10

The Woman in Ice Valley

2 September

The case discussed this week is the unsolved mystery of the Isdal ("Ice Valley") Woman, who's identity remains unknown. Ruled a likely suicide, the case has been subject to speculation and investigation for half a century. Joe has a theory of his own, and Sandra goes down the conspiracy rabbit hole.

Joe got his information from:

• This BBC article
• This video from BuzzFeed unsolved
• Wikipedia, which is also where the reconstruction sketch can be found (drawn by forensic artist Stephen Missal from morgue photographs), as well as the photo of Isdalen.

Sandra got her information from:

• Wikipedia, as well as the same BuzzFeed video
• The podcast "Death in Ice Valley" by BBC and NRK

Audio transcript

Midweek Murders contains graphic and explicit content, listener discretion is advised.

Hello!

Bonjour.

You sounded like Brad Pitt in inglorious bastards.

Haven't seen it.

You just sounded super american saying bonjour.

I thought that the password for this meeting was come 20. [Laughter]

Come 20, slogan for the year isn't it. [Music]

When I tried to log out they were like how satisfied are you with your experiences? Zero doesn't exist so I'm going to take a one.

I left a similar review on the lego website.

Why?

It was this big secretive release, so they're releasing a new set at the end of this month, so their email was like oh click on this link and subscribe to our mailing list to be one of the first people to find out what this secret set is, and then lower down it was like VIP members can view a video from the actors who played fred and george weasley who do a Q & A with the creators of this kit to test their knowledge on harry potter. I was like yeah that'll pass 10 minutes let's do that. Link didn't work, couldn't get through to the VIP section, the pages were really slow, and then as I was scrolling through just browsing the lego, a pop-up came up and was like "how has your visit been today". I was like, well all right, pages are slow, your hyperlinks don't work, videos nowhere to be found, you wouldn't let me into the VIP section, you wouldn't let me into my account, very dissatisfied. How old are you? Over 18. [Laughter]

Of course.

That was the oldest age group. They were like zero to five, six to ten, ten to fifteen, sixteen to eighteen, over eighteen.

Oh that's funny.

I've seen a a leak of what the set is.

What is it?

A full scale diagon alley, and it looks amazing.

Oh my god, that's amazing!

Yeah, so even though the website on my face, I'm still gonna buy it.

You know why I suggested that we would watch Logan next time we're hanging out?

Because you know that I enjoy a muscular man and Hugh Jackman buffs up very nicely.

He does, he does, but also because the little girl in that movie is the girl that played the lead role in His Dark Materials.

Oh the one that you hated, the one that you absolutely abhorred.

I didn't, I just said....

The one that you were physically sick watching because her acting was so bad.

You always take whatever I say to the absolute extreme.

Do you want to know the word for that?

Yeah I probably know it already, tell me anyway.

Hyperbolise.

You always hyperbolise everything I say.

Oh hyperbolize, I like that.

Because when I said that [censored] was an attractive woman you were like you hyped her up so much, you were like she's a goddess. I was like never said that, said she was an attractive woman.

Because it's funny to wind you up. If you haven't worked out that that's how our friendship dynamic works by now, I feel like you haven't been paying attention to any of our conversations.

Do you feel like you can't do all of your funnies because I don't get annoyed?

Sometimes there is not the back and forth banter that I would appreciate if you were getting annoyed. But that doesn't stop me from trying.

You're lucky I don't get annoyed.

No I am, because otherwise we would not have lasted as long as we have. Most people by now have been like you're a cunt, why do i even talk to you.

Probably.

Wow okay.

You're a funny cunt, don't get me wrong.

You little...

Oh but you do like the inflammatory comments.

I'll inflame your comments.

Hashtag come 20. Okay are you ready for the case?

Are we ready to talk about crime. What? Do you feel stressed? Yeah, hey my dudes... Do you have like other things that you need to do?

I've got fuck all going on mate.

Then why are you stressing me?

Because it's funny.

Is it though?

Yes.

Oh god. You're listening to midweek murders, I'm your host... No, which means, wait.

Ah she it fucked it.

Why don't you do it this week.

Hello it's a wednesday, and that means it's time to talk about crime, with midweek murders. I'm your host Joe.

