Nearly 34 years...

After more than 33 years the Kambo Mannen is not identified.

What happened in this September days 1987, when a conductor found the human remains of the later so-called Kambo Mannen besides the former train line between Kambo and Moss?

Whom the unknown stranger met before he was deadly injured by a train?

Two of his limbs had been severed, an arm and a foot. He had not been drinking alcohol prior his death and was killed by the train. 

Who took his identification card, his papers, his passport?  And his funds?

It was not clear for the train operator who saw something at first he thought it was a plastic bag on the rails, to see a human remains in front of his traction engine. 

Today the train line it’s a pass for tracking and the trains are running through a tunnel which was built a few years ago. Long after the incidents with the Kambo Mannen. In all these years the mystery grew even bigger about the unknown alien. 

Some newer information were revealed after a recent newspaper article in 2017 by the Norwegian tv2 nyheter in Oslo. But nobody could reveal what the person wanted in this specific area close to a radar station in the Cold War against the former Soviet Union. He had no camera with him or other tools for espionage.  Maybe the Kambo Mannen was one of the spies of the military intelligence of the existing so-called Warsaw Treaty Organization. But this reason is unlikely.

The Warsaw Pact states sent plenty of secret scouts to the scene with foreign number plated cars in this specific area.

Yes, and there were many suicides in these days along train lines in Norway. But this is even more unreal with the Kambo Mannen. 

What seems today some sort of bizarre game- were in those days in the two systems a common method to find needed information. In 2017, it revealed that the police forbid foreign number plates in the area close to the Gylderåsen station in Våler of the NATO Nike system of the Norwegian army.

If he had been a spy, at least a vehicle would have been found nearby. Keys that would have pointed to the vehicle. The Norwegian police these days experienced in these particular cases would have checked the circumstance and surroundings. 

But it but this was not the only case of mystery and unidentified people in Norway in the last 50 years. It started with the most mystery case of the unknown stranger from the Isdal, who used multiple identities while she was in Norway, 1970.

Last traces led to former Tito Yugoslavia. 

The woman with the strange code was mystified and certainly the target of the military intelligence of the Norwegian government. They had all reason to look for her luggage which was discovered by police in the train station in Bergen a few days after her death.

Exotic Circumstances

They were around about 15 people in  Norway which could be identified and  three cases led to Germany and the former East German hemisphere. 

The last one to leave a strange mystery was the dead woman in the Plaza Hotel in Oslo in 1995. Jennifer Fergate.

But the Kambo Mannen came under different circumstances, which showed that he was searched before his death. 

Someone could, of course, claim that the unknown person somehow came to Norway like a stowaway, then decided to commit suicide at short notice next to the railway line and buried his belongings somewhere along the way. Anyone reading this already knows that it does not sound realistic. 

The trail of the later investigation to the German vessel- the MS Edelgard- was just a manoeuvre to mislead the real investigations which ended again on this railroad in autumn 1987. 

Well, there were large smuggling rings that brought goods into Norway and shipped them into the country at previously spotted points. Alcohol and art smuggling were big business there. This sounds more realistic. First part of Kambo Mannen

Kambo Mannen's traces

His cloth could have been from a German second hand delivery to East Germany- different finds and numbers could not be explained and files about how it was delivered and to whom it was delivered would be destroyed by now. Second hand shops in the FRG were not so common and so popular.

Plenty of files of the East German former state security are destroyed or brought to a place where the government cannot gain any information any more.  Funny enough files were found in a mine tunnel shortly after reunification. 

Other files are still shredded pieces of the former East German State security HVA. It will take years to put them together again in painstaking detail, like a puzzle.

The Kambo Mannen did not reveal where he received the packet of Camel filter cigarettes which were solely produced with this specific tobacco for the Eastern Block market. 

This leaves only the clothing, which has posed even more mysteries since the first day of the investigation than these exhibits have revealed.

The 55-60 year old man was wearing the following when he was found dead on the train line: 

We have explained long before the Norwegians in tv2 in our first article the connection to some clothes. We refer to the first part.

A grey blouse jacket / military jacket -so called "Schimanski jacket". An item of clothing made famous by the television series Schimanski, the Duisburg fictional(!) "Crime scene", which was very fashionable at the time and was worn by the actor Götz George in each of these episodes. 
One pair of blue jeans
A white shirt with dark, thin stripes
Two medical stockings with three blue stripes on top and open toe.
A yellow machine knitted jumper with a square pattern.
One white vest
One pair of Elan Body panties
A handkerchief with brown stripes in a square pattern.
A black belt made of artificial material.
A red Victorinox Swiss Army pocket knife of the model "Climber".
A soft pack of Camel cigarettes. Produced in the West for the Eastern European market.
 

Sources: Kripos  Norge

It was common practice at the time to ship clothes collected by aid organizations in West Germany to the East. That meant to Poland or the former GDR. It was also customary for the German Red Cross, for example, to provide clothing to late settlers arriving from the East. This also applied to special prisoner from East Germany from the former GDR, which are little known in the world. Also, not in Norway. 

