Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Pathway Chili.
Speaker 2: I'm Robin, I'm Jules, and I'm Ashley.
Speaker 3: Let's dive right into this week's case.
Speaker 2: June third, nineteen ninety five, Oslo, Norway, the body of
Speaker 2: a woman is found inside room twenty eighth five of
Speaker 2: the Oslo Plaza Hotel, and since a pistol is in
Speaker 2: her hand, she appears to be the victim of a
Speaker 2: self inflicted gunshot wound. Three days earlier, she checked into
Speaker 2: a hotel under the name Jennifer Fairgate. Well, the name
Speaker 2: turns out to be fake, and since she has no
Speaker 2: identification in her possession, the woman remains a Jane Doe.
Speaker 2: There are a number of strange details which lead to
Speaker 2: speculation that Jennifer might have been a spy and was
Speaker 2: actually the victim of foul play, but all attempts to
Speaker 2: identify her are unsuccessful.
Speaker 1: After that, the path went Chiley. So today we are
Speaker 1: going to be traveling to Norway in order to explore
Speaker 1: a mystery involving an unidentified decedent, the nineteen ninety five
Speaker 1: death of a woman known only as Jennifer Fairgate. As
Speaker 1: I'm sure you know, about four and a half years ago,
Speaker 1: this story was featured on an episode of season two
Speaker 1: of the Netflix reboot of Unsolved Mysteries. It involves a
Speaker 1: woman who checked into what is probably the most luxurious
Speaker 1: hotel in Norway's capital city of Oslo, and three days
Speaker 1: later she was found dead inside a room of what
Speaker 1: appeared to be a self inflicted gunshot wound. Even though
Speaker 1: she had registered under the name Jennifer Fairgate, all the
Speaker 1: details she provided turned out to be fake and her
Speaker 1: true ideay could not be established. Needless to say, there
Speaker 1: have been a lot of theories pushed forward about who
Speaker 1: Jennifer Fairgate really was, but one of the most prominent
Speaker 1: is that she may have been a spy who was
Speaker 1: involved in espionage, and the Unsolved Mysteries episode even explored
Speaker 1: the possibility that her suicide was staged and she was
Speaker 1: actually murdered by an unknown party. Many of you are
Speaker 1: probably already familiar with the story of the Somerton Man
Speaker 1: at Decened, who was found on a beach in Australia
Speaker 1: seventy six years ago and was tentatively identified in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two. There are a number of parallels between the
Speaker 1: Somerton Man and Jennifer Fairgate, which i'll be discussing in
Speaker 1: more detail later on, but this was another case in
Speaker 1: which there were all sorts of wild theories about the
Speaker 1: victim being a spy, yet the actual truth might be
Speaker 1: a lot less complicated. So on this episode, we're going
Speaker 1: to try and figure out who Jennifer Fairgate was and
Speaker 1: the circumstances which led to her losing her life.
Speaker 3: So there's some pros and cons to this case when
Speaker 3: you're looking at it from an investigative point of view.
Speaker 3: The first thing I think when I hear what you
Speaker 3: guys just described is we're in twenty twenty five. Please
Speaker 3: tell me that we have a police department who preserves
Speaker 3: some evidence about Jennifer Fairgate in an effort to at
Speaker 3: least provide an identification for this woman, and that DNA
Speaker 3: might be a possibility.
Speaker 1: Yes, DNA is definitely a possibility, But I think the
Speaker 1: rules for genetic genealogy are different in Europe than they
Speaker 1: are in North America. I do not believe they've actually
Speaker 1: implemented it, so they're still at the phase where, well,
Speaker 1: if we get a good match, we can compare her
Speaker 1: DNA to it, but they can't actually enter her DNA
Speaker 1: into a forensic genealogy database and hope that it matches
Speaker 1: a distant relative. So I think that's why she is
Speaker 1: still unidentified.
Speaker 3: Okay, well that's frustrating and hard. But then you also
Speaker 3: have to think of this from a cold case perspective.
Speaker 3: When you look at a case that occurred and you said,
Speaker 3: I believe nineteen ninety five, then the police and anyone
Speaker 3: who would be investigating this case eventually have to step
Speaker 3: back and not give as much attention to a case
Speaker 3: like this because there's not much to go on, and
Speaker 3: in Jennifer's case, you don't have a family and that
Speaker 3: political pressure and social pressure saying you have to help
Speaker 3: us solvet our loved one's mysterious death, you have to
Speaker 3: help us keep looking at this. So without that kind
Speaker 3: of evidentiary perspective, and without the social and political pressure
Speaker 3: of a family and community asking for their person someone
Speaker 3: they cared about, to be identified, then it's shocking to
Speaker 3: me that we're even discussing this case. I'm excited because
Speaker 3: Jennifer Fairgate was somebody's daughter and sister and friend, but
Speaker 3: it's a really interesting case because you don't have the
Speaker 3: elements you typically have in a cold case. That's being
Speaker 3: kept alive.
Speaker 2: Robin, do you know if okay?
Speaker 1: So?
Speaker 2: Obviously, when Unsolved Mysteries aired this case, it became a
Speaker 2: true crime obsession internationally, but would this have been like
Speaker 2: a national obsession in Norway?
Speaker 1: It was pretty much languished in obscurity for a long
Speaker 1: time until a Norwegian journalist decided to publish an article
Speaker 1: about it, and it finally got some national attention. And
Speaker 1: it wasn't particularly well known in North America before Unsaw Mysteries,
Speaker 1: but it was discussed in places like Reddit. So I
Speaker 1: don't know if it's an obsession, but it has gotten
Speaker 1: more coverage in Norway than most cases I think involving
Speaker 1: unidentified decedents.
Speaker 2: Our story begins in Oslo, Norway, in nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 2: and takes place at the Oslo Plaza, a luxurious five
Speaker 2: star hotel which also happens to be the second tallest
Speaker 2: building in all of Norway. At around seven to fifty
Speaker 2: pm on the evening of Saturday, June third, a part
Speaker 2: time security guard named espen Nass arrived at room twenty
Speaker 2: eight oh five to check on a female guest. The
Speaker 2: woman had checked in three days earlier, but it had
Speaker 2: not yet made any payment for the room in spite
Speaker 2: of numerous requests for her to do so. The woman
Speaker 2: had exceeded her credit limit, and, since it do not disturb, side,
Speaker 2: had been hanging on the room's door since the previous morning.
Speaker 2: The hotel's receptionist asked Nas to speak with her. When
Speaker 2: Nas arrived at the room, he knocked on the door,
Speaker 2: but was startled when he heard a gunshot from inside
Speaker 2: seconds later. Unsure of what to do, Nas hid in
Speaker 2: a concealed position for a period of time to watch
Speaker 2: the room, but when no one emerged, he took the
Speaker 2: elevator downstairs to the hotel's security headquarters and had them
Speaker 2: contact the police. The hotel's security chief went to room
Speaker 2: twenty eight oh five and knocked on the door, but
Speaker 2: received no answer. Since the door was double locked from
Speaker 2: the inside, it could only be opened by a special
Speaker 2: security key card, so the security chief used it to enter.
Speaker 2: He then discovered the body of a woman lying face
Speaker 2: up on the bed, where the linen mattress had been
Speaker 2: soaked with blood. She was the apparent victim of a
Speaker 2: self inflicted gunshot wound, which had been fired through the
Speaker 2: center of her forehead. A browning semi automatic nine millimeters
Speaker 2: pistol was in the woman's right hand, across her chest
Speaker 2: and her thumb was on the trigger. There were two
Speaker 2: bullets embedded in the floor, and while one of the
Speaker 2: bullets was from the fatal shot which killed the woman,
Speaker 2: the second one had been fired through the pillow, mattress
Speaker 2: and bed. Since the pillow was flipped over, it was
Speaker 2: theorized that it may have been used as a silencer
Speaker 2: for a test shot. When the Oslo police arrived at
Speaker 2: the scene, they quickly came to the conclusion that the
Speaker 2: woman's death was a suicide. There were no signs of
Speaker 2: struggle or for sentry, and since the door had been
Speaker 2: double locked from the inside, it seemed impossible that an
Speaker 2: intruder could have exited the room and locked the door
Speaker 2: behind them, and even though the room's window was open,
Speaker 2: there was no balcony or means to use for an escape.
Speaker 2: The woman had registered at the hotel under the name
Speaker 2: Jennifer Fairgate and listed contact information for Belgium, but things
Speaker 2: became a lot more complicated when the Oslo police got
Speaker 2: in touch with the Belgian authority about notifying next of kin.
Speaker 2: They soon learned that most of the contact info was false,
Speaker 2: and there was no record of anyone named Jennifer Fairgate,
Speaker 2: and sure enough, a search of room twenty eight oh
Speaker 2: five failed to turn up any official identification for her.
