Wearing my fiction writer hat - I found this fragment fascinating:
DNA analysis is now one of the key tools police use in forensic analysis and identification cases.
It didn't exist back in 1970.
But it turns out several tissue samples from the woman's organs, including from her lungs, heart, adrenal gland and ovaries, have been stored at Haukeland University Hospital.
Makes me wonder what kind of "perfect crime" may be committed today, where the criminal literally achieved technical perfection, only to be caught 40 years later by a forensic technique that doesn't even exist today.
This happened to Lance Armstrong. As one investigator put it, his 1999 urine was meant to pass the drugs tests available in 1999. But when subjected to tests developed 5 years later, it failed.
Encrypted records of the crime but which you refuse to decode. Your drive is imaged and stored and at some point in the future, the algorithm is revealed to have a flaw which leaks key information into some part of the cipher text.
Wasn't one of the things we learned from Snowden that the NSA archives huge amounts of encrypted data because they can't crack it right now, but might in the future, given enough technical advancements?
>Makes me wonder what kind of "perfect crime" may be committed today, where the criminal literally achieved technical perfection, only to be caught 40 years later by a forensic technique that doesn't even exist today.
This happens all the time, when DNA became a core forensic tool a lot of cold cases were solved, and a lot of people were also acquitted.
That said since no one knew about DNA samples were often not preserved also due to the cost of preservation in some cases evidence was destroyed that latter primarily affects acquittal efforts since after you've lost all your appeals the evidence can be destroyed legally to save costs.
IIRC there was a proposal or even a change in law to mandate the preservation of evidence for all convictions on death row until they are executed but since in the US it's a state by state issue it's likely not to be uniform.
It's actually interesting to note that over time I've become increasingly skeptical of ferensics.
My wife works daily in a genetics and neuroscience lab. She said typically one out of three experiments they do, even under the best conditions don't turn out. Given how little forensic DNA is often collected, and how often DNA either becomes contaminated or the experiment/process fails, I often question the validity of tests.
My wife doubts the validity even more than I do lol
DNA sequencing in forensics isn't a full sequencing it's just a profile with an 1 in n match usually in the low millions which outside of direct same sex familial match is going to be highly unlikely to be a false positive.
Forensic evidence doesn't exists in a vacuum it's looked at in context.
It's also worthy to note that most cases aren't an episode of CSI and most convictions still rely on witness testimony and or confessions.
Thats not to say that there haven't been bad practices in he past ranging from bad science to individual malpractice and even malice.
But it's still better than just having he said she said, as forensics allow you to verify testimonies and build a plausible depicture of events.
And you're right to. Without proof of blind sample testing and rigorous QA on the process, there's no reason to trust the results. And that type of evidence, if accepted, would only wisely be used for ruling out suspects.
Even considering the defense as the null hypothesis, the US legal process is not as scientific in some very important ways as it could be.
The multiple passports are fascinating, and that's probably the best thing that limits the search space.
The number of white, brown-eyed, 164cm tall women between 25 and 40 with many fake passports is very small: almost certainly with a state-sponsored intelligence service. Add in the gold crowns, and you've got a pretty good profile of this woman.
You can rule out small countries and countries with bad intelligence services at the time. With her European ancestry you can probably rule out her working for African, South American, or Asian governments. That leaves European and North American governments.
The list then is pretty narrow: America, Canada, USSR/East Germany, West Germany, France, the UK, Italy, Spain. Canada, Spain, Italy, and France almost certainly wouldn't be spying in Norway.
Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, and Denmark are all unlikely, as she seemed "foreign" to the Nordic region. Belgium and the Netherlands don't have much of an intelligence service to speak of, especially during the time, and almost definitely wouldn't be spying in Norway.
That gives the final list of America, USSR/East Germany, West Germany, and the UK.
"English with an accent" (probably) rules out the UK and America. So that leaves us with the USSR/East Germany or West Germany.
