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On a cold November morning in 1970, hikers in Norway stumbled across something that would haunt the nation for decades. A burned, unrecognizable body in the remote Isdalan Valley. Every label on her clothing was meticulously removed. Her suitcase held secret codes, foreign currencies and spoons from across Europe. Her fingerprints never matched her identity. A blank page. She traveled from Norway to France, Belgium and Switzerland, always careful, always watched. Some say she was a spy. Others say she was a smuggler. Some insist that it was a suicide. The truth is still out there, buried in mystery. And 50 years later, the Istal woman remains Norway's most baffling unsolved case. Who was she? And why does she die in the shadows of the Cold War? Well, today we dig into all the evidence, all the theories, and all the secrets that refuse to die. If you are a fan of Cold War history, unsolved cases, and just getting into the gritty, dirty details with your boys, this is the episode for you. So sit back, relax, and welcome to camp.
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So good, so good, so good.
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Score.
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This episode is brought to you by Jack Daniels. Jack Daniels and music are made for each other. They share a rhythm in the craft of making something timeless while being a part of legendary nights. From backyard jams to sold out arenas. There's a song in every toast. Please drink responsibly. Responsibility.org, jack Daniels and old number seven are registered trademarks. Tennessee whiskey, 40% alcohol by volume. Jack Daniel Distillery, Lynchburg, Tennessee.
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What's up, people? And welcome back to camp. My name is Mark Gagnon and thank you for joining me in my tent where every single week we explore the most interesting, fascinating, controversial stories from all time forever. That's right. This is the place where I literally sit in my tent and I deep dive into all my strange Wikipedia wormholes that I used to do my whole life and now I've officially just decided. Decided to put them onto the Internet. Yes, I do this channel. I also do religion camp. I also do history camp. If you like more specific stuff this channel. For the time being, we've Kind of just been deep diving on, you know, things obviously that I've been interested and gripped by, but like, kind of like mysteries, stories, occult stuff, conspiracy stuff. It's just been kind of a fun sort of deep dive. And we've gotten a lot of requests for this specific story. Now, as you know, this is not possible to do just alone. I'm merely a man, but with the help of, you know, all of our wonderful, beautiful people that are listening, most of you are, you know, CEOs, wealth, investors, speculators. You know, I think our, the net worth of our average listener is like, What, a bill? 40k? 40k? Somewhere between 40k and a bill. It probably. But it's not possible without you guys. And more importantly, it's not possible without my dear friend Christos, one of the wealthiest man I've ever met. I mean, what's your net worth right now? And be honest, probably, I'm going to say ten figures. I do. Well. Oh, that is a rich answer. And honestly, that pisses me off. So I need you to stop talking for the rest of this episode, okay? Because I'm not going to take getting talked down to by the 1%. All right, guys, today we're talking about a fascinating, fascinating story. This, this one, it's sort of true crime, but it's also sort of espionage, mystery, conspiracy. And so for me, that's kind of like the perfect mix. Sometimes you do true crime stuff and it's just like sad. Like, it's just like this woman was murdered by this terrible guy and then he died. But also he was abused as a kid, so everything sucks. And it's like, well, what is that? Right? But this story has mystery in layers. Okay, does it involve a woman that has died? Yes. All right. Which I'm, I'm not stoked on. I don't like it when women die. It actually pisses me off. It's one of my least favorite things. If I. Anytime I see sexism, I get freaking livid. But also there is mystery here. So I feel like some jokes here and there invited. Is that fair? They lighten the mood. Yeah. Yeah, right. That's what we need on a beautiful Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, I don't know, one day this is coming out. But guys, it starts on the morning of November 29, 1970. There's a man and his two daughters, and they're hiking through Isdalen Valley just outside of Bergen, Norway. Now, the valley is known locally as Ice Valley, and it's not the kind of place that you're going to really visit for too much fun, right? It's cold, it's rocky. It's pretty quiet. It's just like a slice of wilderness. It always seems to kind of, you know, hold secrets. So as they are kind of following their path on their short little trek, something among the stones catches their attention. This sort of dark object. And what they find that day would become one of the strangest unsolved mysteries in certainly Norwegian history and maybe European history and maybe the history of the world. Lying