Speaker 1: Hey guys, Steve here, you are listening to one of
Speaker 1: our original twenty six episodes. If you listen to any
Speaker 1: of our new episodes, you're gonna notice that we're sounding
Speaker 1: a little different in these ones. Yeah, there's a reason
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Speaker 1: remastered because they had a really annoying hum. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean a huge thanks to listener James for doing almost
Speaker 1: all of the legwork on this thing. They'll also notice
Speaker 1: if you had listened to what we're calling the last
Speaker 1: twenty six episodes before and you're re listening now, the
Speaker 1: music and sound effects are gone. Yes, we've we've gone
Speaker 1: back to straight audio, so be warned. We sound a
Speaker 1: little different today than we do in what you're about
Speaker 1: to listen to. Yeah, bye bye, Thinking Sideways. I don't understand.
Speaker 1: You never know stories of things. We simply don't know
Speaker 1: the answer too. Well. Hello there, welcome to another episode
Speaker 1: of Thinking Sideways, the podcast fast distinct from Thinking Thinking Sideways,
Speaker 1: the movie, Thinking Sideways, the novel. This is the podcast.
Speaker 1: So I am joined by on my right and on
Speaker 1: my left, actually straight in front of me, Steve. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so the gang's all here and we're gonna talk about
Speaker 1: something very mysterious, unresolved mystery from the nineteen seventies. It
Speaker 1: is for some of you may have even heard of this,
Speaker 1: the case of the woman. The ideal woman was found
Speaker 1: dead in late November nineteen seventy near a town called Bergen, Norway,
Speaker 1: in what's called the Idlin Valley. The valley sort of
Speaker 1: tapers down towards this mount colt in this mountain called
Speaker 1: Mount Olrican, which is to the northeast of Bergen, and
Speaker 1: on the on the that side of the mountain, it's
Speaker 1: called the Valley of Death. Yeah, I was gonna. I
Speaker 1: was waiting for the connection of how Joe might have
Speaker 1: found this story. Yeah, it's kind of thing for the
Speaker 1: death death. Yeah. I just go and type in value
Speaker 1: of death, mountain of death, the river of death, Yeah,
Speaker 1: leg of death, creak of death, total of death, you know,
Speaker 1: and I always find something. So November twenty nine, on
Speaker 1: the foothills of Mouth ol Rican, a man who's apparently
Speaker 1: a professor and his two daughters were hiking and it
Speaker 1: came across the remains of a naked woman who had
Speaker 1: been hitting among some rocks. He was partially burned. There
Speaker 1: were some empty bottles bottles was smelled of gasoline nearby,
Speaker 1: also a bottle of sleeping pills. So they I don't
Speaker 1: know if they finished their hik er not. Presumably they
Speaker 1: walked back to town and got the police. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would think so. And by the way, this place
Speaker 1: is called the value of death because there there's a
Speaker 1: lot of trails there, which some of which apparently according
Speaker 1: to a website I was reading about that was totally
Speaker 1: separate from this entire thing. Uh, some of the trails
Speaker 1: are not very well maintained and it's considered rather treacherous.
Speaker 1: So that's why it's called the value of death, not
Speaker 1: because parposes are cond up there all the time. So anyway,
Speaker 1: I saw the police show up, and this winds up
Speaker 1: being the biggest criminal case at the Bergen Police. It's
Speaker 1: it's not a huge town by any means, and the
Speaker 1: right and now it's normally yeah, yeah, it's all the same. Ye.
Speaker 1: So anyway I mentioned they found some plastic bottles wreaking
Speaker 1: of gasoline, and they also found out partially burned passport
Speaker 1: and again the sleeping pills. She also and had turned
Speaker 1: out that upon upon the autopsy, that she had some
Speaker 1: of those pills in her so she had taken a
Speaker 1: couple of pills. She had taken she had taken several
Speaker 1: of these things. Yes, some more interesting things. I mentioned
Speaker 1: the passport and the sleeping pills. And this is one
Speaker 1: of those those deleos where I really really would like
Speaker 1: to be able to see the actual police reports, because
Speaker 1: you know that what I've been able to round up
Speaker 1: is kind of spotty. For example, the body is was naked, right,
Speaker 1: so were there any clothes nearby? There's no mention made
Speaker 1: of that clothes because you said she had been burned?
