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– The victim completely senseless and random. The intense hunting in Europe. These are the elements that make this case very special. No one had seen the perpetrator enter the apartment and no one had seen him leave. Was gone? Where did he go? From Monday to Wednesday we had no clear clues.
He remembers it almost like it was yesterday, even though two years have passed. Police lawyer Christian Hatlo explains in detail when he is asked to summarize one of the most intense homicide investigations by the Oslo police in recent years.
The eight days from October 15 to 28, 2018, are still very fresh in my memory.
– My son has been murdered and I will never get him back.
On the part of Hatlo, the working day began with the report of a robbery in Majorstua. Details were scant, video surveillance from the scene was so poor that the perpetrator could not be identified.
Fortunately, the robbery victim had escaped the incident unscathed. A short time later, the situation was reversed.
A young man was found dead in a bus. The distance from the robbery to the crime scene was only a few minutes on foot.
What was really happening in Majorstua?
Check out the Dagbladet Right on podcast about the Majorstua murder below.
Enter an unknown person
– There were no signs of theft, and of course you had to see if the others who lived in the bus had anything to do with the murder. They never received any status other than witnesses, but it had to be investigated. There was also a lot of talk about bitcoin and people are starting to think about why, says Hatlo.
Little by little, it becomes clear that the police are faced with an unanswered murder mystery. Without witnesses, good surveillance footage, or a clear motive, there are no suspects either. The challenges will soon go from difficult to worse.
Two days of intense research yield few results. The questioning of the other three children in the collective does not lead to specific individuals who may have committed the murder.
Statistics on homicide cases in Norway show a clear picture. When a life is taken, with few exceptions, partners, ex-partners, family or friends are behind.
This time was different. This time a man was killed in his own home by a completely unknown perpetrator.
Stumble in the blind
The police are already coming out on the day of the murder and are asking the public for help. Someone must have seen something.
– When Oslo hits the red light, we are very many. We quickly received a series of tips. Many of them turned out to be blind spots, says Hatlo.
One of the most interesting tips came from a taxi driver. A male passenger had asked her to take him to Skøyen.
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– The person in question paid with a 500 bill and said “you haven’t seen me” when he got out of the taxi. Then he switched to a new taxi. In this, we later found traces that we thought were blood, says Hatlo.
The taxi takes the man to a hospital, where he is admitted. For the police, it takes a long time to get information out of the hospital. The hope of a quick solution to the murder is alive.
– 12 people had entered that could correspond to the passenger’s description. It all turned out to be blind spots. It shows a bit of what one should investigate in such a situation, says the police attorney.
The story of Makaveli Lindén, which threatens his life
A crushing recession
After two days of no response, the first real lead finally appears to the police. A tipper has found some objects thrown down the Frogner River. It turns out to be things from the collective where the murder occurred.
Surveillance images of the area are collected quickly. Several people have been captured near the area.
– But the behavior of one of them caught our attention. The person passed first, then came back and behaved strangely. In the end, the police managed to get a good picture of the person in question and sent her, among other things, to border controls, says Hatlo.
At the same time, DNA samples are taken from clothing found by the Frogner River. Analyzes are carried out. The answer, however, will be a recession for the police.
Searching the registry does not return results. Interpol and Europol are contacted, but the answer is also negative at Interpol. No one matched the DNA found on the thrown clothing.
An unusual Friday night
While the DNA findings were being analyzed, the police had tracked down the man who the suspects were behind the murder. From Frognerelva it went down to Skøyen station.
New surveillance images were obtained. Did they really come close to a breakthrough?
On Friday night, the case completely changed. The Swedish police had made contact. They knew who the DNA in the clothes came from. The name marked: Makaveli Lindén.
He must have used large amounts of “zombie drugs”.
The 20-year-old was previously convicted in Sweden, among other things, of robbery in a bus in 2017, but was released from jail shortly thereafter. An international application is sent quickly. Also in Oslo, the police come out with the name and photo of the suspect. A tattoo on the 20-year-old’s hand makes him easy to identify.
At the same time, it is clear that Lindén left Norway almost immediately after the murder. After moving back to their home country, the journey has gone south by train, through Denmark and then to Belgium.
The horror scene
Intense police manhunt is launched in Europe. Belgium cleans itself first. From there, the tracks point further south towards France.
On Monday, the French police will be contacted and connected. Eight days after the murder, at 06:40 on Tuesday, October 23, the message arrives. The suspect has been arrested in Dijon by special forces.
Hatlo remembers the day as very special. The Oslo police had realized that they faced what could be a very long and difficult investigation. If the perpetrator managed to reach a country without an extradition agreement, he would be almost defenseless.
– That’s the horror scenario, says Hatlo.
– When an assailant manages to leave Norway, without you having identified the person, how challenging will the investigation be?
– Makes it a lot worse. This is one of the most difficult things we can do. When the person in question has no connection to Norway, he doesn’t know where to start looking.
In hindsight, the police attorney has given the investigation a lot of thought. The work that was done at the time has been described almost as a textbook example. On Monday, October 19, almost two years after the murder, the trial begins against the 22-year-old Swede in the Oslo District Court.
The lawyer for the police describes the murder itself as a great tragedy.
– It seems to be completely random. And sadly, we face brutal murder. This is evident in the indictment, says Hatlo.
