Jennifer Fairgate and the Oslo Plaza Hotel Mystery

[00:00:00] Kyle Risi: [00:00:00] And also remember
[00:00:02] Kyle Risi: that briefcase, why did she have it? Such a manly thing for a young woman to be carrying with her. It held the gun, right? It held the gun, but also, interestingly, 24 other bullets. If you're gonna kill yourself, you just need one, right? Yeah, she is
[00:00:16] Adam Cox: definitely a spy.
[00:00:43] Kyle Risi: Welcome to the compendium, an assembly of twisted tales and Oslo mysteries, where the answers aren't as fair as you think.
[00:00:52] Adam Cox: Ooh. As fair as you think. What does that mean?
[00:00:56] Kyle Risi: In today's episode of the Compendium and Assembly of Fascinating [00:01:00] and Intriguing Things, we're Fairgate.
[00:01:08] Kyle Risi: Now, that's the name that she used when she checked into Oslo's most prestigious hotel back in 1995. Not long after, she was found dead under bizarre circumstances. Now this case has confounded both professional investigators and of course, our friends of the pod, Hobby Detectives, aka The Sleuths
[00:01:30] Kyle Risi: but what adds layers to this intriguing story is the veil of mystery that envelopes it. The odd circumstances around Jennifer's death and the questions surrounding her true identity have led many just to ponder what really happened in the days leading up to her passing in June 1995. And why Jennifer went to such great lengths to hide who she really was.
[00:01:55] Adam Cox: Wow, I'm getting very Cecil Hotel vibes with the people checking in under [00:02:00] different names and then they die. I'm intrigued. What happened to her?
[00:02:03] Kyle Risi: That's what we're here to find out today. Okay. But before we do that, should we get on with the introductions? Let's do it.
[00:02:08] Kyle Risi: For those of you tuning in for the very first time, I'm your host, Kyle Risi.
[00:02:12] Adam Cox: And I'm your co host, Adam Cox
[00:02:14] Kyle Risi: And you are listening to The Compendium, an assembly of fascinating and intriguing things.
[00:02:18] Kyle Risi: We are a weekly variety podcast where I, Kyle Risi, tell Adam Cox all about a topic that I think he'll find both fascinating and intriguing, from groundbreaking events to unforgettable people. We do this all in a simple one hour ish episode, giving you just enough information to stand your ground at a social gathering.
[00:02:38] Kyle Risi: Adam, before we jump into today's topic, how's your week been?
[00:02:42] Adam Cox: My week's been good. We've obviously celebrated your birthday.
[00:02:45] Adam Cox: You turned 21
[00:02:45] Kyle Risi: again. I did. I feel 21. I look in the mirror and I'm not 21. . Actually, that's such a sad reality, because you hear elderly people, our grandparents, our parents say it, and they go time and time again they feel like they're still 16 at heart, [00:03:00] but then they look in the mirror and they're like, who is this person looking back at me?
[00:03:03] Kyle Risi: And I feel like the longer I keep living, the more instances where I'm looking in that mirror and I'm going, who is this person looking back at me? In fact, the other day. I found a grey chest hair. And it wasn't just grey, it was white. It was so white, I was literally blinded. That's why I left that on the bathroom cabinet for you
[00:03:26] Adam Cox: yeah, that was very thoughtful of you, thanks.
[00:03:28] Kyle Risi: You're welcome. I want you to be part of these monumental moments in our lives as we transcend the veil from the living to the dead.
[00:03:37] Adam Cox: Wow, morbid thought. So what have you got for me today? I don't know if you've heard of the artist Marina Abramović?
[00:03:48] Kyle Risi: Sounds like some kind of composer. It's gotta
[00:03:50] Adam Cox: be. No, she's a Serbian performance type artist. Okay. So she's been going for about five decades and some of her pieces of work you can basically interact however you [00:04:00] will with her body in a weird way. So someone actually even held up a loaded gun to her head at one point. Another point I think you could, she spent eight hours a day just like sitting in a room and you could just watch her.
[00:04:13] Adam Cox: What is she doing? I don't really, it's art. I don't really get it. Okay. But essentially the Royal Academy of Arts is presenting a retrospective of all of her sort of performance artist work over the last few years. And if you want to go and visit this, I think it's on video, I'm assuming.
[00:04:31] Adam Cox: You have to.
[00:04:33] Kyle Risi: Oh god, Adam, when you start something with a laugh, it just gets me feeling really uneasy.
[00:04:40] Adam Cox: In order to enter the building, you have to squeeze past two nude performance artists. Okay, are they hot? They are nude. They're standing about a metre or two apart, looking at each other in the eye.
[00:04:54] Adam Cox: And it's, there's a big enough gap for an average sized human being to squeeze past them on the [00:05:00] way in. Okay. I'm
[00:05:01] Kyle Risi: going to show you a picture. Oh, God. Oh, God. They're attractive. So that's not so bad. But her boobs are I've seen better days. Don't say that. But that's bizarre. So you very specifically said an average sized person.
[00:05:17] Kyle Risi: What about those plus size beauties that
[00:05:20] Adam Cox: There's not enough room to fit past it's very close. I mean that woman doesn't know where to look She's not looking them straight in the eye. She's not looking at them. No, that's awkward
[00:05:28] Kyle Risi: And there's definite peen kind of rubbing
[00:05:32] Adam Cox: touching Yeah, but there is an entrance if you didn't want to do that because boundaries Yeah, but I thought that was very odd Yeah.
[00:05:40] Adam Cox: And the people that volunteer for this, do you want a job standing naked? And is this recent? I think it was the last couple of weeks. Yeah. Damn. How long is it running for? I don't know. So if you're in the
[00:05:48] Kyle Risi: London area. Very good. So my all the latest things comes from, do you remember those anti privacy adverts that would [00:06:00] display before you watch a DVD? Yeah. And they had that very distinctive slogan which was like, You wouldn't steal a car, so why would you steal a
[00:06:08] Adam Cox: DVD? Oh yeah, that's right. They would scare you thinking you'd go to prison.
[00:06:11] Kyle Risi: Yeah, listen to this.
[00:06:12] Kyle Risi: You wouldn't steal a car. You wouldn't steal a handbag. Oh yeah.
[00:06:27] Adam Cox: You
[00:06:27] Kyle Risi: wouldn't steal a television. I remember this. You wouldn't steal a mobile phone. So why would you steal a DVD? Just in case we get sued, that's all we can play. Oh really? Because actually, this whole segment's about anti privacy, right?
[00:06:45] Kyle Risi: Oh, okay. But yeah, do you remember
[00:06:46] Adam Cox: that? I do remember that. It was on, yeah, all DVDs at
[00:06:49] Kyle Risi: the time. Exactly. So this haunting tune was composed by a Dutch musician named Melky Rietveld. So he was a Dutch musician, and he created this piece for a local film festival in [00:07:00] 2006, right?
[00:07:01] Kyle Risi: Now. Here's where things get truly rich with irony, because the music in that anti privacy advert, the one that's basically lecturing you on the ethics of stealing, no way. Rietveld
[00:07:18] Kyle Risi: never actually gave any permission for his work to be used outside of the film festival whatsoever, let alone in a campaign against piracy. He received no credit, no payment, nothing. And he had to obviously settle the issue legally, which obviously that's all kept private, so we don't know exactly to what extent he was paid out.
