KOPERVIK/GAMLE SUNDSVEG (VG) Johny Vassbakk (52) visits the scene of the murder he denies he committed on Wednesday.
More than 27 years ago, prosecution believes Vassbakk killed Birgitte Tengs and left the 17-year-old in bushes near her childhood home.
Vassbakk denies criminal culpability and claims that, as far as he knows, he has never met Birgitte Tengs.
He says he was only once on Gamle Sundsveg, the dirt road where the murder took place: in court he explained that he went there with a relative, but this must have been several years after the murder of Birgitte Tengs.
Traveled the scene
The case is currently pending in the Haugaland and Sunnhordland District Court. On Wednesday, the court left the court in Haugesund to travel crime scene inspectionreconstruction of the crime.
They first went to the center of Kopervik, where Birgitte was the night she was killed. They later drove to the scene, where police set up roadblocks showing where Birgitte Tengs was dragged across the road and into the bush below.
Vassbakk voluntarily participated in the inspection.
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Together with the judges, the prosecution and his defense attorneys, the 52-year-old defendant followed in Birgitte’s footsteps on her final evening, Friday May 5, 1995.
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When the court reviewed the information from that evening last week, it became clear that it is very difficult to determine with certainty exactly where and when Birgitte Tengs disappeared. Those who saw it as early as 1995 did not know exactly when and where it happened. Over 27 years later, it was nearly impossible to tell.
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Birgitte was at a party at the Karmel House of Prayer in Avaldsnes before hitchhiking south to central Kopervik where she was last seen alive.
Today the center of Kopervik is deserted, but in 1995 it was the meeting place for young people on Friday evenings. On the evening that Birgitte Teng disappeared, the pedestrian street was filled with revelers. A number of friends and acquaintances report seeing the cheerful, blonde 17-year-old in the city center around midnight.
Police believe the last reliable observation was made by a former classmate at the west end of the pedestrian street. The information is considered the safest because the person concerned also described seeing a police car with blue lights. In this way, Birgitte’s observation outside what was then called the Torfæu pub could be timed for an emergency call at 00.07 that evening.
From Kopervik, the district court came to Gamle Sundsveg.
No one knows how the 17-year-old traveled the scant four kilometers from the center of Kopervik to Gamle Sundsveg. Birgitte Tengs was said to have been killed on the dirt road between midnight and 2am, but exactly when she was never established.
In a good friend of her father’s found her the next morning, badly prepared.
When the police arrived, her body was cold. Attempts to take her temperature to estimate the time of death were unsuccessful.
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