And I'm your host Sandra, but let's do it properly this time.

And this week we're coming from Upplands Vasby. We're coming from the swedish chef. Herdig gird, chocolate moose. You're listening to midweek murders, which means that it's time to talk about crime. I'm your host sandra.

And I'm your co-host Joe.

Ba bam. This week we're going to talk about the case of the ice valley woman, or as it is in norwegian the Isdal woman, that means ice valley if you didn't know. I'm here to wow you with my scandinavian prowess. You're welcome.

My scandinave prowess.

And I got my sources, my information, from wikipedia, death in ice valley the podcast by Marit Higraff and Neil McCarthy. McCarthy, McCarthy. Sorry, should I say that again? Yeah I don't think you managed to get that out in one go. The podcast death in ice valley by Marit Higraff and Neil McCarthy, and a video that was from buzzfeed unsolved, researched by Christopher Hodspeth, Ryan Bergara and Shane Maday.

I also got mine from wikipedia, a bbc article, and also the buzzfeed video.

Okay so our case starts on the 29th of november 1970, when a man and his two daughters were out on a hike in an area called ice valley, or Isdalen as i said. As one of the girls noted the smell of burnt flesh she decided to investigate, and found the charred body of a woman laying on her back with her arms up in a boxing position, a common pose in which people have died in fires are found in. Is this true?

This is actually the first i've heard of it, so no comment.

No comment.

What do I look like, some kind of pathologist?

Yes, question mark?

Joke's on you they're medically trained.

Shocked by what they had stumbled upon, they immediately notified the police. At the crime scene police noticed several confounding details, such as the labels being cut off the woman's clothing, the woman's back being untouched by the flames, as well as her jewelry and watch having been removed from her body before the fire but not taken. There was also a fur hat underneath the body which contain traces of petrol. At the autopsy they discovered 50 to 70 sleeping pills in her stomach, bruising on the right side of her neck, and soot in her lungs indicating that she had been alive whilst on fire. They concluded that the cause of death was a combination of the medication in her system as well as the carbon monoxide poisoning. Is this like, because one of the policemen said that she hadn't swallowed all of the pills, does that mean that she did have some of the pills in her mouth? Or did...

It probably means that there were more pills found outside of her person, either in a bottle or surrounding area.

Okay. I think he might have meant, because he was norwegian, he was one of the policemen on the scene. I think he might have meant that it wasn't digested.

Most of them weren't digested, that's how they found them, in her stomach.

Yeah, okay, makes sense.

So they found 50 to 70 in her stomach, but she could have taken a hundred.

Okay so if we're speculating, then most of the pills that she took had not hit her system at the time of death.

Well we don't know how many she took, but I would assume that she hadn't. Because anybody who's taking more than 50 to 70 is crazy.

Did you research the like the brand fenemal? I researched it, and it said that it was most commonly used nowadays I guess, as a epilepsy medicine. But back then it could have been probably sleeping pills or anxiety...

So they're phenobarbitol which is a barbiturate so I would have assumed they were used as a sleeping pill and I think that's what fenimal was prescribed as it's definitely not prescribed in the uk as i don't think it's prescribed at all in the uk actually but i don't know okay is it because it has too many side effects or usually because barbiturates aren't prescribed in the uk that much anymore so for example the lethal cocktails that they give to people on death row in the u.s contain barbiturates which basically just stop your heart rate if it's a high enough dose so they're usually considered too dangerous okay that makes sense this was as i said in the 70s so the rules and the regulations might have been different because in scandinavian countries in general they don't prescribe medicines that can have any kind of dangerous side effects like they're very never mind yeah but given that her um prescription had been erased from the bottle there's no way to tell in what country or by what doctor they were prescribed so given that in scandinavia they don't prescribe drugs that have a high risk of side effects it's likely that she didn't get them from there in the first place.

