During the Court of Appeal’s consideration of the Orderud case in 2002, pictures were shown of two pieces of wood from a stump where the police should have found a projectile. According to private investigator Tore Sandberg, it was said in court that the projectile was fired with the same weapon that was used during the triple murder in the kår housing on Orderud farm. Sandberg, who has worked for a long time for Per Orderud to have his case reopened, now believes that a key piece of evidence presented in court is wrong. WRONG: Private investigator Tore Sandberg says that the testimony and the evidence that the Kripos investigator presented in court were wrong. Photo: Petter Sommer / news – We are talking about one of the most important pieces of evidence in the Orderud case. It was absolutely decisive for the conviction of Per and Veronica Orderud, says Tore Sandberg to news. Sandberg believes that there is no evidence that there was ever any projectile in the pieces of wood that were shown in court. He has re-examined the pieces of wood in connection with Per and Veronica Orderud’s attempt to have the case taken up by the Re-entry Commission. Orderud farm, the scene of one of the most talked about murder cases in Norwegian legal history. Photo: Knut Fjeldstad / NTB scanpix Reporter On 10 January, Per Orderud reported former first officer and crime technician in the Kripos, Tore Per Bakken, to the Bureau for Police Affairs. In the report, it is stated that Per Orderud is reporting the former Kripos top for: “… false statement before the court, false accusation, provision or complicity in the provision of false evidence in connection with criminal proceedings against me following the triple murder of my mother, father and sister in the housing estate at Orderud farm in Pentecost 1999”. news has been in contact with Tore Per Bakken. The former crime technician does not want to comment on the report against him. In front of Dagbladet, which mentioned the report first, he calls the allegations a complete fabrication and flatly rejects the accusations from Orderud. REJECTS: – The claims from Per Orderud are completely fabricated, says Tore Per Bakken to Dagbladet. Photo: Marthe Synnøve Johannessen / news Important evidence The projectile in the tree root was an important piece of evidence for the police, since it was said to have come from one of the two weapons used during the triple murder in May 1999. The police believe the fatal shots in the kår home came from a Ruger caliber 22 and a .38 caliber Colt revolver, but neither murder weapon has ever been found. The projectile in the tree stump must have come from a firearm with caliber 38. Orderud farm, the scene of one of the most talked about murder cases in Norwegian legal history. Photo: Knut Fjeldstad / NTB scanpix Lars Grønnerød explained that he had test-fired the Colt revolver several times, including at Vestengbrua in Ski. After he was arrested, he showed the police where the weapon had been tested. Grønnerød later told the police that it was he who delivered Colten to Per and Veronica Orderud. The discovery of the projectile therefore linked the couple to the murders. During his testimony in court in 2002, then crime technician Tore Per Bakken explained where in the tree stump the projectile had been found. The stump itself was never shown in court. Nor should any detailed description of where in the stump the projectile was found be given, according to Sandberg. – What he showed were two pieces with a rubber band around them, that is the only picture that was in the case documents. He showed the same photo in court and shone it with a laser pen and said “this is where we found the projectile”, he tells news. The murder mystery explained in one minute. New investigations Sandberg says he has examined the two pieces of wood without finding traces of any projectile. He gained access to the pieces of wood in June 2022 in connection with the work on resuming the Orderud case. He then also gained access to three other pieces of the stump, which, according to him, were not previously known. – We carried out a thorough visual examination and saw no trace of a projectile having been in the piece of wood Tore Per Bakken showed in court, says a report Sandberg wrote after the examinations on 2 June. The Orderud case 22 May 1999: On the night of Pentecost, the married couple Kristian (80) and Marie Orderud (84) and their daughter Anne Orderud Paust (47) were shot and killed in the kår home on Orderud farm in Sørum municipality in Akershus. 14 June 1999: The couple’s son Per and his wife Veronica Orderud, her sister Kristin Kirkemo and Kirkemo’s ex-boyfriend Lars Grønnerod were charged with the triple murder. 22 June 2001: Per and Veronica Orderud and Kristin Kirkemo were sentenced to 21 years in prison for premeditated murder, or complicity in premeditated murder. Lars Grønnerød was acquitted after the main indictment, but sentenced to two and a half years in prison for negligent complicity in murder. 5 April 2002: Per and Veronica Orderud were sentenced to 21 years’ imprisonment in the Eidsivating Court of Appeal. Kristin Kirkemo and Lars Grønnerød were sentenced to 16 and 18 years in prison respectively. All four appealed to the Supreme Court, but only Kristin Kirkemo’s case was allowed to be tried. The Supreme Court rejected the appeal on 20 December 2002. 17 June 2010: The commission for resumption of criminal cases rejected Lars Grønnerød’s request to have the case assessed in a new trial. November 2011: Per and Veronica Orderud withdraw their reinstatement petition after seven years on the grounds that they want further investigation into the case before it is dealt with. Per Orderud was released from prison on 3 January 2015. On 14 January, Veronica Orderud was also released. Kristin Kirkemo and Lars Grønnerod were released in 2011 and 2013 respectively. Lars Grønnerod died on 13 September 2019. (NTB) Knut Holen, former deputy head of Kripos and now partner with Tore Sandberg, is, like Sandberg, convinced that Per and Veronica Orderud are innocent. – I have read all the documents in the case and watched the court proceedings on video, and I think there is something not right here. I hope Tore Per Bakken can come up with a normal explanation for this. – Do you think evidence has been tampered with in the Order Examination? – I dare not say anything about that. What I can’t figure out is where in the tree root the projectile could have been. We do not know where the projectile presented in the Court of Appeal comes from, and based on the documents in the case this is not documented. The Bureau of Police Affairs confirms having received the report from Per Orderud. – It is still being assessed by our case department, and we have so far not made a decision as to whether an investigation will be launched on the basis of the accusation. As is well known, the Order Committee stands for the Reinstatement Commission, and it is necessary, among other things, for us to make certain clarifications related to the petition that is being processed there, says Terje Nybøe, head of the Bureau for Police Affairs, to news. It was in 2018 that Per and Veronica Orderud applied to have the case reopened. Head of the Re-enrollment Commission, Siv Hallgren, tells news that they are carrying out interviews and investigations and do not know when their investigation will be finished.
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Per Orderud reports the former Kripos leader to the Bureau – news Norway – Overview of news from various parts of the country
