This is a mystery that has haunted Norway for almost 50 years. In November 1970, a partially burned corpse of a woman was discovered in a remote corner of the Norwegian Isdalen Valley.
Someone removed the labels from her clothes and removed anything that might help her identify her.
When the police began to investigate the circumstances of the death of this woman, they found coded messages, forged documents and other strange evidence, but this case was never solved.
And now, 46 years later, the Norwegian police and journalists from the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation NRK decided to reopen the investigation.
The story of a woman from the Isdalen Valley is a tangle of abandoned evidence, as if descended from the pages of a detective novel.
WARNING This article contains an image that may seem traumatic to some readers
First Clue: Body in the Valley
Promotional video:
Isdalen Valley is located near the city of Bergen
On the morning of November 29, 1970, in the Isdalen Valley, a man with whom his two daughters were with, stumbled upon a burned body.
The corpse lay on several stones, hands were in the "boxer pose" - typical for a burnt corpse.
Isdalen is also known among the locals as the "Valley of Death": here in the Middle Ages people often committed suicide, and in the 1960s, several tourists lost their way in the fog.
But the woman did not look like an ordinary tourist.
Isdalen Valley - a remote place with not the best reputation
“It was a remote place, far from the usual routes,” explains Karl Halvor Aas, a police lawyer who was one of the first to arrive at the scene, in an interview with the BBC.
He remembers the strong smell of burnt flesh.
The body was in a boxer pose - typical for a charred corpse
“The body was badly burned in the front, including the face and most of the hair,” he says, and notes that there were no burns on the back. "Looks like she jumped back - from the fire."
According to him, the body was so badly burned that it was impossible to imagine what this woman looked like initially.
Alleged location of the gruesome find
By the time Karl arrived at this place, it was no longer possible to determine how long the body had been there.
But how did this woman get burned?
Second evidence: things at the scene
Police found several items at the scene, including jewelry, a watch, a broken umbrella, and several bottles. But it was the arrangement of these items that made the strongest impression on Tormod Bones, one of the investigating magistrates.
The woman's wristwatch and jewelry were not on, they were lying next to her.
“The location of these things was strange. It looks like it was some kind of ceremony or ritual,”he says.
Jewelry and watches found near the body
Photo of two bottles found at the crime scene
Police also found the remains of a pair of rubber boots and nylon stockings.
“She was wearing a lot of synthetic clothes and all of her clothes were badly burned,” says Tormod.
Even more mysterious is the fact that the labels of the manufacturers have been cut from the clothes and the stickers on the bottles have been erased.
The police did not find anything at the crime scene that could indicate the identity of the woman.
Photos of clothing details and a burnt umbrella
The police began looking for witnesses.
The woman was described as being about 164 cm tall. She had long dark hair, a small round face, brown eyes, and small ears.
She was about 25-40 years old, and her hair at the time of her death was gathered in a ponytail, tied with a blue and white ribbon.
The unnamed woman became known as the "Isdalen Valley Woman."
A sketch of the profile restored by the artist, distributed by the police
This story shocked Bergen, a quiet city with a low crime rate.
A few days later, the police found additional evidence.
Clue 3: suitcases
The police found two suitcases in a storage room at the Bergen train station.
There were glasses in one of the suitcases. The print on one of the couples matched that of the deceased woman.
Two suitcases and eczema cream found by police at Bergen train station
The suitcases also contained:
- Clothing
- Multiple wigs
- German and Norwegian banknotes, as well as Belgian, British and Swiss coins
- Comb and hairbrush
- Cosmetics
- Several teaspoons
- Tube of eczema cream
At first, the police were very optimistic, Tormod said, because they believed the suitcases would help identify the body.
Fingerprint sunglasses
But they soon found that all tags that could identify the woman, her clothes or things had also been removed.
Even the prescription label for the eczema cream, which could include the name of the doctor and patient, was scraped off.
Letter from the Norwegian police to the Galeries Lafayette department store in Paris
The police did their best to find out where the woman's belongings were bought.
Investigators even contacted several major stores abroad, including Galeries Lafayette in Paris, to see if they recognized any packaging from the woman's makeup.
None of them were able to identify these items.
A mysterious encrypted note was also found, but the police managed to decipher it only much later (see the fifth evidence).
There was one important piece of evidence in the suitcase: a bag from Oskar Roertved's shoe store in Stavanger.
The owner's son, Rolf Roertwed, remembered selling a pair of rubber boots to an exquisitely dressed, beautiful woman with dark hair.
The boots he sold to her were similar to those found on a woman in the Isdalen Valley.
The police believe that the umbrella found near the body was also purchased from the store.