Speaker 1: Correct her body? Selene connection is yeah, her body, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he had been partially burned. That presumably they don't say
Speaker 1: what parts were burned, but presumably her It must have
Speaker 1: been her head because they weren't not able to take
Speaker 1: any photographs of her face to show to people because
Speaker 1: there was nothing recognizable. Yeah, apparently they were not able
Speaker 1: to get a photograph out of the passport that they
Speaker 1: found because I had probably apparently been burned. Also, it's
Speaker 1: probably once burned. So anyway, they had a problem with
Speaker 1: how to identify this person. Her Her fingerprints have been
Speaker 1: sanded off U And you did you ever find what
Speaker 1: I was looking through this, I could ever find were
Speaker 1: they stand it off prior to death or had they
Speaker 1: been sanded off, you know, weeks in advance. I could
Speaker 1: never he was never able to pin down was just
Speaker 1: like done to her after she was killed? You know,
Speaker 1: one of the one of the little one of the
Speaker 1: little fragments of evidence that's in here leads me to
Speaker 1: believe it happened after she was killed. But you know,
Speaker 1: there are people who are criminal pipes who don't want
Speaker 1: to leave fingerprints prints behind, and they do stand off
Speaker 1: their fingerprints. It's not it's not totally uncommon. You can
Speaker 1: either use sandpaper or acid to get rid of those fingerprints.
Speaker 1: As as far as when they were standing off later on,
Speaker 1: they found they found some luggage, I'll get to that,
Speaker 1: but they found some sharts, some pieces of glass in
Speaker 1: the luggage and had it had partial fingerprints on the glass,
Speaker 1: and police reportedly believed that those were her fingerprints. So
Speaker 1: they were never able to use those to identify her.
Speaker 1: But if police believe that they were fingerprints, then that
Speaker 1: that makes me believe that somebody must have standed off
Speaker 1: her fingers after the murderer. Yeah, yeah, so so, But
Speaker 1: again I'm not a hundred percent share. Again, you know,
Speaker 1: like as as with all of these things, you know,
Speaker 1: a little straight backtoys that aren't really actually true managed
Speaker 1: to get worked into the story by other people. And
Speaker 1: so so as far as the pieces of glass with
Speaker 1: the fingerprints, I don't know if that's true or not.
Speaker 1: Who knows if any of this is true, who does it?
Speaker 1: Norway even exists. It might be a big old house
Speaker 1: I've never Yeah. Okay, so by way, as I said,
Speaker 1: she had an they did an autopsy on her. She
Speaker 1: had suffered blunt force trauma to the neck. And this
Speaker 1: is this was apparently the cause of death, or if
Speaker 1: not the cause of death, then certainly a contributed to it.
Speaker 1: Then again, they discovered several sleeping pills in her inner system. Uh,
Speaker 1: they looked at her teeth, and they tried to find
Speaker 1: her using her dental records, and they that came back. No,
Speaker 1: they were not able to identify her that way. There
Speaker 1: was evidence that she had had some dental work done
Speaker 1: in Latin America. How you know this is this is
Speaker 1: against something I know that like certain things like you know,
Speaker 1: for example, if you get dental work done in Russia,
Speaker 1: it's kind of obvious apparently because it's kind of crude
Speaker 1: and it might be you know, And I was not
Speaker 1: able to find out how they knew there was anything
Speaker 1: to do with Latin America unless customarily in Latin America
Speaker 1: perhaps they use different materials for fillings or techniques, different techniques. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's so, I don't know. Yeah, that was again, that
Speaker 1: was one of those things I questioned, how do you
Speaker 1: how did you make that connection because it's not stated anywhere. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So anyway, enough of the dental work. They I'm going
Speaker 1: to skip ahead of the ending. They eventually wind up
Speaker 1: concluding that she committed suicide. Yeah, now this is this
Speaker 1: is somewhat controversial, but let me get back to their
Speaker 1: investigation though. They first of all, they were asking around
Speaker 1: all the people she stayed at several hotels. She had
Speaker 1: actually come and gone to the town of Bergen several
Speaker 1: times and meanwhile gone off and traveled around Europe a
Speaker 1: little bit returning, and while she was there, she tended
Speaker 1: to change hotels often and often sometimes within hotels she
Speaker 1: would change rooms. So interesting behaviors. Yeah, so they the
Speaker 1: police asked around at all the hotels. Um, they got
Speaker 1: descriptions from people and based on the bone structure they
Speaker 1: were able to see in her face from the autopsy
Speaker 1: and everything, and paying that up with with a police sketch,
Speaker 1: artists and descriptions that hotel employees gave them various other people,
Speaker 1: they were able to put together a composite sketch of
Speaker 1: this person and show that around to people. So anyway,
Speaker 1: they continue with their investigation. Eventually that eventually it led
Speaker 1: them to the train station in Bergen, where they found
Speaker 1: in a locker then two suitcases that belonged to this woman. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know it sounds so it's so much like I know,
Speaker 1: you related, maybe yeah, all right, was this a girlfriend?
Speaker 1: She was murder Yeah something shrude, But anyway, I haven't checked. Actually,
Speaker 1: I need to get a globe out and find out if,
Speaker 1: like if like this town in Norway is exactly exactly
Speaker 1: on the opposite side of the earth from Adelaide's. It
Speaker 1: was Adelaide, Australia where he was found, right, Yeah, So anyway,
Speaker 1: they go, they find these suitcases. Major fine, but then
Speaker 1: they find to their sugarun that the labels had all
Speaker 1: been removed from all the clothing. Yeah, I know, I know,
Speaker 1: no labels. They found a bottle of lotion which was
Speaker 1: apparently prescription only, but the the label had been peeled off,
Speaker 1: and in the line of one suitcase they discovered five
Speaker 1: German marks have been sewn in the orange thread of
Speaker 1: a weird type. Yeah. So they found a few pieces
Speaker 1: of broken glass. Why you keep broken glass in your suitcase?