[00:07:37] Kyle Risi: But can you just imagine his reaction when he first heard this composition in that context? Just the irony! And the hypocrisy. And it's just a wake up call that even entities that position themselves as moral authorities can just be as big of shitbags as everyone else, really.
[00:07:54] Kyle Risi: So I thought that was pretty funny. That's all I've been doing this week, looking up stupid facts, that was a good one. [00:08:00] Yeah
[00:08:00] Adam Cox: should we get
[00:08:00] Kyle Risi: on with the show? Let's do it. Okay. Are you ready? I am ready.
[00:08:07] Kyle Risi: So on the night of Wednesday, May the 31st, 1995, a young woman dressed in black walked into the Plaza Hotel in Oslo in Norway. And this was no ordinary hotel. It was the city's most luxurious place to stay at the time, and she wasn't just any guest either. She had booked room 2805, which is a high end room on the 28th floor with a stunning view of the city.
[00:08:34] Kyle Risi: For this, she would pay 1, 845 kroner per night, which is around about four hundred dollars, or sorry, four hundred pounds today. It's quite expensive, but it's a fancy hotel. So even though the lobby was bustling with new arrivals, she in particular stood out because of the way that she was dressed.
[00:08:53] Kyle Risi: Now two days later, on the morning of Friday, June the 2nd, she decided to extend her stay through the [00:09:00] weekend.
[00:09:01] Kyle Risi: Notice it started popping up on her TV in her room, asking her to come to the front desk and settle up her bill. And each time, she simply grabbed the TV remote and clicked OK to acknowledge that she had received the message. Yet, intriguingly, she never actually made it to the front desk to actually pay.
[00:09:19] Kyle Risi: On the evening of Saturday, June the 3rd, 3 days since the mysterious woman had checked into... The receptionist, a woman called Evie, noticed something was off. The woman hadn't given a credit card and she'd exceeded her credit limit. So at 7. 36, Evie sent yet another message to the room's TV, this time more urgent.
[00:09:42] Kyle Risi: Please contact the cashier. And once again, the woman clicked OK, but nothing more. Evie then discovered the previous unanswered messages and realised that housekeeping hadn't been in the room since Thursday. A Do Not Disturb sign had also been hanging on the door since [00:10:00] Friday. So concerned, she alerted the hotel security.
[00:10:04] Kyle Risi: Okay. Now just before 7. 50pm, Epson something, I don't know that name. I'm not going to pretend to even pronounce it. So he's a part time security guard and he was given the task to check on room 2805. Now Epson rode the elevator to the 28th floor. Walked up to the mysterious woman's door and knocked.
[00:10:26] Kyle Risi: Moments later, a gunshot ran out from inside the room. Not knowing what to do, Epson hid behind a nearby alcove in the hallway, and with no further sounds coming from the room, he decided that he would return to the ground floor and inform the security chief about what just had happened.
[00:10:43] Kyle Risi: For the next 15 minutes, After that gunshot rang out, room 2805 remained unguarded. So it's a gap in time that leaves us wondering, did anyone leave the room during minutes? At 804, the security chief [00:11:00] himself decided to investigate. He rode up to the 28th floor, he knocked on the door three times, but like before, no answer came from within.
[00:11:07] Kyle Risi: The door was secured with a double lock from the inside, which meant that only security could gain access. Using his keycard, the chief opened the door and he found a disturbing scene. A woman lay dead on the bed, her arms folded against her chest and her legs were hanging off the edge of the bed. The TV was on, the curtain was flapping against the open window and a peculiar smell filled the air.
[00:11:31] Kyle Risi: Now despite shouting out at her, There was no response, and realising the gravity of the situation, the chief immediately closed the door and ordered his team to call the police. So we have a dead body on our hands.
[00:11:44] Adam Cox: A mystery.
[00:11:45] Kyle Risi: It is a mystery. So by 8. 50pm, the police had arrived at the Plaza Hotel.
[00:11:51] Kyle Risi: Now, a person called udun Kristiansen, who was with the Oslo Police Department at the time, said that he approached room 2805 with extreme caution .
[00:11:59] Kyle Risi: [00:12:00] Once inside, he found the woman dead with a single gunshot wound to her forehead, and a gun lay in her right hand, which was resting on her chest. And her thumb was still on the trigger stuck in the firing position. When police took the gun from a hand, they heard a click as the trigger moved back into its original position.
[00:12:19] Kyle Risi: Now the bullets trajectory showed that. It had been shot while she was laying on her back on the bed, and the blood had soaked through the linen reaching the mattress beneath her. She was dressed in a black jacket that went down to her thighs, silk pyjama bottom shorts, stockings, and black pumps.
[00:12:39] Kyle Risi: Intriguingly, Both key cards were found inside the room, and since the door had been double locked from within, it would have been impossible for someone else to lock it from the outside. There was no sign of anyone else being in the room, and there was no sign of there being any kind of struggle. All the evidence had pointed [00:13:00] to her being alone in this room.
[00:13:03] Adam Cox: Okay, Just to recap, she is laying on the bed. She has a gun wound in, her forehead. So it's implying that she has shot herself, and the way that her thumb is on the trigger, there's obviously some pressure still there to keep it down,
[00:13:20] Kyle Risi: that's right. So she, that cell tells me that she died instantly.
[00:13:23] Adam Cox: Yeah, but then to if you're pointing a gun to your forehead, and you're using your thumb to pull the trigger, that's what I'm guessing, Yes. then... Then you've you've shot yourself, but then I would have thought the that'd be instant You'd be out pretty much if it's in the brain. But then somehow her hand seems like it was neatly on her chest exactly and it was still the pressure was on the gun exactly
[00:13:45] Kyle Risi: So according to officer Christiansen the evidence suggested that the woman had spent most of the time inside the room Even more perplexing was that There was no sign that anyone entered the room during or around the time of her death.
[00:13:57] Kyle Risi: And the crime scene report [00:14:00] concluded, it was overwhelmingly likely that this woman had committed suicide. And because of this, the police didn't take many steps that would usually be standard in a suspicious death case.
[00:14:11] Kyle Risi: They didn't keep the bedsheets or the pillows as evidence. They didn't question many of the hotel guests or staff, nor did they secure the room for an extended period of time while they investigated. They were just like, this woman has killed herself.
[00:14:26] Adam Cox: Sure, So I guess they have, I dunno, they've seen the body and they've made this assumption, haven't they? But had they maybe, I'm assuming that at that point they hadn't taken her thumb off the trigger or anything like that at this point, they're just like, Oh, it's a suicide. Let's just clear this place up.
[00:14:39] Kyle Risi: But here's the part that baffles everyone. When investigators searched the room, they found absolutely nothing that could reveal who this woman was. There was no credit cards, there was no driver's license, no plane tickets. There wasn't even a handbag, a wallet, or any money. [00:15:00] Things like pictures, car keys, house keys, which most tourists would have, were also missing from the scene.
[00:15:07] Kyle Risi: items like toothbrushes, hairbrushes, cosmetics, toiletries were also nowhere to be found. Or even books or magazines were just absent. It gets stranger. There was no passport found in the room either, which is unusual given that passports are generally required to visit Norway, right?