right there, half hidden by the rocks, was the burned body of a woman. She's on her back. Her face and the front of her body are so badly charred that no one could recognize her. She's mostly kind of, like, undressed, and there's traces of burned clothing. And this is a pretty odd state for someone anywhere, really. But specifically in this part of Norway. Around her are traces of what looks like a fire. Investigators later discovered the remains of two suitcases with every label covered, carefully removed. An empty bottle of Fenimol. This is like a strong sleeping pill. And what was left of a few petrol containers, literally like gas cans. Now, during the autopsy, doctors found that she had consumed between 50 and 70 undigested sleeping pills. But what is really strange about this entire case were the details that the police actually found. Every tag had been removed from her clothes. Her jewelry had no markings. The fire had done so much damage that many of her physical features were just impossible to recognize. Whoever she was, someone, or maybe even herself, had gone through great lengths to erase her identity. The first police report read like any other, right? It was pretty factual. It was precise and, you know, kind of emotionless. But between the lines, there's something really strange. This wasn't a hiking accident gone wrong or, you know, like a simple case of normal suicide in the mountains, which happens from time to time. It seems planned and organized and careful and far stranger, but than anyone could explain. So after the autopsy takes place, what it revealed only adds questions. So the woman is between 25 and 40, which is not very helpful in, you know, identifying someone. She's small and slim, about five' four in height, with unusual dental work that immediately stands out. Several of her teeth had gold crowns. Now, this is, you know, common in some parts of the world, but it was rarely seen in Scandinavia at that time. But it was more common in, you know, Eastern Europe or Southern Europe or even South America. So to the pathologist, it hinted that she might have come from outside of Scandinavia. Now, the burns on her body also tell a very strange story. I mean, her face, neck are badly scorched, but her back has far less damage, as if the fire had been focused on specifically the identifiable features in front of her. Now, even more unsettling, doctors found traces of smoke in her lungs. So, not to be too morbid, but that meant that she was still breathing when the fire began. Now, inside of her stomach, they found traces of, like I said, 50 to 70 fenimal tablets. And this is like a strong barbiturate. And these pills are pink. And this is a variety that's sold in England rather than the white version that is typically sold in Norway. Now, it was enough to make her unconscious and likely deeply sedated, but not necessarily enough to kill her outright. The medical team couldn't say exactly what ended her life. It may have been the pills, it may have been the fire, or maybe even the carbon monoxide that she inhaled as the flames burned. The report concluded that she died from a combination of phenobarbital incapacitation and carbon monoxide poisoning. So literally from the carbon monoxide from the flames and from the pills that she had consumed. Now, theories began to split immediately. Some said that she took the pills herself and she planned to die. Some theories suggest that someone else had drugged her and staged the scene to look like a strange suicide. The evidence kind of pointed both ways at once. So the police tried something unusual for the time. They sent her fingerprints through Interpol to agencies across Western Europe. I mean, that includes France, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands and more. The results came back the same thing at every place they sent them. No match. So whoever she was, she had never been arrested, never worked in a job that required fingerprinting, and had never served in the military. So at this point in the investigation, the police don't have a clear visual on what she looked like. They don't have any type of match for her fingerprints. And her dental records are sort of strange. It leads them to believe that she's from outside Scandinavia. But without any type of centralized dental record system across Europe, the clue, like all the rest, go nowhere. Still, investigators refuse to give up. Even with her face destroyed, they began to piece together her story through just old fashioned detective work. They start going to hotel clerks, train conductors and waiters who maybe had seen her. And slowly a trail began to form. She had checked into hotels under different names, spoke in different languages, and always seemed to be paranoid or watching the people around her. Witnesses described her as polite, well dressed, but sort of distant and maybe aloof. Through these accounts, the police began to map her movements across Europe One alias, one city, and one faint trace at a time. The investigation finally started to make progress when the police began retracing her steps through these hotel records. So they found that on November 23, 1970, just six days before she was discovered, she had checked into the Hotel