Speaker 3: So this is really interesting because when you look at
Speaker 3: this idea that the death is suspicious, there's elements of
Speaker 3: the case where you start to say, Okay, who is
Speaker 3: this person? What was she doing there? That's the kind
Speaker 3: of things that kind of raise the hair on the
Speaker 3: back of your neck. But you also have to think
Speaker 3: about the security guard who's standing there and he's watching
Speaker 3: for someone to come out as if there was a confrontation.
Speaker 3: He's scared that the shooter could come out into the
Speaker 3: hallway and actually injure him as well. He's very well
Speaker 3: aware that there's no other way out of that room,
Speaker 3: so he's sitting there to watch no one comes out,
Speaker 3: and when he goes to the room, there's a deceased
Speaker 3: female there with a gunshot into her forehead. Now we
Speaker 3: all know when you're talking about suicide, there's a lot
Speaker 3: of kind of trends when you look at male versus
Speaker 3: female suicides, and a shooting is a much less common
Speaker 3: method for a woman to complete suicide, especially a facial
Speaker 3: injury like that, where she can't be buried in an
Speaker 3: open casket, those kinds of things. But what if Jennifer
Speaker 3: is doing something where no one cares, no one knows
Speaker 3: where she is, no family's going to come forward, and
Speaker 3: so she doesn't care about those things, and it really
Speaker 3: is a suicide. Is that a potential in this case?
Speaker 1: I think so. Yeah. And the only reason they've explored
Speaker 1: the possibility that this could have been a murder is
Speaker 1: that the security guard was gone for about ten or
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes. Even though he looked at the room for
Speaker 1: a long time, he went downstairs to get help. So
Speaker 1: if there was a killer inside, they could have snuck
Speaker 1: out during that window of time without anyone seeing them.
Speaker 1: And as we're going to go into in a little while,
Speaker 1: there's been some speculation that this woman was a spy
Speaker 1: and was involved in sp and that if she was
Speaker 1: killed by someone, it could have been a professional who
Speaker 1: locked the door behind them so that it looked like
Speaker 1: no one was ever in there. But at the outset
Speaker 1: at least, everyone just pretty much assumed it was a suicide,
Speaker 1: and that does seem like the most logical explanation. But
Speaker 1: even if it was the big mystery is who was
Speaker 1: this woman and why did she do this?
Speaker 2: Do either of you know how often in the gun
Speaker 2: related suicides that people would end up shooting themselves right
Speaker 2: in the middle of their forehead.
Speaker 1: That is very rare, because I've always heard that there's
Speaker 1: a risk that you could pass through your brain and
Speaker 1: cause damage but not actually kill you. And that's why
Speaker 1: a lot, a lot of the time people like to
Speaker 1: put it in their mouth, because they know that that's
Speaker 1: a better opportunity to finish the job. But I've rarely
Speaker 1: ever heard of like a gunshot wound at the forehead.
Speaker 3: I mean even to the side of the head, under
Speaker 3: the chin, or in the mouth. Those are all much
Speaker 3: more common, I would think, and especially like I was saying,
Speaker 3: you know, a gunshot wound's going to destroy the visual
Speaker 3: component of your face, and so I feel like, you know,
Speaker 3: we know, women are much more likely to do a
Speaker 3: method that preserves the beauty of their face that their
Speaker 3: loved one doesn't have to see that there's more emotional
Speaker 3: thought to those kinds of things. Doesn't mean that women
Speaker 3: don't shoot themselves. They do, but right in the forehead
Speaker 3: it seems uncomfortable, awkward, bizarre to even hold a gun
Speaker 3: in that manner as well.
Speaker 2: Like I could see in a situation where maybe they
Speaker 2: only had like a long gun or like a shotgun
Speaker 2: and they were trying to like fen angle a position
Speaker 2: to do it, but not with a nine to millimeter.
Speaker 1: It is odd. You can even assume that she decided
Speaker 1: to shoot herself in that manner, hoping that maybe able
Speaker 1: to destroy her face and no one will recognize her.
Speaker 1: But they obviously left enough that they've been able to
Speaker 1: create a composite sketch of what this woman looked like. Now,
Speaker 1: I'll mention that prior to the Unsolved Mysteries episode, most
Speaker 1: of the sources out there referred to this woman as
Speaker 1: Jennifer Fergate spelled Feerge instead of Fairgate, which is spelled Fai,
Speaker 1: which is spelled fair Gate. I think this confusion came about.
Speaker 1: I think this confusion came about because the hotel's booking
Speaker 1: department registered her under the name Fairgate when she originally
Speaker 1: made a reservation, but she twice signed her last name
Speaker 1: as Fergate when she checked in. Since the majority of
Speaker 1: the sources seemed to refer to her as Fairgate, that's
Speaker 1: theme I'll be using here, and of course, even though
Speaker 1: we know her first name isn't actually Jennifer, this is
Speaker 1: how we'll be referring to her for the rest of
Speaker 1: this episode. Jennifer originally phoned in a reservation to the
Speaker 1: Oslo Plaza on made the twenty second, and called the
Speaker 1: hotel again on the thirty first to confirm the reservation
Speaker 1: and informed them that she was planning to check in
Speaker 1: that night. It's worth noting that she spoke English during
Speaker 1: the first call and German during the second call, where
Speaker 1: she also mentioned that she was planning to check in
Speaker 1: with a male companion named Lewis Fairgate. This person's first
Speaker 1: name is spelled l s, which is how we spelled
Speaker 1: the female name Lois in North America, but in French
Speaker 1: it's a male name and pronounced Lewis. Jennifer showed up
Speaker 1: at the hotel to check in at around ten forty
Speaker 1: pm on the evening of May the thirty first, and
Speaker 1: her original reservation was for two nights. The rate for
Speaker 1: the room was one thousand, eight hundred and forty five
Speaker 1: kroner per night, which is around one hundred and ninety
Speaker 1: four dollars in American currency, but for reasons unknown Jennifer
Speaker 1: was never asked to provide a credit card, and she
Speaker 1: did not pay anything in advance. It was also apparent
Speaker 1: that Jennifer never provided any identification, because even though the
Speaker 1: receptionist had ticked the box on the check in form
Speaker 1: where a guest is supposed to write down their passport number,
Speaker 1: no information was listed for her contact info. Jennifer did
Speaker 1: provide an address for the village of Verlaine, Belgium, which
Speaker 1: was located in the promise of Liege and had a
Speaker 1: population of around three thousand residents at the time. However,
Speaker 1: the street name one forty eight Rue de Lastade in
Speaker 1: the postal code seven nine six eight did not actually exist.
Speaker 1: The phone number she provided was three five dash six
Speaker 1: 's eight dash three two six five four eight, but
Speaker 1: six ' eight was not Forlaine's area code, and while
Speaker 1: that six digit number did exist in two other area codes,
Speaker 1: neither of them were six eight. The phone numbers from
Speaker 1: these other area codes were later called, but none of
Speaker 1: the people who answered knew anything about Jennifer Fairgate. On
Speaker 1: the check in form, Jennifer listed her employer as Serpuce
Speaker 1: Belgia spelled cer Bis, and it also did not exist,
Speaker 1: though there was a Belgian company at the time called
Speaker 1: Cerberus spelled cerder Us. Jennifer's birthdate was listed as August
Speaker 1: twenty third, nineteen seventy three, which would have made her
Speaker 1: twenty one at the time of her death, but after
Speaker 1: an autopsy was performed, forensic pathologist estimated that she was
Speaker 1: likely between twenty five to thirty five years old.
Speaker 3: Well, this is interesting when you step back and look
Speaker 3: at all of the details. If she truly was let's
Speaker 3: say twenty one or even twenty five, what's the likelihood
Speaker 3: she's doing something at a high level of putting her
Speaker 3: at risk of something like espionage or being a spy.
Speaker 3: She's a baby that's so young. Now thirty five, I
Speaker 3: could see her having a career or doing something where
Speaker 3: she has a background that gets her deeper and deeper
Speaker 3: or higher and higher in an organization. But at twenty
Speaker 3: one or twenty five, she's just so young. And then
Speaker 3: you look at this idea that the front desk receptionist
Speaker 3: doesn't ask for a lot of information. Not guaranteed they
Speaker 3: required it at the time because we used to be
Speaker 3: able to pay cash for a room and you make
Speaker 3: up whatever name you wanted. But Obviously Jennifer was not
Speaker 3: behaving in a way they raised any kind of suspicion.
Speaker 3: There was nothing that made her uncomfortable about running her
Speaker 3: a room. She very calmly probably filled out all this
Speaker 3: information and didn't raise any alarms and made her need identification,
Speaker 3: Like she was smooth enough and calm enough, which then
Speaker 3: makes suicide really interesting because how long had she.