[00:15:24] Kyle Risi: When the police inspected her clothing for clues, They found that all the labels within her clothes had been removed. That's weird. That is weird. The only piece of clothing, a grey blazer hanging inside the closet, offered a clue. It was traced back to a German fashion house, and sold in Germany.
[00:15:44] Kyle Risi: What was even stranger, is her choice of clothing. While she had an array of clothes for her upper body, she brought nothing extra for the lower half.
[00:15:54] Kyle Risi: No trousers, no skirts, no dresses. She didn't even have extra underwear or [00:16:00] shoes with her either and the police think that she may have gotten rid of some of these items before her death. So what was she wearing on her bottom? Like these silk pajama bottoms and I believe that's what she might have arrived in and I say silk pajama bottoms it's just maybe the style they look like silk pajama bottoms but I think at the time they were fashionable enough to be worn outside but that's it.
[00:16:21] Adam Cox: That's it, so one pair of like trousers so to speak and then a few tops and a
[00:16:26] Kyle Risi: jacket. They were like shorts because she was wearing tights.
[00:16:29] Kyle Risi: So in the room, they also found cologne, but it was made for men. They found a travel bag and an attache case, which is like a briefcase basically, and that was of German origin. An ironing board and an iron were also in the room, even though those items aren't standard amenities.
[00:16:48] Kyle Risi: This suggests that she might have requested them, and housekeepers who had been in the room noted how oddly tidy it was, actually staying in the room whatsoever.
[00:16:59] Kyle Risi: So [00:17:00] perhaps one of the most puzzling elements is how she managed to check into a five star hotel like the plaza without any identification. Credit card or even paying in advance. Considering the hotel's existing clientele often include famous individuals. This seemed to investigate is like a significant lapse in their usual strict security protocols of the hotel and how she managed to bypass these procedures is still baffling.
[00:17:26] Adam Cox: So they do have them in
[00:17:28] Kyle Risi: place at this hotel. Yeah,
[00:17:29] Adam Cox: usually your passport, unless she was local to the country, that's the only time you wouldn't need a passport, right?
[00:17:35] Kyle Risi: Potentially,
[00:17:36] Kyle Risi: What's bizarre is that the information that she filled in on a registration card when she checked in was also proven to be completely false. What she did is she filled her name in as Jennifer Felgate. Her telephone number was listed as a Belgian number, as well as her address, which was an address in Belgium.
[00:17:52] Kyle Risi: She also listed her company name as a company called Cerebis, I believe that's how you pronounce it. Which [00:18:00] was an existing business But it turns out that they had no record that she ever worked there.
[00:18:04] Kyle Risi: So the police contacted the Belgian authorities who were no help at all, because it turned out that all of the details that she provided just didn't exist.
[00:18:11] Kyle Risi: Even more puzzling were the two phone numbers in Belgium that she had dialed from her hotel room. They were nearly identical, differing by just one digit, and both numbers were non existent.
[00:18:24] Adam Cox: So she dialed them from her hotel
[00:18:26] Kyle Risi: room?
[00:18:27] Adam Cox: So do you think she wrote them down and went, let me just check these numbers, make sure they don't go anywhere?
[00:18:32] Kyle Risi: Why would you? Unless it's a signal to something.
[00:18:36] Adam Cox: When police checked the room for fingerprints, they only found hers, which didn't match any of the details on the Interpol database. Even the gun had no fingerprints. And this led some investigators to reconsider whether or not her death was actually a suicide.
[00:18:50] Kyle Risi: So her What? Exactly, it's bizarre. So further scrutiny revealed that Jennifer had booked her room about a week before she had arrived.
[00:18:59] Kyle Risi: The hotel [00:19:00] front desk operator remembered the call. She apparently spoke in English and the background was quiet, suggesting that she wasn't calling from a phone booth or from a busy public area.
[00:19:09] Kyle Risi: So what do you make of all of this?
[00:19:11] Adam Cox: So at the moment she has hidden her identity. That name doesn't exist. She doesn't have a passport.
[00:19:19] Adam Cox: All the labels in her clothes are missing. She's given Belgian address that some of them may or may not be real, made up. But I really, I don't understand.
[00:19:30] Kyle Risi: It's just confounding. Why would someone go through such lengths to erase their identity?
[00:19:35] Kyle Risi: So what's also baffling is that on the day before she arrived she actually called up the hotel and asked if she could extend her check in period to later that evening. Okay. But at the same time she also asked if she could add someone else to The registration card. And that was a man called Louis Fairgate.
[00:19:53] Kyle Risi: Now, when she checked in, apparently Louis was with her. At some point, someone observed Louis standing with her when she [00:20:00] was either checking in or when she came back downstairs to exchange some currency. But after that, Louis disappears from the story altogether.
[00:20:08] Adam Cox: Is there CCTV footage at this point in time?
[00:20:11] Kyle Risi: They didn't check the CCTV footage, even though there was CCTV footage at the time. Because her death was considered a suicide, they just didn't feel it was necessary.
[00:20:20] Adam Cox: Okay, Weird. It is weird.
[00:20:23] Adam Cox: And so this guy may or may not have been there at the very beginning. And was this when she was speaking in German when she wanted to check him in as well?
[00:20:29] Kyle Risi: That's right. So it's the first time she called up she spoke in English. The second time she phoned up she spoke in German.
[00:20:35] Kyle Risi: I mean, does that give us a clue to her identity? Yes on the registration card, she used belt and details, but there are some clues that are inside the room that indicate German origin. For example, the blazer and the briefcase, as well as the cologne.
[00:20:52] Kyle Risi: I just feel like. There is some strange connection to Germany that she is potentially trying to conceal.
[00:20:59] Adam Cox: Could have [00:21:00] obviously visited Germany. So it doesn't necessarily need to have come from Germany, but then it feels something very like Mafia underground.
[00:21:08] Kyle Risi: Do you think it sounds sinister?
[00:21:09] Adam Cox: A little bit because there's Obviously this question whether she was in the room by herself, if someone was acknowledging these messages, but actually she was perhaps already dead, then the whole no fingerprints, there's just something very clinical about this.
[00:21:23] Kyle Risi: Yes, it's bizarre, isn't it? So the hotel's Thai security and cameras could have offered some clarity, but since the police initially treated the case as a suicide, they never reviewed the footage. So that answers your question. This decision only increased the frustration of those keen to solve this baffling mystery because if they just kept it, we would have known, A was Louis real?
[00:21:45] Kyle Risi: And under what circumstances did she check in? Was she being coerced? Was she like, being led? Was she being trafficked? What was the situation?
[00:21:54] Kyle Risi: Despite any lack of missing person reports matching Jennifer's description. The case was initially investigated [00:22:00] as a homicide. But the line of inquiry didn't build any kind of traction whatsoever because nobody came forward to report her missing.
[00:22:09] Kyle Risi: And so the notion of suicide was just revisited, and that's what was concluded. And it was supported by, certain pieces of evidence, like the door was double locked from the inside, there was no signs of a struggle that were visible. Her body didn't bear any kind of form of injuries that would suggest a struggle, and also, no one seemed to have been in the room or entered, at least based on the evidence that we have at hand.
