Criminology - The Isdal Woman

Episode Date: August 21, 2022

In 1970, a family hiking in Norway stumbled upon the burned body of a woman. Police had very little to work with to try to identify this woman. There were, however, items scattered around the woman's body that appeared to have been staged. Days later, investigators found more of the woman's belongings inside some suitcases at a railway station. The items inside the suitcases were also intriguing as it appeared that any type of identifiable information had been removed from the items. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss the intrigue and mystery surrounding the unidentified Jane Doe who has become known as The Isdal Woman. Investigators discovered quite a bit of information about the woman's movements before her death, and they interviewed a number of people who had seen her. These individuals had some very interesting things to say about the woman. Entries written in code, multiple aliases, which all would have required a different passport, and a documented check fraud scheme have led to much speculation in this case. But, the question remains, who was The Isdal Woman, and how did she die? You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

One of the biggest decisions for a new parent is who you trust with your child's health care. We chose Salis Health. They're the only place in L.A. that pairs an incredible concierge pediatrician with 24-7 urgent and emergency care for your child, all with the same trusted medical team. No waiting, no guessing. Just calm, exceptional care from people who truly know your child. 24-7 virtual care and house calls available. Learn more at solacehealth.com and mention code Pediatrics 10 for 10% off your child's first year. It was 2018 in Los Angeles, California, when a wealthy heiress walked into a bank and essentially walked out with almost $15 million, never to be seen again.

I'm Jamie Rice, and on the first season of Dirty Money Moves Women in White Color Crime, I'm taking you on a deep dive into the life of female hustler, Mary Carol McDonald. Listen on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. Everyone and welcome to episode 220 of the Criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. Mr. Morford, what's going on with you, man?

Not a whole lot. Just ready to pump this episode out. I'm excited because this is a case that out of a country we haven't done yet. We've done cases in Australia, Canada, outside the U.S., but this is our first one that's going to be in Norway. so I'm pretty excited about that. Yeah, yeah, me too. Before we get to it, let's go ahead and give our Patreon shoutouts. We had Elise Leirdom Gadsden jump out to our highest level, Julie Keahane, and Matt Hudson.

So some great new support. We really appreciate it. Yeah, thank you so much for that support. It goes a long way to helping the show. And for anyone that would like to support criminology, you can do so by going to Patreon.com slash criminology. All right. Let's go ahead and jump right in.

man, I know you're excited. We have a fascinating case. It's an old case and it happened in Norway. And like you said, more if this is our first case that we're bringing you out of Norway, we're excited about it. It's the case of the Isdale woman. Unfortunately,

there are a lot of small inaccuracies and many narratives and retellings of the case. A lot of that has to do with mistranslations from Norwegian to English. So we're going to do our best to tell this. story as accurately as possible using all the best sources that we could find. And we're also going to try our best to pronounce some of the names right. I know that will be a tall order. It's something that I've struggled with over the years pronouncing people's names, city names in other countries.

One of the things that I've learned morph is that many times names are not pronounced exactly the way that you would think they would be. You know, in other countries, they're just different. So, you know, we did our best to look everything up and hopefully we got to write pronunciations. Now, a little quick geography. The country of Norway is sandwiched between Sweden, Iceland, and the UK. Oslo is the nation's capital.

This is a country with a population of about 5.5 million people. So just to give, you know, our. listeners in the U.S. a little perspective, that's about half the size of my home state of Ohio. The Isdale woman was found dead on November 29, 1970, in the Isdalen Valley in Bergen. This location is in the westernmost part of the country, along the coast of the Norwegian Sea. It's an area filled with beautiful scenery and breathtaking views with homes nestled into the hillside. only one island separates Bersion from the open seat. On November 29, 1970, a family hiking in the Isdalen Valley, or Ice Valley, as it's commonly

called, near Bersion, made a terrible discovery. The father and his two young daughters stumbled upon the body of a woman. They noticed a smoky, burnt smell and investigated, ultimately finding the body at the entrance to Dodds Dahl. She was deceased and had obviously been on fire. Her body was rigid. She was laying on her back with her arms flexed up due to the heat of the flames. The front of her body had been badly burned.

The family went to get help. And when authorities arrived to investigate, the mystery began. Due to how badly she had been burned, they could not identify the woman. Her face was unrecognizable. There was no ID found for her. It was also not possible to get fingerprints. And this is really where the case. starts to get very strange.