Speaker 1: Been in the room, Just a couple of days, so
Speaker 1: like she didn't immediately go in there and shoot herself,
Speaker 1: Like she came in and out a couple of times
Speaker 1: over the next few days before it happened.
Speaker 3: And it doesn't seem like anyone at the hotel recognized
Speaker 3: any kind of distress or change in behavior that would
Speaker 3: raise alarm bells. Not that you always can see warning signs,
Speaker 3: but you'd think that they would at least be kind
Speaker 3: of you know, she seems heavy. Last time I saw her,
Speaker 3: she seemed really upset, but we don't have any of that,
Speaker 3: so it seems like she presents very calm, She is
Speaker 3: very confident to fill out this false information. So in
Speaker 3: that way, you almost feel like, did she come prepared
Speaker 3: with all these lies because they were given to her,
Speaker 3: or is it just she made them up very comfortably
Speaker 3: and didn't care, Like there are people who have no
Speaker 3: problem falsifying anything that they say, so so many conflicting
Speaker 3: behaviors almost.
Speaker 2: When I find it so interesting that she chose this
Speaker 2: Belgian company and maybe she just misspelled it, like did
Speaker 2: she mean to write Cerberus and write and she wrote
Speaker 2: service because Cerberus is the multi headed dog who guards
Speaker 2: who's like one of the hounds of Hell, basically who
Speaker 2: guards the gates of Hell or Hades. So I wonder
Speaker 2: if there's anything symbolic in her choice there.
Speaker 1: I did not know that. I've seen so many theories
Speaker 1: about why she shows her name, why she shows these places,
Speaker 1: But this is the first time I've ever heard that
Speaker 1: the name of a dog, a hound of Hell, is Cerberus.
Speaker 1: So that's an interesting new take.
Speaker 3: That is interesting to take a hell hound. That's super cool.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: But there was a company that truly was just one
Speaker 3: letter off right from what No, No, it's quite a
Speaker 3: few letters off if you look at she spelled it
Speaker 3: ceer Bis, a six letter word, and then you have Cerberus,
Speaker 3: which I mean, I don't know, it's not Did they
Speaker 3: interview people at the actual company that did exist.
Speaker 1: A good question because they probably never even thought of
Speaker 1: that at the time, because they just wrote her office
Speaker 1: as suicide and maybe didn't put two and two together
Speaker 1: and think that, oh the maybe she meant sorebus, So
Speaker 1: that part of the story is unclear.
Speaker 2: There were also conflicting reports about whether or not Jennifer
Speaker 2: had a male companion with her, and if he may
Speaker 2: have been the mysterious Lewis Fairgate, whose name was also
Speaker 2: listed on the registration card. The receptionist who checked Jennifer
Speaker 2: into the hotel said that she was alone, but the
Speaker 2: reception desk supervisor reported seeing Jennifer in the company of
Speaker 2: a dark haired man who appeared to be between thirty
Speaker 2: five to forty years old. However, it's possible that the
Speaker 2: man was not with Jennifer when she first arrived, but
Speaker 2: was present when she went down to the lobby to
Speaker 2: make a currency exchange, about an hour and a half
Speaker 2: after she originally checked in. Whatever the case, no trace
Speaker 2: of this man could be found after Jennifer's death, and
Speaker 2: there was no record of any man named Lewis Fairgate
Speaker 2: with Interpol or any other databases. But it was established
Speaker 2: that Jennifer received two key cards when she checked in,
Speaker 2: both of which were found inside of her room following
Speaker 2: her death. The only fingerprints which could be found in
Speaker 2: the room matched Jennifer, but when they were run through
Speaker 2: interpool there was no match and no missing persons report
Speaker 2: on file for anyone matching her description. A review of
Speaker 2: airline passenger lists for all flights that arrived in Oslo
Speaker 2: on the night Jennifer checked into the hotel also failed
Speaker 2: to turn up any leads.
Speaker 3: It is interesting when you look at Lewis Faregate, it's
Speaker 3: Jennifer Fairgate as well. So is she presenting as if
Speaker 3: this person would have been her husband, her partner, her brother.
Speaker 3: Who is this person to her right? They have no idea.
Speaker 3: His name could also be fictitious. And then, like you said,
Speaker 3: we're not even sure that this dark haired man was
Speaker 3: definitely linked to her right when she first arrived. So
Speaker 3: it's bizarre that there's so many elements of this story
Speaker 3: that exists. I mean, she's lied from start to finish
Speaker 3: about what she's doing there, who she is, and who
Speaker 3: she's with. So I do find it interesting that their
Speaker 3: name's match, and how did they find out the name?
Speaker 3: This is just the registration card, Like she's going to
Speaker 3: have this guest come check in with her.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when she originally made the reservation, she said she
Speaker 1: was going to have a companion named named Lewis Fairgate.
Speaker 1: But of course there are conflicting reports about whether this
Speaker 1: man was actually with her, because the receptionist when she
Speaker 1: checked in said that she did not see a man. Sorry,
Speaker 1: he did not see a man with her, But another
Speaker 1: cleric thought that they saw a man with Jennifer later
Speaker 1: on when she made a currency exchanged. But they've never
Speaker 1: established if this man ever entered the room at any point,
Speaker 1: and of course, if he was with Jennifer during or
Speaker 1: stay in the hotel, we have no idea what happened
Speaker 1: to him afterwards.
Speaker 2: And what if he was just some random guy that
Speaker 2: she was talking to, like while she was in line
Speaker 2: for the currency exchange, and the supervisor thought that they
Speaker 2: were together, but they were actually just in conversation. Like,
Speaker 2: we don't even know if this Lewis Fairgate was completely fictitious,
Speaker 2: if he even existed at all, Like, I mean, not
Speaker 2: him by name, but some man that she was going
Speaker 2: to meet exactly.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's possible that maybe she was playing to
Speaker 1: check in with a man, but he didn't show up,
Speaker 1: and maybe that played a role in her suicide.
Speaker 3: There also could be an underlining mental health issue where
Speaker 3: you have someone who has built up such a fictitious
Speaker 3: life and she has all of these just kind of
Speaker 3: a confidence in a lie, and it's all to cover
Speaker 3: something else, right that she functions as if, Oh, I'm
Speaker 3: coming to this hotel and I have a partner who's
Speaker 3: going to meet me, or my husband's going to come
Speaker 3: meet me, and she just, you know, fills out this
Speaker 3: form with no real information. Some of the signs point
Speaker 3: to someone who's kind of lost touch with reality as well.
Speaker 2: She got really lucky with her check in that they
Speaker 2: didn't ask for more information.
Speaker 1: Especially since this is pretty much the fanciest hotel at Oslo.
Speaker 1: It's like you would think that a place like that
Speaker 1: is going to check all sorts of thing like require
Speaker 1: credit card identification, even back in nineteen ninety five, I'm
Speaker 1: sure a luxury hotel would do that. In addition to
Speaker 1: the lack of identification for Jennifer, a search of the
Speaker 1: room failed to turn up any money, credit cards, plane tickets, photographs,
Speaker 1: or keys, and oddly, she also did not possess any
Speaker 1: toilet trees. Or cosmetics such as a toothbrush or hair brush.
Speaker 1: But here's a full inventory of items which were found
Speaker 1: in room twenty eight oh five. At the time of
Speaker 1: her death, Jennifer was dressed in a black thigh length
Speaker 1: cotton jacket, a bra, black silk pajama shorts, stockings, and
Speaker 1: black pumps. Other items of clothing in the room were
Speaker 1: a cotton sweater, a sleeveless blouse, three light colored bras,
Speaker 1: a gray blazer, a long black leather jacket, and a
Speaker 1: long trench coat. Curiously, other than what she was wearing,
Speaker 1: Jennifer did not have any additional items of clothing for
Speaker 1: her lower body, such as pants, skirts, or shoes. To
Speaker 1: make things even stranger, the brand tags have been removed
Speaker 1: from most of Jennifer's clothing, and the shoe manufacturer's name
Speaker 1: was removed from the insoles of her pumps. The only
Speaker 1: item which did have a label was the blazer, which
Speaker 1: was traced to the German fashion house Renee Lizard, and
Speaker 1: it likely wasn't removed because it could have destroyed the
Speaker 1: blazer's lining. In addition, Jennifer had a gold ring on
Speaker 1: her right middle finger, which was also likely manufactured in Germany.
Speaker 1: A gold ring in her left ear and a Citizen
Speaker 1: Aquilon diving watch on her wrist. It was determined that
Speaker 1: the Browning nine millimeter pistol was originally manufactured at a
Speaker 1: factory in Herstel, Belgium in nineteen ninety or nineteen ninety one,
Speaker 1: but it contained no ceial numbers, as it appeared they
Speaker 1: were burned off by acid, making the gun impossible to trace.
