New book: The first mistakes

Author Eivind Pedersen believes Agder police took the investigation too lightly in the first few hours after the Baneheia murders. Pedersen himself sat in the bushes and observed when Stine Sofie Sørstrønen and Lena Sløgedal Paulsen were found in the outdoor area of ​​Baneheia in Kristiansand, after being brutally raped and killed on May 19, 2000.

Eivind Pedersen’s book “In the shadow of Viggo” will be launched on Tuesday. Half a life behind bars. ”Former Dagbladet Pedersen reporter became known as the only one in the press who questioned Viggo Kristiansen’s guilt when the Baneheia case went to district court in 2001.

Soda bottle

Journalist Pedersen describes the police treatment of the soda bottle as the first mistake of the police. The girls had a bottle of Grans Siesta with them when they went swimming on the afternoon of May 19, 2000.

The girls’ families were out looking for them in Baneheia on Saturday night. Then one of them found this bottle between 04:00 and 05:30, according to Pedersen. The family took the bottle to the police, who put it in the police tent. It ended up there along with other rubbish, Pedersen writes in the book.

– This was a bottle of soda that wasn’t for sale in Kristiansand, so the relatives came with a bottle similar to the one the girls had with them – the police then pressed the alarm button. The girls could have been found before twelve hours had passed, Eivind Pedersen tells Dagbladet.

10-15 meters

According to Pedersen, the soda bottle was found just 10-15 meters away from where the girls were later found.

– If the police immediately treated it as a crime scene, they could have secured the evidence much earlier, says Eivind Pedersen.

The soda bottle is said to have been found between 04 and 05:30 at night, while Lena Sløgedal Paulsen and Stine Sofie Sørstrønen were found murdered on Sunday evening, at 20:37.

Accuse the police: – He had an agreement

– Judicial homicide

– In Baneheia, many clues have been lost because the girls have been around for another day and a half. Biological traces are quickly destroyed and become difficult to detect over time. If police had treated the soda bottle’s discovery like a crime scene, a search with a dog patrol would have quickly found the girls, 12 hours after they were killed, Pedersen says.

Viggo Kristiansen was the victim of not one, but two judicial killings, says author Pedersen in the book. The first came with district court and appellate court rulings in 2001 and 2002, the second when the Readmission Commission found there was “nothing new” to the case in 2010. On the fifth request for readmission, filed in 2017, lawyer Arvid Sjødin was granted in February 2021.

On 21 October this year, the Attorney General presented a petition for the acquittal of Viggo Kristiansen.

The second police blunder occurred on Sunday afternoon, according to the author. The girls were still missing when someone who took part in the Red Cross search operation found swimsuits and sandals hidden in a crack. Police must have been notified of the discovery, but when they didn’t arrive, the search party man found a plastic bag lying on the dock near the water.

He put the bloody clothes in the bag. At the bottom of the bag were residues of soda and ketchup from earlier, Pedersen writes in the book.

– Everyone can imagine what potential clues might have been lost when they rummaged through the discovery site and brought the evidence with them, says Eivind Pedersen and continues:

– The police could not have informed the search teams that this was a potential criminal case. They took it too lightly. They obviously should have informed the search teams that it could be a crime scene.

A few hours later, the girls were found, hiding under a pile of twigs.

It needs to be revised and modified

Discovery of DNA

The discovery of the DNA that linked Viggo Kristiansen to the crime scene during the district court and appellate court case was called sample C25. In the 2001 and 2002 judgments, this DNA finding, known as “allele 10”, was used as evidence that there were two men at the crime scene. This is a DNA profile that 54.6% of Norwegian men have. Jan Helge Andersen has “allele 11”.

– Bente Mevåg (former head of the Forensic Institute, journ.amn.) Stated several times in court that there was no possibility of contamination of the samples, because only female forensic pathologists had handled them, says Eivind Pedersen. You have followed both trials as a reporter for Dagbladet. The author points out that although the forensic pathologists who handled the samples were women, there were also men among the forensic pathologists (including autopsies).

The images Pedersen accessed (see top of the case and below), from the case documents, clearly show the arm of a man holding some samples, Pedersen writes. His arms are not covered.

– They performed the autopsy with their bare arms and dropped the protective equipment, apart from the disposable gloves, says Eivind Pedersen.

Lars Uhlin-Hansen is Professor of Forensic Medicine and Pathology at UiT, the Arctic University of Norway. He speaks in general:

– The usual thing is you’re covered up when you perform an autopsy. If not, contamination of the DNA samples can occur as skin cells can get into the samples, he tells Dagbladet.

Bente Mevåg does not wish to speak to the media, but OUS (Oslo University Hospital), of department head Truls Simensen, says the following:

– When it comes to the matter of a male autopsy, Bente Mevåg and everyone present in the courtroom in both instances, city court and appeals court, of course, it has been known when a male autopsy along with a female autopsy have presented their expert report from the autopsies in both studies.

Sturgeon DNA

Two of the coroners had the same Viggo Kristiansen DNA marker, “allele 10”, as more than half of the male population in Norway.

According to Eivind Pedersen, DNA examinations of samples of Stine Sofie’s leg, carried out in connection with the new investigation after the case was resumed in February 2021, will show a complete DNA profile from post mortem expert Torleiv Rognum.

– When Rognum’s DNA could be found on Stine Sofie’s skin, it’s easy to imagine that the C-25 sample could also have been similarly contaminated. It shows that the coroner was sloppy with the dressing, Pedersen says.

Dagbladet was in contact with forensic pathologist Torleiv Rognum. He has the following comment:

– Elimination samples from those who worked with the deceased are an important part of the forensic genetic examination.

Dagbladet asked Agder police if the traces had been secured well enough in the early stages of the investigation.

– There will now be an external review of the whole Baneheia case, and therefore I do not think it is right that the Agder Police District should answer these questions now. In my opinion, this kind of question about the investigation is part of the external review of the whole case, Police Chief Kjerstin Askholt replies in an email to Dagbladet.

The reporter in this article is a former colleague of Eivind Pedersen.