Don’t believe Baneheia’s answer this week – VG

– We hope to go a long way to shed light on the case, but it is very difficult to say if we will have finished, says the head of the Commission for the Resumption of Criminal Cases, Siv Hallgren, to VG.

The commission continues on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday the processing of the sixth request for the reinstatement of the convicted Baneheia Viggo Kristiansen.

Kristiansen and his friend Jan Helge Andersen were convicted in 2001 of raping and killing Lena Sløgedal Paulsen (10) and Stine Sofie Sørstrønen (8) in Baneheia in Kristiansand.

Kristiansen is currently serving a 21-year prison sentence, while Andersen became a free man in 2016.

She says that the meeting will be held digitally due to the contagion situation in the capital, as several of the commission members come from other parts of the country.

– It is extensive material and having meetings in this way is exhausting and challenging in itself.

– don’t look forward

The appeal of Viggo Kristiansen and his lawyer Arvid Sjødin has been: That the DNA must have been used incorrectly to indirectly link Kristiansen to the case, at the same time that his mobile phone must exclude that he was at the scene of the murders.

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– There have never been such good conditions to follow your path as now. But Viggo Kristiansen hoped to live in the present and is not looking forward, Sjødin tells VG.

The Agder prosecution, for their part, remains very clear in their opinion that there is nothing new in the case and that Viggo Kristiansen remains guilty of rape and murder of children.

They believe that there is no basis for reopening the verdict and that “the general evidence in the case constitutes very compelling evidence that Kristiansen has been rightly convicted.”

DNA inputs

Traces of DNA were found on the bodies of both girls. One of the evidence was determined to belong to Jan Helge Andersen. Another showed male DNA that was compatible with 54.6 percent of Norwegian men, including Viggo Kristiansen. He was not like Jan Helge Andersen.

Compared to Andersen’s explanation, the Agder Court of Appeal held that this proved that there were two perpetrators at the scene, and it was stated that there could be no one other than Kristiansen.

In the years that followed, various experts came on the scene criticizing how DNA evidence was used in court. The criticism has been that it is not possible to establish that there were actually two perpetrators, that the sample may have been contaminated and that the DNA test would never have been approved as evidence in a trial today.

During the process, the Commission has appointed an independent expert to re-evaluate the DNA evidence. Danish Frederik Torp Petersen, head of forensic medicine at Copenhagen’s forensic medicine department, presented his report in June this year.

He claims that Torp Petersen and his colleagues would never report any of the DNA tests used in the Baneheia case in a court case.

Torp Petersen believes that the uncertainty associated with the test result is so high that “these results should only be used for prioritization purposes in the investigation of a criminal case.”

– Now there are many experts who say that what was presented as a DNA test is not a DNA test. This was used when Viggo Kristiansen was convicted, and then he must be allowed to go to court without having to defend himself against incorrect evidence, lawyer Sjødin believes.

The mobile test

The prosecution believes that the rapes and murders of the two girls took place between 19 and 20 on the night of May 19.

During this time, Kristiansen sent and received the following text messages:

All were captured at the EG_A base station. The base station covers the area where Viggo Kristiansen lived, but does not cover the crime scene. The measurements carried out showed that there was good coverage from this base station at 400 meters from the site and a weak coverage at 150 meters. However, repeated investigations have shown that you are not connected to this base station when at the scene.

In court, Telenor concluded that it was overwhelmingly likely that Kristiansen’s phone was not at the location when the messages were sent and received.

The private company Teleplan, for its part, concluded that it was not possible to determine the coverage conditions on this date, so it could not rule out the existence of coverage.

A police officer currently working with analysis of, among other things, teledata, in a note to the commission now concluded that the use of mobile phones gives Kristiansen an alibi at the time of the crime, provided that he himself used the telephone. .

Kristiansen’s lawyer, Arvid Sjødin, believes the mobile phone is preventing Kristiansen from being at the scene when the killings took place.

– We have never had such a good overview of this mobile certificate as now, he says.

The Agder prosecutor writes in his statement to the commission that they will “flatly deny” that the mobile phone certificate is proof of exclusion. They also point out that, in its ruling, the district court discussed various explanations about the use of Kristiansen’s mobile phone on the night of the murder and that the conclusion was that “it is not possible for the court to finally determine what has happened regarding the use of the Kristiansen’s mobile phone. ”

However, the court did not find that the use of mobile phones changed the assessment of the other evidence in the case.

Global evidence

The Agder prosecutor notes in his report to the commission that both men were convicted after extensive evidence in both the district court and the court of appeal, and that there were a number of key elements pointing to both.

Among other things, detailed descriptions of Kristiansen’s sex life are featured, which are described as perverse and violent. The police seized a number of films and magazines including, among other things, the abuse of animals and children, as well as stabbings at Kristiansen’s home.

The police believe that the choice of the place and time of the crimes, as well as the scope and nature, suggest that there were several perpetrators and that it is unlikely that Jan Helge Andersen would have done something like this alone. The investigation material does not contain information that he allegedly abused someone or behaved in a threatening or violent manner.

Viggo Kristiansen, for his part, admitted to police that several years before the Baneheia killings, he had repeatedly lured a seven-year-old girl with him and subjected her to serious sexual abuse.

Jan Helge Andersen explained to the police that Lena Sløgedal Paulsen and Stine Sofie Sørstrønen were lured to the scene to search for missing kittens. The prosecutor believes that Kristiansen’s “experience of luring and deceiving children” reinforces Andersen’s explanation on this point.

Forensic psychiatry experts concluded that Viggo Kristiansen qualified for the diagnosis of emotionally unstable personality disorder. They also perceived that he had pedophile tendencies.