Speaker 1: Aside from the two bullets which had been fed, there
Speaker 1: were seven rounds inside the pistols magazine and a black
Speaker 1: bronze boofal attached. A case was found in the room
Speaker 1: containing twenty five additional bullets, but no other items. Jennifer's
Speaker 1: other possessions included a turquoise green travel bag from the
Speaker 1: German manufacturer Travelight, as well as a nearly empty bottle
Speaker 1: of Bungaro poor lom, a cologne for men. The room
Speaker 1: also contained three empty soda bottles and an open bag
Speaker 1: of potato crisps taken from the mini bar.
Speaker 3: Jennifer checked in for a couple of days, and that's
Speaker 3: all the clothes that they found there for her. When
Speaker 3: you think of the behavior and this idea that all
Speaker 3: the labels were removed from her clothes. One of two
Speaker 3: things is happening this kind of paranoia or the need
Speaker 3: to remove the identification of these designers or whatever. Or
Speaker 3: it could be as simple as back then we really
Speaker 3: didn't think about this, but a sensitivity to tags and
Speaker 3: things like that, or this kind of I don't know,
Speaker 3: she could have an OCD obsession where she needs to
Speaker 3: have the name taken off right where she doesn't like that,
Speaker 3: but to the extent of the gun has the numbers
Speaker 3: removed via acid. That's a little extreme, right, Like my
Speaker 3: late heavy buddy used to have to cut every single
Speaker 3: tag out of his shirts. Reagan cannot have things that
Speaker 3: have tags on him. It's just this, you know, sensitivity
Speaker 3: to things. And but none of them are going to
Speaker 3: remove like burn off logos. They're simply cutting tags out.
Speaker 3: So I don't know that that's actually what's happening here,
Speaker 3: but very bizarre behavior.
Speaker 2: And just for some context, I just looked up on
Speaker 2: Perplexity what would have been the cost of a Renee
Speaker 2: Liizard blazer in nineteen ninety five, and they said it
Speaker 2: was like mid to high luxury range and somewhere between
Speaker 2: three hundred to eight hundred US dollars.
Speaker 1: Wow, Yeah, there definitely were signs that this woman had
Speaker 1: a lot of money, and as actually pointed out, like
Speaker 1: some people think it's really mysterious when people remove like
Speaker 1: tags and labels from their clothing. They think it's a
Speaker 1: sign that they're a spy and trying to get rid
Speaker 1: of their identity. But whenever I see online discussions about
Speaker 1: cases like these, all off and see people say, well,
Speaker 1: that's exactly that something I want to do. I like
Speaker 1: to remove tags just because they make me feel uncomfortable,
Speaker 1: So you shouldn't really read anything into that, though I
Speaker 1: do agree like the fact that the serial number was
Speaker 1: burned off by acid on the gun is a bit
Speaker 1: unusual and does suggest that even if she wasn't a spy,
Speaker 1: that maybe she might might have been involved in criminal
Speaker 1: activity or something.
Speaker 2: I think removing tags can be pretty common. I mean,
Speaker 2: some people are very sensitive. Other people have sensory processing disorders,
Speaker 2: and I think if you're on the autism spectrum, quite
Speaker 2: a few people don't like that sensation. I'm somebody who's
Speaker 2: quite sensitive to scratchy fabrics, so if it's a tag
Speaker 2: that's even slightly scratchy, it will be the only thing
Speaker 2: that I think of but the labels off of shoes
Speaker 2: is interesting because you're not going barefoot in a shoe,
Speaker 2: so you'd think it would almost bother you more because
Speaker 2: they're so anchored into your shoe. You'd almost have to
Speaker 2: like cut it out, and it would maybe potentially create
Speaker 2: even more of an uncomfortable sensation because you're then exposed
Speaker 2: to other fabrics. Jennifer's official description was that she was
Speaker 2: five foot two or five foot three and weighed one
Speaker 2: hundred and forty seven pounds, and she had blue eyes
Speaker 2: surrounded by make up, and short crop black hair that
Speaker 2: may have been dyed. She had also undergone extensive dental
Speaker 2: work done with gold and porcelain, a practice which is
Speaker 2: typically done in the United States, Switzerland, Netherlands, and Germany.
Speaker 2: The Oslo police held on to Jennifer's body for over
Speaker 2: a year in hopes that someone would come forward to
Speaker 2: identify her, but when this failed to happen, she was
Speaker 2: buried in a pauper's grave at Oslo's Vestra Grovelin Cemetery
Speaker 2: in June of nineteen ninety six. The only people who
Speaker 2: attended Jennifer's burial were the pallbearers who carried her casket,
Speaker 2: and she did not receive a headstone. However, the case
Speaker 2: captured the attention of a Norwegian investigative journalist, Lars Christian Wegner,
Speaker 2: who would spend the next two decades chronicling Jennifer's story
Speaker 2: and trying to figure out her true identity. Unfortunately, since
Speaker 2: the Oslo police instantly concluded that Jennifer took her own life,
Speaker 2: no homicide investigation was ever performed. The room's bedsheets or
Speaker 2: pillow were never taken into evidence, very few witnesses at
Speaker 2: the hotel were questioned, and none of the surveillance footage
Speaker 2: from the hotel's numerous security cameras were ever reviewed. While
Speaker 2: a toxicology screening was performed to check Jennifer's system for alcohol,
Speaker 2: which came up negative, they never checked for any traces
Speaker 2: of drugs. Following Jennifer's burial, the Oslo police chief ordered
Speaker 2: the disposal of most of her personal items and other
Speaker 2: pieces of evidence, including skin samples taken from her hands
Speaker 2: and her jewelry which was sold at auction.
Speaker 3: How sad when you think of this, So you have
Speaker 3: a person who's twenty one to thirty five years old
Speaker 3: and she's literally buried into a ground with no headstone
Speaker 3: marking who she is. There's nobody there at her funeral
Speaker 3: no matter what's going on. Let's say she's a deep criminal.
Speaker 3: Let's say she's you know, a crazy spy, or she's
Speaker 3: involved in something that's bad, decisions that make her going
Speaker 3: down a dark path right, influenced by a whole lot
Speaker 3: of things. But there's somebody that gave birth to that
Speaker 3: baby girl, and there's somebody who loved her, and so
Speaker 3: it's really sad when you step back and you think about,
Speaker 3: we really know nothing about her, and someone's going, I
Speaker 3: wonder what happened to this person that at one point
Speaker 3: I was close with and she just disappears. I mean,
Speaker 3: it seems insane when you think about the fact that
Speaker 3: I could literally just disappear and no one knows what
Speaker 3: happened to me, and they're not able to link who
Speaker 3: I am here. It is really interesting because you know,
Speaker 3: is she on sites where people are looking for a
Speaker 3: missing loved one. Is she being kept alive in a
Speaker 3: forensic sense where they can go back and test these things?
Speaker 3: Would they go back and test these things? Or is
Speaker 3: it just people like us who are remembering how bizarre
Speaker 3: and sad it is and we're the only ones who
Speaker 3: were talking about her.
Speaker 1: Well, thankfully. That seems to be like a hobby on
Speaker 1: the internet for a lot of these cases involving John
Speaker 1: or Jane does where people spend a lot of time
Speaker 1: trying to figure out who they are and match them
Speaker 1: up to missing persons. And in the past several years,
Speaker 1: we've seen a number of John and Jane does finally
Speaker 1: get identified thanks to DNA and genetic genealogy, and more
Speaker 1: often than not, when they contact the victims' families, they say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember when such and such went missing, like thirty
Speaker 1: forty years ago, and we didn't know, We didn't think
Speaker 1: that they were dead. We just figured that they kind
Speaker 1: of went off and started a new life or something
Speaker 1: and broke off all contacts. So then it becomes a
Speaker 1: major shock to them when they find out that the
Speaker 1: loved one is buried in a pauper's grave somewhere that
Speaker 1: they're not even from. And there's a good chance that's
Speaker 1: the same thing with Jennifer's case.
Speaker 2: And she was kind of at that time where she
Speaker 2: was right on the precipice of like the Internet exploding.