Anyone on HN want to solve a murder? My email's in my profile :) I feel like that'd be a really interesting group, even if none of us could put much time into it.
I don't think Israel can be ruled out due to 'European ancestry'. Israel did not exist until WW2 and in those post war years anyone in Europe with Jewish ancestry could migrate to Israel and get citizenship, complete with a passport. The 'English with an accent' would fit with Israel too.
Around twenty years ago I did have some friends where all kinds of unusual contraband items were exchanged, up to and including passports. I was not in the market for buying one myself, however, this just seemed to be standard capitalism as applied to the black market - you could get a good fake passport or pay more and get an even better fake passport, i.e. from a decent country. I doubt that the lady was an international cocaine dealer on the run and in need of lots of passports to get across Europe but stranger things have happened and you cannot just assume the lady was a spy.
I have not studied the story any more than the article, however, the travel pattern is that of someone on the run. If you are up against a police (or intel. service) that has proper resources to track you then you are obligated to move every day. This is the most expensive lifestyle to have, not a sustainable existence. In this existence you need to be totally unpredictable, so where you stay may not have much significance other than a need to hide. In this mode of existence you also run out of friends quite quickly so staying in hotels becomes how it is done until the money runs out or you get caught.
Hahahaha damn, brain fart. I've been to Switzerland, Norway, Denmark and Iceland, don't worry I'm not one of those people who can't distinguish them :)
1. This is a broad assumption. "this means she would have had several fake passports." Make this a "should". I have checked so often into hotels that either did not check my passport or did not look at it.
2. 70ies passports were easy to fake. In fact, I knew somebody who "professionally" faked and manipulated passports to help people escape from the GDR (East Germany) when he was a student.
FWIW, I have also checked into hotels that don't check my passport (or look at it) but the vast majority of them do check and write down the info. Especially in Nordic countries I find people do check the insides of passports. Six days ago I checked into a hotel in a Nordic country and they checked both of my passports and looked carefully at the photos, in sharp contrast to the rest of the world.
I think, especially for a foreign woman in small Norwegian places in the 70s, that people would check passports.
And yes, 70s passports were easier to fake. Still, if she had multiple fake passports, as well as with the circumstances from the article, I have a feeling that this isn't just some independent person playing spy. Using a fake passport to escape the GDR makes sense: that's something a non-spy would do. Using multiple fake passports to check into hotels in a foreign country, meeting with Germans in Norway, evading detection, then getting killed by someone who knew what they were doing? That doesn't sound like a non-spy.
But yes, the problem here is that if each of my assumptions has a 10% chance of being wrong, and I make 5 assumptions, my final categorization has about a 60% chance of being correct. Still, it can put the search on the right track: searching a small list of people (short female aged 25-40 that was a USSR, GDR or BRD spy in the year 1970 with gold teeth and brown eyes) makes the search a hell of a lot easier.
I was several times in the situation that I had to check into Hotels without a passport or with "modified" data (don't ask). It is nearly always possible. Even in CHINA I was able to stay into hotels without a ID/passport. Something that should not be possible by law.
"Still, if she had multiple fake passports"
You phrase this like a fact. If you tackle such a problem the right thing would be "she might have had..".
You can never take such information as "proven facts". If I would assign something then: a 50% chance that she had faked passports.
Also, spies normally don't use so many different passports in the same country. Looks odd to me.
South Africa's intelligence service at the time was pretty small and had a small budget, and seemed mostly constrained to domestic matters. Why would they have a spy on an apparently risky mission deep in Norway?
This lady died just around the time that South Africa's nuclear program started to weaponize. She died in November 1970, Wikipedia says that South Africa started nuclear testing in 1971. Norway would be a good place to meet Russians, for instance.
By identifying the corpse? This alone doesn't quite solve the murder, but only unravels the depth of the incident. Really, to do so, someone has to spill the beans, much less than help discover a thread that cracks the case.
Sounds like what you're really doing is inviting a leak. I don't see what else would work.