You might think that the fire damaged her fingers, making fingerprints impossible to retrieve, but several reports indicate that her fingertips appeared to have been filed down in some way so that there was no way to take any prints. But it seems as if this may have been reported in error, because as we'll discuss later, it seems as though the authorities were able to match her prints to some of her items found days later. Police had very little to work with. One clue they did have was that the dead woman had distinct dental work, including gold fillings. The kind of work she had done wasn't done in Norway, or any of the other Scandinavian countries. Fourteen of her teeth had either full or partial fillings.

There were a few things police found around her body. Pieces of burned paper were found next to her. Two plastic water bottles, a pair of rubber boots, a purse, a wool jumper, a scarf, a scarf, a a pair of nylon stockings, an empty passport holder, an empty bottle of St. Havelard liquor, an umbrella, a ring, a pair of earrings, a watch, and a matchbox were all found near the body, and they had been damaged by the fire to varying degrees. The objects near the body were not scattered. They have actually been described as being placed there. Forensic investigator, Tormod, Bones told A&E TV, it looked like there had been some kind of

ceremony. A fur hat was underneath her body like she had sat down on it. The police report notes that the hat smelled like gasoline or something close to it. There was no campfire nearby, no pile of wood or flammable material. The burnt paper that was found was located under her knees and thighs. The watch and jewelry were near her left knee, her purse near her left thigh. One intact but burnt rubber boot was near her left knee and one completely burnt rubber boot was near her right knee. The matchbox was found near her feet. Also at her feet were the two plastic bottles and a melted white cup. Some sources mentioned that there were also burnt crackers or bread found at the scene. So I see why this investigator described the scene as some type of ceremony. You know, as we just went through

where some of these items were located. In my mind, more if I was picturing someone placing these items in very specific positions around the body, that's what it seemed like to me. Yeah, and it's a lot of weird, different things that you might not associate with each other and the fact they're all laid out like this.

It must have been a very bizarre scene for investigators to start digging into and investigating. and on top of this, they have no ID, so it seems like they're going to have their work cut out for them. The dead woman was described as being about 5'4 with brown eyes and dark hair. Her age was estimated to be between 25 and 40 years old. Her long dark hair was mostly burned away, but a bit of it that was tied up in a ponytail was still attached to a blue and white ribbon. On December 2nd, more of the undidentified woman's belongings were found at the Bergen Railway Station.

Two suitcases and the items inside were inventoried. One of the suitcases had five, 100 Deutsche Mark notes in its lining. This was the equivalent to about $137 U.S. dollars at the time. Inside the suitcases, investigators found clothes and shoes, makeup, a wig, a prescription eczema cream with the doctor and patient details scraped off of the label, a notepad, some map, some timetables. a pair of non-prescription glasses, Belgian, Swiss, and British coins, 135 Norwegian croner, and a pair of sunglasses.

All hints of identifiable information had been removed from the clothing and items. Investigators were able to lift some partial fingerprints from the sunglasses, and they matched the unidentified woman. There was also a bag from a shoe store in Stavanger, Norway, close to 120,000. close to 125 miles away. The notepads had been written on, but the entries were in some sort of code. It was just a bunch of rows of letters and numbers

with no obvious immediate meaning. 20M, 23MO. These were some of the examples of the code that the entries had been written in. Police knew, you know, just like you said more, that they had a very challenging case on their hands. So we mentioned that the first set of clues and things that were found alongside her body

were pretty weird and unusual. These things that were found in the rest of her belongings here seem even stranger. So the mystery seems to really get a little bit odder here. Yeah, I get what you're saying. I don't think so much it's what is found. That's extremely strange, except for the, notepads with the with the code written in them. What I do find strange is that anything that could have identified this woman had been essentially erased or taken off. I mean,

you know, you think about a prescription bottle. Well, there's some information on a label. You know, just go get a prescription bottle. It's got your name on it. So to me, that means somebody went to the trouble of ripping that off. for the very specific reason of it not being able to be tied back to this woman. So you said that someone ripped off the label, and I'm wondering what if it was her, and if it was her, what does that mean? What is she trying to hide? Investigators asked the public for information and were able to come up with a very basic sketch, which helped them find more witnesses. Apparently, the woman was hard to forget.

as per the website NRK.NO, she was described by a bellboy who worked at the Hotel Neptune in Bersion as, quote, other than in magazines and movies, the kind of woman we hardly ever saw. Apparently she had a somewhat glamorous appearance. Everyone remembered her, but no one knew her. Instead of calling her Jane Doe, the press began to refer to her as the Isdale woman, and the name stuck. Police were able to pinpoint the Isdale woman's last known whereabouts. where she was seen almost a week before her body was found. On November 23rd, she had checked out of the hotel Hortahamon where she had been staying in room 407.