Speaker 2: Not everyone had computers in their home in nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 2: not everybody had a cell phone. The world was just
Speaker 2: becoming more connected. I think she was just at that
Speaker 2: tail end of people having that ability to just kind
Speaker 2: of fall off the face of the earth, and loved
Speaker 2: one saying something like, oh, I thought they went off
Speaker 2: to start a new life. I didn't think that they
Speaker 2: had passed away. So the timing is kind of unfortunate there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she just does this like a couple of years later,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure someone might have figured out who she
Speaker 1: is by now. So after Lars Christian Wagner took an
Speaker 1: interest in the case, he constructed a timeline to explore
Speaker 1: the events which took place in the days prior to
Speaker 1: Jennifer's death, and he noticed some additional oddities. The Oslo
Speaker 1: Plaza had key cards which automatically logged a time someone
Speaker 1: used them to enter the room, and they showed Jennifer
Speaker 1: entering room twenty eight oh five total of five times
Speaker 1: during her stay. The car was first used at ten
Speaker 1: forty four pm on the evening of Wednesday, May the
Speaker 1: thirty first after Jennifer checked in, and used again at
Speaker 1: twelve twenty one am on Thursday, June the first, likely
Speaker 1: after she went downstairs to do a currency exchange. She
Speaker 1: next used it later that morning at eight thirty five am,
Speaker 1: possibly after she left the room to get breakfast. On
Speaker 1: the morning of Friday, June the second, Jennifer appeared at
Speaker 1: the front desk in order to extend her stay at
Speaker 1: the hotel for an additional two nights, and she was
Speaker 1: then logged entering her room at eight fifty and eleven
Speaker 1: oh three am. One of the staff members would recall
Speaker 1: having witnessed Jennifer enter her room that morning and placing
Speaker 1: a do not disturb sign on the door, where it
Speaker 1: remained until her body was discovered on the evening of Saturday,
Speaker 1: June the third. But here's where things get a bit strange.
Speaker 1: At twelve forty four pm on Thursday, June the first,
Speaker 1: a pair of maids entered Room twenty eight oh five
Speaker 1: in order to clean it, and they can firm that
Speaker 1: no one was there since Jennifer's key card had been
Speaker 1: used at eight thirty four am, but was not used
Speaker 1: again until eight fifty am the following day. This implied
Speaker 1: that Jennifer had left her room sometime on Thursday morning
Speaker 1: and spent the night elsewhere until she showed up at
Speaker 1: the front desk on Friday morning. However, no one could
Speaker 1: confirm Jennifer's whereabouts during this nearly twenty four hour window.
Speaker 3: So do they go and actually look at the cleaning
Speaker 3: lady's key cards as well, because if they have this
Speaker 3: missing key activation right, that there's actually no in and
Speaker 3: out for Jennifer after this point, and the cleaning staff
Speaker 3: says that they actually went in the room and nobody
Speaker 3: was there. Is it possible that they had their timeline
Speaker 3: wrong and that do not disturb sign actually kept them
Speaker 3: from going in that room, or is there a proof
Speaker 3: on the computer system that they used their master key
Speaker 3: to get into that room.
Speaker 1: That's a good question because I do know that they
Speaker 1: TechEd Jennifer's key card, but I don't know if they
Speaker 1: had the resources to check the maid's key cards, because
Speaker 1: I do think that's a possibility that they were mixed
Speaker 1: up at their times, or they were mixed up at
Speaker 1: the room they went into, because I can only imagine
Speaker 1: how many rooms they clean within the course of a day,
Speaker 1: so they could have totally mixed up Jennifer's room for
Speaker 1: another room, or just got in their dates mixed up.
Speaker 2: Okay, So do you guys think that during that twenty
Speaker 2: four hour window Jennifer disposed of some sort of like
Speaker 2: skirt or pants because she had two long jackets, like
Speaker 2: a trench and a long leather jacket. But I just
Speaker 2: can't get past the fact that what was she wearing
Speaker 2: like silky shorts or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let me just double check here, Yeah, black silk
Speaker 1: pajama shorts but nothing over it, no pants, and she
Speaker 1: had some stockings but nothing to cover them.
Speaker 2: So theoretically she could have come into the hotel wearing
Speaker 2: her trench coat or her long leather coat and been
Speaker 2: wearing absolutely nothing on the bottom and nobody would even know.
Speaker 1: That is possible. I mean, I don't know how likely
Speaker 1: it is, but I do think there is some credence
Speaker 1: to the theat that she could have spent that twenty
Speaker 1: four hour window disposing of personal items which could have
Speaker 1: provided some sort of clue to our identity. We're going
Speaker 1: to talk more about this in episode two. But you
Speaker 1: might remember the episode we did sometime last year about
Speaker 1: a man named Peter Bergman who checked into a hotel
Speaker 1: in Ireland and over the course of the next few
Speaker 1: days you could see him going in and out and
Speaker 1: he was probably disposing of all of his personal items
Speaker 1: so that he couldn't be identified. So I think there's
Speaker 1: a chance Jennifer did the same thing.
Speaker 2: That was literally the case that I thought of. I
Speaker 2: remembered him carrying like a plastic bag or something like that,
Speaker 2: and he was seen disposing of that.
Speaker 1: Correct, he wasn't seen disposing of it, but the lobby
Speaker 1: security camera kept showing him walking out of the hotel
Speaker 1: carrying these bags, but when he were returned, he had
Speaker 1: nothing in his hands, so it was very likely that
Speaker 1: he was going out to dispose of whatever was in
Speaker 1: these bags at various locations.
Speaker 2: In another odd detail, one of the maids who cleaned
Speaker 2: the room on June first recalled seeing a pair of colorful,
Speaker 2: high heeled shoes, but they were never found, and the
Speaker 2: maid confirmed that these shoes were different than the black
Speaker 2: pumps that Jennifer was wearing at the time of her death.
Speaker 2: The maids also noticed two doubey comforters were on the bed,
Speaker 2: but since only one of them had been used, they
Speaker 2: decided to place the second duvet inside the closet, but
Speaker 2: when Jennifer's body was found, both duvets were lying next
Speaker 2: to each other on the bed, suggesting that a second
Speaker 2: person may have stayed in the room at some point,
Speaker 2: since Jennifer never provided a credit card or paid for
Speaker 2: the room when she checked in. A message was sent
Speaker 2: to the rooms television at two nineteen pm on Thursday
Speaker 2: afternoon requesting that she come down to the front desk
Speaker 2: to see the cashier. It was not until Jennifer returned
Speaker 2: to the room nineteen hours later when she finally hit
Speaker 2: the ok button to respond. But Jennifer never went to
Speaker 2: see the cashier, and even though a second notice was
Speaker 2: sent to the TV sometime on Friday and she responded
Speaker 2: by hitting okay, she still never showed up at the
Speaker 2: front desk. The last confirmed witness to see Jennifer alive
Speaker 2: was an employee wh went to a room at eight
Speaker 2: twenty three pm on Friday evening to deliver some broughtworst
Speaker 2: and potato salad that she'd ordered from room service. Jennifer
Speaker 2: gave her a tip of fifty kroner, which was considered
Speaker 2: to be quite generous for a room service tip, But curiously,
Speaker 2: the employee claimed that Jennifer was dressed in a suit
Speaker 2: which resembled a flight attendant's uniform, and she also noticed
Speaker 2: a rolling suitcase on a trolley. Neither the suit nor
Speaker 2: the rolling suitcase could be found in Jennifer's room following
Speaker 2: her death, but it's worth mentioning that the Broughtworst and
Speaker 2: potato salad the Jennifer had ordered was still there at
Speaker 2: the time she was found and had only been half eaten.
Speaker 2: The presence of the unfinished meal had been the source
Speaker 2: of confusion, as fifty milli liters of undigested food, including Broughtworst,
Speaker 2: was found in Jennifer's stomach. This would seem to indicate
Speaker 2: that Jennifer ate something a short time before she died,
Speaker 2: even though this meal was delivered to a room nearly
Speaker 2: twenty four hours before her body was found. At seven
Speaker 2: thirty six pm on Saturday May third, the front desk
Speaker 2: receptionist notice that Jennifer had exceeded her credit limit, so
Speaker 2: she sent an urgent message to the room's TV screen
Speaker 2: requesting that she contact the cashier immediately. Even though someone
Speaker 2: in the room responded by hitting okay, the receptionist was
Speaker 2: still concerned enough to send security upstairs to knock on
Speaker 2: Jennifer's door, and that's when espin Ess heard the gunshot
Speaker 2: At seven point fifty.
Speaker 3: So many bizarre things are happening here. The most concerning
Speaker 3: and bizarre thing to me is that flight attendant's uniform
Speaker 3: she was supposedly wearing, and that she has this rolling
Speaker 3: suitcase on a trolley, because where is it. The food
Speaker 3: not so bizarre if you ordered food and you're kind
Speaker 3: of hold up in a hotel room. It's a nice hotel,
Speaker 3: So I bet that they had, you know, microwaves and
Speaker 3: our little fridge and things like that, so she could
Speaker 3: have ordered that food, had a couple bikes and I'm like,
Speaker 3: I'm going to save it for tomorrow night, right, and
Speaker 3: had who knows what else she had in her room
Speaker 3: that she could eat. But what's very bizarre as well
Speaker 3: is when that knock happens on the door. Right, There's
Speaker 3: all these times she's being reached out to, you need
Speaker 3: to come pay, you need to come pay, you need
Speaker 3: to come pay. Please come see us, you need to
Speaker 3: come pay. And then when they go knock, they hear
Speaker 3: this gun shot very shortly after where I mean, what
Speaker 3: would cause that? Like they just happened to be there
Speaker 3: in that one moment that she was sitting there about
Speaker 3: to end her life anyway, and then she pulls the trigger.
