The 52-year-old defendant categorically denies that he killed Birgitte Tengs. And he must of course be considered innocent until proven otherwise. But after the first week of the trial, even more questions have emerged about the police investigation at the time. The murder of Birgitte is one of the most investigated criminal cases in Norwegian history. Large resources were deployed. Both from the police station in Haugesund, from the sheriff’s offices in the area, and from Kripos. From Oslo came what were seen as the country’s best homicide investigators, many of whom stayed at Haugalandet for many months. As we know, the investigation stalled for a long time, before it was mistakenly turned against Birgitte’s cousin. As recently as last Friday, he was finally cleared by the Court of Appeal. But the man who now sits on the dock went under the radar. This despite the fact that he was tipped off to the Tengs investigators from various quarters. In court on Monday, the public prosecutor said that the 52-year-old was already tipped off on 10, 11 and 26 May 1995, i.e. a few days after Birgitte’s murder. According to the prosecutor, several tips also came in over the years, right up until 2016. The defendant was first questioned as a witness in the case in December 1995, the following year he was on a list of priority persons to be worked with further. But then the investigation turned in the direction of the cousin. In retrospect, it is strange that the police did not focus more on the 52-year-old at a much earlier time. This week the court heard the story of a man who, since the mid-80s, has been involved in a large number of crimes of immorality. Violence, sexual advances, exposure and theft of women’s clothing are some of the keywords. The incidents vary in severity, but some of them stand out. When he was only 15, the defendant attacked a woman in a wooded area, hitting her several times in the head with a bicycle pump. According to the victim, he appeared clearly sexually aroused during the attack. He also allegedly asked the woman if she was married, and what her sex life was like. In court on Thursday, the 52-year-old explained that he attacked the wrong woman, and he actually wanted revenge on a girl of the same age who had bullied him. Two years later, he entered the bedroom of the same woman’s house and stole her skirt and a pair of shoes. “I was sneaking around, it was embarrassing to go and buy shoes and clothes, I looked in the front doors of houses and took shoes,” says the defendant. Four years later, the most serious incident for which the 52-year-old has been sentenced to date occurred. Then he made his way into the apartment of his female psychologist. Wearing stockings, a skirt, a bra and a garter belt, he made sexual advances towards her and came close to strangling her with a cord, which eventually caught fire, but the woman was not seriously injured. “The brain failed and he tightened and tightened,” says a police interview from that time. “I had no intention of killing, it was only to frighten”, says the defendant today. The psychologist was one of those who notified the police about the defendant in the days after the murder. In August 1995, the defendant received a new sentence, this time for telephone harassment. In questioning half a year later, he confessed to having called 50 women in inappropriate ways. One year later he received his first sentence for exposure. The defendant explained in court that he may have been behind between five and ten incidents of hazing in the local area at this time. Later, he was also convicted of burglary and theft of women’s clothing in several places in Rogaland. Common to all of this is that the man now charged with murder has been regularly investigated for various types of immorality offenses in the years before and after the murder of Birgitte Tengs. He has been in for questioning countless times, many of them at the same time as one of history’s biggest murder investigations was taking place in the same police district. It is then no wonder that Birgitte’s parents react. “Why wasn’t he scrutinized more closely in 1995? So after the murder? They ask me that question. I don’t have an answer to that. I assume that the investigation management will explain to us when they come here at one point or another,” says assistance lawyer Erik Lea to news. There are probably more people than parents and legal aid who ask themselves these questions. Later in the case, Kripos’ then head of investigations Ståle Finsal will testify in court. It will be interesting to hear what he has to say about all this. Also seen in light of the fact that the defendant at the time had the same type of car and the same color as the one several witnesses had described from the center of Kopervik on the night Birgitte disappeared. The sum of all this makes the man now accused of murder an obvious mode candidate. In other words, a man who can be considered suspect because of past behavior. And although we obviously know more now, almost 30 years later, much of the information about him was already in the police systems at that time. Then it seems incomprehensible that he was not scrutinized more closely. Then it must be said that there is a long way to go from immorality offenses to murder. Although the prosecution in the Tengs case has succeeded in placing the defendant in a perpetrator profile, it is hardly enough to convict him. It is still the DNA discovery that is the main evidence in the case, and where the battle stands. It is not possible to predict the outcome, and there are still many weeks of evidence to be presented. But the questions have not decreased after the first week of the trial.
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No wonder Birgitte’s parents react – Statement