[00:22:34] Kyle Risi: Right? There's that 15 minute window when the security guard went downstairs to get the police chief, but other than that, there's just no...
[00:22:43] Adam Cox: Someone could have been hiding in a cupboard or closet,
[00:22:45] Kyle Risi: Oh, well, are you suggesting that. After they murdered her, they hid in the closet. And then when someone came into the room, They then managed to sneak out some way.
[00:22:55] Kyle Risi: I don't know. Yeah, that's plausible. Because
[00:22:57] Adam Cox: you can't really, I'm assuming you wouldn't escape through a window [00:23:00] because you're on the 28th floor.
[00:23:01] Adam Cox: That'd be quite dangerous.
[00:23:02] Kyle Risi: The window was open, unless there was a ledge or something, I guess we don't know.
[00:23:06] Kyle Risi: So the police held on to Jennifer's body for a whole year, hoping that someone would come forward to identify her, but nobody ever did. So in 1996, they made the sad decision to just close the case and then bury her, and on the 26th of June, She was laid to rest in a cemetery in Oslo, and it was a pauper's grave.
[00:23:25] Kyle Risi: There was no priest, there was no headstone, and not a single person was there to mourn her. Just a simple coffin lowered into the ground, and that was it. The case was closed. That's sad. It's really sad.
[00:23:38] Adam Cox: I guess they couldn't find any DNA, anyone else's DNA on
[00:23:41] Kyle Risi: her. At the time, DNA wasn't really a thing that was commonplace in...
[00:23:46] Kyle Risi: These types of cases in Norway, but also her case was deemed a suicide So they also didn't feel it was necessary and it was an emerging tech So they could have but they just didn't feel it was necessary I
[00:23:56] Adam Cox: guess it's not uncommon from what we learned from the Cecil Hotel [00:24:00] people would check in under an alias and then would commit Suicide they would do that because they wanted to not be traced and tracked and it sounds like she went through to extreme length Yeah Not reveal any identity.
[00:24:13] Adam Cox: Crazy
[00:24:13] Kyle Risi: extreme lengths, right? Checking in under a different name. Yeah, but cutting out your labels, not bringing anything with you, like mad.
[00:24:21] Kyle Risi: So two months after she was buried, the chief of police gave an order to get rid of all the evidence that they gathered, this means that Jennifer's clothes, her personal belongings, even the samples taken from her skin, were all destroyed.
[00:24:33] Kyle Risi: Her valuables like a ring and her earrings, they were all sold off at auction. But here's a twist, it turned out that the gun wasn't actually destroyed. This was kept by police, and this is going to give us a few clues. Now, let's talk about Lars Christiansen Wegner. I believe that's how you pronounce his name.
[00:24:50] Kyle Risi: So he's a journalist from Norway. Who had been on the case since 1996, and he stumbled upon Jennifer's story while he was working on a series about missing persons.
[00:24:58] Kyle Risi: Wegner [00:25:00] thinks that Jennifer's life obviously counts for something and it absolutely does. Right. He believes that her unmarked grave should at least have some kind of headstone with her name on it. But he just doesn't know who she is so he decides that he's going to set out on a journey to try and see if he can discover who she was with the very minimal clues that we have to go on.
[00:25:20] Kyle Risi: So in 1996, Wegner penned an article about Jennifer that appeared in a local newspaper and he tucked his notes away in a case in his desk drawer.
[00:25:29] Kyle Risi: And over two decades, he would occasionally revisit the story, but nothing ever came of it. But he couldn't just shake the story off. So fast forward to 2016 with no felt that it was time to just do one last final efforts into trying to uncover this mystery. And so he headed to the small Belgian village that Jennifer had listed on a registration card. And he felt that there must be some reason why she decided to list this address down on that registration card, because the address existed, so she must have known. [00:26:00] Or had some kind of connection to this place.
[00:26:02] Adam Cox: Right? There's some significance
[00:26:04] Kyle Risi: to her. Yeah. Has to be.
[00:26:05] Kyle Risi: So to help him, he wrote in Cedric Lagast. He was a local reporter and he was asked to help dig deeper and help him chat with kind of some of the locals. So Wegner and Lars met with Hubert Jonnet. He was the mayor of Erlen who had spent his whole life in the town and they showed him sketches of Jennifer and asked if like he recognized her and he just drew a blank.
[00:26:26] Kyle Risi: So following this, they decided to try and show the sketch to some of the locals in the area. And interestingly, a couple did say that she looked remarkably like one of the residents sister-in-laws. But eventually this lead also just fizzled out because they managed to find this sister-in-law. And they found that she was alive and well.
[00:26:47] Kyle Risi: And ask for the address that Jennifer had listed on her. Registration card. While the streets existed, the exact house did not exist at all. The street numbers actually ended before [00:27:00] they got to her number, which I believe is 1 42. So they would just add a loss
[00:27:04] Kyle Risi: Even a search through her local birth records returned. Absolutely nothing. And Jennifer's supposedly birthdate that she'd list on that registration card didn't have any matches whatsoever. So they just found nothing. Now wait now. And lost eventually came to speculate. That may be Jennifer, probably wasn't from the area. But there must be something linking it to this place because she knew so many of the specific details within the area. Like for example, the street name. Also her telephone number was of the area and the two numbers that she called from the actual hotel room. We're from this area as well.
[00:27:37] Adam Cox: So she's, yeah, using like half truths for this.
[00:27:39] Kyle Risi: So what was she doing? What were the significance of those numbers? Could they be signals, that she was, she would dial the number, yes they didn't exist, but maybe they triggered some kind of signal to someone?
[00:27:51] Adam Cox: That's what I was wondering, if that, there was something being sent to say, yep, I'm here, or whatever.
[00:27:57] Kyle Risi: Mafia link that you were talking about. Something a bit
[00:27:59] Adam Cox: more [00:28:00] sinister or she was just going Oh, hang on. Does that number exist? Let me just double check. I don't know. Yeah,
[00:28:05] Kyle Risi: it's weird. It's messed up.
[00:28:06] Kyle Risi: So the police thought that Jennifer might've been depressed. She may have just took another own life, but there were also reasons to question that for one, it looks like she had taken a shower just before she'd killed herself. Now the hotel's bathrobe. was on the bed and used towels on the floor in the bathroom.
[00:28:23] Kyle Risi: Near the sink, there was a soap bar and even some shampoo bottles that had been used. Plus, she was also dressed quite nicely. She'd done her makeup she had eyeliner on, and they say that it looked like she was almost getting ready to go on a night out. So if she was depressed, she would be moping around the room, right?
[00:28:39] Kyle Risi: She wouldn't have gone out of bed, the room wouldn't have been as clean as it was. Like, it was tidy. I guess
[00:28:46] Adam Cox: so. But I guess you don't know what, if she was depressed, what kind of state her mind was in because she might have just been like, getting ready to make herself look nice for the last time, but then if you are really depressed, then you [00:29:00] perhaps wouldn't think that?
[00:29:01] Kyle Risi: I don't know. I don't think she was depressed. Maybe it was a hit? Maybe it was an accepted hit. Maybe someone was there to kill her. Maybe she was instructed to kill herself. Maybe she's not part of the mafia. Maybe she's higher up. Maybe it's something more official.