Speaker 1: It is kind of beyond me. But they found these
Speaker 1: are the ones I mentioned earlier. And they found partial
Speaker 1: fingerprints on those pieces of glass which they believed could
Speaker 1: be hers, and but they were not able to use
Speaker 1: those to identify her. Again, this this leads me to
Speaker 1: believe that her fingerprints must have been standing off the
Speaker 1: scene of the crime. Although you know, maybe they ran
Speaker 1: out of gasoline. You think they could pour gas on
Speaker 1: her hands and just light them on fire and be
Speaker 1: a lot easier than than standing her hands. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is this is obviously a murder and the suicide theory
Speaker 1: that came up by the police, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: discount that right away because I don't take sleeping pills
Speaker 1: and then throw myself onto a rock and bang my
Speaker 1: head and then let myself while I'm naked. This just
Speaker 1: doesn't make sense. So I could see if some buddy
Speaker 1: botched burning the body. Then they would go for Okay,
Speaker 1: what else can I do? Saying the fingerprints off seems
Speaker 1: like a hard way to do it, rather than and
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, this is gruesome dropping the hands off. Chopping
Speaker 1: the hands off, Yeah, that's true, that would be easier
Speaker 1: way to take care of the problem. But then getting
Speaker 1: you got to get rid of the hand. Yeah. Maybe
Speaker 1: maybe they forgot to bring their hatchet. Maybe, yeah, but luckily,
Speaker 1: luckily they thought they thought to bring their sandpaper. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it could very well be. And meant, what a lot
Speaker 1: of people don't realize about about human bodies is that
Speaker 1: they're almost all water. And then then actually burning a
Speaker 1: human body, it's a lot harder than than it seems.
Speaker 1: It's very difficult. Yeah, And so they probably had a
Speaker 1: couple of bottles of gas. They threw them on there,
Speaker 1: and then she just didn't, you know, go up in
Speaker 1: flames like they had hoped, And so they had the
Speaker 1: Unfortunately they had no gas left over to torture hands with.
Speaker 1: One of them had to go back to town to
Speaker 1: the hardware store a gets the sandpaper. Yeah, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: all right, yeah, this is weird. Yeah. Anyway, So, so
Speaker 1: on the basis of all the various witnesses who had
Speaker 1: met this woman. They were, like I said, be able
Speaker 1: to put together a composite sketch. And they were. They
Speaker 1: were publishing the local papers and they were also disseminated
Speaker 1: across Europe via Interpoal and they were able to actually
Speaker 1: put together quite a quite a bit of her travel
Speaker 1: itinerary between between the interpoal and between the various inquiries
Speaker 1: but police made and also they found a diary that
Speaker 1: had some coded stuff, coded references broke and the broken. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they broke code, not the diary. So they were able
Speaker 1: to decipher some of some of this and and sort
Speaker 1: of figure out her travel itinerary. Uh. They found out
Speaker 1: that she had traveled around Norway and across Europe with
Speaker 1: with eight or nine different identities, different names, and she
Speaker 1: gave yeah a lot of names. Yeah, seriously is according
Speaker 1: to some reports in the lugger they found a bunch
Speaker 1: of a bunch of different passports from different countries, all
Speaker 1: different names. I don't I'm kind of discounting that because
Speaker 1: if they had kind of passports, they would have had photos, ever,
Speaker 1: and they wouldn't have needed to put together a composite
Speaker 1: sketch that's good. I hadn't even made that connection. That's
Speaker 1: a great point. Yeah, so they have they discovered all
Speaker 1: these different names that she had signed into hotels using
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. But he was using again police
Speaker 1: inquiries in her diary. So she went to let's see
Speaker 1: she she was in March nineteen seventies. She was in Norway,
Speaker 1: stayed in Oslo, went to Bergen's, stayed at the Hotel
Speaker 1: Bristol under two different names and Alslo. She used Genevieve
Speaker 1: Lancier and then she was Claudia Tilt in the Bergen
Speaker 1: uh and then moves to the hotel Scandia, same name,
Speaker 1: and then goes and then winds up leaving Bergen and
Speaker 1: traveling eventually to Germany, stays there for months, and then
Speaker 1: eventually got back to Oslo in October or October after
Speaker 1: after staying there for a brief amount of time, she
Speaker 1: went up going to Paris, stayed a couple of different
Speaker 1: hotels in Paris, and then eventually made her way back
Speaker 1: to Bergen, Norway. Got there at the end of October,
Speaker 1: where she stayed again another hotel and her get another name,
Speaker 1: and then left Bergen and then wound up coming back
Speaker 1: under and staying at a hotel and her get another name.