Speaker 3: It's not the stress of the money necessarily, because she's
Speaker 3: clearly ordering food and paying for it. So it's just
Speaker 3: it's odd timing that that shot comes shortly after someone
Speaker 3: knocks on our door. Supposedly house cleaning had knocked, Supposedly
Speaker 3: other people had been by, and she was being communicated
Speaker 3: with or at least attempts before that. She didn't have
Speaker 3: to open the door, So why shoot yourself?
Speaker 1: Then?
Speaker 2: Does this seem odd too, that she's allowed to get
Speaker 2: room service even though she's been delinquent on paying her
Speaker 2: room bill for X amount of days?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it seems so weird, like that the hotel let
Speaker 1: her get away with something for days without like demanding
Speaker 1: that she pays something, and they're even still sending a
Speaker 1: room service. It's unusual enough that they let her check
Speaker 1: in without a credit card to begin with. But my
Speaker 1: theory has always been that if she was suicidal, that
Speaker 1: she maybe just decided I want to spend the last
Speaker 1: few days of my life in a luxury hotel. And
Speaker 1: then when she got the last message saying that you
Speaker 1: need to contact the cashier immediately, she realized, Oh the
Speaker 1: jig's up. They're going to throw me out of here eventually,
Speaker 1: So that could explain why she decided to shoot herself
Speaker 1: right after she heard the knock on the front door,
Speaker 1: because she feared she was going to be ejected.
Speaker 2: Maybe it was a money issue, because if she went
Speaker 2: to the front desk, they would demand that she pay
Speaker 2: up to date, whereas maybe she only had like enough
Speaker 2: money to pay for this last meal or something to
Speaker 2: that effect, and so that's why she didn't go down
Speaker 2: and settle her bill, because you'd think if she had
Speaker 2: the money and she was intending to end her own life,
Speaker 2: you would just feel good about yourself at the end,
Speaker 2: go and pay your bill, because these people are not
Speaker 2: only going to have to deal with the trauma of
Speaker 2: finding your body, it's going to disrupt the flow of
Speaker 2: everything at the hotel. So you'd think that the one
Speaker 2: thing that you would do would be to pay your
Speaker 2: bill if you could afford it.
Speaker 1: But it's possible she couldn't because people have wondered. That
Speaker 1: tip of fifty kroner that she gave to the room
Speaker 1: service person was a lot more than usual, so it
Speaker 1: could have been the last money she had and just
Speaker 1: felt I'm going to like give this as a tip
Speaker 1: for my last meal, and then by the time they
Speaker 1: throw me out here, I'm just gonna shoot myself instead.
Speaker 1: There were a few other odd details when Jennifer's body
Speaker 1: was found, and iron and ironing board were found inside
Speaker 1: the room, items which would ordinarily have to be ordered
Speaker 1: from the front desk, but it's unclear if Jennifer ever
Speaker 1: requested them. It appeared that a bathrobe and towel inside
Speaker 1: the bathroom had recently been used, and there was an
Speaker 1: open bar of soap and an open bottle of shampoo.
Speaker 1: This suggested that someone had taken a shower shortly before
Speaker 1: Jennifer's body was discovered, though it cannot be determined if
Speaker 1: it was her. There was also a newspaper bag containing
Speaker 1: a copy of the USA Today paper which had the
Speaker 1: number twenty eight sixteen written on it, as well as
Speaker 1: an unidentified fingerprint. Since it was common practice for the
Speaker 1: hotel to deliver complimentary newspapers to the guests, the bank
Speaker 1: may have belonged to room twenty eight sixteen down the hall,
Speaker 1: but by the time this was pursued, hotel registration records
Speaker 1: have been destroyed. However, a woman who had been staying
Speaker 1: in the adjoining room twenty eight eighteen reportedly told police
Speaker 1: that she had seen what she described as a quote
Speaker 1: unquote suspicious foreign couple near room twenty eight oh five
Speaker 1: around the time of Jennifer's death, but this lead was
Speaker 1: never followed up on. During his investigation, Lars Christian Wegner
Speaker 1: learned that a man from Belgium, whom he is only
Speaker 1: referred to as mister F, had been staying in room
Speaker 1: twenty eight oh four, directly across the hall from Jennifer
Speaker 1: during the time period he was there. Mister F was
Speaker 1: never questioned by police, but Wagner managed to track him down,
Speaker 1: and mister reff claimed that he remembered one of the
Speaker 1: employees asking him about Jennifer's death as he was checking
Speaker 1: out the problem. Mister F said that he checked out
Speaker 1: on the morning of Saturday, June the third, and Jennifer's
Speaker 1: body was not discovered until later that evening. When Wagner
Speaker 1: pressed him about this is mister F had no explanation
Speaker 1: for this discrepancy. Even though the Oslo police destroyed a
Speaker 1: lot of evidence from the case, they still held onto
Speaker 1: Jennifer's gun, and when Wagner showed it to some weapons experts,
Speaker 1: they concluded that it was not actually an authentic Browning
Speaker 1: nine millimeters pistol. Instead, it was made up of parts
Speaker 1: from several weapons which were produced by a Hungarian factory
Speaker 1: during the nineteen sixties and seventies, and the only part
Speaker 1: of the gun which was actually produced in a Browning
Speaker 1: factory in Belgium during the early nineteen nineties was the barrel.
Speaker 3: Very interesting that a twenty one year old or let's
Speaker 3: say a twenty five year old is going to have
Speaker 3: this piece maled weapon and one with the serial numbers
Speaker 3: taken off, but also just kind of this put together weapon,
Speaker 3: not that she's going to know how to build a
Speaker 3: weapon like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, very bizarre. Like there's so many signs here that
Speaker 1: you would think that, well, she's just an ordinary woman
Speaker 1: who just decided to check into a hotel. But then
Speaker 1: when you look at the firearm and how unusual it was,
Speaker 1: you think to yourself, she had to be involved with something,
Speaker 1: if not necessarily espionage, maybe she was involved in criminal
Speaker 1: activity of some sort.
Speaker 3: And mister f there was really no follow up with him, right,
Speaker 3: like he had his story and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 3: okay it.
Speaker 1: Is, but it is.
Speaker 3: It's a suicide, so we just close the case.
Speaker 1: Well, he wasn't questioned during the original investigation. It was
Speaker 1: Lars Christian Wegner, the journalist, questioning him years after the fact,
Speaker 1: and I don't believe the police ever followed up on it.
Speaker 1: Though I can't give him the benefit of the doubt
Speaker 1: that because he was recalling the situation for many years earlier,
Speaker 1: maybe he was mistaken about hearing about Jennifer's death when
Speaker 1: he checked out, So I don't know if that is
Speaker 1: an indicator that he had some inside knowledge of her death.
Speaker 3: So it's possible that he's actually mixing his reality with
Speaker 3: what he recalls from the media and they're just getting convoluted.
Speaker 3: It could be a very innocent explanation, or it could
Speaker 3: be something that should have been looked into further. But
Speaker 3: like we said, one, since a ruled a suicide and
Speaker 3: not a questionable death or a homicide, there really probably
Speaker 3: wasn't any more attention given to it from law enforcement perspective.
Speaker 2: The mysterious nature of Jennifer's death led to speculation that
Speaker 2: she may have been a spy or an intelligence agent
Speaker 2: involved in a covert operation, and perhaps her suicide had
Speaker 2: been staged. Even though she had supposedly fired a weapon,
Speaker 2: there was a surprising lack of gunshot residue or blood
Speaker 2: spatter on her right hand. The gun appeared to be
Speaker 2: positioned upside down in Jennifer's hand, and her fingerprints could
Speaker 2: not be found on it. Since a nine millimeters semi
Speaker 2: automatic weapon generally had a strong recoil, one expert believed
Speaker 2: that the gun should have fallen out of Jennifer's hand
Speaker 2: after she fired it, or at least left some scratches.
Speaker 2: Remarks when Espiness heard the gunshot after knocking on the
Speaker 2: door and headed downstairs. Room twenty eight oh five was
Speaker 2: technically left unguarded for fifteen minutes before the security chief arrived,
Speaker 2: and the Oslo police would not show up there for
Speaker 2: at least an hour. So could an unknown party have
Speaker 2: shot Jennifer, place a nine millimeter pistol in her right hand,
Speaker 2: and then somehow manage to escape the room undetected. Well.
