– We were lying and talking about how good we were, says Elsa Wang. She still remembers the Tuesday 25 years ago. Elsa and her husband Sigurd lie on the corner sofa at home in Herøy. The flu has not yet taken hold of Sigurd and they are actually about to go to bed when the phone rings. Sigurd is a sheriff. It is colleague and best friend Trond Kirkeby calling from the neighboring office in Sandnessjøen. Trond would like to have Sigurd with him on a mission that night. Elsa doesn’t know more when she goes to bed. The next morning she is woken up by the alarm clock. On the stairs are the priest and a doctor. – Sigurd and Trond Kirkeby have been shot and killed, says the priest. Elsa goes into the bathroom. She looks at herself in the mirror. She thinks about her two children, aged 19 and 22. Already there she begins to build a fortress. – We will manage this, I thought then. But it was going to be a tough time, she says today. Two family men in the same profession Sigurd Wang was from Sandnessjøen. He was fond of the outdoors and enjoyed being out at sea. The sheriff’s involvement branched out into the community as well. He was a football coach for the children at Herøy and sat on the municipal council for the Liberal Party. At home, he liked to discuss politics with his wife Elsa. For example, they had a divided view of the EU. Which led to many good and interesting political conversations, Elsa remembers. His best friend Trond Kirkeby was originally from Hamar, but moved to Helgeland as a newly qualified police officer in 1979. He and his roommate Beate were in Oslo for a few years, but Nordland lured them back. Beate Jørgensen and Trond Kirkeby. Photo: Private Sheriff’s first officer had a strong relationship with his parents and siblings, but the most important pieces in his life were the three children he had with Beate. The relationship with their eldest daughter was particularly close. Trond was her soccer coach, so they spent a lot of time together on the soccer field. In addition, he was an active outdoorsman, and liked to take the children on trips. Trond Kirkeby with his three children. Photo: Beate Jørgensen On the afternoon of Tuesday 10 March 1998, Trond gets word that they are to move out to Austbø. Nordland Psychiatric Hospital (NPS) has received some worrying calls from a patient on leave. He says he is armed and says he wants to start a war. Trond calls his good friend and colleague at the Herøy and Dønna sheriff’s office. He would like to have Sigurd Wang with him on this mission, which in the end goes really wrong. A police officer at Austbø the day after the dramatic hours. Photo: news Three shots in the night There are almost cowardly teams at Austbø that night. The patient from NPS, Dag Helge Rønning, has entrenched himself in his childhood home. The rifle he has borrowed is state-of-the-art, while the police’s equipment is old-fashioned and outdated. At the same time as a sharpshooter tries to install himself in the house next door to Rønning, Rønning leaves his childhood home with a rifle in his hands. He walks purposefully along the road. The wind stirs up the fresh snow, but up by a white house he sees two dark figures. Trond Kirkeby and Sigurd Wang are in the middle of evacuating the nearby houses when they are shot and killed. For the first time since the murders, the widows of the two police officers are telling about their experience. Elsa Wang (left) and Beate Jørgensen have spent a long time processing all the impressions after their men were killed at Austbø in 1998. Photo: Lars-Petter Kalkenberg / news – Everything was just chaos All Beate Jørgensen knew the day ahead was that the roommate Trond would most likely come home late. At seven o’clock in the morning on Wednesday 11 March, the doorbell rings. Trond’s side of the bed is empty, and on the stairs are both priest and sheriff Ole Gustav Årnes. Beate immediately understands that Trond will never come home. Beate imagines Trond lying in a house on Austbø. She imagines the police hunt for the perpetrator. She is trying to figure out who to call, because she needs support. And the following years will prove to be demanding for both Beate Jørgensen and Elsa Wang. Policeman Sigurd Wang was buried from Herøy church. Wang’s coffin was carried out by his 19-year-old son, the sheriff’s two brothers and a close friend. Constable Trond Kirkeby was buried from Sandessjøen church. Minister of Justice Aud-Inger Aure was clearly moved when she spoke at the funeral of Sheriff Sigurd Wang. Looking for escape routes Elsa Wang talks about her two children who were 19 and 22 at the time. The son dropped out of his education in the Coast Guard. The daughter tried to complete her teacher training at Nesna. In order to do that, mum had to travel with her to every exam. Beate struggled with sleeping at night. The events at Austbø loomed in the back of my mind. She took to looking for escape routes when she was visiting people. She was left with three children. – The eldest, 12-year-old Therese, reacted with a lot of anger and shut me out a bit. She didn’t want to talk so much about her father and about what had happened. They had many common interests. He was her football coach and they spent a lot of time in teams otherwise, says Beate. For her, the first year was about survival for herself and her family. – I tried to create security again, and make life work one day at a time. There was never an option to give up. And in the middle of this came the trial, which had an unexpected outcome. Dag Helge Rønning surrendered to the police in the afternoon after the night of the murder. Here he is arrested by the police. Photo: Håvard Eide / NTB No longer a threat The plan was for Beate and Elsa to sit on the same side as the perpetrator during the trial so that it would be less confrontational. But Beate wanted it differently. – I wanted to meet the challenge. I wanted him to be confronted with us whom he had hit so brutally, she says. – One of the strongest things was that I sat and felt a little sorry for him when he explained himself. After the trial, she was no longer afraid of the man who had killed her partner. Dag Helge Rønning was sentenced to 21 years in prison for the murders at Austbø that night. A few years after he was released, Rønning was found dead in his own apartment outside Oslo. Elsa Wang has never felt hatred towards the perpetrator, but she has felt bitterness in connection with everything Sigurd missed. Things they could experience together. Confirmations, baptisms, weddings, Christmas and birthdays. Beate Jørgensen feels the same way. As time has passed, the consequences of the three shots at Austbø have dawned more and more on her. – When you are younger, you see the challenges in a slightly different way. As the years go by, you really see the consequences of what happened to us. Life became arduous! Now that we have grown older, we think that life became a little more arduous than it should have been, say Elsa and Beate. Mutual support It is now 25 years since the murders at Austbø. A recent podcast from news tells about what happened that dramatic night in Helgeland, and not least what happened in the lead up. In the time after the murders, the perpetrator himself placed much of the blame on the medication he received in treatment for his mental disorders. – The children think it is important not to blame psychiatry and believe it would be wrong to focus on the perpetrator being “innocent”, says Beate. In the past year, Elsa Wang has managed to get rid of some heavy feelings about the murders at Austbø. – Going through the incident at Austbø now, after 25 years, has made me able to go more into myself. Now I can actually enjoy the photo albums again. Both Beate Jørgensen and Elsa Wang had strong support for two years from a psychologist with extensive experience from dramatic events. They could predict much of what was going to happen in the grief process going forward. It has helped the widows through a tough time that very few can imagine. But the two have had the most help in each other. – It is perhaps the best help over time. We have not been able to talk to many others about what has happened. Not many people understand what we have gone through. Only we know. Sigurd and Elsa Wang had two children together. Photo: Private
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The widows of the police killings at Austbø speak out in connection with a new podcast – news Nordland