Rubber boots similar to those found in the valley
Rolf says that he remembered the woman because it took a long time to choose her boots - much longer than the average client.
“She spoke English with an accent and had a calm expression,” he told the BBC.
He also remembered the strong smell coming from the woman. In his opinion, it could be garlic.
Using this description, the police tracked the woman staying at the nearby St. Swithun Hotel, where she registered under the name of Fenella Lorch.
However, the problem is that Fenella Lorch is not her real name.
Clue four: hotel profiles
It turns out that the woman lived in several hotels in Norway, each time under different pseudonyms.
Most hotels in those days required guests to show their passports and fill out a registration form. This meant that the woman had several fake passports.
On one of the questionnaires, a woman wrote that she had arrived from London
The police found that the woman had stayed at the following hotels in 1970 under various names:
- Genevieve Lansier from Louvain stayed at the Viking Hotel in Oslo on March 21-24
- Claudia Tielt from Brussels stayed at the Bristol Hotel in Bergen from March 24th to 25th
- Claudia Tielt from Brussels also stayed at the Scandia Hotel in Bergen from March 25 to April 1
- Claudia Nielsen from Ghent stayed at the KNA Hotel in Stavanger from October 29th to 30th
- Alexia Zarne-Merhez from Ljubljana stayed at the Neptun Hotel in Bergen from October 30 to November 5
- Vera Jarle from Antwerp stayed at the Bristol Hotel in Trondheim from 6 to 8 November
- Fenella Lorch stayed at the St. Swithun Hotel in Stavanger from November 9-18
Ms Leenhuvfr stayed at the Rosencrantz Hotel in Bergen from 18 to 19 November
- Elisabeth Lenhuvfr from Ostend stayed at the Hordaheim Hotel, Bergen, from 19 to 23 November
The police analyzed the woman's handwriting
The woman made a strong impression on 21-year-old Alvild Rangnes, who worked as a waitress at the Neptune Hotel at the time.
“My first impression of her was: how elegant and confident! she told the BBC. - She looked so fashionable, I wanted to imitate her style. I remember how she winked at me … She probably thought that I was looking at her for too long.
“Once, when I was serving her, she was sitting in a restaurant next to two military sailors from Germany. One of them was an officer. But she did not communicate with them,”recalls Alvild.
Hotel & quot; Hordaheimen & quot; in Bergen - last on the list
The police interviewed several hotel staff who saw the woman, including Alvild.
They found out that the woman spoke not only English. She also used some German phrases.
She also often asked to change the number, once asked three times to move.
Clue number 5: the note
There is speculation that this woman was a spy.
There were not many foreign tourists in Bergen at the time, and the fact that this woman seemed wealthy and traveled a lot caused a lot of gossip.
“It was during the Cold War and there were many spies in Norway, including Russians,” says Bergen-based detective writer Gunnar Staalesen, who was a student at the time.
In addition, Israeli intelligence operated in Norway. This was revealed three years later when Mossad agents killed a man in Lillehammer who was mistakenly believed to be a terrorist, he adds.
Local newspaper headline: Rumored to be the woman was a secret agent
Norwegian intelligence services also investigated the case, but this became known only a few decades later.
According to NRK, security services were interested in reports that a woman was observing military personnel testing new missiles in western Norway, but no concrete conclusions were drawn from their investigation reports.
Coded note found near the corpse
The police eventually managed to decipher the coded note, but it does not prove that the victim was a spy.
The note appeared to be a list of places the woman had visited. For example, O22 O28 P is the dates (October 22-28), she was in Paris, O29PS is the day she traveled from Paris to Stavanger, O29S corresponds to her arrival date in Stavanger (October 29), and O30BN5 is the same time as her stay in Bergen from October 30 to November 5.
The Norwegian police sent out a description of the woman and a sample portrait of her to police departments in different countries, but no one was able to identify her.
Interpol protocol drawn up during the investigation
Clue six: autopsy
When investigators examined the woman's body, they found a strange bruise on the right side of her neck that could have been the result of a blow or fall.
There were no signs that the woman was suffering from any ailment.
The autopsy also revealed that the woman had never been pregnant.
Her death was probably painful.
“Smoke particles were found in her lungs, which means that this woman was alive while she burned,” says Tormod.
He found traces of gasoline on the ground under the body. According to him, this means that it was gasoline that was used for the arson.
A high concentration of carbon monoxide was found in her blood - evidence of poisoning by combustion products.
The experts also determined that there were about 50-70 foreign-made sleeping pills called Fenemal in her stomach, although they were not completely absorbed into the blood until death.