Hordeheimen in Bergen under the name Elizabeth Leeuwenhauer, claiming to be a Belgian national. The staff remembered her very clearly. She was polite, even friendly, but something about her felt off. According to these accounts, her English carried an accent that no one could quite place. It was sort of German, maybe French, maybe something else entirely. She paid fully in cash, carried expensive luggage, but but was dressed sort of plainly, and she seemed nervous. She was glancing outside the window again and again as if she was expecting someone. But this person, Elizabeth Leanhauer, wasn't her real name. It was just the latest in a string of false identities. As investigators followed the trail backwards through registry books, they realized that she had been traveling for months across Scandinavia and Western Europe, changing names every few days. In Oslo, she had been Genevieve Lancier. In Trondheim, she was Vera Harle. At different hotels in Bergen and Stavanger, she used names like Claudia Tilt, Alexa Zarna, Marquez, Claudia Nielsen. And this pattern was always the same foreign sounding names that could kind of fit anywhere in Europe, yet belonged nowhere specifically. Each alias came with forged or borrowed documents, and none of them actually led to a real person. Hotel receipts and travel records showed that she had visited multiple towns and cities across Norway, France, Belgium and Switzerland between March and November of 1970. She. She never stayed anywhere longer than two or three nights, and she always chose modest hotels where questions were fairly limited. She also traveled pretty light, just two suitcases, and she always paid in cash. So to fill the gaps left by the fire, Norwegian police turned to people who had seen her alive. And witnesses described her in fragments. A hotel clerk, shopkeeper, all offered small pieces of a larger puzzle. One clerk in Bergen recalled how she spent hours sitting in the hotel lobby and her eyes were just fixed on the entrance, waiting for someone to show up. But no one ever came. And because her face had been destroyed, the Police in the 1970s created composite sketches based on witness descriptions. Artists work from these witnesses, trying to recreate what she may have looked like. Drawings were circulated to other police departments and then printed in newspapers across Scandinavia. And the combination of these sketches, hotel records and eyewitness memories helped investigators rebuild a version of her life that the physical evidence couldn't really offer. And witnesses didn't just remember what she looked like. They all mentioned this nervousness her behavior was very strange. Constantly watching the doors and lobbies, the cash payments, and this strange mix of foreign names that never really fit in. A waiter in Stavanger recalled her ordering in what was like an English tinged German accent. And when speaking with another guest, she suddenly just switched her accent almost to, like, Dutch or Flemish. And then a shopkeeper remembered her buying hiking boots and then outdoor clothing. More curiously, several witnesses said that she hadn't always been alone. Witnesses reported seeing her with unknown men on several occasions. So in Bergen, she was seen with men whose identities were never confirmed. And one witness reported seeing her with two men wearing coats that looked southern. The police wrote down the descriptions, but with no names or photographs, the leads just kind of vanished. So even her travel pattern seemed deliberate. She had visited cities tied to Norway's defense and industrial network. So bergen, home to NATO's naval command, Stavanger, near the oil exploration zones, and Trondheim with its military research centers. Was this just a coincidence? Or was there a purpose behind the route that she chose? And the question became one of the central mysteries of the case, one that still has no clear answers. Now, the burn suitcase that was found near her body turned out to be one of the most revealing parts of this mystery. When the police went through, they found something even stranger. All the clothes were well made wool dresses, nylon stockings, very sensible shoes. But every single label had been removed. Not ripped or torn out, but meticulously removed from every garment. Even labels on cosmetics and the prescription information on her eczema cream had been carefully scraped off. Inside the suitcase, they also found several different currencies. There was German marks, Belgian francs, British pounds, Swiss coins, and 135 Norwegian kroner. There were also a handful of spoons from all over Europe, like little silver keepsakes that might have been collected on her travels. Or maybe they were meant for something else entirely. But you've seen these spoons. People used to collect them all the time, and she had a bunch of them. Her cosmetic kit looked normal at first, but every brand name had been removed or filed off the actual bottles themselves. And then there were notes. On a few sheets of paper, investigators found a strange markings, rows of letters and numbers that didn't really form any type of coherent words. The handwriting was neat, deliberate, but written in a cipher. And they noticed certain combinations repeated