Speaker 1: While she was in Oslo, she stayed, she said, an
Speaker 1: hotel ender a named the name of very Yarrel. She
Speaker 1: gets the stabbonger. She stays at hotel called Vanilla Lorch.
Speaker 1: Eventually gets back to Bergen, stays at the hotel Rosenkrantz
Speaker 1: using the name Elizabeth Lean Howard. She had a lot
Speaker 1: of names. She had a lot of names. Uh. So
Speaker 1: on the on the morning number she left the hotel,
Speaker 1: she paid, she signed up, paid in cash and asked
Speaker 1: for a taxi. She apparently went to the railway station,
Speaker 1: which is where she once she dropped off her two
Speaker 1: pieces of luggage and she and that was the last day,
Speaker 1: but he saw her alive. Her body was found six
Speaker 1: days later. So back to her mini names. She also
Speaker 1: used whigs. They found wigs in the luggage and some
Speaker 1: of the some of the people at the hotel said
Speaker 1: they had seen her wearing various wigs, according to some accounts.
Speaker 1: In the luggage they also found eyeglasses non prescription, probably
Speaker 1: used just for altering her appearances. Yeah uh and again
Speaker 1: the diary with the cryptic entries. Witnesses said also that
Speaker 1: she had spoken several languages, French, German, English, and Dutch. She,
Speaker 1: as I said, stayed in many hotels and many often
Speaker 1: changed rooms. She usually in signing it would indicate that
Speaker 1: she was a traveling saleswoman and an antiquities collector, which
Speaker 1: is suspicious, not really, but uh yeah. They described her
Speaker 1: as thirty of those antiquity well, that seems to be
Speaker 1: the standard cover for spies, and oh yeah, don't you
Speaker 1: watch movies. Okay, So anyway, according to the staff at
Speaker 1: the hotels, she was described as as thirty forty years old, attractive,
Speaker 1: about five ft four or five ft five, with white hipps,
Speaker 1: small eyes, and that's about she's They said that she
Speaker 1: uh see to be kind of on her guard and
Speaker 1: stayed in a room a lot. They took the clothing
Speaker 1: in the suitcases, which of course didn't have any labels
Speaker 1: in it, but they showed her to some clothing retailers
Speaker 1: and all they were able to say is that it
Speaker 1: appeared to be Italian clothing, so apparently she had a
Speaker 1: taste for Italian clothes. There was a connection. She had
Speaker 1: been witness witnessed hanging out with apparently an Italian photographer
Speaker 1: whose name eludes me at the moment. But anyway, this
Speaker 1: is this photographer supposedly had given her a lift, according
Speaker 1: to some accounts, had had dinner with her. One other
Speaker 1: accounts said she spent the night with him. And so
Speaker 1: again some of those funny little factoids that worked their
Speaker 1: way in to the story. So anyway, the police interviewed him.
Speaker 1: He said that the woman said she came from a
Speaker 1: small town north of Johanasburg, South Africa, and that's a
Speaker 1: that's a hard accent to fake. That would be a
Speaker 1: South African accent is a hard one to fake. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But I swear when I was reading on this that
Speaker 1: people said she had a quote unquote unplaceable accent if
Speaker 1: she was flu what was it three four fe German, French,
Speaker 1: Flemish and Dutch. I think yeah, so she had she
Speaker 1: had a lot of languages under her belt, which will
Speaker 1: mute out an accent on its own, And so it
Speaker 1: might that might be why they said I can't place
Speaker 1: this accent, because if that's where we're presuming that she
Speaker 1: was telling the truth, or this guy is telling the truth,
Speaker 1: If that's where she came from, then she learns all
Speaker 1: these other languages, she's gonna water down that accent just
Speaker 1: unintentionally or intentionally, nobody's gonna know what she sounds like. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: it's also quite possible this is northern Europe too, and
Speaker 1: and Afrikaans accents is probably an unusual one that most
Speaker 1: people wouldn't recognize as opposed to you know, say, German
Speaker 1: French accent, that kind of thing. That could be another
Speaker 1: another possibility anyway, besides the Italians saying that she had
Speaker 1: been was from near Johannesburg. She told him that she
Speaker 1: had six months to hang out in Norway and didn't
Speaker 1: didn't be lie right on that anymore. Um, and so
Speaker 1: that's about all he knew. So that was kind of
Speaker 1: a dead end. So on she checked out of her room,
Speaker 1: she paid in cash, as I said, and was never
Speaker 1: seen again alive. And the the only other part of
Speaker 1: the story, well as a couple of other parts, supposedly
Speaker 1: thirty two years after the fact, local twenty six year
Speaker 1: old man twenty six years old at the time, I
Speaker 1: was hiking around the same area with some friends, and
Speaker 1: I'm kind of discounting this because I mean, the guy
Speaker 1: waits thirty two years to come forward. It's like, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna go ahead and tell his story. Anyway.
