On the morning of November 5, the last preparations are made before the annual charity ice hockey match in Oświęcim. “Everyone” in the Polish city is going there. 51-year-old Marek has just started the day. Maybe the hockey game could be a nice place to take the family? He calls his daughter Pamela. No answer. She has visitors this week. By a man about whom there will soon be a lot in both Norwegian and Polish newspapers. They must be busy, Marek thinks. He realizes that his daughter had told him that she was going on a trip. Maybe the mobile is left in the car? But something is jarring. He feels it. He had feared what would happen if Pamela’s Norwegian ex-boyfriend came to visit. A little later, Marek calls again. Still no response. What happened to Pamela? PAMELA: Friends describe Pamela as smiling and loving. She is described as a mother who always put her daughter first. Photo: Privat Barndommen The story of Pamela starts in Poland in 1996. She was born on 14 October, as the only child of Marek and his then wife. An hour’s drive west of Krakow, in the small town of Oświęcim, she grew up. Later, much of life was to take place in Norway. Her parents divorced two years after her birth. Pamela lived with her father, who became her main caregiver. THE FIRST PICTURE: Pamela and Marek sometime in the 90s. Photo: Private He was there when she took her first steps. He fitted support wheels to her bike. And took them off again when she found her balance. He remembers the first time he took Pamela to the stables. PASSION: Pamela on horseback with father Marek. Pamela had two passions, her father says: horses and mountain walks. Photo: Private Pamela was five or six years old. With wide eyes, she looked up at one of the horses. She was afraid of the mighty animal and she began to cry. But this did not stop her. The next time she posed fearlessly with a carrot in her hand, her father recalls. – Then she got a friend. Horses were her passion. However, there was never any question of buying the little girl her own horse. The economy was far too tight for that. FATHER: Marek is Pamela’s father. He raised Pamela almost single-handedly. Photo: Adrian Nyhammer Olsen / news To improve his income, Marek applied for a job in Norway. The plan was to travel for a couple of months. Work and be a tourist in the country in the north. At first, Pamela remained in Poland with her grandparents. While her father worked as a carpenter, Pamela was allowed to visit. There began the love affair with the new country. The high mountains and the deep valleys. She was “sold”. The only thing she talked about was Norway. She had to live there! After secondary school, she got her way and was allowed to move after her father. Here they were to start a new life. And in Norway she would meet a man who really changed her life. Pamela and Marek fell in love and experienced many typical tourist destinations in Western Norway. Pamela and her father Marek in Aurlandsdalen. At Tvindefossen on Voss. At Ulriken in Bergen. Photo: Private She started high school in Bergen, learned the language and made lots of friends. In her third year at upper secondary school, she met a young man from Western Norway. He was the same age as her. Something about him impressed Pamela. She was attracted. In love. – He was a calm guy. Peaceful. That’s why I can’t understand what happened, says Marek. Just after Pamela’s 20th birthday, she found out something that would change their lives. PREGNANT: Pamela became pregnant at the age of 20. Here she was standing outside Hotel Norge in central Bergen. Photo: Private She was pregnant. Just a few months after she got together with the young man she met at school. She had her whole life ahead of her, her father thought. What about the education? Was Pamela going to be a mother now? In 2017, almost 21 years old, she gave birth to the child. A little girl. In this story we call her “Lena”. With regard to the now five-year-old girl, news has chosen neither the family’s surname nor the girl’s real first name. MOTHER: Pamela’s daughter was born in 2017, and grew up in Norway and Bergen for the first two years of her life. Photo: Privat Both the Norwegian and Polish families lined up for the new parents. Eventually, the tiny family moved on their own. To a student dormitory at Fantoft in Bergen, where “Lena” attended the student kindergarten while Pamela studied psychology and bioengineering. But then the family idyll began to crack. Today, both the father and close friends say that Pamela experienced that her boyfriend did not care enough about the child. They say she thought her boyfriend couldn’t take care of himself once. – She said she had two children at home. One one-year-old and one 21-year-old, says Marek, Pamela’s father. PAMELA: Friends describe Pamela as loving, cheerful, happy, caring and helpful. Photo: Privat After three years, in late summer 2019, the relationship ended. According to the father and friends of Pamela news has spoken to, there was a complete ice front between the two after the break-up. For several months there was no contact. Then she started receiving threats, according to her father and friends. She got scared. Fearing that something would happen to them, Pamela had to make a choice. What was best for the little girl? She chose to leave her studies, the apartment at Fantoft, the kindergarten, the mountains that took her away. The new country. She was also never to return to Norway. Because of the horrible things that happened to Pamela, the friends who are now telling the story do not want to come forward with their names and photos. Home to Poland In the winter of three years ago, Pamela and her daughter moved into a small two-room apartment in Oświęcim. After eight years in Norway, she was back where she herself grew up. From the living room window, Pamela could look down on the school she herself attended. Now she had to raise a small child here herself. It is also in this apartment that the story of Pamela will end. DICTIONARY: Pamela worked as a Norwegian and English teacher in Poland. Photo: Adrian Nyhammer Olsen / news After she moved, her ex went to the police with a report. The Bergen police receive the report, and carry out investigations to find out whether Pamela had unlawfully taken the couple’s joint child to Poland. The case was eventually dropped. The police decided that there was no criminal