There are a few other mysterious cases of unidentified people, the most famous of which is the Somerton Man (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamam_Shud_case) (warning: contains mortuary photograph).
I remember reading about this a few years ago when I somehow ended up on the Wikipedia "List of famous unsolved murders" or something like that, and went down the rabbit hole. It's an eerie, creepy story, one of the few that left me feeling genuinely creeped out.
The explanation on that Wikipedia article sounds convincing for me. Brazil has a lot of spiritualism cults and movements that few foreigners hear about and which can seem pretty weird.
The thing that strikes me is that she used American date notation on the "coded" note -- AFAIK no Europeans put the month first. Probably a red herring though ;)
That's not the case here. The only way America differs from Europe in writing the date is when you include the year. She didn't do that on the note, so whether it's "October 22" or "22nd of October" carries little meaning. I'd go for the shorter O22 myself as well.
SO many fake passports... I bet she was an East German spy. People in such a line of work usually don't have labels in clothes, because the labels might not match the rest of the story.
To be fair, I don't have labels in my clothes because they irritate me so much. Oddly, it never used to be a problem but it has become one in the last five or six years.
(I don't have any fake passports, though, and my medications do have their printed labels.)
From the image, these are gold crowns with porcelain fronts, safe for the ones in the back. In countries were gold teeth are/were a status symbol, these would be made to be blatantly visible, so no porcelain fronts.
I read recently that by some DNA Samples you can trace your origin back to certain local groups- shouldnt that be possible with the sample taken here. How accurate would this be?
A question that occurred to me a few years ago: how many murderers get away with it, and are out there walking the streets like normal people? And bearing this in mind, how many murderers have I walked past on the street, blissfully unaware of their heinous crime(s)?! Creepy!
Never mind murder. Murder's pretty uncommon. On the other hand, 1 in 5 American women report having been the victim of either rape or an attempted rape. Even more report some incident of domestic violence so I can assure you that you walk past some pretty awful people every day. You probably work with some of them too.
You are conflating a university study with all women. And the 1 in 5 number comes from a study with a strong self selection bias, and also conflates drunken sex and unwanted kissing with rape. Better studies produced a 1 in 40 estimate.
But by all means produce your better studies than a comprehensive one by the CDC.
The figures are accurate, but there's a lot of people with an emotional investment in not believing the numbers. This phenomenon is a symptom of patriarchy, btw. Ask your feminist friends about it, you'll be amazed.
Again you used the word "rape" which isn't what the CDC measured.
It was a telephone survey dependent upon what the respondent regards as rape. Nearly half of what they counted as "rape" were categorized "drunk/drug facilitated penetration". So they count anytime a man drugs a woman and has sex with her against her consent (which is clearly rape), as well as if a woman drinks too much, has sex, regrets it and later answers a survey that it was rape because that man should have known better.
Rape is a horrific crime. But trying to pump up the statistics by using vague and overly broad definitions isn't right either.
What is science without rigorous definitions? Imagine you ask 100 women if they were ever raped and 25 say yes. You ask each for details, and twenty describe horrific encounters that were clearly rape. Five say they had drunk sex against their better judgment with a persistent suitor who claimed he loved them, and then he never called again and they felt violated.
What would be the scientific measure of rape in this survey, 20 or 25? Do you let the victims decide what the definition of rape is, or does the scientist have a reasonable definition of rape that they apply to the victim's experience?
Except that isn't rape and only stupid men think women believe it is. However, what definite _is_ rape is sex without consent due to alcoholic incapacitation of the victim. This gives you victims who would have great difficulty proving a damn thing in court. Victims who get their attack consistently mischaracterised by men who prefer to believe a man's version of events over a woman's.
Now, if you're asking me how many women have been raped in a fashion that is likely to result in a conviction, I'll agree that the number is much smaller. But let's not confuse a failure in society with a society where this stuff doesn't happen.