The woman had checked into the hotel on November 19th. When she checked out, she had paid her bill with cash and then asked for a taxi. Where she was between leaving the hotel and being found, dead in is Dalen Valley is a mystery to this day. During that stay, she had used the name Elizabeth Lienhafer, but it was soon found to be a fake name. That same morning before checking out, she went to Bersians private bank near the hotel Horde Haemann. The bank teller clearly remembered her visit, mostly due to how funny to him the language she spoke sounded. Whatever language she spoke sounded so odd to the teller that he laughed to himself. Investigators, with the help of the military intelligence services,

were able to figure out what the coded entries in the notepad meant. It was a travel log, a list of places that the Istel woman had been to and went. This seemed like it was a huge clue for authorities. Being able to trace her steps meant more witnesses. More people could have information about her identity. However, they found that if she traveled Europe and Norway, she had used at least eight different aliases, and each alias would have required their own passport.

She used the names Genevieve Lancier, Claudia Tilt, Claudia Nielsen, Alexia Zarnay Marquez, Verra Jarly, and Fenella Lorch. According to most sources, none of the passports were ever found. Some sources do state that these passports she would have needed to travel under these aliases were actually collected and found in her personal belongings. But it's unclear if this is accurate. Police determined that the Istale woman had been to Paris, France, and to Oslo, Trondheim and Stavanger in Norway before ending up in Bergen, where she had stayed in multiple hotels. So to use a cliche more if I would say the plot thickens. I mean, this is some real kind of Jason Bourne type stuff.

A person who's using at least eight different aliases and would have needed at least eight different passports. You know, I'm reminded of that scene in the Jason born movie where he's trying to figure out who he is. He realizes that he has a secret bank account with some sort of safety deposit box. And when he opens it, he finds cash in all kinds of different currencies. He finds all these passports. This is the type of stuff you would find in a spy novel. And we're going to talk about some of the theories in this case later on.

But it's hard not to start thinking about spies, espionage. or maybe some criminal activity that she was covering up and didn't want to be associated with and was trying to distance herself from. Well, one thing is clear to me. If, you know, some of these things are true, the number of passports, the number of aliases, which we believe they are, obviously there was a reason for her to feel the need to do that. And like you said, there are a host of different theories on it that we'll get into. The police were desperate for answers, and they questioned anyone that may be able to shed light on who the Isdale woman was.

Hotel staff recalled that she claimed to be either an antiquities dealer or a traveling saleswoman. No matter which alias she used, she listed Belgian as her nationality on hotel check-in forms, sometimes filling them out in French and other times using German. Witnesses recall that she wore different wigs and that sometimes she spoke German, sometimes she spoke Flemish, and sometimes she spoke in broken English. Some people remember that she had a strong odor to her. Some people thought it possibly could have been garlic. As we mentioned, the Isdale woman had a prescription for eczema. And some eczema medications can make your skin smell sort of strange or acidic.

So the prescription cream in her suitcase could have been the source of the smell. Of course, it's also possible that she just ate a lot of garlic, which a lot of us know can be secreted from your pores when you sweat. It's also possible that her outer clothes had absorbed garlic somewhere where it had been cooked. Hotel cleaning staff also remembered that the Isdale woman's room had the same kind of heavy or possibly spicy smell that others had described. Now, it's an interesting detail about her. It's got my mind racing, but obviously it's not enough to help the authorities help ID the Isdale woman. Yeah, and you know it's a uphill battle when you're trying to link the smell of garlic to try and ID her. That's, that's got to be a really tough project to undertake. Yeah, I think if that's one of your main things,

you're going off of, you're going to have a really hard time. A waitress remembered seeing the Istelle woman next to two members of the German Navy. One of them was an officer. More often, she was seen sitting by herself reading a book. Many witnesses described her as stylish and usually wearing all black, and many witnesses described her as very attractive. She didn't seem like a tourist. She seemed confident in public, comfortable traveling alone.

