Mental institutions is a well researched field although every aspect of their history and their present day forms might never be fully grasped. Will yet another mentioning add to the understanding or only add to the history writing cumulatively? This case highlights close links between some of the victims and the system itself, which says something about the intellectual climate associated with mental hospitals. We see how even close relatives of some of the ones formulating the ideas and methods became institutionalised, and why that matters. Karin's case is a warning that was on the verge of being lost. But did the ideas of purging society of undesirable individuals and their genes ever truly disappear? These ideas have persisted longer than the supposed abolition of totalitarianism would suggest. It was an abolition that enabled the hydra of myths to survive. This story can be read primarily as a piece of journalism or as a compact introduction to the darker history of the 19th and 20th centuries.