okay three days after the body had been discovered two suitcases were found by police at the bergen railway station and bergen i just wanted to tell you that just literally means mountains very similar to germany yeah they could link these the suitcases to the body of the woman because of a fingerprint lifted off of a pair of sunglasses found in one of the suitcases in addition to the sunglasses they found maps several different currencies wigs a pair of non-prescription classes and a notebook with coded notes i guess as well as normal things such as clothes and makeup what was not normal was that it kind of seemed like she had rubbed off the fingerprints of everything else except for these one pair of sunglasses which had like a partial fingerprint and that she had rubbed off like the labels of the cosmetics so creams and makeup and stuff she had rubbed off the labels of those so in the suitcases i don't know which one they also found a tube of eczema cream with a prescription label where she had dropped off the doctor's name and also her own name the police concluded that the last time the woman had been spotted was a week before her body was found or six days i think and she was checking out of a hotel in norway the staff at the hotel described the woman as non-talkative with the strange english accent like all of them said that her english wasn't that good and also with a possible lisp so they couldn't tell if like her accent was strong because she couldn't really speak english or if it was because she had a lisp and a noticeable like gap between her two front teeth which i'm not sure is does that cause a lisp? I'm not sure it does. I don't think it causes a lisp but it's quite an identifiable feature.

so a bell boy at the hotel where she was last spotted asked her where she was from because he found her accent a bit unusual and she had told him that she was from belgium other things they noted was that she had gold teeth which was not common in the 1970s in norway at all and that she smelled strongly of something possibly garlic and this is differing depending on which witness you ask a lot of people noticed that she had a very pugnant smell which was pungent smells sorry which was not cohesive with the way that she was dressed she was a very very elegant lady and all of the norwegians definitely weren't used to people coming to visit as tourists and when they did they weren't clad in the like very fashionable clothing and they weren't like they did notice her everyone noticed her i also read somewhere that one of the hoteliers said that she smelled quite distinctly and it took him like a year to be able to identify that smell as garlic yeah and the reason it took him that long was because garlic wasn't very popular in the 70s in norway like i don't know how reputable that is in scandinavia i would say that people didn't eat much garlic in the 70s like now good job you weren't born then because i eat garlic for everything and i'm not sure that it was garlic because it was a shoe shop man that said that it was garlic probably okay yeah some of the ladies like some of hotel staff and maids and stuff like that said that there was some kind of very strong herbal kind of scent they weren't sure what it was but it could have been garlic or it could have been something else like a perfume that was very strong i guess i don't think they thank you yeah and because she was so well dressed and all of the people who met her assumed that she had a lot of money i think they noticed the smell because it was pugnant or what did you say pungent pungent yeah so it was a very strong smell and they didn't like it nobody liked it so it was weird and some people on the internet or on reddit said that it might have been an eczema cream like some kind of skin cream that was smelly rather than garlic or a perfume because she probably wouldn't have chosen it herself and also if you smell that strongly of garlic you have to eat loads of garlic like i eat garlic probably with a meal a day i don't smell that badly of garlic i don't think right not at all no but if you've met me you wouldn't say that i smelled strongly of garlic right no totally not stop it say it properly for the audience please i think she was a vampire hunter case closed yeah got killed by a vampire sure sure but no i think that nobody can eat that much garlic you know what i mean challenge accepted so i don't think it was garlic but maybe.

after that the police began tracing her movements before her death with the help of her notepad entries that seemed to list dates and places where the istal woman had been and side note her notepad entries was in a code but because of her handwriting they could match her notepad entries with places because when they kind of cracked the code as it were they noticed that she had been around norway in a lot of different places and she had written her name and passport number and everything like that in their check-in forms because in the 70s as a tourist you had to write your name and passport number and country of birth and stuff like that with the help of handwriting analysis they compared her notes in the notebook with check-in forms and that they concluded that the woman had traveled around norway in oslo torontimes stavanger and europe so some of the places was in sweden and paris etc during her travels she had used at least eight different passports and she had also used different names at all of the places stating that she was from belgium most commonly whilst filling out the forms in either german or french and the woman that did the podcast marit she speaks german fluently and she said that some of the check-in forms was not grammatically accurate in german so she probably couldn't speak german fluently she didn't seem like a native german because she couldn't properly write out an occupation in german grammatically correct in german didn't the most recent evidence of her teeth show that she grew up in germany no it showed that she was born in germany and then moved to either the german french border so she would still know german well she could have been in a french school she was french tour because they found that from a handwriting analysis yeah but she didn't seem to be 100 fluent in german that's what they kind of are guessing from the way that she wrote down her occupation well eyewitness statements say that they think which is also like most norwegian didn't nor morse what what mostly morse most from the top most people in norway didn't speak german or french in the 1970s so they thought that she might have spoken to other people that she met other men that she was with in different hotels and shops in either german french or flemish they're not quite sure so that's kind of still a mystery i guess the police ruled the death of suicide but many of the norwegian police say that they find this quite unbelievable not only because of the location of the body which was in a hiking trail that is not generally very easy to get to like it's it's a very hard hike she didn't have the clothes for a hike and going up there to commit suicide it's a very hard track and also like why you could have committed suicide anywhere. You know?