But maids delivering breakfast and coffee to her room don't. remember that confidence. They remember that it seemed that the Istell woman was almost afraid to open her door. A few times, she didn't touch the coffee at all after it was delivered. The maids and Bergen also remembered how dirty and wet her rubber boots were, as if she had been out in the woods. And that's an interesting detail, right? We've already talked about the rubber boots, where they were found, how they were found. You know, the other thing that I like about cases like this, where you have a lot of very strange details is how police uncover them. It's always fascinating to me because you're going to talk to a lot of different people.

That legwork that you and I often talk about is a huge part of police work. And I don't care where you are in the world. That part is pretty universal. You have to get out. You have to talk to people. You've got to track movements. And to me, all of that stuff is very fascinating. I mean, I think from each of these witnesses that they found, they were able to sort of get little pieces of the puzzle to try and connect them all together.

But some of the pieces almost don't seem to fit together because here you have this woman who's described as this attractive, classy looking woman that seem to be stylish. Yet here she is with muddy rubber boots as if she's going someplace out in the woods or something. So it sort of clashes. So you look at one part of her, but then you look at this other clue, where do you go? How do you reconcile the two? And I think you can add in the confidence, right? People described her as having an air of confidence in public, but behind closed doors, it seemed to at least the maids who were delivering the food to be different.

And I think that can be true with people. You know, a lot of people exude confidence in a public. setting because they have to, whether it's for their job or whatever, but behind closed doors. Maybe they're not so confident. Or maybe it was a sign that she was a little scared of something. The son of the owner of the shoe store and Stavanger also remembered the Isdale woman. The man, Rolf, was 22 years old at the time. She had bought a pair of rubber boots, most likely the ones found near her body.

He told A&E television. She was a customer who took up space, asked a lot of questions, and spent a long time making up her mind. She also spoke English at the shop, but not very well. And Rolf too confirmed that she smelled of garlic. Some witnesses recalled that she smoked a lot of cigarettes. They have been described as long cigarettes, perhaps a fancier type of brand. Managers at multiple hotels remember that the Isdale woman had switched rooms, looking out the window before requesting a new room.

Hotel staff recalled that she would move the large chair out into the hallway, put the do not disturb sign on the door, and sometimes even move other furniture inside the room, like a table or desk, into the closet. It was as if she was making more space in the room. When she left her room, she would move the table, chair back inside, giving maids a chance to go in and tidy up. One bellhop remembers getting a generous tip when she checked in and he moved her luggage into her room. She tipped him five Norwegian

croner, which was a pretty substantial tip at the time. Some witnesses remember that the Isdale woman had a slight lisp. One other clue that really didn't lead to anything was that the matchbook that had been found near her body was found to be from a shop in Germany. Now, this shop was considered a sex shop, but the store also carried lingerie, erotic books and stuff like that along with sex toys. And to me, just one more strange facet to throw into the mix. Yeah, another layer that police have to try and go through to see, does this mean anything? How relevant is it?

Is there any clues in those locations, perhaps in that shop that could tell us who she was? So I'm picturing a detective traveling over to Germany. He's got to go into this sex shop, ask a bunch of questions. All right. That's part of the job, I guess. Yeah. Sometimes you have to do that work wherever it takes you. And when you were talking about those details, it brought to mind a scene.

from, I think it was the movie, a Euro trip where they, some Americans go over and they're in Europe and they tour and they go to a hostel and I think they encounter a dominatrix who turns out to be a spy. And I'm sort of getting, you know, that kind of vibe here in the details. Well, I think you and I are both getting a lot of different vibes, which kind of just goes back to the strange number of circumstances that surround this case and the locations and the shops and, you know, it's part of what draws a lot of people to this case. So you're running out of closet space. The good news, you don't need to stop shopping.

