When singer Per “Dead” Ohlin of Norwegian black metal pioneers MAYHEM committed suicide in April 1991, it was widely reported that the band’s founding guitarist Euronymous — who discovered the body — made necklaces from pieces of the skull.

Dead‘s suicide became the stuff of black metal legend. Euronymous reportedly took several pictures of the body and allegedly sent one of the pictures to the owner of Warmaster Records in Colombia, who then used it as the cover of the bootleg live album “Dawn Of The Black Hearts”, released in 1995.

During Loudwire‘s recent interview with MARDUK‘s Morgan Steinmeyer Håkansson, the guitarist confirmed that he does indeed possess a piece of Dead‘s skull a s well as lead fragments from the bullet which killed Dead and a piece of his brain matter.

“Yeah, sure,” Morgan confirmed. “I got it way back, right after he died. Back in those days they [MAYHEM] were living in a house and didn’t have the best financial aspects, so they didn’t even have a telephone. So I remember I was celebrating New Year’s in 1991 with Dead back home in Sweden. Then he got back, he wrote one letter [to me], then someone told me he’s killed himself.”

Morgan continued, “So I wrote a letter [to MAYHEM] and then I got the reply back from the guitar player [Euronymous] — ‘Well he just shot himself and here’s a piece of his skull.’ It was a shotgun, you know? So [he also sent me] two pieces of the lead and a piece of the wet brain. I’ve still got it. I keep it well protected. . . He sent it to all these former comrades of Dead. A few of them. There were not that many people … maybe five.”

Source: Blabbermouth.net