[00:29:16] Adam Cox: Maybe. It feels almost like a spy, actually.
[00:29:18] Kyle Risi: Mmm. That's the vibe that I'm getting. Yeah. And it's a potential theory that we cover in this, right? And we'll explain why in just a moment when we have a look at what some experts say.
[00:29:28] Kyle Risi: But some experts do have different opinions about the gun. One said that it looked like it was a mix of various parts. It was a makeshift gun. It was like a Hungarian knockoff from decades ago. So it looked like a Browning kind of pistol gun. And it's a really powerful gun an thought that it came from some kind of Hungarian factory called, I think it's called the FEG, which means nothing to me. They also said that it wasn't in great condition, pointing that it might have potentially some kind of criminal background.
[00:29:57] Kyle Risi: Okay. And then, there's the way that [00:30:00] Jennifer held the gun as well. According to Wegner, that's the journalist, her grip was not what you'd expect. When she was found, her thumb was on the gun's trigger while her fingers were there on the other side of the handle.
[00:30:12] Kyle Risi: So this is puzzling because how did she manage to keep hold of such a powerful gun in such an odd grip? Because remember, this is a real serious weapon. . It is a military grade weapon and it's a powerful gun with a real strong kind of kickback.
[00:30:29] Kyle Risi: Kickback, yeah. So she's holding the gun in that particular way with these small hands, shooting herself using her thumb. You're going to have some kind of recoil. And her hand wouldn't be expected to be just laying elegantly across her chest. That's the bit I think is weird. But there's more to it.
[00:30:48] Kyle Risi: The guns force would have left some kind of scorch mark on a hand as well. But there was nothing and this raises questions about whether or not there was someone else in the room.
[00:30:58] Adam Cox: Yeah, there's, she's had, I feel
[00:30:59] Kyle Risi: [00:31:00] like there's a hit. The chief pathologist who examined Jennifer's body pointed out that, normally when people take their lives with a gun, their hands are shaky, right? So what they will typically do is they will try and stabilize the gun by putting their other hand around the barrel, to try and keep it. Still, and also to stop the recoil, right? And when you are doing this, if you then shoot a bullet into your forehead.
[00:31:27] Kyle Risi: You were going to have some blood around your fingers where you were stabilizing the gun. Okay,
[00:31:34] Adam Cox: from the
[00:31:34] Kyle Risi: impact on the bullet. Yeah, but there just wasn't, right? There was no blood, there was no soot, there was no gunshot residue. This was the first time that the pathologist had ever seen anything like this in a suicide case.
[00:31:46] Kyle Risi: Even stranger, there were blood spots that were scattered all around the room, on the bed, on the pillow, on the phone, on the table, and even on the ceiling. But, not a speck was on Jennifer's hands. So all of these factors make it hard to rule [00:32:00] out the possibility that someone else might have been involved.
[00:32:03] Adam Cox: So if it's not on her hands, what were her hands doing at the time? Were they tied up, or it suggests that she perhaps, she didn't have any injury marks, so maybe she wasn't like, seriously tied up, so she wasn't trying to get away, there's no Could someone
[00:32:18] Kyle Risi: have been holding her down, maybe laying their knees on her arms, pinned down?
[00:32:23] Kyle Risi: That would explain why there was no blood on her hands. They'd shot her and then they'd staged the scene. That's where my mind's going. That's what it feels like. Yeah.
[00:32:32] Kyle Risi: So Wegner takes it upon himself to try and piece together and reconstruct the crime scene with the help of a few Experts Who brings up an important detail. The absence of blood on Jennifer's chest and her clothes, as we just mentioned. He argues that if nothing was blocking the blood, you would expect to find it on her hands and her body and her face and things like that.
[00:32:52] Kyle Risi: He thinks that the killer could have pinned Jennifer's arms down using his knees, placed his hand over her face to [00:33:00] tilt her head back into the correct position, and then fired a shot. After that, the gun was then placed into Jennifer's hands to make it look like a suicide.
[00:33:09] Adam Cox: Yeah, that's what it feels like. And if the gun was wiped down, or someone was wearing gloves. Yeah, no fingerprints. And then if her fingerprints aren't properly on the gun, because you'd think they'd be all over it because she'd be handling it in all sorts of ways. Mm hmm. Yeah, weird.
[00:33:23] Kyle Risi: So also Wegner raises another crucial question. Why didn't Jennifer fight back? Iverson suggests that she might have been unconscious at the time, perhaps even drugged, but Wegner points out the police only tested her system for alcohol. Which means that we don't know if there was any drugs in her system, her body's now been destroyed. So to get a clearer picture of what unfolded in that room, 2805, Wegner created a timeline using, ingeniously, the logs from Jennifer's keycard.
[00:33:51] Kyle Risi: It's important to note that the keycard only records people entering into the room, but not when they exit, right? Because you don't need to insert the card. Sure. So the timeline [00:34:00] reveals that Jennifer first entered the room on Wednesday the 31st of May. 44 p. m. That's that late check in. After that, the key card was used on Thursday at 12 21 a.
[00:34:10] Kyle Risi: m. So she'd obviously been out for the night, maybe gone out for some drinks. Thursday at 8 34 a. m. So Friday and then Friday at 8 50 a. m. And then lastly on Friday. at 11. 03am. After that point, the card was never used again.
[00:34:26] Adam Cox: So the theory is she last went into the room on Friday at 11am.
[00:34:30] Kyle Risi: So a message sent to Jennifer's TV on Thursday afternoon went unanswered until Friday morning. And another message sent on Friday night got a response within minutes. She also used the pay per view TV twice, once on Friday and again on Saturday.
[00:34:45] Kyle Risi: And because she wasn't seen entering and leaving the room much, police thought that she might have been in a room most of the time getting ready for what they believe was potentially her suicide. So Wegner talked to a few of the witnesses to fill in a little bit more [00:35:00] of the details around Jennifer's stay. For instance, when hotel maids checked her room before 1pm on Thursday, it was empty. And that means from Thursday morning until she used her keycard to enter the room at 8. 50am on Friday, she was somewhere else. She didn't stay in the room that night, right?
[00:35:19] Kyle Risi: No one knows where she was for those Was she meeting with someone in Oslo? Maybe she was exploring the city? Did she know someone else in Oslo? Why was she out all night when she had a hotel room?
[00:35:31] Adam Cox: That is I guess we've still got this mystery over if she was with another man.
[00:35:35] Kyle Risi: Yeah, we've, we'd never hear from him again.
[00:35:37] Kyle Risi: That's all the information we have. One of the maids also noticed, nice little detail, a pair of nice shoes in Jennifer's room when she was out, right? Yet, when her body was discovered, those shoes were gone. Male shoes or female shoes? Female
[00:35:52] Adam Cox: shoes. Do you think maybe, because there wasn't many clothes found?
[00:35:56] Adam Cox: Someone who potentially might have killed and might have taken some [00:36:00] of her belongings with her?
[00:36:01] Kyle Risi: Possibly, but I don't know how they could have gotten out of the room. Yeah that still doesn't make sense. It doesn't!