These clothes were compulsorily catalogued.

Most of the labels were also cut out of them and, for example, plasters with numbers were affixed to shoes. This explains the discovery of the plaster in the shoe only now because at that time in the clothing depots one had to be able to match the shoes to each other in large quantity. 

Another aspect is the sole insert, which was only studied a few years ago. This indicates that the sole was subsequently adapted to the shoe because it does not belong to the shoe and this in turn explains the second-hand clothes thesis.

Did the man come with an order from the GDR via the main access camp Friedland?

Von Bundesarchiv, B 145 Bild-F079036-0029 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, Link

 

Are there any documents about the dead man still to be found here?

The former GDR smuggled its snitches to the West directly. In any case, the number is not a secret code, but comes from a clothing store. 

More to read in the second part in March 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another murder

One does not want to believe the overall context.

But, there must be one of these connections that writes life or, as in the present cases, death. 

Parallels can be found with the cases of the Isdal woman and the dead, eight years later (1995), at the Plaza Hotel in Oslo.

It was not unusual that a body was found on September 22, 1987, along the railway line near Oslo, between Kambo and Moss. According to forensic examinations, the dead man had been run over by a train.

The clothing of the dead man was presumably from Germany. First, there were the obligatory thrombosis stockings, two socks for medical support with three blue stripes on top and an open toe at the toes.

 

Von Jörg Zägel - Eigenes Werk, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

Hertie, KaDeWe, fine-rib undershirt (Elan Body), the typical Schimanski jacket of the days 1987, when the Duisburg bully investigator was the rating king of the ARD.

 

At first, it seemed mysterious why the labels had also been cut out of his clothes. It was like the two deaths mentioned above. A packet of cigarettes from the former Eastern Bloc, an almost empty box of Camel, which was produced in the West for the East, was found with the body, as well as a Swiss army knife, a red Victorinox Swiss Army pocket knife of the model "Climber".

In this context, the cigarettes could have come from the stocks of the former GDR Intershop. Mephisto shoes from the traditional company from Sarrebourg in France, which pointed to quality and a genuine connection to the Federal Republic. On the label of the Elan undershirt, there was a "German" written 1.  an  trace of the Second-Hand shops was gradually discarded because all the clothes came from the former Federal Republic of Germany.

In the course of the investigations, espionage again played a role with the finger of suspicion to the former Eastern Bloc. Along the railway line, there was a tunnel that led to a NATO facility on Gylder Hill in Våler in the 1980s. A radar station located there was part of the so-called Nike system. It was a missile defence system that was supposed to protect Oslo from a missile attack from the former Soviet Union.

 

But also a ship of a shipping company from Rendsburg came into the focus of the investigations. Bizarre became the case when the captain couldn't remember the passenger who allegedly had sailed on his cargo ship. At that time, it was common for passengers to be transported on cargo ships.

The case was filed away in Norway in 1990 because no papers were found on the dead man. Once again, however, the mysterious murder, initially classified as suicide, leads to the GDR after a trail to Switzerland, where a mix-up occurred, and the so-called "truck trail" was eliminated. A witness, truck driver Roy Sandberg, had reported after years that the tarp of his truck was cut when the events took place.

< healthy>Who knows this man, who is about 50-60 years old, or can provide relevant information about the case described? Relevant information also, especially from the environment of the former Kunst und Antiquitäten GmbH, which was subordinated to the KoKo. This also includes freight forwarders and drivers of the former VEB Deutrans, who may have taken the contraband goods to Scandinavia. Has an employee from this environment disappeared during the period in question? Also in connection with Jauerfood, a cover company of GENEX and GDR foreign trade in Copenhagen?

Did the dead man come from Berlin?

News is welcome at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

 

Another part about the Kambo Mannen

 

After the publication of the first article about one of the most mysterious murder cases in post-war history, we received numerous letters. Many thanks for all advises and comments.

 

Please read the first part.

 

Who was the beautiful stranger?

 

Of course, the question is allowed, why nobody misses the Isdal woman. This circumstance is extraordinary.

 

Were there people, one reader asked, who did not officially exist, but who rushed like a shadow army through the Cold War of Europe?

 

That well, maybe. In our research, we have found no evidence to deny or affirm this fact.

 

Of course, the trail also points to the former Yugoslavia. To the machinations of the days of Tito. This would be following what witnesses said, that the Isdal woman had met with two men of southern appearance. It must have been just before she died.

 

Yes, and Norway has done everything it can to cover its tracks and, as a deterrent to more Soviet spies, has invented one story after another to avoid the real reason. From the point of view at the time, this was quite understandable. This includes the history of the two check fraudsters who were arrested in 1972 using false identities in their crimes. The public never believed this story, which sounded like a legend of a former police officer who retired in 1976.

 

Nobody could or would believe in the suicide of the Isdal woman. According to the autopsy report, the Isdal woman was standing when the fire broke out. However, she could not stand any longer according to human judgement, because she had taken a lethal dose of Fenemal and alcohol, voluntarily or involuntarily, this could not be reconstructed. She choked to death on her combustion—carbon monoxide poisoning. Later, during the autopsy, a haematoma was found in the neck area, which could have been caused by a punch or a fall against a tree.

