Traces in the fog of one of the most mysterious murders in post-war history

The case of the Isdal woman becomes more exciting than it initially appeared, even after the newer investigations by the public prosecutor's office in Bergen in 2016. 

If you look at the case of the Isdal woman from the point of distance, it becomes clear that many documents from the police investigation from those days did not find their way to the Public Record Office in Bergen. These documents seem to have been withheld until today.

The reason is elementary; the purchasers of certain items would inevitably have to return them to their rightful owners. Other documents that were found in the suitcases of the unknown deceased, however, have already been published like the unfortunate matchbox from the Beate Uhse sex shop. 

Why documents disappeared is or was the case can certainly no longer be determined today. 

The Norwegian military intelligence service certainly did not cover itself with glory these days. 

The probability that the Isdal woman also had a stay in Hamburg is very high. The German goods could have come from the Kepa / Karstadt in Hamburg, which was within a stone's throw of the station at that time. In the assortment, the items were found at Isdal woman's luggage. Numerous prehistories and journalistic research can be found here. 

 

 

PHOTO: POLITIET / STATSARKIVET I BERGEN

It is 50 years ago in fall that prosecutor Carl Halvor Aas took over the investigation on that misty November day in 1970.

 

An alleged suicide with 60 Fenemal pills in her stomach and carbon monoxide poisoning was ruled out. These tablets were not available in Norway. Even the investigators did not believe in suicide. 

 

Even after the fisherman's statement, one could have doubts about the completeness of the files. This statement is now in a different context. No espionage tools such as mini cameras etc. were found in the records of the unknown dead. Nevertheless, after meeting the two southern looking gentlemen on a forest path shortly before her death, which was observed by a witness, she was seen as a spy. The code she used in her diaries was simple and somewhat naive. Shoes and deodorant from Germany immediately pointed to a female spy. Besides, all signs had been removed from her clothes. 

The penguin missiles will not have played a role in this context. Even the later interrogated employee of the Israeli Mossad "Lillehammer Affair" did not know the name. Instead, the visit to the Hotel Bristol in Trondheim is more interesting - as Vera Jarle from Antwerp from November 6 to 8. Before that, she had stayed at the Hotel Neptun in Bergen from 30.10.1970 - 06.11.1970 under the name of Alexia Zarna-Merchez, born on 27.11.1943 in Ljubljana. 

According to the oxygen and strontium isotope analysis of the University of Canberra, the trail also led to the then internal border area between Serbia and Croatia. On an imaginary line between Užice and Sarajevo.   

 

 

PHOTO: KART FRA PROF. JURIAN HOOGEWERFF/NATIONAL CENTRE FORENSIC STUDIES/UNIVERSITY OF CANBERRA 

 

The Isdal woman stated not only once that she was an antique dealer. This seems to be valid 50 years after the body was found in Isdal. The statement of the Italian photographer and the hotel report is available for this purpose. Apparently, she travelled again and again under false legends, but on several occasions, she also stated her profession as a decorator. She knew a lot about porcelain, the Italian photographer Giovanni Trimboli stated. Trimboli was a dubious figure who was said to have connections with the Mafia and smuggling, only long after his death it became public. Photographing him would only have been camouflage.

It was about art smuggling from the former Eastern Bloc

Border crossing point Helmstedt FRG/GDR 1969, kasaan media, 2020

 

East Berlin had since Aktion Licht (Action Light) in 1962, in which all the safe-deposit boxes in banks that had not been used since the war were opened by employees of the Ministry of State Security who had not reported in after the war.

The currency gorge of the GDR needed money. This "Aktion Licht" brought in more than 4 million DM at that time. Among them were countless works of art that were smuggled all over the world.

Incredibly valuable pieces (paintings, jewellery, antiques, etc.) were thus handed over to their owners in the respective countries by couriers. Only in February 1973, the KuA GmbH (Kunst und Antiquitäten GmbH) was founded in East Berlin. This company continued to operate as a "seller" via the former Yugoslavia until well into the 1980s. Years ago, a trace had already been revealed to an artist who lived at that time in Norway and in the south of France. 

 

To a certain Kjell Varvin, to whom the trail of the Isdal woman now led, also in other contexts.

 

 

 

 

Riksarkivet (National Archives of Norway) from Oslo, Norway - Vidkun Quisling og hans kone Maria.

 

Probably the henchmen had found clues to the legendary art treasure of Vidkun Quisling during "Operation Light" years earlier. Quisling, whose name today still stands for the greatest shame of Norway, was the governor of the Nazis in Norway and had built up a considerable art collection together with his Russian wife since the end of the 1930s, some of which disappeared in Eastern Germany after the war.

 

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.