[00:36:07] Kyle Risi: And when they questioned the maid, she was sure that the shoes that she had seen were not the same ones that Jennifer's wearing when her body was found. Something else that caught the maid's attention was the spare set of bedsheets was unused and still tucked away in the closet. But when Jennifer's body was found, those same sheets that she had tucked into the closet were then on the bed.
[00:36:28] Kyle Risi: She didn't put them on the bed. Who put those new sheets on the bed? Who does that?
[00:36:32] Adam Cox: Yeah, I agree, because if you're If you go to this hotel and you're thinking about committing suicide, probably last thing on your mind is making your bed. Yeah. I would think.
[00:36:41] Kyle Risi: So on Friday morning, another hotel worker saw Jennifer put a Do Not Disturb sign on the door, and from that point on, she seems to have never left the room.
[00:36:50] Kyle Risi: That was it. So Kristen Anderson, a room service employee at the hotel, was possibly the last person to see Jennifer alive. Around about 8. 06pm on the [00:37:00] Friday, Jennifer ordered a meal of, and again, another clue, bratwurst and potato salad. So again, that's a German meal. Yeah. Even though there was no credit card on file for her, she managed to get the meal added to a tab and when Kristen arrived at the room at 8. 23pm, He says the room was notably tidy, almost sterile, and the bed looked like it hadn't even been touched. But she gave Christian a fifty kroner tip, which is quite generous for the time, I think it's like worth like six pounds, right?
[00:37:31] Kyle Risi: And that's the only cash that was linked to Jennifer that the police had found.
[00:37:35] Adam Cox: So why did no one, although I probably know the answer to this because they suspected it was a suicide, but no one questioned the whole checking in, the fact that she didn't leave any credit cards or identity information.
[00:37:47] Adam Cox: So for someone to be able to do that, they must have either coerced the person on the desk to say, Hey, I'll give you an extra tip if you can just get me in this room or
[00:37:55] Kyle Risi: whatever. True. I guess there's a couple of theories there, right? Could be that exactly what you [00:38:00] said, or their security isn't as tight as they're making it out to be.
[00:38:05] Kyle Risi: Maybe they make these allowances all the time and they're probably trying to cover that up because if they find that actually their security is lax, they might get into trouble, because the hotel is quite an important hotel. But before we get there, final detail on Jennifer.
[00:38:21] Kyle Risi: So on that night, Jennifer was wearing a skirt. And had a suitcase with her. Oddly, both were missing from the room at her death. The meal she ordered was still there, half eaten. Jennifer's autopsy showed that the meal was still in her stomach, undigested. This raises an interesting question
[00:38:36] Kyle Risi: because at the time that they think she died, that was a whole 24 hours after she'd ordered that meal. So did she die on that Friday night? Or did she wait almost the entire day before she had a single bite of that food?
[00:38:50] Adam Cox: That'd be weird. I would never leave food that long. No, you
[00:38:53] Kyle Risi: wouldn't.
[00:38:55] Adam Cox: Yeah, I just, but then, is there reports that they definitely know [00:39:00] that she died on the Saturday then? Is that when they pinpoint her death? I
[00:39:03] Kyle Risi: don't think they definitely know. I think they're basing this pretty much on the fact that the gunshot rang out when the security guard came to check on her. And they're assuming that's when she died. A little small detail is that when they were checking the crime scene, there was another shot that was fired. And this shot seems like it was a test shot that she may have fired through a pillow, using a pillow to silence it.
[00:39:26] Kyle Risi: It rang right through the pillow, through the mattress, and embedded itself on the floor underneath, only just a few inches away from where the other bullet that killed her. rang out. They think it was a test shot because the pillow was flipped around after that test shot was made because there's a scorch mark on the back side of it where the gun would have left that scorch mark.
[00:39:46] Adam Cox: Yeah could someone have killed her on the Friday, maybe with a silencer as well, to do that, but then stayed in the room?
[00:39:54] Adam Cox: then did the shot on the Saturday to then, I don't know, then cause the escape [00:40:00] essentially. This feels like an escape room.
[00:40:03] Kyle Risi: Yes, it does feel like an escape room. So various theories float around why Jennifer was in Oslo. Some say that she could have been involved in a drug smuggling kind of operation.
[00:40:12] Kyle Risi: Others speculate that she might have been a high class sex worker. And others even talk about her possibly being a secret agent or an assassin.
[00:40:21] Adam Cox: She's a secret agent or undercover.
[00:40:22] Kyle Risi: I think so. In the 1990s, the Plaza Hotel in Oslo was a hotspot for secret... international politics. Told ya. So leaders from around the world would gather there to discuss like serious political matters, right?
[00:40:37] Kyle Risi: For example, the Israel and Palestinian authorities held really super hush hush talks in various rooms and conference areas. When Jennifer obviously was found dead, there was no political talks and meetings happening at the time.
[00:40:50] Kyle Risi: Right? I think it's an interesting point to note that if she was a secret agent and she is connected to governments and politics in some kind of way, and [00:41:00] if this hotel. Is known to be used by various governments in various talks and negotiations, then maybe it could be a hotel that is used by various secret agents. As a place where they. Routinely dispose of. Maybe defective. Secret agents. It's a place where they may become, they have their identity declared. And then they get disposed of.
[00:41:27] Adam Cox: Would you do that? Would you go okay, you now need to go commit your suicide? And they're like, yeah, okay, fine. With that, you'd only do that for a reason, i. e. maybe to protect your family or something like that. There's a reason you're doing that, right? Yeah. Oh,
[00:41:39] Kyle Risi: okay. Possibly.
[00:41:40] Kyle Risi: Yeah. So enter Ola Kjeldødje. Sure, we'll go with that. Enter a guy called Ola. Okay. Basically, he is quite a big name in the Norwegian intelligence service. He's no stranger to the kind of the global hotspots, having worked in places like the Middle East, in the [00:42:00] Balkans and in Africa.
[00:42:01] Kyle Risi: And when asked about Jennifer's case, he says that he didn't think for a moment that this was a simple suicide. Instead, he suggests that it might have been a well-planned operation, perhaps even an assassination. He points out some strange facts. For instance, the way that Jennifer supposedly shot herself didn't add up.
[00:42:21] Kyle Risi: And then there was the gun. Someone had used acid to remove the registration number on the actual gun itself. Oh, really? Now, this is a trick that some experts say that spy agencies and not your average criminal will use when removing a serial number from a gun. If you were a criminal, what they normally do is they grind the number off using some kind of like little small grinding tool.
[00:42:46] Kyle Risi: Whereas secret agents and government officials and these different departments, they will use acid and it's done in a very professional way. And there's telltale signs when you've removed a serial number using acid versus grinding it off. Interesting. [00:43:00] And this odd detail. Links to the possibility that it could have been some kind of intelligence agency involved in this.
[00:43:07] Kyle Risi: So he points out that removing labels from the clothes is a pretty standard practice in the intelligence world. Why? Because you don't want anyone tracing your clothes back to a specific country.
[00:43:20] Kyle Risi: Now Jennifer been missing from the hotel for a long period of time also seems to make sense to him as well. He thinks that she probably had a second spot to go to as a backup location. Just like an agent would apparently. And ask for the locked door from the inside. he says that that is no hurdle that an expert within the intelligence community couldn't overcome
[00:43:40] Kyle Risi: If they wanted to get into that room or they wanted to double lock that from the outside, then those capabilities are completely within their reach. Okay. What do you think of that? I believe him. Do you? Yes. Ooh. I think I believe him as well.