Fingerprints were sent to Interpol
The autopsy concluded that the woman had died as a result of carbon monoxide poisoning and taking a large number of sleeping pills.
It has been reported that the cause of death is most likely suicide. This opinion was supported by the chief of police of Bergen.
But many people find it hard to believe.
“We talked about it with the police, but as far as I remember, very few believed it was suicide,” says Karl Halvor Aas.
Both the remote place where her body was found, and the method of taking suicide - self-arson, seem strange to him.
“I don’t believe it was suicide.” - Karl Halvor Aas
In the absence of further evidence, the case was closed and the body was buried in February 1971.
The police assumed the woman might be Catholic, and a Catholic funeral was arranged for her.
According to the police protocol, the coffin was decorated with lilacs and tulips, and the priest held a simple service for this "unknown woman who was lowered into a grave in a foreign country in the absence of loved ones."
Police photo of the funeral: a priest at the Möllendal cemetery, six police officers carrying a white coffin.
The police are still hoping to find the woman's family. She was buried in a zinc coffin so the body would not decompose. The police also keep an album of photographs of the funeral - especially for her relatives.
Harald Åsland was one of the investigators who did not want to close the case.
“My father couldn't put this case on the shelf,” his son Tore says. "He never came to terms with the fact that they had to close him."
His father kept several documents from the investigation, and Tore eventually wrote a book about the case of a woman from the Isdalen Valley.
The grave where the unknown is buried. She is decorated with a small wreath and a candle
Over the years, this work has inspired writers and artists.
“In this case, people are intrigued by an unsolved mystery. It's almost a crime novel,”says Gunnar Staalesen.
But in 2016, the opportunity arose to return to the investigation.
Clue eight: teeth
The woman from the Isdalen Valley had characteristic teeth: 14 of them were filled. She also had several gold crowns.
This was especially unusual for a person of her age group. The type of dental work was also atypical in Norway.
Gisle Bang, professor of dentistry, saved the woman's jaw in the hope that others would know where such fillings and crowns might have been made.
A woman from the Isdalen Valley had characteristic teeth: 14 of them were filled
After his death, everyone decided that the jaw was lost.
Medical examiner Dr. Inge Morild, who "inherited" the Isdalen woman's dossier, says he was once told that the jaw was "thrown out because it smelled bad."
But as a result of inquiries from NRK reporters, Professor Morild found a jaw deep in the basement of Hawkland University's court records.
The find gave the Norwegian police the opportunity to reopen the case and use the latest methods to try to identify the woman.
Detailed description of the deceased's teeth sent to international experts in the field of dental practice
The Norwegian Criminal Investigation Service (Kripos) and the University of Bergen have started isotope analysis of teeth, namely:
Oxygen isotope analysis, which can reveal the type of water a woman drank as a child, and from which areas the water came.
Strontium isotope analysis, which can show the food a woman ate and the type of soil in the area where she grew up.
This is the first time the Norwegian police are conducting isotope analysis of teeth, but forensic scientists hope the findings will help them identify the region in which the woman lived.
Clue nine: tissue samples
DNA analysis is now one of the key tools used by the police in forensic analysis and identification, but it was not in the arsenal of investigators in 1970.
It turned out that several tissue samples from the organs of a mysterious woman, including those from her lungs, heart, adrenal glands and ovaries, were stored at Haukeland University Hospital.
Prof Morild says it was the norm in Norway to store tissue samples after autopsy, as the samples can be useful for re-examination and also as a source of DNA.
Tissue samples
Professor Morild found a jaw in the basement of Hawkland University's forensic archives
NRK and local police decided to send samples for DNA analysis.
Nils Jarle Gjövog, head of the forensic medical department in the Western Police District, says it is important to identify the woman because her relatives may live somewhere and wonder what happened to her.
“We are trying to identify every unknown body so that relatives can get an answer,” he says.
Investigative journalists are trying to get to the bottom of the truth
While they waited for the DNA test results, NRK broadcast a documentary about the investigation and received over 150 potential leads from people interested in the case.
“In Norway, this incident has become an unsolved mystery. A lot of people want to find out what happened,”says journalist Stole Hansen.
After several months of work, scientists obtained a DNA profile of the woman.
The latest results, released on Friday, suggest that the deceased was of European descent, making the hypothesis that she was an Israeli agent less likely.
The Norwegian police intend to notify the department of Interpol, engaged in the search for unidentified bodies, of the new information.
European police departments will be asked to check their DNA databases.
“If one of her close relatives is somewhere in the DNA registry, we will receive invaluable information,” says Stole Hansen. - It would be great.
The woman from the Isdalen Valley has not been able to solve the case for 46 years. But t