The gull murder: – – still has not found the weapon of the crime

TROMSØ (Dagbladet): The 38-year-old, accused of the murder of 59-year-old Marie-Louise Bendiktsen, presiding at the 108th District Court, is now dressed in a black dress and is wearing a black dress. a dark blue shirt. He will sit there for four weeks while the trial of Sjøvegan's murder, aged over 20, is underway.

The calendar showed on 15 July 1998 that Bendiktsen had been found dead at his home. The forensic investigation established that she had been raped before her house was lit. But since the first day, murder is a mystery.

With Bendiktsen's son and daughter in attendance, Attorney General Torstein Lindquister began his opening lecture. He recounts the dramatic Christmas Day of 1998, the huge investigation that followed, and what the prosecution considers to be the strongest evidence in the case: a trace of DNA from the scene that corresponds to a sample taken by the defendant.

800 tips – no answer

The Sri Lankan, now 38, rejects any form of guilt. He claims to have had a brief intimate relationship with the deceased at the age of 17, claiming that he did not know what had happened to him afterwards.

– At the autopsy, it was established that the deceased had died before the fire and that she was threatening to murder. Then, 800 people were interviewed and 1,900 DNA samples were delivered. A number of survey projects have been launched. But that gave few or no answers. The result was that nothing led to anything concrete, Lindquister said.

In addition to interrogations and DNA testing, over the years, about 800 pieces of information have been provided, which the Attorney General describes as an intense hunt. The investigation was then officially closed in 2003, but without the work being stopped altogether for this reason. The local police refused to give up finding answers to the murder of the 69-year-old widow.

Technological advances

– In 2013, the technology of DNA has been improved. This meant that the University Hospital of Oslo had found the results of the DNA. In a report dated March 9, 2018, the conclusion is that the DNA profile of the scene was identical to that of the accused, says Lindquister.

But the accused was no longer in Norway. He had left the country and was in Sri Lanka. On his return to Gardermoen on June 20, police waited and waited. Since then, the father is in detention.

– The investigation has since focused on the accused, said the prosecutor.

Not found the weapon of crime

It is unclear exactly when Bendiktsen died or what was the murder weapon. A scout knife was found on the scene, but the police determined that it was probably not the one used for the murder.

No clear cause of fire has been detected. But the fire started and the house was the most damaged in the part where the room was. It's also here that the 59-year-old was found dead.

– The relationship that the defendant claims to have had with the deceased is of course at the center of the trial. This emerged in questioning, and was then a completely new information in the case, says Lindquister.