[00:43:55] Adam Cox: I don't think it's an average Joe, like murderer or anything like [00:44:00] that. If there's some, if there's someone else, like if involved in this , it's definitely higher up and it's tried to be kept hush.
[00:44:06] Kyle Risi: But what really gets his attention is how clean the whole situation was. There's no evidence, right?
[00:44:11] Kyle Risi: There's no traces, there's no family members asking questions. He suspects that this was a professional job and that someone came in afterwards to tidy up the loose ends. So there's a part of me that thinks that maybe she did die on the Friday. Maybe she was drugged. Maybe she was smothered. Maybe something else. And then someone came in hours and hours later. To actually
[00:44:29] Adam Cox: stage the rest of it.
[00:44:30] Adam Cox: Yeah. And also, who's to say that the police and the hotel aren't somehow... Involved. Involved. Yeah. If this is like a political hotel that is notorious for this kind of like meetups and stuff like that, could there have been someone like masquerading as, some... Hotel worker. Yeah. And then the police coming in going, oh yeah, it's just a suicide That just, wrap this up.
[00:44:50] Adam Cox: Yeah. Yeah. Who knows?
[00:44:52] Kyle Risi: I think I maybe buy that as well, because if this hotel's hosting all these dignitaries, right? All these secret services, and these agents will also be involved in checking the [00:45:00] security and reviewing it and things like that. And they might have access to certain things. Certain cards and things like that.
[00:45:05] Kyle Risi: Like if you were hosting the president of the United States for an example. He would send the secret service out there to check everything, make sure the security's all in place, maybe have backup things in place, and maybe they just had access to these things over the years.
[00:45:17] Kyle Risi: And the fact
[00:45:17] Adam Cox: that no one even thought to check security or she may have had a passport or a fake passport when checking in and someone maybe scrapped that information got rid of it.
[00:45:27] Kyle Risi: He also says that if Jennifer was indeed an agent who had met a fate as this, the government would quite likely have offered the family a settlement. And. Make them promise to not say anything or maybe make them sign something because she was part of the intelligence services.
[00:45:40] Kyle Risi: They may have even gone to them and said, listen, your daughter died in the line of duty and she's a hero. Here is a nice little settlement to sort you out for the rest of your lives.
[00:45:49] Kyle Risi: Don't speak about this because the details around what she was doing is really sensitive. Yeah. And maybe that's why someone's not come forward and that's what this Ola guy is suggesting.
[00:45:59] Kyle Risi: [00:46:00] 1 big gap in the case is the lack of Jennifer's d n a. D n A testing wasn't the go-to method in the Norwegian investigation process back then, although, They initially did keep blood samples. These were all destroyed in 1996 after she was buried.
[00:46:14] Kyle Risi: Now, if anyone wanted to get a DNA sample, they'd have to go to the lengths of exhuming her body. So in 2016, over two decades after Jennifer's death, her body is dug up.
[00:46:27] Kyle Risi: And they managed to extract a complete dna profile of jennifer's body considering that she'd been buried for 20 years
[00:46:35] Kyle Risi: And off to the testing, the science points to European roots specifically, indicating that she may have spent her early years in Northern Germany. Which is really interesting because now we have loads of clues that point all to Germany. Remember the cologne. The fact that she was speaking fluent German. The food choices that she ordered when she was staying at the hotel. The blazer jacket. And of course the briefcase [00:47:00] containing the gun. All German.
[00:47:02] Kyle Risi: So one of the hotel workers working at the hotel front desk remembered that Jennifer spoke German, but not just any German. She had an accent that sounded like it came from the Eastern part of the country. Now could it be that she was from Eastern Germany or at least lived there for a while? Long enough for it to develop this accent
[00:47:21] Kyle Risi: As far as the DNA goes, the police also did hit a dead end. There were no matches to the DNA found anywhere. They were not on any of the databases and they couldn't identify any links to where whatsoever.
[00:47:33] Kyle Risi: But while this to us might seem suspicious. Remember of the time DNA evidence wasn't that mainstream. So it could be that there was just never an opportunity to get her logged into some kind of database while she was alive
[00:47:45] Adam Cox: yeah, I can't imagine there'd be as many people on record.
[00:47:48] Kyle Risi: That's right. So Wagner was stumped.
[00:47:50] Kyle Risi: But he wasn't ready to give up just yet the age on Jennifer's registration card that she filled out at the hotel was put down that she was 22. But her autopsy report estimated that our [00:48:00] ages ran about 30 years old.
[00:48:02] Kyle Risi: Now there was a way to pin down her exact age. Just a little bit further. And this is where we get introduced to a guy called Henrik Druid. So he's a Swedish professor who is skilled in various forms of forensics. Now he suggests that there could be another way to determine her exact age. And basically this comes out of the cold war. Now between 1955 in 1963. Various nuclear bomb tests were happening all around the world. And these tests caused a spike in C 40. 14 levels in the atmosphere.
[00:48:34] Kyle Risi: Certain parts of the body, like the enamel in our teeth can absorb the C14. And because of this, scientists can actually use teeth to tell when a person was born by comparing the amount of 14 contents that was in the atmosphere at the time compared to when these bombs have been set off during this time.
[00:48:53] Kyle Risi: So fast forward to 2018 experts, users method to find out that Jennifer was probably born in 1971. [00:49:00] And this means that she would have been 24 at the time that she died.
[00:49:03] Kyle Risi: There's also a couple other clues that also indicate she may have grew up in Germany. One notable clue was the ring that she was wearing when they found her body. The numbers that were engraved in the ring indicates that its origin was from the Germany area. Also her handwriting style that was used on the hotel registration card was typical of a German native.
[00:49:25] Kyle Risi: Not to mention that her travel bag that was made in Germany by a company called travel light and the dental work that they observed when they were getting that sample of the C 14. From her teeth. Indicated that some of the work that she had done on her teeth with typical of germany at that time
[00:49:43] Adam Cox: oh, wow. Yeah. Isn't it incredible that they can do that? That makes sense. I'm guessing there's different techniques in different countries for dental work?
[00:49:51] Kyle Risi: I guess so. But also let's not forget that a witness confirmed that she also spoke German. So all these pieces of the puzzle start coming together suggesting that she was likely a woman from East Germany.
[00:49:59] Kyle Risi: [00:50:00] Okay, I get it Kyle, she's from Germany. She's from Germany.
[00:50:02] Kyle Risi: So when the team's up with a huge European newspaper based in Berlin, which is read by about 10 million people every single day. And he's thinking is that maybe someone would be able to recognize Jennifer if he posts that sketch of her in side an article. And the hope is that someone potentially come forward. But so far, no one has.
[00:50:23] Kyle Risi: And again, maybe. Maybe. That connection between the military intelligence service is a solid one.
[00:50:31] Adam Cox: Yeah. Cause if you're a spy, you're going to try and lay low, aren't you?
[00:50:36] Kyle Risi: There is also people that are talking about using current genetic genealogy and matching to various databases to see if they can find DNA, but the technology just isn't there just yet. Maybe they'll do that in the future. But again, still no clues there.