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when you sell for the first time. Make room for what you. feels like you. Go to the real real.com to start selling and get your extra $100 to keep shopping at the realreelreel.com. That's the realreel.com. Terms apply. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder which emergency. We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible. A new new, series from ABC Audio in 2020. Blood and water. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. If you love chilling mysteries, unsolved cases, and a touch of mom-style humor, Moms

and Mysteries is the podcast you've been searching for. Hey guys, I'm Mandy. And I'm Melissa. Join us every Tuesday for Moms and Mysteries, your gateway to gripping, well-researched true crime stories. Each week, we deep dive into a variety of mind-boggling cases as we shed light on everything from heist to whodontas, where you're your go-to podcast for Mysteries with a Motherly Touch. Subscribe now to Moms and Mysteries wherever you get your podcast. The Estelle Woman's autopsy on December 5th showed that she had breathed in smoke. There was soot in her lungs, meaning she had been alive when she was very near a fire, presumably when she was actually on fire.

The smoke inhalation had caused carbon monoxide poisoning and contributed to her death, but a large amount of phenobarbital, a barbiturate, was found in her system. She was said to have taken at least 50 individual pills and possibly up to 72. They were phenomol pills, a brand name for phenobarbital. Undisolved phenomol pills found in her stomach were 60 milligrams each, which was not a dosage sold in Norway. Some reports state that 12 or more phenomal pills were found near her body, but that may be an error. Around 12 pills were found undissolved in her stomach. High levels of the drug were also found in her blood. All right. So, you know, we have to analyze this. When you're talking about finding this type of levels in someone's system, when they said, you know, she could have taken 50, maybe possibly as many 72 pills. We're not talking about baby aspirin here. This is pretty powerful stuff. And I hurt my back last week, had to take a muscle relaxer. And one made me feel like my head was spin.

I don't know how somebody takes 50 to 72 pills and is even walking around. And we'll definitely talk about some of the theories. Maybe she didn't take those pills on her own. I know one thing. It's not a case of someone accidentally taking 50 or 72 pills. You know, a couple times I've taken talent on. I couldn't remember if I took two and then I'd take two more. We're not talking a case like that.

We're talking a substantial amount of pills that someone wouldn't accidentally take on their own. It would have to be intentional. The main effect of a large amount of phenobarbital would be a decreased level of consciousness, which would be paired with a decrease in ability to breathe. This could explain how she would have been in such a state of unconsciousness that she would not have moved or woken up once she was on fire. Her neck muscle had been bruised, but not the skin itself. This could have happened during the fall into the fire, maybe hitting a branch on the way down, but obviously, you know, none of this is certain.

It also could have been from someone hitting her neck. Think something like a karate chop. Now, a coat could have protected her skin, but maybe not the muscle. According to the autopsy report, by Christmas Eve, authorities had officially concluded that the Isdale woman had taken her own life by taking an overdose of sleeping pills. authorities theorized that she had taken the pills and then either deliberately set herself on fire or she had passed out into a fire if she had not been burned or inhaled any smoke. The phenomal pills by themselves would have killed her. Marilyn Monroe's death was also reportedly caused by a barbiturate overdose, though it was

pentobarbital in her case, a different but similar drug. The Istelle woman was buried on February 5, 1971, in an unmarked grave in the Mullendale Graveyard in Bergen. She was given a Catholic burial. Investigators made that decision because she had used the names of Catholic saints as her aliases. In order to preserve her body for future investigations, she was buried in a coffin lined with zinc. However, investigators kept her jaw to be able to analyze it further. In 1991, someone came forward with information about the Estelle woman. woman. A still anonymous taxi driver recalled picking the woman up at the Hort of Haman Hotel and that an

unidentified man also got in the taxi and he drove them to the train station. So more of another thing that I found interesting, you know, here's a tip. Someone comes forward about the case 20 years later. Now, we still don't know who this taxi driver is, but, you know, comes forward and gives the police information. In 2005, another person came forward with more information about the Isdale woman. The man lived in Bersian and was 26 years old. At the time she was found five days before her discovery, he had been hiking at Floyd, a mountain in Bersion when he saw a woman walking just ahead of two men. The woman was not dressed for a hike. She was dressed lightly like you would for a day in the city. The men walking behind her.

were both wearing coats. He remembered that the woman looked almost defeated, and it looked like she wanted to say something to him, but she stopped herself. He had reported this to the police at the time he witnessed it, but they didn't take him seriously. In 2016, tissue samples taken from the Istell woman in 1970 were found in storage. Apparently, they had been forgotten about.

