Who Was the Isdal Woman?

in the closing weeks of 1970 the badly burned remains of a female victim were discovered lying on the side of an isolated Norwegian Valley her true identity has continued to elude the authorities right up until this very day in this story we ask who was the isdal woman [Music] [Music] the historic city of Bergen lying on Norway's western coast is situated at the center of a mountain chain known locally as the Seven Mountains the largest of these features is Mount Ren which lies to the southeast of the city City rising to an imposing 643 M

of the many well-known hiking trails threading their way across its slopes the most popular is situated in the ISD Daran Valley which runs along Ran's Northern face it was here that on a bitterly cold November evening in 1970 a solitary hiker descending the mountain encountered three other people traveling up The Path as the figures slowly approached from the opposite direction he was taken aback by how out of place they looked amidst their rural surroundings pacing slightly ahead was a middle-aged woman quite well dressed but clearly feeling the effects of not wearing any protective outer garments

behind her walked two imposing men both dressed in dark clothing but also ill prepared for the conditions wearing only lightweight jackets and casual ual Footwear as the distance closed between them the hiker was struck by her beauty though something of a haunted expression dominated her features as she neared him she slowed her pace and reached out as if to take his hand one of the two men then moved swiftly to her side and she was Brusly hurried along without managing to say anything the hiker stopped and watched as the three figures continued along the path

until they passed out of sight she had needed his help that much was clear but he doubted he could have handled the two men on his own quickening his Pace the lone hia continued his journey resolving to report the matter today's video is sponsored by Aura and it's a really important time to be talking about them because over 2.9 billion records were stol en from national public data which offers personal information to employers private investigators staffing agencies and others doing background checks these stolen records include a person's full name address date of birth social security

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keep you safe online all inside one app should the worst case scenario happen they provide up to $5 million in identity theft Insurance don't leave you or your family vulnerable to data breaches go to aura.com bedtimestories to try two weeks for free the following morning he arrived at the local police station and related the encounter to the desk officer his efforts were met with little more than a shrug and a sigh and instead he was questioned as to why it was any of his business resentful of the policeman's disinterested tone the young man left the

station and put the matter behind him 5 days later he would receive a brutal unwanted reminder of the encounter there emblazened across the front page of his morning newspaper was a headline announcing that the remains of a woman had been found mutilated on the Windswept slopes of Mount Ulen the ISD Daran Valley already had a dark and grizzly past even prior to the discovery of her corpse on the morning of November the 29th known colloquially as Death Valley the region had long been a popular location for suicide attempts with more than one Frozen corpse having

to be manhandled down its flanks by Mountain Rescue workers the victim on this occasion had been discovered by a man walking with his two teenage daughters as the family had proceeded along the main trail they spotted what looked like a suitcase full of clothes painstakingly laid a top one of the nearby Boulders almost as if it had been ceremonial in nature on closer inspection they discovered the corpse of a woman concealed between the large rocks and having apparently been burned to death recoiling in horror the man grabbed hold of his children and hurried off to

call the police the attending officers were appalled by the extreme efforts which had been taken to hide the victim's identity as they approached the air had been thick with the sickly stench of burned human flesh the victim's facial features were totally destroyed reduced to a charred mess on closer inspection the tips of her fingers had been abraded by a tool of some kind in an apparent attempt to render her fingertips unrecognizable except for her lower back which had been resting on the ground and where her shoulders and upper arms had been wedged tightly against the

Rocks either side the rest of the body and its clothing was entirely burned and blackened one of the officers had paused to pick up a brown fur hat which lay nearby and discovered that it smelled strongly of petrol it appeared as if the deceased had been soaked with the accelerant and then set Al light in addition to items of jewelry and a broken umbrella there was an empty bottle of cheap lure an empti packet of phenomal sleeping tablets and a few water bottles which were half full any documentation that might have identified her such as

a passport or identity card seemed to have been removed s sickened and bewildered by what they saw the officers set about recovering the body for further examination the results of the subsequent postmortem did little to assist the police inquiry whilst livid bruising was found and photographed at the base of the victim's neck indicating she had been violently incapacitated this was determined not to be the cause of death instead it was found that she had been poisoned as a result of ingesting at least 50 of the sleeping pills the coroner was unable to determine if she

might have still been alive when she was set Al light it was also discovered that any brand labels and identifying features from the clothes she wore had been cut away making it impossible to trace them back to a point of sail for several days the detectives assigned to the case made little Headway until a breakthrough occurred when partial fingertip samples removed from the body during the autopsy were found to correspond with two suitcases that had been found discarded on the platform of one of Bergen's busy central train stations the cases had clearly been searched and

tampered with some skin lotion with a prescription was recovered but the section that would have identified the medical practice and Doctor it originated from had been cut away two different sums of money were concealed in the lining of the case 500 German Deutsch marks and 130 Norwegian croner there was also a postcard from an Italian photographer who lived and worked in the city when officers tracked this photographer down they were sure he would be able to shed some light on the woman's identity but this again turned into a dead end he admitted to having met

the woman and taken her to dinner during which she had told him she was from Johannesburg and was on a six-month visit to Norway's most popular tourist locations he had never seen her again after the meal and when contact was made with the South African consulate it was determined she had lied about her nationality with no leads generated from appeals for information in the Norwegian press photos and sketches of the woman were circulated to Europe European news agencies and various branches of Interpol eventually this wider appeal led to a flood of information in relation to