Speaker 2: If you watch the Unsolved Mysteries episode which aired in
Speaker 2: October of twenty twenty, it features an interview with Ola
Speaker 2: caldeger who had once been the group leader for a
Speaker 2: section of the Norwegian intelligence Service. Caldegar found it very
Speaker 2: unlikely that Jennifer's death was a suicide, and even though
Speaker 2: Room twenty eight oh five had been double locked from
Speaker 2: the inside, he said the people who work in professional
Speaker 2: intelligence organizations would be trained on how to manipulate a
Speaker 2: door and lock it behind them without leaving any evidence.
Speaker 2: Caldegar also said that if an intelligence agent was killed
Speaker 2: in the line of duty, it was common practice for
Speaker 2: the government to inform the agent's family about their death
Speaker 2: and take care of them financially for the rest of
Speaker 2: their lives, on the condition that they remain quiet about
Speaker 2: the situation. If Jennifer had been an agent who was
Speaker 2: murdered under these circumstances, this could explain why no one
Speaker 2: ever came forward to identify her. Wegner made a trip
Speaker 2: to Berlain, Belgium, the village which Jennifer had listed on
Speaker 2: her registration card, but even though he circulated the composite
Speaker 2: sketch of her face among the village's residents, no one
Speaker 2: was able to positively identify her. We mentioned earlier that
Speaker 2: the address Jennifer provided did not exist, and birth records
Speaker 2: could find no listing for any village residents who were
Speaker 2: born on the date she wrote down. August twenty third,
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 3: Absolutely fascinating when you look at this idea that it's
Speaker 3: common practice. I didn't know that for the government to
Speaker 3: inform them about the death and then start to take
Speaker 3: care of the family after their loved one is killed
Speaker 3: in the line of duty. That is really bizarre and
Speaker 3: interesting when you look at this death here. If there's
Speaker 3: some highly trained person who would know how to manipulate
Speaker 3: these systems and could access her, it would make sense
Speaker 3: that if the family speaks, they lose their benefits, and
Speaker 3: we've already lost someone we love, we can't afford to
Speaker 3: lose the benefits too.
Speaker 1: That would be crazy though, that the family was aware
Speaker 1: of this case and knew that people were trying to
Speaker 1: identify Jennifer, but they're also saying to yourself, no, please
Speaker 1: don't do that, because we are getting financial benefits for
Speaker 1: staying silent or something. So it'll be very interesting if
Speaker 1: she is identified and they find out that it's a
Speaker 1: situation like that where the family has known all along
Speaker 1: who she was and what happened to her, but for
Speaker 1: various reasons they have just been unable to say anything. However, well,
Speaker 1: there was nothing to indicate that Jennifer ever lived in Verlaine.
Speaker 1: There was evidence to suggest she has some knowledge of
Speaker 1: the area. While she was staying at the Oslo Plaza,
Speaker 1: phone records showed that Jennifer attempted to make two calls
Speaker 1: from from Maroon to numbers which did not exist, but
Speaker 1: the zone and area codes for these numbers did belong
Speaker 1: to the Belgian municipality of Jamape Sarsambra, located only seventeen
Speaker 1: kilometers from Berlin. Interestingly enough, the two non existent numbers
Speaker 1: Jennifer dialed only had a one digit difference between them,
Speaker 1: which implied that she could remember the exact number and
Speaker 1: was trying different digits at random. Back in nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 1: DNA was not collected, and even though police took a
Speaker 1: blood sample from Jennifer, it was destroyed. One year after
Speaker 1: she was buried. In November of twenty sixteen, Jennifer's body
Speaker 1: was exhumed and a full DNA profile was successfully extracted
Speaker 1: from her body. While DNA analysis could not match her
Speaker 1: profile to anyone, the results indicated that she was of
Speaker 1: the European heritage, and isotope analysis showed that she likely
Speaker 1: spent her early years living in the northern section of
Speaker 1: what was then East Germany. Additional testing was performed on
Speaker 1: Jennifer's time by a Swedish forensic expert named Henrik Druitt.
Speaker 1: During the Cold War era between nineteen fifty five and
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty three, a lot of above ground testing was
Speaker 1: performed which involved the detonation of nuclear bombs. As a result,
Speaker 1: this increased the levels of sea fourteen in the atmosphere
Speaker 1: and wound up being incorporated in the anomal of people's teeth.
Speaker 1: When Druid examined the sea fourteen content in the anomal
Speaker 1: of Jennifer's teeth and compared with atmospheric levels from different
Speaker 1: time periods, he came to the conclusion that she was
Speaker 1: probably born in nineteen seventy one, making her twenty four
Speaker 1: years old at the time of her death. Even though
Speaker 1: the use of genetic genealogy has led to the identification
Speaker 1: of a number of decedents in North America these past
Speaker 1: several years, the practice has not yet been used in Norway,
Speaker 1: though the authorities are reportedly looking into the possibility. But
Speaker 1: for the moment, the woman known only as Jennifer Fairgate
Speaker 1: is still unidentified and the actual circumstances of her death
Speaker 1: remain shrouded in mystery, So I guess you count say
Speaker 1: the path went Chile.
Speaker 3: Try to think of people who are twenty four years old,
Speaker 3: if they've gone to universities, or they've gone through their
Speaker 3: post high school, through post high school education and things
Speaker 3: like that. Maybe they're twenty one twenty two when they
Speaker 3: start looking for their career, or maybe eighteen, right, But
Speaker 3: what secret service or what kind of government agency would
Speaker 3: be seeking out an eighteen nineteen twenty two year old
Speaker 3: to be doing these secret missions. Wouldn't they be looking
Speaker 3: for an agent who's older and who looks younger.
Speaker 1: Well, I've seen so many fictional movies, stuff like Black Widow,
Speaker 1: where they tell stories about like young children who are
Speaker 1: recruited and trained to be in assassins. Well, they're still
Speaker 1: like eight or nine years old, and then by the
Speaker 1: time they're in their early twenties they're very skilled. But
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's a reality, if they ever
Speaker 1: trade children like that in real life. But yeah, otherwise,
Speaker 1: it does seem weird that's someone so young would be
Speaker 1: involved in like a top secret espionage thing at such
Speaker 1: a point in their life. You would think they would
Speaker 1: have to have years of training before they could pull
Speaker 1: that off, so, needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised
Speaker 1: when Unsolved Mysteries decided to feature this story on an
Speaker 1: episode of the reboot. I had already read about the
Speaker 1: Jennifer Fairgate case on Reddit and Stephen Pacheco did an
Speaker 1: episode about her on the Trace Evidence podcast a few
Speaker 1: months beforehand, but it was great to see an unsolved
Speaker 1: mystery from Norway get worldwide exposure on Netflix because the
Speaker 1: more eyes that see Jennifer's face, the better chance there
Speaker 1: is of her being identified. It goes without saying that
Speaker 1: the past several years have been an amazing time in
Speaker 1: the true crime world when it comes to unidentified decedents,
Speaker 1: as so many John and Jane Does have gotten their
Speaker 1: names back thanks to the usage of genetic genealogy and
Speaker 1: DNA profiling. But like I just mentioned, genetic genealogy is
Speaker 1: not a practice which is being used yet for criminal
Speaker 1: investigations in Norway, and I have no idea what the
Speaker 1: legalities would be to implement it. However, after the Unsolved
Speaker 1: Mysteries episode came out that composite sketch of Jennifer Fairgate
Speaker 1: was circulated everywhere online, so theoretically, if someone recognized her,
Speaker 1: although would be required is for a living relative to
Speaker 1: come forward and submit their DNA for a comparison. In
Speaker 1: July twenty twenty two, just a few weeks before I
Speaker 1: covered this case on the Trail Went Cold, it was
Speaker 1: announced that the Somerton Man had a seton who was
Speaker 1: found on a beach and the Somerton Park suburb of Adelaide,
Speaker 1: South Australia in nineteen forty eight, had finally been identified
Speaker 1: as a man named Carl Charles Webb. Even though three
Speaker 1: and a half years have since passed, the identification has
Speaker 1: still not been officially verified by law enforcement, but the
Speaker 1: consensus seems to be that one of the most famous
Speaker 1: mysteries of all time has been solved. Since there are
Speaker 1: so many strange details surrounding the Somerton Man's death, one
Speaker 1: of the most prominent theories has always been that he
Speaker 1: was a spy who was involved in espionage, but it
Speaker 1: turns out that Carl Webb was in all electrical engineer
Speaker 1: who once worked as an instrument maker, and there's nothing
Speaker 1: to indicate that he was involved in espionage. If he was,
Speaker 1: in fact, the Somerton Man, then his backstory was a
Speaker 1: lot more mundane than people thought. So could the same
Speaker 1: logic apply to Jennifer Fairgate. While much like with Jennifer,
Speaker 1: all of the labels have been removed from the Somerton
Speaker 1: Man's clothing, giving off the impression that he was going
Speaker 1: to great lengths to conceal his identity. Indeed, there are
Speaker 1: quite a few cases out there involving unidentified decedents wearing
Speaker 1: clothing that had their labels removed, and it seems like
Speaker 1: this detail always prompts amateur sluice to leap to the
Speaker 1: spy theory.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of theories that could make sense here.
