortened on appeal and is now a free man. He has changed his name and lives in an unknown location.
The harrowing story of the Swedish national echoes that of Josef Fritzl, the Austrian who raped and held his daughter captive in the basement of his family home.
In 2008, his daughter Elisabeth managed to tell police that he was holding her captive. As a 42-year-old, she said she had been held underground for 24 years and abused since the age of 11.
Fritzl lured her into the cellar, built in the style of a cold war bunker, when she was 18. He told his wife and family acquaintances that she had run away to join a cult.