You talk about a "scientist", only all these reports are stuck together by actual scientists, and all you've managed to produce is some flimsy MRA talking points.
TL;DR; Try believing women for once. It's surprisingly informative.
It's curious that you define rape as something that happens to a woman, whereas "sex without consent due to alcoholic incapacitation of the victim" can happen to a male, too. I've had male friends raped in that way, and the only one who tried to report it to the police was disgusted by the officer's response: "Score!" He outright refused to take a complaint from my friend.
Rape is also defined (by the Rape Crisis Centre in New Zealand) as sex where one party has pressured the (unwilling) other into it, pressured the other into sexual acts, used alcohol or drugs to generate compliance, or even simply used force. Each and every one of those can be applied to a sexual encounter between a male and a female, with a non-consenting male. Would you just believe the women in those cases, too?
Something that's quite interesting to note, I've seen a citation of "The Gender of Sexuality" by Rutter and Schwartz for a claim that lesbian women reported rape by their partners in 1 out of 3 relationships, double the rate claimed for heterosexual relationships. (I haven't read the book, and the citation was quite some years ago.)
You make some good points and you're right, men can be victims and women can be perpetrators. And yes, women can be liars. But liars to the extent that it invalidates the CDC's preferred methods? I'd need to see some hard proof of that.
> You are conflating a university study with all women
Are they? Yes, that figure comes up in campus studies, but there's not-too-dissimilar numbers for the general population. For instance, RAINN cites a 1998 NIJ/CDC survey as saying that about 1 in 6 American women had “been the victim of an attempted or completed rape” in their lifetimes. https://www.rainn.org/statistics/victims-sexual-violence
> the 1 in 5 number comes from a study
There's more than one campus sexual assault study which gives a figure in that range. Which one are you referring to?
The overall solution rate for murder in the US is about 65%. In big cities with dubious police leadership, the solution rate for murder can be under 50%.
That's a great question. It could be that the police arrested a suspect who either confess or was tried. Therefore it probably includes bad convictions. I doubt the stats get revised downward when convictions are reversed. For that matter, some confessions are later reversed.
Everything about this says dead spy caught by other spies. The interesting part won't be her real identity, even though that would be a critical window into the things that are actually interesting.
No theft, no sexual abuse, no emotional yarns, bloodless, no noise yelling or fighting, drugged and burned, and obscured identity, effective for decades. The murderers were professional state operators, so whoever did it, collects a paycheck for killing people like this woman, above all ordinary law and order. Some of the rival operators may have been women, staving off sexual transgression, since that doesn't always remain professional on its own.
What was she trying to do? How did her cover blow? Whoever killed her, they had clear understanding that she wasn't who she claimed to be, and no one knew who she really was. Once they discovered mystery girl, if they weren't ordered to take her out, all they had to do was phone home and ask if they were supposed to have peers in the vicintity, if not, she's the enemy.
Based on this, you can assume by geography that she was a cold war spy, attractive, with money heading into Eastern Europe, not westbound out of Europe. If she were sourced from Eastern Europe, she wouldn't have been caught and erased so quickly while still mainland. Closer into Eastern Europe, she'd have had more protection. Operating alone like this, she may have been a canary. Bait, doomed from the start, but unaware of her role in the operation she proved as hazardous.
I'm totally speculating of course but is not necessarily execution (she had all their fingers still and the tooth). The poisoning could happen also accidentally (in a militar laboratory for example). There is not post-mortem revenge or killer names annotated in a suicide note, maybe because there was nobody to blame for her death except herself?
The victim knows that is doomed in some time, no mather what she does; and goes voluntarily to a far and solitary place to commit suicide and clean its remains for the investigators. She whore jewels and exclusive clothes and is probably worried by her aspect after the suicide. She takes painkillers to assure the death.