Speaker 1: So on two November that was that would be at
Speaker 1: the day after she checked out of the hotel. This
Speaker 1: guy was hiking with friends in this in that area
Speaker 1: and supposedly came across a woman of foreign appearance who
Speaker 1: was her face was distorted by fear. He said. Um.
Speaker 1: He said he was that she was dressed elegantly and
Speaker 1: very inappropriately for hiking, so and and that seemed a
Speaker 1: little bit mysterious to him. And what does elegantly mean,
Speaker 1: like a horrible gown or something like, Yeah, I'm thinking
Speaker 1: at least address if nothing, if nothing else, maybe not
Speaker 1: a you know, big poopy prom dress, but just address
Speaker 1: in general. Yeah. Yeah, So anyway, so he sees her,
Speaker 1: she looks, she looks very scared, and it's dressed in
Speaker 1: formal wear. And they passed each other, and she said
Speaker 1: she she moved her mouth as if she was going
Speaker 1: to say something, but then I decided apparently not to um.
Speaker 1: And also she was being followed by two black coated
Speaker 1: men who also looked for and yeah, I know, I know.
Speaker 1: Did he did he report that to the police, not
Speaker 1: until after the body was discovered. And this is the
Speaker 1: thing that I find kind of incredible about it, and said, so,
Speaker 1: this is guys, this is a young guy twenty six
Speaker 1: years old with friends. She's all by herself being followed
Speaker 1: by some guys that are going to murder her. Why
Speaker 1: doesn't she just like say, hey, guys, I'm gonnah with you?
Speaker 1: Is that okay? Seriously? And wouldn't you do that? Sure
Speaker 1: as hell would That's another reason I don't really buy
Speaker 1: this story. But apparently after you heard about the murder,
Speaker 1: you contacted the police and he recognized her from the
Speaker 1: composite drawings they saw in the newspaper. But he said
Speaker 1: that the policeman that he spoke to basically said, quote,
Speaker 1: forget her. She was dispatched the case, the case will
Speaker 1: never be solved, and so he basically took that advice
Speaker 1: and forgot about it, and then thirty two years later
Speaker 1: apparently decided to come forward about it. Yeah. I know
Speaker 1: it's a little fishy, so I'm not I'm not really
Speaker 1: buying this. Yeah. I thought i'd showed in there because
Speaker 1: it's just part of the legend. Yeah, Yeah, that sounds
Speaker 1: thanky to me. Yeah. There was a Norwegian television network
Speaker 1: did a little story on it in two thousand two.
Speaker 1: According to them, um Special Branch, which is apparently Norwegian
Speaker 1: intelligence was was involved in this case, they claim, and
Speaker 1: that might be when this this this guy came forward,
Speaker 1: because two thousand two, that's about thirty two years after
Speaker 1: the case. He might have been part of it. The story.
Speaker 1: I didn't see the obviously, the television story about it.
Speaker 1: I just heard about it the papers and I didn't
Speaker 1: see and he mentioned that this guy in the newspaper articles.
Speaker 1: But according to this special Branch was involved. And even
Speaker 1: though apparently the police were followed following some promising leads,
Speaker 1: Special Branch basically told them to cut off the investigation
Speaker 1: and just label its suicide. So this is this is
Speaker 1: what they said. Oh so, so what they're saying is
Speaker 1: basically they were they were told what the answer was
Speaker 1: and just to let it be. Yeah, basically not to
Speaker 1: follow it any further. Although I guess that, you know,
Speaker 1: goes along with that young man's story, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess there are some circumstances in which you don't
Speaker 1: speak up, like, you know, maybe those guys behind her
Speaker 1: had guns and she knew it and she didn't want
Speaker 1: to you know. Yeah, I mean not just that, but
Speaker 1: you know, involve a lot of innocence, right, Like it's
Speaker 1: not going to save her life, it's just going to
Speaker 1: get other people killed. Yeah, that's that's true. That's very noble. Ever.
Speaker 1: But but another thing I find incredible about us story
Speaker 1: is that the cop would say something like you forget
Speaker 1: her the case was ever be solved, you know, the cop.
Speaker 1: If the cop was truly being warned off by Special Branch,
Speaker 1: wouldn't he say something like, well, thanks for the info,
Speaker 1: ser on put in the file, not say something. But
Speaker 1: if the guy, if the guy comes forward and he
Speaker 1: he tells somebody and then they keep acting as if
Speaker 1: they've got no other information, and he pipes up again
Speaker 1: and he says, well, I talked to you know, Officer
Speaker 1: Qualsky over there, and he, you know, he took my statement,
Speaker 1: and then quality, uh, you know, it makes this it
Speaker 1: just snowballs on itself. Yeah. Possibly, you know, Qualsi could
Speaker 1: just say look and the guy said she was being
Speaker 1: followed by two two, four unlooking men in black coats.
Speaker 1: So what was I supposed to do? Put it on
Speaker 1: an a P B on form looking guys in black coats?