The Institute of Public Health in Oslo isolated DNA from the samples and was able to create a DNA profile. A team at the Institute of Forensic Medicine at the University of Innsbruck analyzed the DNA and found that the Istel woman was likely European, or at least had parents from Europe. In 2017, isotope analysis done on the Estelle woman's tooth enamel by investigators at Kripo's, the National Criminal Investigation Service, and the University of Bersion narrowed down the area that she grew up in

to be somewhere along the France-Germany border, most likely in the Nuremberg area. A chemist working the case told the BBC of the find, this is much more specific than I could have dreamed of. It's also now believed that the woman moved from central or eastern Europe to Western Europe before her mid-teens, possibly just before or during World War II. So now we get into another area that you and I are very fascinated with, the forensic side of things, creating a DNA profile and just what exactly you can learn from having that type of information. It's amazing to me to be able to say, you know, the person was most likely from here or grew up here, but moved somewhere else most likely in her mid-teens. Yeah, it's like putting the cart before the horse, but you'd like to be able to go back if you

could in a time machine and bring technology back. with you to 1970, because back then when they were doing this investigation, they had such little technology to go on. You know, today we have all this DNA stuff. We have traffic cams at every place surveillance, all kinds of things, social media, things that they might have been able to help pinpoint who this woman was a lot easier. But obviously, again, we can't go back in time and bring that technology back there. but you make a good point because so we have the technology now and a lot of stuff can be done with it.

But what would it have meant to have this type of information, you know, when the investigation was active right in the beginning, when police were able to talk to people and follow up on leads, it could have been a game changer. In 2018, a team at the Swedish Medicines Agency at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, also analyzed the Isdale Woman's Teeth, which had been rediscovered in 2016 along with the tissue samples. Investigators revised their age estimates, believing that she had been born before 1944. Interestingly, if your teeth formed before any atomic bombs had been detonated, above ground. Using carbon dating, investigators can tell that your teeth formed before or after 1955. Using carbon dating works to narrow down years of childhood because your tooth enamel absorbs carbon until they're fully formed and then they stop. In the teeth of the Isdale woman, there were no increases of carbon, as you would expect if her teeth had formed after 1955.

using a different method called race massation, investigators analyze the denton inside the Isdale woman's teeth and found that she was between 36 and 44 years old at the time she died. Though she had listed 1942 on some of her hotel check-in forms, it's now thought that the Isdale woman was born between 1926 and 1934. Most newspaper headlines of the discovery of the Isdale woman called her a young woman or a young girl. Authorities had scoured missing persons reports for young women with dark hair and dark eyes who could possibly be a match to the Isdale woman, but they found nothing. Now looking back after these new findings came out, it's very possible that they overlooked

women a little bit older in their search for the Isdale woman's true identity. In 2019, a man living in Forbach, France, came forward and claimed that he had once been in a relationship with the Estelle woman. It was the summer of 1970, and he claimed that she had pretended to be 26 years old. The man had stolen a picture of her once when he looked through her things. It was around this time that he noticed that she had wigs in her belongings. She dressed to look younger than 26. It wouldn't answer any questions about herself or her past. She would also regularly receive foreign phone calls at pre-stance.

scheduled times. The picture he presented the woman he was with in 1970 does look a lot like some of the drawings of the Estelle woman. Also in 2019, someone discovered a handbag buried under just six inches of soil. Anything that may have been inside was completely destroyed, and there was no way to trace it to the Estelle woman, but it was found buried just 40 meters from where she had been found in an isolated area. In 2021, Hugh Morrison, a forensic artist, released new digital recreations of the Estelle woman's face. He told the Press and Journal, UK, it's extremely important to me that nobody should be left unidentified and without a name, no matter how much time has passed.

Now, like in many high profile unsolved cases, there are a lot of different theories in this case about what the Isdale woman's background could be. There are a few main theories that seem to be viable possibilities. many people do not believe that the Isdale woman took her own life alone. If it wasn't murder, at the very least, people believe someone was with her at the time of her death. First of all, the area where she was found and was not easy to get to and she was sort of off the beaten path. It would have been cold and the wet grass would have been very slippery. It would have been hard to get to carrying all the items that were found.