the case though none of it ever managed to verify the victim's identity prior to arriving in Norway it was discovered she had traveled to a host of other European countries utilizing a variety of manufactured passports and identities wherever she went the list of nine fake names included jevie Lancia Claudia Shelt Vera schlenck and Claudia neelen Witnesses stated that the woman was fluent in several different languages including German and Flemish and had also used fake wigs and hair dyes to further alter her identity she had offered the people she interacted with various backstories including that she

was an antiques dealer and a traveling salesperson eventually after several fruitless years the case was closed by the Norwegian police citing a suspected suicide from time to time public interest would be revived by articles in the National media only to subside again when no new leads were generated neither the woman nor the two men she was with on that fateful November evening have ever been identified the official suicide verdict which was recorded by the Norwegian coroner has never been fully accepted either by the general public or anyone closely connected to the case whilst it is

conceivable that the isdal woman concealed her identity before overdosing on prescription medication it would have been impossible to later wedge herself between the rocks and then self imilate given the incapacitating effects of having taken so many sleeping pills this suggests that another party must have been involved in the attempt to destroy her remains most likely one or both the unknown men who were last seen with her the first and most Sinister scenario is that she was taken there by them against her will with her last desperate attempt to speak with the young hiker thwarted by

her captors she was then forced to consume the sleeping Tablets before being felled by a blow to the back of the neck then tucked into the rocks and set a blaze an alternative scenario has the men destroying her body at her own request after she had committed suicide it is possible that whatever secret she had gone to such length to conceal was one that she wanted to take to her grave and her escorts on that day were there to assist her in this a third more outlandish theory is that given the meticulous manner in which

her belongings were removed from her body and laid out the death was some form of ritual sacrifice containing a hidden meaning that could only be known to those involved it has long been suggested that the isdal woman may have been an international spy given that the incident occurred at the height of the Cold War Norway was a hot bed of Espionage activity during the conflict as it sat directly on the border between the Western powers and the neighboring Soviet block the fact that she had easy access to a host of new identities and matching fake

passports indicate she must have been associated with a well controlled and financed organization one of the other items found in the two abandoned suitcases by the investigating officers was a small diary filled with hand written coded entries whilst the actual messages have yet to be deciphered there seems to be some correlation between the dates entered and the woman's movements throughout the country that year and the testing of a new missile system called The Penguin this idea is supported by the testimony of a local fisherman who contacted authorities during the appeal for information and stated that

he had seen her near the northern city of stavenger at the same time a large military exercise was taking place there the circumstances surrounding the death of the Isel woman a strikingly similar to another mysterious death that occurred in Australia known as the tamam sh case on the morning of the 1st of December 1948 the body of an unidentified male in his 40s was found slumped against the seaw wall at summon Park beach in Adelaide whilst the summeran man's cause of death was never fully ascertained it bore all the hallm marks of a poisoning once

again labels had been removed from the clothing he was wearing and a suitcase abandoned at a nearby train station had been similarly searched and stripped of any possible identifying features he was also in possession of papers containing handwritten coded notes and was suspected to have been operating in the country as a spy at the time of his death in 2017 following further speculation and discussion about the case in online Internet platforms the Norwegian police decided to instigate a cold case review of the isdal woman's death to date the DNA samples taken from her body nearly

40 years ago have still failed to correlate with anything on the Interpol database but a new analytical technique carried out by the University of Bergen did manage to uncover further Evidence about her Origins previous analysis is of the handwriting samples taken from the woman's diary suggested she had been educated in a western European country with France being the strongest possibility the staff at the University then analyzed the Isotopes and the teeth that were removed from her body hoping this would hold some insight into where she may have lived during her younger years what they discovered

was that she had most likely been born and raised in Germany in the 1930s with the data favoring nurenberg as her town of origin as an older child she had moved out of Germany to a neighboring country which is believed to have been either France or Belgium there was also evidence that at some point in her life she had undergone expensive dental surgery in a non-european location such as South America or Asia this suggests that the isdal woman grew up in Nazi Germany and would have been repatriated to one of the vict notorious Allied Nations

at the conclusion of World War II following the outbreak of the Cold War she may have lived on the western side of the Iron Curtain in her older years she had then ended up working for an employer who had sent her to far away and exotic locations potentially a western intelligence agency whichever side she worked for as the conflict continued her duties would have taken her through unoccupied European countries where it appears she spent time observing and documenting events for her Employers in due course her actions garnered unwanted attention prompting someone to deem her a

significant threat which necessitated immediate intervention we may never know if it was her enemies that went to Such Great Lengths to hide her true identity or indeed employers when they found she had been killed all we do know is that her life was ended in a cold and clinical manner hidden away from prying eyes on the 5th of February 1971 she was given a Catholic funeral and buried in an unmarked grave but what is staggering is that even if she didn't have any immediate family it is almost inconceivable that another relative of hers has not

had their DNA entered on record somewhere during the subsequent years one reason for this especially if the Isel woman did grow up during the horrors and upheaval of the second world war is that her entire family and the records of their existence were wiped out another is that her identity might well be known to the powers that be but because the level of Espionage she was involved in was so secretive it has been covered up and hidden from the p public whatever her beliefs and motivations were the manner in which this helpless Soul was killed

is truly saddening it is our hope that one day her identity will become known and that her full story can finally be told to the world for [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] B time glor