Speaker 1: You know, story when logic yeah. So anyway, Yeah, so anyway,
Speaker 1: it is a big imponderable mystery. And I decided that
Speaker 1: what we need to do is one of us needs
Speaker 1: to learn Norwegian, uh, and the other one another one
Speaker 1: of us needs to get us like a second job
Speaker 1: to stay with the money so we can fly to
Speaker 1: Norway and then read the police files. Why don't we
Speaker 1: just make a time machine that would be easier. So okay, Joe.
Speaker 1: So we've got this account of what happened to this woman,
Speaker 1: and this is one of those stories, as you mentioned,
Speaker 1: where things work their way into the story and it changes. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I came across completely different accounts of this story. I
Speaker 1: didn't do well. Yeah, I forgot to mention that there
Speaker 1: was another account where she wasn't found on the mountain
Speaker 1: at all. She was found in a hotel room where
Speaker 1: the body stuffed in a fireplace partially burned, right, And
Speaker 1: they found and in that version they say they found
Speaker 1: not the nine pastor Yeah, and it was not only
Speaker 1: the the five hundred German franks is that correct mark marks?
Speaker 1: But they also found local currency. I think it was
Speaker 1: so it was, I mean the details were the same,
Speaker 1: but then there was odd things injected into it there
Speaker 1: was a monogram silver spoon, but the monogram had been
Speaker 1: carved off, and then spoons in herb Yeah when they
Speaker 1: found yeah, exactly, and at that one. I okay, I
Speaker 1: admit right now, this version that I'm talking about sounds
Speaker 1: like the fanciful version they got spun off. But it
Speaker 1: still makes me question the original version that we're talking
Speaker 1: about and the details that we're finding it. I gotta yes,
Speaker 1: the spoons thing I not especially kind of laughable because
Speaker 1: you know, so you buy a spoon, You've already cut
Speaker 1: the labels out of your luggage, so you buy a
Speaker 1: spoon with a monogram on and then you file it off.
Speaker 1: Why don't you just buy a spoon that doesn't have
Speaker 1: a monogram, plain spoon. Yeah. I know how ignorant that
Speaker 1: makes me sound, but it's just it didn't make sense.
Speaker 1: I know they don't have Ikea, but but it's just
Speaker 1: it's it's really weird. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, And you know,
Speaker 1: all the spoon thing. You know, the only explanation I
Speaker 1: can think of for that is that she was a
Speaker 1: bit of a klepto and maybe she had a policy
Speaker 1: of nabbing a spoon from every hotel she stayed at.
Speaker 1: You know, there's people that do have that do that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah, I mean yeah, but I
Speaker 1: found Uh, I didn't run across that, and I was
Speaker 1: going to mention that, so I thank you for bringing
Speaker 1: it up, because I'd spaced it off. But yeah, as
Speaker 1: far as you know, being found stuffed in a fireplace
Speaker 1: in a hotel room, I don't know. Most hotel rooms
Speaker 1: number one don't have fireplaces. Actually, I mean, this is
Speaker 1: what seventy is when this happened, and we're Norway, which
Speaker 1: is kind of cold. I wouldn't be surprised if hotel
Speaker 1: rooms had fireplaces. I mean, I've staying hotels in the
Speaker 1: States that have fireplaces. I'm not gonna say that it
Speaker 1: doesn't happen. Yeah, it's it's entirely possible. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: so were there accounts of her every time she checked
Speaker 1: into a hotel asking for a room with a balcony.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, well there was at one point. She didn't
Speaker 1: always do that, but at one point apparently when she
Speaker 1: was staying at and I don't remember which hotel it was,
Speaker 1: she asked to change rooms because she wanted to room
Speaker 1: with the balcony. That that just might have been a
Speaker 1: way to change, to get to get to get a
Speaker 1: room change without arousing suspicions. Fair, you know, So that's
Speaker 1: that's probably what that was about. And then somebody said
Speaker 1: they heard her talking to a man in her room,
Speaker 1: a man across the hallway, and she said something to
Speaker 1: him in Germany, I'm coming or something like that. Yeah. Again,
Speaker 1: that doesn't and I was so many like took me
Speaker 1: a little weird detail, little things that don't really don't
Speaker 1: really shed any light on anything. Why I didn't mention
Speaker 1: they were talking to the guy. Yeah, I just think
Speaker 1: they're you know, they're interesting because you know, we're just
Speaker 1: talking about how it's it's hard to tell what's true
Speaker 1: and what's not true in this story. So you know,
Speaker 1: I think adding like any little detail we can, you know,
Speaker 1: who knows what's the real one and what's not the
Speaker 1: real one. Yeah, I know, that's you know, that's the
Speaker 1: beauty of this kind of stuff. You know, guess people
Speaker 1: all fired up and people start actionalizing it and next
Speaker 1: thing you know, it's all polluted and h it's hard
Speaker 1: to say what's really on. But it's interesting though that
Speaker 1: the Norwegian media has gotten sort of involved with it.