The case is associated probably with skin damage (eccema treatment) and maybe tooth decay, and the victim dines in public, and travel by several countries, so there is not a fear of contagious at least in this phase, this suggests that is not a biological live weapon (no waiters fell ill later)
Mushrom poisoning causes not eccema; therefore the killer agent would be probably of radioactive nature (Polonium?)
Should be relatively easy to check if the jawbone is radioactive and if gold and other metals in teeth are aplied in one or more than one time suggesting a beating or sudden tooth decay.
If tags are missing we could assume exclusive clothes. As we have a description of the colour and style of clothes exclusive could mean traceable materials, pigments and fabrics.
fingers and teeth all there; clearly not foul play; maybe accidental overdose during interrogation?
You presume every strategic professional murder involves a torture session. Operating in hostile territory doesn't guarantee time, safehouses or personnel to cover every action every time. Norway clearly wasn't clued into the cloak and dagger games happening in their territory. Whoever did this, they weren't behaving with legal immunity. They may have had to organize a team on short notice, and act fast. Some people just don't have the stomach to cut off fingers and rip out teeth. If pressed for time, and blocking exfiltration is more important that learning details, and they were short on resources, a team might skip the dungeon.
possible suicide, why not?
Pills, gasoline, secrecy, destroyed evidence and fake foreign passports all sound like parts adding up to professional homicide.
latent poison as murder weapon; she did it to hasten a very slow death; she had bad skin;
Nope. Doubt it. Sedatives are a pretty classic complement to a professional murderer's toolkit. They packed her with barbituates to calm her down, and knock her out then took her some place quiet, and did her in. The skin cream, if anything, hints that maybe she was British. Eczema is a pretty common hereditary problem with the Brits, and this is a BBC story, after all.
I'm sorry but I think you should get over the Litvinenko assassination, put down the comic books and come to terms with the fact that many professional murders are not nearly so elaborate. This is from the 1970's and these kinds of things weren't trying to be tales of science fiction. A hit was a hit back then. Getting shot, stabbed, blown up or in this case, drugged and burned is pretty much how things went down.
unmarked clothes, no giveaway
Makes a lot of sense. I agree this strengthens the spy narrative.
> Pills, gasoline, secrecy, destroyed evidence and fake foreign passports all sound like parts adding up to professional homicide.
Or just unmanaged mental illness, leading to suicide. A lot of the reason things are unexplainable or confusing might be that there is no logical or coherent rationale for them - they are simply the paranoid responses to delusional fantasies.
> You presume every strategic professional murder involves a torture session.
Not. I was thinking in a post-mortem "cleaning" of the corpse. Why to remove the tags in clothes but forget to distroy the fingerprints if they where professionals? It seems that badly damaged but partial fingerprints where recovered.
Takes her out of the game. The pills don't produce a conclusive casualty in under an hour. She might survive by incidentally vomiting, recover and fly home. There might be others, undercover, tailing the kidnapping, and waiting to rescue. Rescue might simply be incidental first responders. Since she wasn't rescued we might assess there were more layers of interference in the murder. Lookouts, participating as accomplices.
The burning kills quickly (minutes or less of smoke inhalation), and even if ineffective in killing due to interruptions, certainly produces scars that won't be easily hidden in the future and puts someone on the sidelines.
It also sends an unpleasant message to everyone who didn't bring her home, and we still don't know who that is. Given that she wasn't even recovered, one might presume her original identity was marked deceased in a contrived accident, conincidentally, thousands of miles away. Maybe her family already knows the real story, and remains quiet.
Fire means it will be some time before forensics could pin down the chemical situation of the victim and by that time the perpetrators would be out of the country.
DNA analysis is now one of the key tools police use in forensic analysis and identification cases.
It didn't exist back in 1970.
But it turns out several tissue samples from the woman's organs, including from her lungs, heart, adrenal gland and ovaries, have been stored at Haukeland University Hospital.
Makes me wonder what kind of "perfect crime" may be committed today, where the criminal literally achieved technical perfection, only to be caught 40 years later by a forensic technique that doesn't even exist today.