near her body, and especially hard to get to if she had already taken any of the phenomal pills. Some people believe that the Istel woman could have been an escort, traveling around to see clients. The men she saw may have been spies or members of the military, which could explain the secrecy and the sightings with military men. But if she was an escort, there was no real need to get rid of all traces of logos on clothing and her belongings. She stood out to some people because she was usually alone, it was never known to bring anyone back to her room, which may go against the escort theory. Many people believe that the Isdale woman was a spy of some sort, possibly a Soviet spy. This could be the reason that her itinerary had been written in a shorthand code,

illegible to those not familiar with her travel patterns. It could also explain why she switched rooms so many times and why she was hesitant to open the door, even to, even to, you know, to room service she had ordered. Was she afraid that she would be poisoned by another spot? Is this why on some morning she never touched her coffee and why she would usually order very bland foods like porridge in which a poison would be easily tasted or smelled? Moving the chair out into the hallway could have signaled to someone without them having to come to the room or signaled to them that she was in the room without anyone else knowing what it meant. The travel details in the woman's notepad seemed to line up with the dates and locations of

top secret missile test by the Norwegian Armed Forces, specifically the Penguin Antiship Missal. Even the Security Department of the Armed Forces High Command was aware that the Isdell woman was in both Tanager and Stavanger during the months that the Penguin test were conducted. In March, April, October, and November, the Isdell Woman and the Penguin Test were in the same city. A fisherman believed that he had witnessed the Estelle woman watching the movements of the military and Stavanger. A less popular theory is that the Isdale woman was a former Nazi in hiding. She pretended to be born in 1943, just a few years before World War II ended. But if she was really born in 1930, she would have been a teenager when the war ended. That's definitely old enough to have

participated in some sort of Nazi activity, according to some. When you look back at how many people not only noticed the Isdale woman but remembered her, her olive skin, her strong spicy smell, her long cigarettes, being alone at a time that it was unusual for a woman to travel alone, her odd habits with the furniture. It seems unlikely that she was a trained spot. Clearly, she drew a lot of attention to herself. This seems like something a spy would not want to do. Same thing with someone undercover for any reason, even trying to escape the past of their life in Nazi Germany. At the very same time, the Istel woman was in Norway. There's a Czech scamming ring that was

arrested. Many believe that this is the most logical reason behind the woman's multiple fake identities. In 1972, four people were arrested, two in Bersion and two in Oslo for check fraud. The suspects were from Peru, Brazil, Spain, and London. In July 1974, they were convicted of 60 counts of check fraud. Another member of their crime was arrested in Dusseldorf, Germany, and authorities believed there were even more members that got away. Could the Istale woman have been one of them? She did have multiple forms of currency and fake identities. One unusual thing that happened while we were researching this case was that there were actually two other deaths that popped up outside of the course of our research

in real time where a body was found burned and the case was ruled a suicide. These both happened in the U.S. in August 22. It's such an odd coincidence because someone taking their own life by fire is pretty uncommon, which is one of the reasons that a lot of people don't believe that the Isdale woman did take her own life. So to have two suicides involving fire, one on August 9th and one on August 10th. Just before we recorded this episode, at the very least, it was very eerie time. Like with the Istale woman, many people don't believe that the woman found dead. Her body both on fire and hanging from a tree in Los Angeles's popular Griffith Park was a suicide. People are also skeptical

about the second recent death, this time a man in New Canaan, Connecticut. But discussion of this case has been slightly muddied because police have had to quickly clarify that this incident was completely unrelated to the disappearance and murder of Jennifer Dulles from the same area. Now, this man's body wasn't hanging, but he had burned a death, which seems like a very unusual way of taking your life. It's just not very common. Some of these theories in cases of unidentified bodies are the same.

ones thrown around in similar cases where someone is unidentified, even without fire being added to the scenario. Cases like the Somerton man in Australia, Peter Bergman in Ireland, or Jennifer Fergay in Oslo, also in Norway, are mysterious. Jennifer's case was closed as a suicide, but her identity remains unknown. And many believe that she could have been murdered by someone who made her death look like a suicide. The Somerton man and Peter Bergman died of apparent natural causes. But while Bergman had advanced prostate cancer and multiple bone tumors, the Somerton man was healthy, leading many to wonder if he was poisoned. To this day, Jennifer Fergate and Peter Bergman are still completely unidentified. Now, not all of the questions surrounding the death of the

Somerton man have been answered, but many believe that his true identity has been discovered. And I think right now, Morph, we're just waiting for an official confirmation. All these years after the Estelle woman died, people are as busy as ever trying to figure out her identity and looking at all the clues over and over, see if anything new can be learned. Some point out that if she was using the eczema cream found in her suitcase, there was paraffin in it. It's now known that such creams can cause fabrics to combust more easily. The most severe burns were to the right side of her body, including her thigh, and indicated that she had been seated when on fire.