Speaker 1: And actually in one of the articles that I read,
Speaker 1: they actually questioned somebody from Special Branch and you basically
Speaker 1: said they wouldn't comment on So that was about it,
Speaker 1: or just maybe they didn't know anything. It's entirely possible
Speaker 1: that they just, you know, weren't involved and knew nothing
Speaker 1: about it. I don't know. I feel like just it's
Speaker 1: so much easier in cases like that if they don't
Speaker 1: have anything to hide, then just don't have anything to
Speaker 1: hide it three years later and say no, no, we
Speaker 1: weren't involved, Sorry, we know nothing about it. Yeah not. Oh,
Speaker 1: I can't comment on that. So what does Joe do
Speaker 1: you have on this? What? What the heck is going
Speaker 1: on here? You know, I'm at a little bit of
Speaker 1: a loss. I know that there's there's some talk about
Speaker 1: here possibly being a spy, but I'm not talking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, But the thing about it is, uh, it's
Speaker 1: entirely possible she was a spy. But spies don't do
Speaker 1: suspicious things like things like standing off their fingers, their fingerprints.
Speaker 1: Although again, if they were filed off standing off after
Speaker 1: her death, and that might explain that they don't like
Speaker 1: the sort of thing that spy would do. No that
Speaker 1: would have that would attract attention at borders and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, that would that would look suspicious. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're supposed to do that when you're a spy. You're
Speaker 1: supposed to just never attract attention to begin with. Well,
Speaker 1: in the spy theory, what is what you and I
Speaker 1: had talked about this before? What is There's a book
Speaker 1: that's in Norwegian about this, and it's what the heck
Speaker 1: is the name of it. It's Operation Isotope. Unfortunately it's
Speaker 1: in Norwegian and it's never been translated to English as
Speaker 1: far as I know anyway. And so yeah, there was
Speaker 1: talking about her like, you know, like attempting to buy
Speaker 1: radioactive materials, and that sounds familiar to ya. Where the
Speaker 1: evidence for this, you know, came from? I don't know,
Speaker 1: Oh my, go read the book. I don't know where
Speaker 1: I have a new theory. Yeah, I remember a Rio
Speaker 1: de Janeiro lead masks. They were the foreign looking men
Speaker 1: in black boats that could have been I think the
Speaker 1: time travel travel over there. That's why she looks so
Speaker 1: freaked out right, because they just did hear it out
Speaker 1: of nowhere. It started following her and they said, we
Speaker 1: need the radioactive material, and he she said, we don't.
Speaker 1: I don't have radioactive material. What are you talking about.
Speaker 1: I'm not the radioactive material you're looking for. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so we got mad and killed her and then killed themselves.
Speaker 1: What what other theories have we got on this? You know?
Speaker 1: I mean she could have been I could I could
Speaker 1: see where possibly she could have been, maybe a carrier
Speaker 1: for say a crime network, um so, a drug carteller
Speaker 1: or something funny like that. Yeah, it's entirely possible. That
Speaker 1: would be an easy way to to transport drugs across borders,
Speaker 1: if it's your quote unquote these are antiquities and look
Speaker 1: at these old vases that I have and then they're
Speaker 1: just cram full of whatever drug it may be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that would make total sense. Yeah, because the procedures for
Speaker 1: checking stuff we're obviously not as stringent as they are now. Yeah. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so they probably would have been would have been fairly
Speaker 1: easy to do that kind of thing, if it could
Speaker 1: have been smuggling secrets, radioactive materials, who knows what. But
Speaker 1: although spuggling radioactive materials, it just sounds like kind of
Speaker 1: an unhealthy thing to do. Yeah, that's long term solution. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not a good career choice. Yeah, there's also there's other possibilities.
Speaker 1: Another one is that she was just kind of an itinerant,
Speaker 1: you know, eras type of person and enough spare cash
Speaker 1: Ley and around to travel around into Europe and she
Speaker 1: just ran across the wrong person. It was murdered for
Speaker 1: some entirely random reason, that that kind of stuff happens
Speaker 1: to so stepped on somebody's toes basically, or yeah, made
Speaker 1: the wrong person mad, made the wrong person mad, or
Speaker 1: just happen to like make friends with the guy who
Speaker 1: turned out to be a serial killer, you know that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. Okay, Yeah, that I hadn't thought about that. Yeah, yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's not a lot of not a lot of like
Speaker 1: hants or clues they really point us anywhere. That's why again,
Speaker 1: one of us needs to learn Norwegian so they can
Speaker 1: read that book, and the other one not, and the
Speaker 1: other one of you needs to learn Norwegian so you
Speaker 1: can read the police files. And then we'll like, you know,
Speaker 1: shed a little light on this whole. There we go. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a perfect This this case actually did attract the attention
Speaker 1: of no less august An organization than Cracked, and they
Speaker 1: actually actually wrote a little thing on it. Uh, they
Speaker 1: were mainly focusing on the bungling of the investigation by
Speaker 1: the police especially they were a little credulous about the
Speaker 1: whole the whole finding of suicide. Although you know, if
Speaker 1: you if you believe these reports that came out in
Speaker 1: that two thousand to report and Special Branch actually digging
Speaker 1: involved and basically told them to back away and declare suicide,
Speaker 1: well maybe they're not bunglers. They were just told they
Speaker 1: declared suicide. I believe it that that that doesn't make
Speaker 1: any sense because when you think about it, it would
Speaker 1: have made a lot more sense to tell them to
Speaker 1: declare it to be a murder and unsolved murder because
Speaker 1: those things do happen fairly frequently. Unsolved murders would have
Speaker 1: a higher probability of being reopened in the future, whereas
Speaker 1: in a suicide, well what's a suicide. We don't we
Speaker 1: don't go back and look at cold suicide because we
Speaker 1: don't happen. Yeah, that's that's true. But at the same
Speaker 1: time they've given the facts of the case. You know,
Speaker 1: it's gonna arouse a little bit suspicion if somebody, if
Speaker 1: somebody stripped naked and file series and files our fingertips off,
Speaker 1: dousing themself with gas gasoline and then and then bashes
Speaker 1: themselves in the back of the neck while lighting themselves
Speaker 1: on fire and eating sleeping pills. I hadn't forgot about that.