case, that no one had broken the law. A ruling from Polish law shows that Pamela has parental responsibility for the child. For Christmas and birthdays, packages arrived from my father’s family in Norway. But not from dad himself. He was completely out of the picture. – Why is dad in Norway?, “Lena” asks her mother one day. Most of the other children in the kindergarten in Oświęcim have fathers. Why isn’t my dad with me? DRAWING: This drawing of a mother and a father hangs in the room where Pamela was found. Photo: Adrian Nyhammer Olsen / news It is a difficult question for the mother to answer. Pamela herself knows what it’s like not to have contact with one of her parents. She finally chooses to invite him to visit and back into her and “Lena’s” life. The phone Back to 5 November 2022 this year. Marek has tried again and again to reach his daughter by phone. It has only been a day since he last saw her, but now he is afraid that something is seriously wrong. POLAND: Pamela grew up in the small town of Oświęcim, in southern Poland. Photo: Radoslaw Dimitrow Marek gets into the car and drives towards his daughter’s apartment. There will be no hockey game. Under the fog at dusk, he can see the darkness from the apartment on the fourth floor. He calls. Still no answer. On the way up the stairs, his legs start to shake. He fishes out the key from his pocket and locks himself in. In his grandson’s room, he finds his 26-year-old daughter brutally stabbed to death. The grandson has disappeared without a trace. – The whole world fell apart, says Marek. LOCATION OF FOUND: Marek found Pamela brutally stabbed to death on the floor of the children’s room. Photo: Adrian Nyhammer Olsen / news Polish police decide to do something they rarely do. They implement “Child alert”, a system that calls for “Lena” in all possible channels across Europe. That same evening, the girl is found in the back seat of her mother’s car. Danish police stopped it on the motorway outside Kastrup. The driver of the car was Pamela’s 26-year-old ex-boyfriend. He is charged with the murder and kidnapping of his own five-year-old daughter. A role model – How can a man who has lost his only child feel? I do not know. An enormous emptiness. Two and a half weeks after the murder, news meets Marek in the same apartment. There are still Halloween decorations in the living room and on the balcony. DECORATIONS: The apartment is still decorated for Halloween, which was celebrated the same week Pamela was killed. Photo: Adrian Nyhammer Olsen / news In the corner stands a drying rack with women’s clothes, even though no woman lives here anymore. The floor is scarily clean. Little has been said about the family affected by the tragedy. About the woman who grew up in Norway, the little girl who was born in Haukeland and the grandfather who started a new life here. The reason why Marek wants to meet news is to tell the world about his daughter Pamela. About a loving and smiling mother who always put her child first. – She was a wonderful person. She was my role model, he says. – My daughter wanted to build a better world for her daughter. She wanted my grandson to have contact with his father. Now she has neither mother nor father. She was left alone. IN MOURNING: Marek was the main carer for Pamela growing up. Now he has to raise a child again. Photo: Adrian Nyhammer Olsen / news The 26-year-old Westerner is still in custody in Copenhagen. He is charged with murder. Poland has asked Denmark to extradite him. On 21 December, the Danish court will decide whether the man can be extradited to Poland. news has been in contact with the man’s defender, Poul Helmuth Petersen. He has not answered questions from news. Spokesperson for the public prosecutor’s office in Poland is Janusz Hnatko. When news met him in Krakow in November, he said that the police had strong evidence that the Norwegian carried out the murder. The evidence includes, among other things, witness interviews, electronic traces and a bloody knife. For the sake of the investigation, he will not go into further details. Hnatko has not wished to comment further on the matter until the issue of extradition has been decided. The man is also charged with kidnapping. A ruling from the district court in Oświęcim on 25 February 2022 shows that the Norwegian was temporarily deprived of parental responsibility for the child. Pamela was in charge alone. Fear of death In the chaos that followed the murder, Marek traveled to the courthouse. Here he was given temporary custody of his grandson. Then he had to travel to Denmark and pick her up. He then had to bury his daughter, just five days after he found her dead. Everything has gone so fast. – It is slowly dawning on me that I will never see my daughter again. That I will never hug her again, says Marek. THE GRAVE: The church was full when Pamela was buried on 10 November. A sea of flowers formed on her grave. Photo: Privat Now it is the grandson who needs him. That certainty scares Marek. He has to buy a new apartment. Decorate children’s rooms. Become a toddler parent again. And how many years does he really have left? You never know. He has now decided to sell his motorcycle. He does not dare to take any chances. – She is five years old. I’m 51. Maybe I’ll live another 40 years, God willing. But maybe only 10. Who is there to take care of her then? No. The family has also started a fundraising campaign for Marek and the grandson. CHILDREN’S ROOM: Marek’s life has been turned upside down. In between the grief, he has to deal with the practicalities. Among other things, he has to get a bigger flat for himself and his grandchild. – The most important thing is to secure a financial future for her, he says. Photo: Adrian Nyhammer Olsen / news “Lena” can wake up in the middle of the night and ask for her mother. “Why isn’t she with us?”. – Telling her that her mother is dead is the hardest thing. But now she knows that mom is in heaven. That mom is now her angel. I think so too, says Marek. Hi! I cover the murder case in Poland where a young Norwegian man is accused of killing the 26-year-old mother of young children, Pamela. Here are several cases we have written: Do you have tips or input on the case? Please send me an email.
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Marek found his daughter Pamela (26) killed with a knife in the children’s room – news Vestland