In the podcast death in ice valley they kind of allude to the fact that she could have been born before world war ii and therefore been able to escape nazi germany because of the kinder transport so they think that she might have been born before the war and then before the war broke out she was moved from her family to another country maybe they still don't know but i would say if she was a spy which it kind of points towards that because of the notepad with the coded messages and the fact that she didn't put down her real name she had a lot of different passports etc etc it kind of points to the fact that maybe she was a spy because they couldn't find any record of her in any of these countries that her like the names on the passport were not real people there was no trail i guess but to counter that do spies not get given a counter personality that has a full background yeah for them to fall under so if she were given another name would that name not have a job and a birth location and a passport and a birth certificate and all of these things that she was missing to like give her a false identity of being someone completely non-suspicious yeah they did interview on the podcast from bbc and nrk they did interview a former kgb agent that had the exact same point that you had he was like if she was a kgb agent which he wouldn't have been because of the fact that they get given a person who has died that already has a history and a first name and a job that kind of stuff and she wouldn't have had eight different passports because that's not what they did in the kgb yeah it just it seems strange to and i i mean i've got no knowledge of the spy networks and how they actually run but it seems a bit strange that she would be given eight different identities that just stop with the name that doesn't seem to hold up under any kind of script that that's almost as suspicious as just sticking to your original name it definitely is and that was his point as well and he said he she is definitely not a kgb agent because if she was they would have given her one name and one birthplace and one history like one job you know yeah easier to remember yeah and uh questioning or torture or whatever yeah but he also said that what it looks like is that she might have been a courier which means that she might have taken information from one place to another or from one person to another because she moved around in norway a lot for example and he said that but if she was a courier which he could have been she wasn't a KGB agent courier she was some other secret agent career and that brings i don't think should be mi6 either no or mi5 whichever one deals with non-uk affairs fun fact for you one of them deals with internal affairs one of them deals with international affairs that's the difference is that the difference is MI5 internal and am i can't remember which way is but one of them deals with spy affairs in based in the uk or great britain and the other one deals with international obviously still working for the uk i think mi5 is national i think mi5 is probably yeah the national one then six is the international i think so but i should say also that the history at the time in the 1970s was that they were involved in the cold war so norway is not a part of eu but is a part of NATO so they're aligned with america and they were as well in the 1970s and the journalist in the podcast that i listened to she grew up close to one of norway's largest military bases so they had a lot of american soldiers come there to they were sent to norway to train in arctic environments because of the cold it's cold and it rains all the time. Kald krig. It's pretty though, it's so pretty but it rains all the time and it gets really cold. Kallt krig!

so at the time they were testing the penguin missiles in norway which was a new kind of weapon and she was spotted several times this is an air quote because obviously we don't trust eyewitness statements that much i guess but she was spotted by a fisherman that lived and worked very close to where the missile tests were conducted he claimed that he saw her at the time and several times when those missiles were tested and he said that he saw her talking to a norwegian naval officer at the time so he was obviously connected to the testing and because they were afraid of russian invasion at the time probably still are if my parents are anything to go by she called he called the police and said that this woman that is noticeably not norwegian because every eyewitness that saw her said that she's not norwegian they could tell because there wasn't a lot of tourism in norway and she dressed very upscale whale way which they didn't in norway they were mostly in you know outdoor blushes yeah and also because it rained so much probably wellies you know all the time don't need wellies if you're wearing galoshes noticeably not norwegian she had a tan she had a tan therefore she can't be norwegian probably quite accurate but i was still talking about the fisherman he said that she had spoken to a naval officer a norwegian naval officer so he called the police because he was scared of russia i was like yeah this woman keeps popping up during these penguin missile tests and i'm not sure if she's a russian spiral and that report is on record with the norwegian secret service but the interview itself is deleted so it can't be found classified yeah or it doesn't exist because they did release the reports after x amount of years but the report itself is on record but the actual interview with him which is also on record that they did an interview with him is also deleted so the tapes is nowhere to be found and the fisherman's son that they interviewed in the podcast says that his father was approached by the norwegian secret service give it a gun and they told him to off to england i don't i'm not sure if that's actually true because it's his son that is saying that they were like they gave him a gun and said like use this to protect yourself and then fuck off please. hmm doesn't sound like something that any kind of security service would do. Yeah, no, it doesn't.