Speaker 1: That looks like a kind of a clumsy way to
Speaker 1: commit suicide, the heck of a jungling act. Yeah. Additionally,
Speaker 1: like her clothes would be there that we actually I
Speaker 1: might have stripped him off and just run naked around
Speaker 1: for a while, and it's like I'm gonna die, might
Speaker 1: as well run naked. And yeah, that's true. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think the way it was February, it was yet, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it could have been that she was she was running
Speaker 1: around naked and she started started freezing to death and
Speaker 1: what was that? Remember the case? So I forget what
Speaker 1: that condition is called now hypothermia hypothermy about the actual
Speaker 1: mental condition that develops from hypothermia. You think you're warm,
Speaker 1: Think you're warm? Yeah, exactly. So maybe she was running
Speaker 1: around naked and started thinking that she was really cold
Speaker 1: and then decided, hey, I've got some gasoline here, I'll
Speaker 1: warm myself up with a little gap. Yeah I was,
Speaker 1: you know, I was willing to say it was like
Speaker 1: an accidental suicide before I read about the burning situation, right,
Speaker 1: because like somebody takes like a bunch of sleeping pills
Speaker 1: and like goes a little crazy, takes all our clothes
Speaker 1: off and slips and falls. Sure, yeah, and then gals
Speaker 1: is themselves in gasoline. And although I guess only pausible
Speaker 1: scenario I have here is somebody takes lee pink tolls,
Speaker 1: so that and they're going to commit suicide by dozing
Speaker 1: themselves in fire for whatever reason, that's the method they've chosen.
Speaker 1: All right, Fine, so they take sleeping pills so be
Speaker 1: because they think it all hurt less. Or they'll just
Speaker 1: like fall asleep and then burn to death, or you
Speaker 1: know whatever, set themselves on fire, slip fall, kill themselves
Speaker 1: on accident, but it seems like there would be more burning.
Speaker 1: Maybe I don't know it. Yeah, still working. That's those
Speaker 1: are the two places I can get. Yeah, it's puzzling. Well.
Speaker 1: Another theory is that no, that I made up just now.
Speaker 1: She decided to take the sleeping pills and also drink
Speaker 1: some gasoline and then and then just because of gasoline
Speaker 1: would kill her on top of the sleeping pills. And
Speaker 1: then she decided to smoke one last cigarette, let herself
Speaker 1: on fire, and yeah it doesn't make any sense. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: well this is the first I'm not i'm mystery that
Speaker 1: we have not actually solved. Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of
Speaker 1: a disappointment. It's the first. In Joe is Mine, he
Speaker 1: always solves. We just are never on board. Yeah what
Speaker 1: about the Yeah okay, so yeah, she was being followed
Speaker 1: by two foreign looking guard clothes chuper cora anyway, Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: well anyway, so there we go. Mry solved the troop
Speaker 1: of Cobra once again. That's the end of our episode.
Speaker 1: I know it makes you sad, it makes me sad too.
Speaker 1: If you want to contact us, if you have any
Speaker 1: information about this case, and I'm sure one of you does,
Speaker 1: there's somebody out there, probably with special brand, who participated
Speaker 1: in this cover up. We want to hear from you.
Speaker 1: Contact us at Thinking Sideways Podcast at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: Check out our website Thinking Sideways podcast dot com, find
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Speaker 1: be sure to leave us a rating. We like those
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Speaker 1: your folks. Oh yeah. And also, by the way, don't
Speaker 1: let me forget Stitcher. Find us on Stitcher, so there's
Speaker 1: some many ways to find us. We're super accessible. Yeah. Alright,
Speaker 1: So that's it for this week, folks. So long. We'll
Speaker 1: see you next week. Bye bye, guys.