[00:50:50] Kyle Risi: So lastly, one final piece of information that I wanted to bring up today is that when the investigators were searching her room, they did find one interesting clue, which at the [00:51:00] time didn't seem very significant at all. But later on, internet sleuths have pointed out that maybe it had way more significance than was initially thought, but. It's too late now to really put an investigation in place to investigate what this was all about. And that was inside the room. There was a bag that contained. And newspaper called us today. And on that bag was written a single number, and that was the number 2 8 1 6. Now in context of this. There's only a few doors away from Jennifer fare gates room, which has 2, 8 0 5.
[00:51:38] Kyle Risi: The strange thing is, no one ever checked who was in that room 2816 on the night that she died, or in the lead up, or following her death.
[00:51:48] Kyle Risi: Could that have been where she vanished for those missing 24 hours? Was she in someone else's room in the hotel? Or maybe this is why her room was so spotless because she was in another room.
[00:51:59] Adam Cox: Interesting. [00:52:00] Or it could just, it could be a complete red herring, but yeah, is that somewhere she was told to go?
[00:52:05] Adam Cox: She wrote it down, then the other, but that could be anything. That could be someone who handed it to her if it was on like a
[00:52:10] Kyle Risi: newsstand or whatever. Possibly, but why, what's such an interesting number? So closely connected to her room 2805. What is the significance of that number 2816?
[00:52:21] Kyle Risi: I think maybe there was someone, maybe that's where Louis Furgate was. Maybe.
[00:52:25] Adam Cox: Maybe that's where she was told to go or
[00:52:28] Kyle Risi: that would explain where those missing shoes are and some of the items that were missing from the room. Maybe that's where they were. Maybe that's where she spent a lot of her time.
[00:52:34] Kyle Risi: Maybe that's where she slept at night because her room was so pristine and so sterile. It's bizarre. It doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense. And also remember
[00:52:44] Kyle Risi: that briefcase, why did she have it? Such a manly thing for a young woman to be carrying with her. It held the gun, right? It held the gun, but also, interestingly, 24 other bullets. If you're gonna kill yourself, you just need one, right? Yeah, she is
[00:52:59] Adam Cox: definitely a [00:53:00] spy.
[00:53:00] Kyle Risi: Yeah, it's bizarre, right?
[00:53:02] Kyle Risi: Sadly, because the hotel records from 1995 are gone, we have no way of knowing who was in room 2816, and whether or not they have any link to Jennifer, or her identity. This stuff must happen all
[00:53:15] Adam Cox: the time, in a way, because... There's spies in the field and whenever they meet their end, just think about the guy that was poisoned in the UK from Russia, wasn't it?
[00:53:25] Adam Cox: And that was off a, was it a door handle? I can't remember what it was, but all these things that are going on, like covertly. Then it's probably this just hit the news and therefore got enough sort of interest by reporters and stuff like that where naturally it should have just been buried and made hush.
[00:53:43] Adam Cox: It's just this particular one
[00:53:44] Kyle Risi: caught the attention.
[00:53:45] Kyle Risi: There is another story called the Israel woman, which is a name given to an unidentified woman who was found dead in Norway's ice valley in November, 1970, and her body was charred making it really difficult to identify her. So the [00:54:00] investigation revealed that she had multiple identities. She wore wigs. She traveled from town to town, switching hotels of few days. And there's speculation that she might have been involved in secret service or was some kind of spy. And maybe she met the same grisly end, where she was disposed of. What's the word? expired. Terminated. Terminated, like it's done.
[00:54:23] Kyle Risi: And so i think jennifer fare gates Was a secret agent or a spy.
[00:54:29] Kyle Risi: Because think about it, if you've been told that you worked as a secret agent, you've done a great job, you understand the line of work that you're in, you're no longer needed you need to go off to be murdered or killed or whatever.
[00:54:41] Adam Cox: Yeah, but I don't know if I'd buy that. Was she just assassinated? I don't feel like you'd go we're gonna kill you. Unless there's obviously a sinister reason why they're gonna try and get her to do that.
[00:54:51] Adam Cox: And based on the way that she shot herself, or, didn't shoot herself. Shot herself. Yeah, with air quotes. I think she was just assassinated. Maybe she was on a mission and [00:55:00] it went wrong, or it, yeah.
[00:55:02] Kyle Risi: Do you think, if we draw a parallel to something... James Bond?
[00:55:06] Kyle Risi: No. If we draw a parallel to something a little bit closer to home, consider the sheriff a Piney case where there was speculation that they had potentially kidnapped the wrong person. So maybe. Jennifer felgate was a victim of sex trafficking hence louie fairgate and maybe she was brought to the hotel room while they were waiting for her to be exchanged to whoever may be the client and then they decided that actually they didn't want her anymore and they decided to just discard her
[00:55:35] Kyle Risi: yeah, another possible reason.
[00:55:37] Kyle Risi: Would you like to see a little picture of her? Hopefully alive. Yeah, she's alive. She's a very striking woman. So that's the sketch that was done from her autopsy photographs.
[00:55:48] Adam Cox: Oh, so she's got, yeah, quite short hair the kind of spiky short black hair. And yeah, she's got quite a angular
[00:55:56] Kyle Risi: face, I guess you could say. She's a handsome [00:56:00] woman.
[00:56:00] Kyle Risi: But that I just thought you might be interested in seeing her. I think it's important that we know who she was, she looked like and that she was a real person. I feel like the fact that
[00:56:07] Adam Cox: she's got this short hair, there's low maintenance, I would think.
[00:56:10] Adam Cox: Therefore, she could be. You could say yes, maybe she was involved with, I don't know, spies, that kind of thing, undercover. But she
[00:56:19] Kyle Risi: was also young. And the 90s, that's the style and the,
[00:56:26] Kyle Risi: the aesthetic that a lot of women had. And it stood out. And if you're a secret agent, you want to blend in. She stood out. Yeah, interesting. Yeah, so that's the story of Jennifer Fairgate. Do you like it?
[00:56:37] Adam Cox: That was, yeah, that was really good. I'm it's frustrating that we don't know more about it.
[00:56:41] Adam Cox: Yeah. And maybe there'll be bits that are unearthed in the future, but it feels like
[00:56:47] Adam Cox: that's
[00:56:47] Adam Cox: it, as much as we're going to know.
[00:56:48] Kyle Risi: That is. Should we run the outro? Let's do it. And so we've come to an end of another episode of the compendium and assembly of fascinating and intriguing things.
[00:56:56] Kyle Risi: If you found today's episode, both fascinating and intriguing, then [00:57:00] subscribe and leave us a review. Don't just stop there though. Schedule your episodes to download automatically. As soon as they become available, we're on Instagram at the compendium podcast. So stop by and say hi, or you can visit us at our home on the web at the compendium podcast. com.
[00:57:14] Kyle Risi: We release new episodes every Tuesday. And so until then, remember that even in a city as open as Oslo, some doors remain closed forever and behind them might just be a story as complex as Jennifer Fairgate's.
[00:57:30] Kyle Risi: See you later.
[00:57:31] Kyle Risi: See ya. [00:58:00]