Witnesses contacted the police – they did not believe that Anne-Elisabeth had been abducted – NRK Norway – Summary of news from different parts of the country

After a long and secret investigation, the police announced in January 2019 that Anne-Elisabeth Hagen (68) had been missing since October 31.

The case was investigated as a kidnapping for financial reasons, after her husband Tom Hagen (70) found a threatening letter with money demands inside the house.

When the disappearance was known, some acquaintances of Anne-Elisabeth Hagen chatted together. They decided to go to the police.

These people met Anne-Elisabeth Hagen through association work.

The sum of what Anne-Elisabeth Hagen is said to have told them shortly before the disappearance meant they had little faith in the abduction theory. It seemed crazy. They thought Tom Hagen could have played a role in his wife’s disappearance and that the reason was marital problems. NRK is aware of this.

– she was going to leave

Tom Hagen wonders about this. This is how he responds to witness statements to the police.

– I haven’t faced this until now. What these people probably don’t know is that you should leave the association. But he was afraid to say it. It could have excited her. He wanted to spend more time with his children, grandchildren, and puppy. The puppy gave him a lot of joy after we had to kill the previous dog in the spring of this year, something he took seriously, Tom Hagen tells NRK.

The couple’s adult children have criticized the police description of the parents’ marriage.

NRK also knows that Anne-Elisabeth Hagen told one of the couple’s children that she wanted to leave the association.

The testimonies were used by the police when they went to court to search the couple’s properties. Police wanted to conduct further forensic investigations of the couple’s home and obtained court approval to seize it for three months, until the fall of 2020.

Several other people in Anne-Elisabeth and Tom Hagen’s circle have been questioned in the case. Several of them have described the marriage between the two as normal.

In April this year, Tom Hagen was charged with murder or complicity in murder. After eleven days in detention, he was released by the Eidsivating Court of Appeal. The court concluded that there was no good reason to suspect his murder.

From what NRK understands, the police have not found any direct connection between Hagen and the crime.

The 70-year-old has always denied his criminal guilt and had previously told NRK that he has nothing to hide.

The main theory of the police is that marital problems are the motive of the case. They believe that the problems were an issue until the day of the disappearance. Tom Hagen does not believe this to be true.

In Tom Hagen’s 2016 personal notes, which concern the police, the 70-year-old man is said to have stated that he and his wife were in the middle of a divorce and that he could lose a lot of money.

Tom Hagen is surprised when NRK covers this.

– I think this sounds strange. The notebooks were easily accessible, about 17,000 pages, I have nothing to hide. You may have written that divorce is always a way out, but who gets divorced after 49 years? When I write about challenges and problems, I include everything, both the good and the bad. All scenarios, says Tom Hagen.

He emphasizes that immediately after the disappearance, on his own initiative, he gave the police access to notes and personal records.

Tom Hagen is frustrated that the police have only emphasized a few excerpts and individual quotes from thousands of pages. The notes are spread over many years.

– They seem to have ignored all the positive things on these pages when they try to paint a negative image of me, says Hagen.

In addition to eyewitness descriptions, police have been concerned about a text message that Anne-Elisabeth Hagen sent to a friend on the Hagen couple’s wedding day, October 25, 2018. This was six days before to disappear.

Text message on wedding day

In the text message, mentioned above, Anne-Elisabeth Hagen expressed that the man thought the 49-year-old marriage was a waste of time. She wrote that he was not congratulating her and that she was not interested in celebrating the day with dinner.

– It is completely wrong that I did not want to mark the wedding day. We didn’t usually get great things out of this day, but we had a nice dinner with one of the kids. We also had concrete plans to travel south soon after, as we used to do, Hagen says.

He thinks the text message was meant to be fun and cannot be taken literally.

On the couple’s computer, police found that in 2017 a Google divorce search had been conducted.

Examined computer

Police believe that the home computer, where the Google search was conducted, was used primarily by Anne-Elisabeth. Tom Hagen believes that his wife would not take care of the separation.

– As I remember it, there was a case in the newspaper, that there was a change or simplification in the divorce process, says Hagen, who believes that this may be the reason for the Google search.

– Did you talk about divorce or separation around 2017?

– It has never been an issue, says Hagen.

Defender Svein Holden says that since Hagen’s release “he has faced selective leaks of the case documents.”

– The common denominator of the leaks is that everything is negative for my client. It is a challenge for me, as an advocate, to be unable to respond due to a duty of confidentiality regarding other information contained in the case. However, I hope NRK readers understand that the research leaks do not give a correct picture of what the relationship between Anne-Elisabeth Hagen and Tom Hagen was like, says Holden.

The couple’s three adult children insist that the father is innocent and believe that an issue as serious as divorce would have been raised quite frankly.

– It is completely unthinkable for them that Anne-Elisabeth and Tom will be separated, lawyer Ståle Kihle of the law firm Eckhoff, Fosmark & ​​Co DA previously told NRK.

NRK did not seize the eastern police district Thursday night.