Speaker 3: I mean, there is a potential that she is a
Speaker 3: spy or she is involved in some kind of underground
Speaker 3: criminal activity. But like we mentioned earlier, it's also possible
Speaker 3: that there's just a lot of bizarre behaviors that are happening,
Speaker 3: perhaps even things like dress up and you know, this
Speaker 3: kind of pathological lying and trying to create a life
Speaker 3: for herself that makes her feel like she matters or
Speaker 3: is exciting, and you know, it could boil down to
Speaker 3: her having a mental health issue that results in taking
Speaker 3: her own life. It's just all the little details. It
Speaker 3: seems so bizarre. We went in that room and she
Speaker 3: wasn't there, I guarantee it. That's what the cleaning people said.
Speaker 3: And then you have where she supposedly has someone in
Speaker 3: the room with her with the same last name, she's
Speaker 3: seen wearing the flight, attend an outfit and has a
Speaker 3: roller case. It's never found where and how did all
Speaker 3: those things happen? How do you have her not coming
Speaker 3: out of that room supposedly, but people say that she
Speaker 3: wasn't in the room.
Speaker 2: There's actually another case from Norway which is frequently being
Speaker 2: compared to this one, and that's the Isdall woman, a
Speaker 2: Jane Doe, whose burnt remains were found in Isdalin, an
Speaker 2: ice valley located near the city of Bergen, on November
Speaker 2: twenty ninth, nineteen seven. When the victim's body was found,
Speaker 2: she was burned so badly that she was unrecognizable, but
Speaker 2: the authorities ultimately concluded that the Isdell woman likely set
Speaker 2: herself on fire in a probable suicide. But of course
Speaker 2: there have been a number of people who disagree without
Speaker 2: ruling and believe that she was the victim of foul
Speaker 2: play and much like Jennifer All. The labels had been
Speaker 2: removed from the Isdall woman's clothing and identifying mark removed
Speaker 2: from her personal items, so it appeared that great steps
Speaker 2: were taken to conceal her identity prior to her death.
Speaker 2: The woman had also stayed in a number of local
Speaker 2: hotels under different names, so the case has always been
Speaker 2: surrounded by theories that she was a spy. In spite
Speaker 2: of their numerous similarities, There's probably no connection between the
Speaker 2: Isdall woman and Jennifer Fairgate given the nearly twenty five
Speaker 2: year gap between their deaths, But knowing what we do
Speaker 2: know about the Somerton Man and a number of other
Speaker 2: decedents who'd been identified over the years, it would not
Speaker 2: surprise at all if the backstories of these women turned
Speaker 2: out to be a lot more mundane. For other examples
Speaker 2: of this, look at the cases of Joseph Chandler the
Speaker 2: Third and Laurie Erica Ruff, who are both discovered to
Speaker 2: be living understolen identities after they took their own lives.
Speaker 2: For years, their deaths were shrouded in mystery, with online
Speaker 2: sleuths streaming up all of these wild theories about their backgrounds,
Speaker 2: such as them being spies or wanted criminals or escapees
Speaker 2: from occult but once they were finally identified, it turned
Speaker 2: out that they were just ordinary people who decided to
Speaker 2: take on new identities because they wanted to break off
Speaker 2: all ties with their old life.
Speaker 3: I think so too. There's a very big possibility, Like
Speaker 3: I said, it almost seems like she's roll playing in
Speaker 3: some ways that either she's not satisfied, she doesn't enjoy,
Speaker 3: or she psychologically doesn't understand what the reality of her
Speaker 3: current life is. And so I think it's very possible
Speaker 3: that there is a very innocent and benign explanation here.
Speaker 3: You have someone who you know, in their mental health crisis.
Speaker 3: They're like scratching the name off their shoes, and they're
Speaker 3: burning numbers off their gun because they're paranoid and all
Speaker 3: these things, and or there could be a reason that
Speaker 3: she needed to do those things. I am more likely
Speaker 3: to lean towards their some kind of identity break or
Speaker 3: there's some kind of mental health breakdown in this case
Speaker 3: than that she's a spy. But you really never know
Speaker 3: what could have been happening here because the police ruled
Speaker 3: it a suicide and at that point the investigation stops.
Speaker 3: So I'm praying that you actually get this progress in
Speaker 3: the genetic genealogy in these European countries, because it literally
Speaker 3: takes one person dedicated to focusing on Jennifer's DNA and
Speaker 3: putting it through those systems, and it's a potential we
Speaker 3: could have the answers like we have here in the
Speaker 3: US of exactly who this person is. Maybe her family
Speaker 3: does know she passed away, but if they didn't, can
Speaker 3: you imagine what it would do for somebody. This was
Speaker 3: a nineteen ninety five case that was thirty years ago,
Speaker 3: So there are still people alive today, most likely that
Speaker 3: want to know where this individual went, that she's missing
Speaker 3: and they didn't get a chance to properly bury her,
Speaker 3: and they could then exhume her body and give her
Speaker 3: that headstone, give her that funeral, give her the services
Speaker 3: they deserve, and the whole family could know what happened
Speaker 3: to their loved one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And getting back to Carl Webb, the Summerton man,
Speaker 1: like it was over seventy years before he was identified,
Speaker 1: and most of the people who knew him were already
Speaker 1: deceased by that point, and they're still putting the pieces
Speaker 1: of the puzzle together. But when you look into his backstory,
Speaker 1: he clearly had some serious mental health issues of that time,
Speaker 1: so it just seems likely that he was not involved
Speaker 1: in anything clandestine like espionage, and that he was just
Speaker 1: experiencing some mental health episode before he took his own life,
Speaker 1: and the whole thing seemed more mysterious than it really was.
Speaker 1: And we still don't all that with Jennifer yet, but
Speaker 1: that is a possibility that a lot of these details
Speaker 1: that are so weird may be nothing more than red herrings.
Speaker 1: So this would be a good time to bring an
Speaker 1: end to part one. Join us next week as we
Speaker 1: present part two of our series about the death of
Speaker 1: Jennifer Fairgate.
Speaker 4: Robin, do you want to tell us a little bit
Speaker 4: about the Trail Went Cold Patreon?
Speaker 1: Yes, The Trail Cold Patreon has been around for three
Speaker 1: years now, and we offer these standard bonus features like
Speaker 1: early ad free episodes, and I also send out stickers
Speaker 1: and sign thank you cards to anyone who signs up
Speaker 1: with us on Patreon if you join our five dollars
Speaker 1: tier Tier two. We also offer monthly bonus episodes in
Speaker 1: which I talk about cases which are not featured on
Speaker 1: The Trail Went Cold's original feed. So they're exclusive to
Speaker 1: Patreon and if you join our highest tier tier free,
Speaker 1: the ten dollar tier. One of the features we offer
Speaker 1: is a audio commentary track over classic episodes of Unsaved Mysteries,
Speaker 1: where you can download an audio file and then boot
Speaker 1: up the original Unsolved Mysteries episode on Amazon Prime or
Speaker 1: YouTube and play it with my audio commentary playing in
Speaker 1: the background, where I just provide trivia and factoids about
Speaker 1: the cases featured this episode. And incidentally, the very first
Speaker 1: episode that I did a commentary track over was the
Speaker 1: episode featuring this case. So if you want to download
Speaker 1: a commentary track in which I make more smart ass
Speaker 1: remarks about Jewel Kaylor, then be sure to join Tier three.
Speaker 5: So I want to let you know a little bit
Speaker 5: about the Jewels and Nashty patreons. So there's early ad
Speaker 5: free episodes of The Path Went Chili. We've got our
Speaker 5: Pathwent Chili mini's, which are always over an hour, so
Speaker 5: they're not very mini, but they're just too short to
Speaker 5: turn into a series, and we're really enjoying doing those,
Speaker 5: so we hope you'll check out those patreons.
Speaker 4: We'll link them in the show notes.
Speaker 1: So I want to thank you all for listening and
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Speaker 1: You can email us at the pathwent Chili at gmail
Speaker 1: dot com. You can reach us on Twitter at the Pathwin.
Speaker 1: So until next time, be sure to bundle up because
Speaker 1: cold trails and chili pass call for warm clothing.
Speaker 4: Music by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Callers Comedy