But also on the live episode of that podcast they interviewed like the police one of the higher ups in the norwegian police force and they were like could this be a hit by the norwegian secret service he was like no way because if they had murdered her her body would not have been found yeah fair enough and i was like wow confident in his team i like it no he was like no no way because if they had murdered her yeah he's confident that his team would have done a good enough job to have properly covered it up no the norwegian secret service is not the norwegian police it's too separate yeah but what he's saying is if it were the secret service in norway they would have done a good enough job to not leave any evidence yeah that's that's what he's saying it was like no way i like i think that's commendable he was like especially not in norway they wouldn't have left the body in norway, no way. No take her to finland let the potato breathers deal with her you know finland is actually like the happiest and most successful country in all of europe yeah because they're always drunk they also have the highest rate of alcohol consumption in all of europe no then those two together denmark oh it's the same place in finland they have socialism maybe you'll cut the potato breathing part don't want to offend us candy listener base they're doing very well obviously because yeah finland is the best country in the world i love them no go finland that's good night good night bye is do not cover it says that on all of our radiators in sweden in finnish yeah iso why in finnish i don't know maybe they're manufactured in finland i don't know oh maybe that's why they're so happy they're so warm well at least we do isolate our buildings at least we isolate our buildings you building step away we don't have any neighbors that's why put the weapon down building you're going to the gulag yeah like the closest neighbor is like 40 miles away i'm moving to finland sounds fucking amazing. socialism, radiators, no neighbours, no wonder they're so happy. nobody like norway is so prosperous so pretty so prosperous because they have oil and they are so saudi arabia oh wait yeah that's the difference and then you said socialism just sorry bruh

okay so kettle key probably pronounced another way which i should do that expression a norwegian man who'd been out for a hike in the 1970s claims that he met the israel woman on his way back to bergen which is one he said that it was on a sunday and her body was found on a sunday so he couldn't have been on the same day he said that it was an in an afternoon and the body was found in the morning so he would have known that he couldn't have seen her on the same day that her body was found you know i've been a different sunday that's the thing it could have been the sunday before but she was last spotted checking out of the hotel on a monday or it could have been several sundays before i'm not sure but that kind of leads me into believing a statement because it doesn't fit in the timeline of the crime your statement makes no sense i believe you well i kind of feel like it does lean to more plausible so when was she found she was found on a sunday morning that when on the 29th of november 1970 okay because in her diary she was in bergen on the 24th of march and then she was in stevena on the 29th of october and then also the 9th until the 18th of november so it's perfectly possible that he's seen her in between when she was in steven and when she was back in bergen to die yeah or it kind of feels like it could have been her but it lends more towards his witness statement because he hasn't corrected the dates does that make sense to you no but he could have not remembered i don't know but also he said that it's a hike that people don't do which also then begs the question of how a bloke and his two daughters founder in the first place yeah yeah like why the are they going rambling on this impossible hike in the middle of death valley it isn't actually impossible i understand no but like all of these sources have said that it's a really difficult hike yeah it's called ice valley it's in the middle of nowhere why would you pick this location as a family hike i understand what you mean but like as a scandinavian myself i know that norwegians hike all the time why does this place have such a bad reputation i think they've hyperbolized happened what did you say hyperbolized hyperbolized i can't just like i just enjoyed the throwback yeah hyperbolized the actual danger of this hike it's not like you're gonna be eaten by a panther you know no i i understand that it's a physically difficult hike yeah so because of the fact that she wasn't dressed for a hike or had hiking equipment with her people find it that's what made it suspicious okay yeah because like norwegians hike as not only a hobby it's a way of life like all norwegians have like summer houses in the mountains and then obviously you have to traverse a mountain just to get to a local shop i can't 100 understand it because i'm swedish but my grandparents in the north of sweden used to walk for weeks like they would go in the middle of nowhere for weeks for pleasure you know it's not actually sounds like sweden doesn't have the same rate of happiness as finland does as denmark does denmark is the happiest place no finland's the happiest place denmark's the highest drinking place i think denmark is the highest dream no yeah no finland is the happiest place finland has the most finland is the happiest place they're very good at school trademark in europe they're very copyright what i'm trying to say is that it's a difficult hike if you're not from there so he claims as i said that he met the istal woman on his way back to bergen he said that it robbed him the wrong way because she seemed distressed and or resigned he said that she seemed really sad obviously wasn't finnish also said that she was noticeably no norwegian because one she was dressed as a very fancy lady which is not what she would dress like on a hike never and especially with the weather in norway it always rains and it's very cold very very cold he also says that she first tried to say something to him but then changed her mind after glancing behind her and 20 meters behind her there were two men also noticeably not norwegian which means tanned and not dressed for a stroll in the woods which was like this was way out of bergen like they were not close to the city they couldn't have driven there yeah that's kind of what i have i have a couple of notes about popular theories but i guess that maybe...