The burnt paper under her knees and the matchbook near her feet make it seem that perhaps she was burning something in her hand when maybe she caught on fire. She could have been burning whatever paper there was remnants of, or possibly trying to start a small fire to heat up a drink or some food that also burned up. The crackers, the way she had laid out her shawl on the ground and sit on, it makes me think that possibly she had stopped for a bit to rest, taking off her sweater and putting it on a rock beside her,

and taking off her boots, placing one on either side of her and having something to eat, maybe having a smoke. Why she was in that difficult to reach a location in rubber boots, not hiking boots, and didn't seem to have any warm clothes is still a mystery here, though. It would have taken about an hour and a half to walk from the downtown area of Bergen to the area where the Isdale woman was found. There are some similar theories that the Isdale woman accidentally set herself on fire after suffering from a seizure while smoking or cooking or trying to light a fire to keep warm.

This is because phenomol was also prescribed for seizures, not just as a sleep aide. She was known to smoke and though cigarettes were not found, if they had been in her lap or pocket, They could have burned away entirely. If she had eczema, she could have had sensitive skin, which meant that any tags or labels felt too scratchy to her. Or like many others, even without eczema, she could have just been annoyed by tags. One thing is for sure, the Isdale woman went to great links to hide her identity. The biggest question is why? That question is perhaps just as important as who was the Isdale woman.

perhaps if one of those questions is answered, it may lead to the other question being answered. You never know. Perhaps genetic genealogy will help one day pinpoint who the Isdale woman was as it has been done in so many other cases. And this morph is a case that reminds me very much of the Somerton man. That was a case where people for many, many years have tried to figure out who this person was. there was a lot of mystery surrounding his death and, you know, the things that were found on him, his possessions. There were theories that he was a spy. So there are a lot of similarities in these two cases.

Now, he didn't burn to death. But speaking of genetic genealogy, that seems to be the path that was used to identify the Somerton man. We mentioned it, right? We're still waiting on. official confirmation, but from everything I've read, it seems as though the work that was done has led to him being identified. And I do think it could happen in this case as well. I think one thing that you and I have learned over the past few years is that you can never count out the use of genetic genealogy. We have seen so many amazing things that have been done

in recent years with that technology. Yeah, and that technology, if it can help identify who the Estelle woman was, then maybe they can sort of backtrack and figure out why she was covering her tracks and why she was trying to have this hidden identity. Well, in so many cases like this, where you have someone who has not been identified, the identification is the key because, Without knowing who the person was, how do you know who they were associated with? How do you, you know, kind of construct certain things without having that information?

And, you know, based on the things I've read about the Somerton man revelations, that's kind of what they did, right? Once they figured out his family tree and started to narrow it down, well, then they could figure out who was in what area at what time, what relationship a person had to other people. And it really led to kind of a just a major breakthrough. Yeah, it's really like trying to put a puzzle together without all the pieces and that DNA and that genealogy might just bring that missing piece that completes the puzzle. If you have information about the identity of the Estelle woman, you can email ISdaL at nrk.

and give your tips to the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, who has been covering the updates on her case. So Morph, as we wrap up, there's no doubt this is a fascinating case. I don't know that it's gotten the coverage that maybe the Somerton Man case has gotten over the years, but to me, it's equally as fascinating. You know, the aliases, the, the passports that must have been involved, kind of the strange behaviors. I really want to know what it's all about.

So personally, I hope somebody, you know, figures it out because I want to know. And as we were researching this and going through the details and then recording it, I was just thinking in the back of my mind, what a great movie this would actually be about this case. It'd be really fascinating to see the clues that were there and how investigators dealt with them back in the 1970s before technology came along, what kind of challenges they faced. I definitely watch a movie about that.

I'm right with you. I would watch that as well. If you love the show, but you haven't done so yet, take a minute, go out, give us a rating, leave a review if you want.

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So that is it for another episode of criminology. But Morph and I will be back with all of you next Saturday night with a brand new episode of criminology. So until then for Mike. And Morph. We'll talk to you next week. Take care of you.