 

The probable time of death was Monday, 23 November 1970, at about 10 o'clock.

 

Surely the Isdal woman was not alone in her last hours. In the Hotel Hordaheimen in Bergen, where she was last seen alive, there was a meeting with an unknown man to whom she said she wanted to come straight away.

 

Since the death of the Isdal woman almost half a century ago, the world has changed—even the faces of the countries. The Isdal woman was a product of her time; that fact is often forgotten.

 

Her death cannot be atoned for, even if the perpetrator were to turn himself in. The murder is time-barred in Norway after 25 years, in 1995.

 

Based on a list of the objects that were recovered from the unidentified woman's suitcases and the site in Isdal, Norway, many facts can be reconstructed. Conclusions can also be drawn today from their almost hectic travel activities. At first, the trail of the Isdal woman leads across Europe, then to the German-French border between Pirmasens and Baden-Baden.

 

This was the result of the enamel analysis in 2016. There, in the vicinity, she must have stayed and also the train tickets found later in the suitcases at least point the way to Basel.

 

Twice it used the Hamburg - Basel railway line.

 

The discovery of the map of southern Scandinavia by the Reise- und Verkehrsverlag, Stuttgart, from 1970 speaks for this, according to the evidence list of the Norwegian police. Her handwriting was French; perhaps she was from Belgium or Luxembourg.

 

The intersection, however, can only be located in the Baden-Baden area.

 

This circumstance can be assumed if the tickets found in the suitcases of the NSB locker system in Bergen are not forged. Or were preliminary placed there later? There is a testimony from a witness, who is not mentioned in the documents, who claims to have seen several people with the suitcases before they were found by the Norwegian Criminal Police, two days after the Isdal woman was found.

 

In this connection, nine "passport identities" were found. It is not clear from the investigations at the time whether these passports were forged or were duplicates. So, issued by the state whether the passport forms had been stolen somewhere.

 

 

 

What she was doing in Isdal could, of course, be explained with the top-secret Norwegian Sea Penguin. Experiments with the novel rocket were carried out in all places where she was at the time. In November 1970 the paths crossed with two Soviet agents, named Rubanov and Popov, as the security police in Trondheim dutifully noted. Whether the persons met can no longer be determined from the files.

 

According to another point of view, based on the travel activities of the woman, described as more than elegant, it was a possibility that she was a high-class prostitute who travelled to a specific circle of clients throughout Europe. Perhaps also a drug courier who was killed because of a business in Isdal?

 

Only the names that the Isdal woman, as she was later called in the absence of a real identity, indicate an activity that had to do with intelligence services at the height of the Cold War.

 

Genevieve Lancier, Claudia Tielt, Vera Schlosseneck, Claudia Nielsen, Alexia Zarna-Merchez, Vera Jarle, Finella Lorck and Elisabeth Leenhouwer, in addition to other names during the first test phase of the Penguin Rocket: The unknown woman used the wrong names E. Velding and L. on this trip.

 

 

Selling, according to the Norwegian secret service. Probably, to cover any possible tracks.

 

According to the language, as witnesses assure who saw her at the end, in November 1970, shortly before her death, she was German. However, she also pretended to be a South African antique dealer to an Italian gala, the photographer Giovanni Trimboli, who had invited her to dinner and took her in his car. That was a few days before her even more mysterious demise in the lonely gorge.

 

Indeed, she was a child from the time before the war, born around 1926-1930, knew the profession "Verziererin" in the porcelain industry, which is located in Franconia, near the then Czechoslovakian

border, in Selb and its surroundings, had a great tradition. At least she had to know about it. Perhaps through a direct relative or in the context of the so-called Kinderlandverschickung at the end of the Second World War.

 

She had, for whatever reason, made strange statements on registration forms.

 

This issue is also indicated by the analysis that was initiated decades later. After an almost creepy exhumation years ago. They got everything from the woman, fingerprints, DNA, the dentures, which raises more questions than it answers. Some sources indicate that the dentition in Latin America was processed in this way. There is no sure indication of this, except the time of the unknown in Spain, probably in the Burgos area, in the north. In December 1970 news came that the dental work had been done in Italy or Spain.

 

The question is, does anyone recognize this work?

 

The teeth must have been worked on about three years before her death.

 

 

 The lower jaw of Isdal woman, Kripos Norge, 2019

 

 

 The upper jaw of Isdal woman, Kripos Norge, 2019

 

The work could also have been done in former Czechoslovakia or the GDR. The gold, however, points to work in the Western world at that time. Probably in Germany.

 

Who can remember this specific set of teeth?

 

Next part: 

 

Does the trail lead to Ljubljana in former Yugoslavia?

 

Infiltrated and exfiltrated the beautiful unknown over Yugoslavia or optionally the

 

Czechoslovakia? The whole case refers to the KoKo and its international art trade.