Do you have something about the autopsy? no nope fair enough okay you covered it at the beginning they found her pills and she were breathed in carbon monoxide yeah popular theories include that the isthal woman was hunting for nazi war criminals it's a good one and it's also because they think she might have been mossad yeah israeli secret service because of the fact that norway had a very good relationship with israel at the time during the years around her death like before and after the mossad were searching for nazi war criminals they also think that maybe she was a jewish child that was born in germany before the world war ii and then moved to another place maybe the german french border maybe france maybe after that the uk they're not sure which i think that it does speak to what kind of people secret service we're employing like the best spies do not have familiar relationships people that you can easily erase from history like from birth certificates from stuff like that people who are who don't have family more or less like it was a common theme that they would recruit spies that didn't have family and they also found well there was a big scandal like three years after she died about norway media finding kgb agents in norway who were norwegian kgb agents and also that people had been killed by the mossad in norway so maybe i don't know but it's a very nice like it's a very good storyline that she might have been hunting nazi war criminals i don't know it feels like a book.

you know any other good theories? Yeah. i've got a theory yeah tell me all right so i think she was of jewish heritage supported by facts possibly so well they don't know if she was jewish no they don't know growing up in nazi germany i think when it all started to get serious she was moved to a different family out by the french german border they abused her either emotionally or physically we don't know hyperbole she then repressed this period of her life which explains why on all of her passports and the hotel registrations she was giving her date of birth as 10 to 15 years after they dated her why would she have that many passports then wait for it so because she was abused in the nature that she was abused she developed some kind of psychiatric illness like a psychosis or split personality or whatever and this made her think that she was being pursued by people so she traversed all of scandinavia and europe and blah blah blah to try and escape these fictional people that were chasing her and recorded herself under false names and switched hotel rooms and all of this that and the other to try and escape from them and it got to the point where she was so psychologically stressed that she decided the only way to avoid this was to kill herself but she needed to make sure that she wasn't found because then the people that were following her would be able to do x y and z to her body so she identified a nice remote location decided to take the pills to numb the pain of burning her face so that she couldn't be identified which also would explain all of the labels being cut off of her clothes and all of her prescription medication and things like that being erased and all of her personal belongings being left in a train station while she disappeared off into the mountains to remove herself from history you think that the mental health story is the most plausible one interesting i don't think she was a spy for the simple fact that i don't think any nation would have such an easy way to discredit an identity i don't think any kind of international spy organization would create an identity that was just a name some people on the internet said that the names some of her aliases was very interchangeable so some of her names are some of her other names if you just add some lines to it which would explain that she was doing it herself rather than them being assigned identities to her yeah yeah i get i get what you mean it might have been mental health issues but i just think that burning yourself is such a bad idea she could have just waited for the pills to take no but she needed to remove her complete identity so when they found her they found that only the front of her body was burned and the back was completely untouched and that would make sense in that she was only trying to eradicate her face and her fingerprints and anything like that whereas if she were being burned to remove all evidence then whoever was doing it to her would have done it to a degree where her entire body was burned yeah i get what we mean you think that the secret service of whatever country she might have been affiliated with would have done a better job yeah i think if you're gonna burn somebody to get rid of a body you do it so that they are burnt down to the bones one of the most famous norwegian spy hunters in their history or like recorded history through a cold war and stuff like that says that it was an accident he was like maybe she tried to kill herself with the pills and then her hair spray can