 

(br/mcvth/Bergen/ Norway)

 

Death in the Isdal in Norway

 

Anyone who deals with what is by far the most mysterious criminal case in post-war European history must start on November 29,1970, in the Ulriken Bergen, in Isdalen. 

 

A father and his two daughters found the body of a woman on this Sunday afternoon, the first Advent of this year.

 

This case had all the ingredients of an espionage thriller, which could only have happened in the Cold War era. It made sense that Taxi nach Leipzig, the first crime scene in the ARD programme in Germany, was running that evening for the first time.

 

The Norwegian public prosecutor Carl Halvor Aas, then 30 years old, was on duty that day and found his own, quite real crime thriller with the case in a small valley, in a poorly accessible rocky gorge, in the area of Bergen in Norway.

 

The former prosecutor in charge recalled in an interview with NOK and the BBC, which was conducted many years later, that the smell of the charred body had particularly entered his nose before he even saw the body.

 

The area was picturesque. Between dense tree cover and mossy stones, at a safe distance from one of the paths, lay the half-carbonized body of the approximately 30-year-old and, as reconstructed later, quite a pretty woman. She had also already attracted attention during her short lifetime, as the rather slowed down police investigations revealed shortly afterwards. Braked by whomever, it was not clear and was not clarified.

 

It remained one of the many secrets in this case.

 

Even the place of discovery offered a criminally very confused picture. Burned rubber boots, which would later become a substantial lead in the case. A tube of phenobarbital sleeping pills, a packed lunch and an empty bottle of alcohol. Besides, two white plastic bottles, whose smell indicated gasoline, and a burnt passport. A purse? Wrong!

 

Allegedly the dead woman had succumbed to an overdose of sleeping pills and carbon monoxide poisoning associated with the fire. Soot was found in her lungs, although, according to instructions from above, suicide was indicated, it was almost impossible that the Jane Doe had committed suicide. A box of matches from the German sex shop operator Beate Uhse was found at the crime scene as a spicy detail. Later the matches were allegedly also found in one of the suitcases from the station.

 

Everything, in this case, was contradictory.

 

 

A disturbing puzzle of possible entanglements resulted from the objects and later in the two suitcases from the lockers at the station with the luggage of the unknown woman. These traces did not lead to the identity of the unknown person, nor a motive, nor the perpetrator. The circumstances are also more than strange and therefore also lead to the most adventurous speculations, which entwine themselves like a spider's web around the more than 48-year-old case. The find is still one of the most sensational criminal cases in Norway today and has been riding journalists worldwide for decades.

 

Nothing is defined in this case.

 

Hours later witnesses came forward who were treated very unconventionally for a murder investigation. It was not until the beginning of the millennium that further testimonies on this subject were given, which took the attention. Witnesses who saw the dead woman with two southerners were just didn't taken down as a note by the Police. The witnesses were forbidden to talk at all about their observation. Who or what the southerners were, who the person who died a few days later knew, with whom she had a lively conversation, remained in the dark. The unknown woman stayed at the Hordaheimen Hotel in Bergen days before her death, from November 19 to 23. This stay under a false name, an alias or one of the many identities that a person had. Was one of the strangers, with whom the later deceased in a summer dress was talking, the Soviet military attaché in Norway, who was in Bergen at the same time?

 

Who was that woman?

 

If anyone recognizes the woman or thinks he or she knows her, can give any clues as to her identity, can say anything about the so-called Isdal woman, please contact the local police.

 

There's a memo with Interpol.

 

It became mysterious when several suitcases were found in an expired locker, and the contents could be connected to the dead woman. In the suitcases, props were found that could have come from a spy movie or just a crazy person. So fingerprints of the deceased were preserved on fake glasses. These matched the body found on November 29, 1970. 

 

 

Another curiosity in the whole behaviour of the dead was the constant changing of identities, the creation of tables with seemingly coded groups of numbers that made up a systematic code. Not every woman of about 30 years of age was able to create codes in this form at that time and why would she, when she was travelling through Europe, create such codes at all?

 

The labels had been removed from the clothes.

 

Why did the unknown travel through Europe for several months during her lifetime, giving different names?

 

Later, one of the investigators involved in the case credibly claimed that the Military Intelligence had searched the two suitcases found in the locker before the police. Whether this was the case, no one can say how everything in the case was and is "a maybe" or "possible". 

 

For quite some time it had been suspected that the Norwegian Military Intelligence Service was trying to suppress the proceedings. There were several reasons for this. During the Cold War, Norway was the country on whose coasts Soviet submarines operated. Besides, spies from the Eastern Bloc infiltrated the West via Norway.

 

But why would Counterintelligence protect a foreign agent? According to several parties involved in the proceedings, the police investigation was considerably obstructed.

 

Part 2 Does the trail lead to the HVA in East Berlin?