The Birgitte Tengs case – The lynching mood after the DNA mistake

HAUGESUND/OSLO (Dagbladet): A woman in her 40s describes how tempers took hold in parts of Karmøy’s local environment in 1995 and 1996 after police said they were looking for a man with long hair fair or blond in relation to the murder of Birgitte Tengs.

– People with long blond hair were suspected. It led to quarrels, says the woman in an interview read to the district court of Haugaland and Sunnhordland.

The Karmøy woman was summoned as a witness mainly because she was one of the last people who saw Birgitte with certainty in the center of Kopervik on the evening of 5 May 1995. She should have explained herself on the witness stand, but he is ill, so the court will be held instead subjected to her old interrogations.

Flood of rumors

Police found long clear locks of hair in the late Birgitte’s hands and quickly concluded they couldn’t be hers.

– After that, the investigation went a long way, considering that the perpetrator had light hair. Unfortunately, because otherwise many would have been followed up more thoroughly, said prosecutor Thale Thomseth in his introductory speech.

The police focus on hair length and color became known to the media on June 7, 1995.

The witness describes almost hysterical states as a result of the light hair theory. In addition to violence against men matching the description, there were a number of rumors about named individuals, including a local postman.

– There were even rumors about a person in America who was supposed to have long blond hair, the woman says in the interview.

Several hundred recommendations

Police Superintendent Dag Uppheim, head of investigations in the Kripos cold case group, told the court on Monday that several hundred tips came in at the outset of the outrageous murder case.

– Eventually, there were reports of men with long blonde hair, Uppheim said – who also noted that “the investigation was characterized by this.”

At the time, work was underway to map people who had been in and around Koper during the period in question.

– But in the follow-up work, the color and length of the hair were emphasized, the police chief said.

– It would never occur to me

Eventually, people started informing the police about people named “in derogatory terms.”

– It was rarely designed in a very concrete way. It involved changes in behavior, strange statements when the case was mentioned, wounds and injuries [på personene det ble tipset om]Uppheim said.

530 samples

In 1995, the so-called HLA analysis was dominant among DNA analyzes in Norwegian criminal investigations and the police obtained 530 DNA samples. Neither the now accused Johny Vassbakk nor Birgitte’s wrongfully convicted cousin matches the up to 30cm long strands of hair.

But after a while, the leadership of the investigation began to wonder about the results. Therefore, the strands of hair were sent to England for the so-called mtDNA analysis (mitochondrial DNA analysis). When the results came in in October 1996, they showed the hair was likely Birgitte’s.

– Police chose to emphasize mtDNA, and chose to ignore a perpetrator with long blonde hair, Police Chief Uppheim explained in court.

Both the police and the prosecution admitted during the ongoing trial that the focus on a perpetrator with long blonde hair had drastic consequences for the investigation, mainly because possible killers who didn’t fit the description had been downgraded.

– The cross-checking was probably done less thoroughly against people with dark hair, replied Uppheim to defender Stian Kristensen’s question.

Match

The Tengs case was the first to be examined by the Kripos cold case group. The work led to a new homicide investigation starting in 2017, under the auspices of the South West Police Precinct, and has now resulted in a new indictment and trial.

Since 1995 DNA analysis has become much more sophisticated, and it was precisely a new analysis of Johny Vassbakk’s genetic material in 2019 that led to the allegations against him last September, after a match was found with his so-called Y-DNA in a small amount of trace material found on Birgitte’s pantyhose.

The controversy surrounding the DNA test is the main issue in the current process, as it is only this that connects Vassbakk to the crime scene and murder; for example, no witnesses remember seeing him in the center of Koper on the evening/night of the murder.

While the prosecution believes available DNA analyzes place him unequivocally on Gamle Sundvegen on the night of May 6, 1995, defendants have put forward a number of alternative hypotheses as to how the 52-year-old’s genetic material may have ended up on the pantyhose; among other things, so-called cross-contamination could have transferred the DNA to the garment via a third person or object that both Vassbakk and Birgitte have been in contact with.

Eight unidentified hairs

A relatively large amount of hair was found at the scene of the murder in 1995, and several dozen have been sent for analysis over the years. Today, the police are still involved a list of eight unidentified hairs which is neither from Vassbakk nor from Birgitte’s cousin.

Queue of cold cases

However, these hairs are not given significant weight in the new survey. Uppheim explained on Monday that this was due to, among other things, the “volatility of the hair” – the opposition of Vassbakk’s defenders.

After the erroneous attention to men with long blond hair, the police had to re-examine the material, regardless of hair color and length. It was during this review that Birgitte’s contemporary cousin was caught and finally arrested and charged in February 1997.

The cousin was first convicted by the lord’s court the same year, but acquitted by the court of appeal the following year. On November 4 of this year, he too became acquitted of paying compensation to Birgitte’s parentsand it is now completely out of the question.