rolled into the fire and exploded in their face and then she might have like fallen wasn't that discredited by there being no evidence of an explosion well it was it wasn't that it was discredited by the fact that there was no evidence of a hairspray can like he was like that and if you throw a can of hairspray or anything with an aerosol in it into a fire it explodes so you'd get burned debris scattered everywhere and it wasn't it was entirely localized to the front of her body yeah and he said that maybe she fell off the ledge and then hit her neck on the way down because he thinks or he says that he thinks that it's an accident that she tried to kill herself and then burnt herself by accident well i'm not it's possible that she burnt herself by accident if she had a campfire no but then it's not i was going to say if she had like a campfire took the pills got drowsy fell over but she was found face up so it discredits that theory as well no that's what he thinks that she had a campfire her hairspray can rolled into the fire exploded in her face and then she fell off the ledge of the mountain there's not enough flammable material in just an exploded hairspray canister to cause the full frontal burning that was caused on her she would have had to like have doused herself in hair spray or petrol or whatever for that explosion to decimate the front of her body in the way that it was yeah that's what i think too because her front of her legs her kneecaps everything was like burnt on the front of her body was like super burnt i don't believe that theory because where would she get the money from she was recorded to have traveled all over europe staying in different hotels paid in cash she was oh we don't know anything about her so she could have had a rich family yeah but she was recorded having meetings with men that nobody knows who they are not the eyewitness statement on the trail singularly but others as well like in the hotels that she stayed at in the rooms that she say that the maids and the waitresses saw her having air quotes meetings with other men so like if she was just running all over europe why would she meet other men you know to ask for protection um i'm not sure no i'm sure that's why it's a mystery i still think it's the psychosis this is actually super interesting do you actually think that it was a psychosis yeah to me that's what makes the most sense what i i can't get over the idea that any kind of spy agency would give her such terrible identities if a kgb off a former kgb officer who was active during the cold war is giving a statement to say that there's no way she was a spy because the nature of her identities are inscrutable there's no way she was a spy he said that she could have been a courier like she could have been a person who had information and then traveled to give information to another person he said that that was he was like that's entirely plausible she could because she probably wasn't a spy because if she was a spy they would have planted her in the area that the penguin missiles were active in the testing was active in for however long it took he was like because she would have had to made friends and but if she was a courier just giving information from one person and another that would make sense because it doesn't require you to have a traceable identity i still think she was mental we're all mental what else is new i don't feel like it's beyond the possibility that she killed herself but if she killed herself i think it was because of depression and not because of a psychotic break if she killed herself i think it was because she maybe felt lonely if she didn't have any family which would point to the fact that she was never she has never been identified like nobody has ever come forward with information about her identity i feel like maybe that could have driven her to suicide but i don't think it was a psychotic break and if it wasn't a psychotic break her notes and her steps to become anonymous points to the fact that she was actually acting for someone else and not for herself like if she had a psychotic break she would just run out into the woods years earlier she did not have a psychotic break for years that's not how it works. And giving a spy an identity that's just their name isn't how it works. yeah i get what you mean we have reached an impasse. i need to pee good lord you want to say bye to the listeners goodbye thank you for listening to midweek murders we'll see you next week don't give don't don't don't forget to give joe a special shout out oh thank you so much joe for listening happy birthday it's your special day amazing okay bye bye goodbye forever

Topics

• Unresolved Mysteries
• unsolved mysteries
• cold war
• NATO
• missile testing
• KGB
• unidentified body
• Isdal woman
• spies
• Famous crime cases in Norway
• Mossad
• 1970s crime cases
• Isotope analysis
• Death in Ice Valley
• forensic science podcasts
• Penguin missiles
• fake passports
• coded notes
• Norwegian mysteries
• Jane Doe