like F4, N7. And when police investigators worked to crack the code, they eventually determined that it was just a simple abbreviation system, basically using initial letters for dates and cities that recorded her travel itinerary across Europe. The notes look similar to the kind of like low level ciphers used by spies during the Cold War. Basic, but, you know, effective for like, short, routine communication. It wasn't the kind of encryption that would actually, like, hide state secrets. It was not unbreakable, but just, you know, a very basic sort of, you know, decoder. They could figure out what it was. So when police decoded most of the travel itinerary, the final entry, ML23 NMM, remained undeciphered. And it still leaves questions about her last day completely unanswered. But still, the notes hint at something pretty significant. These weren't random scribbles or diary entries of just a traveler. They were meant to be read again later. So whoever wrote them planned to come back to them or to turn them in in some official capacity. And that made one thing clear, is that this didn't look like the work of someone that was preparing to die. So to really understand the Isdal woman, you have to understand where Norway was in 1970. On paper, the country was neutral and peaceful, but in reality it was still right on the edge of the Cold War, right in the 1970s. The Cold War is still a global phenomena and certainly ravaging what was going on in, you know, eastern to Western Europe. Norway was a founding member of NATO. Its northern border brushed against the Soviet Union and its coastline gave both sides, east and west, access to the icy waters of the Norwegian Sea. Soviet submarines would use these routes to slip towards the Atlantic, while NATO ships, including many stationed in Bergen, were keeping constant watch. And it was really a battlefield, right? There was no open conflict, but plenty of secrets and espionage. So during the late 1960s and early 70s, Scandinavia was buzzing with spy activity. In Sweden, high ranking officers named Stig Wennerstrom had been convicted in 1964 after being exposed for spying for the Soviets for nearly 15 years. In Norway, concerns about Soviet espionage were massive and only continuing to grow. So while major spy cases like Hoistad and Treyhold would emerge in the 1970s and 80s, intelligence services were already on high alert for Eastern Bloc infiltration. Intelligence agents on both sides treated the region as a sort of espionage front line. Even Norway's peaceful looking countryside wasn't as innocent as it seemed. What's up guys? We're going to take a break really quick because I have a story to tell you. Fun fact, after you have a child, your testosterone naturally goes down. It's a way for you to like, become like more empathetic and more in touch and like protect your kid and stuff. And I didn't really believe that. 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This is going to just basically support your testosterone using a bunch of supplements and natural ingredients that are going to make your testosterone be what it's supposed to be. Okay, don't even think about TRT because again, it can be overkill. You're going to be injecting your body and it can also shut down your body's like natural production of testosterone but using this stuff. Tongat, ali, shilajit, vitamin D, zinc, boron, all the natural stuff that is going to be supporting your healthy T levels and helping your stamina and giving you more energy throughout the day. And honestly, it's great. I've only been trying it for a couple weeks now and I want to do a before and after testosterone test and see how much more my testosterone boosted. 91% of guys reported feeling higher energy. And the reviews on this are absolutely amazing. It's made in the USA third party tested and there is a 90 day money back guarantee. So there's literally no risk. You can try it for, you know, three months and if it's not for you, they will get you your money back. And for a limited time, the listeners of this program, this is a crazy deal. By the way, most brands don't do this. You're going to get 60% off for life and three free gifts. When you use the code camp@ Mengotomars.com that is Men M E N go to Mars m a r s and use the code camp at checkout and after your purchase they're going to ask you where you heard about them. Please say that you Heard about them from Camp Gagnon, that we sent you there. It really helps us out. Marsman is great. It is a natural support for your testosterone. Look, you can buy all of these, you know, supplements separately, or you can just go to Marsman and get it all in one case. Now, let's get back to the show.
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Hidden among the fjords and forests were these restricted military zones, some tied to NATO's nuclear storage facilities and radar systems. Now, the Istalan Valley was located in the Bergen area. Now, remember, this is where the Istal woman was discovered. Her broader travels in Norway once again coincide with a lot of these top secret military sites, including the top secret testing and trials of the Penguin anti ship missile that was being conducted along the Norwegian coast. Now, it could just be a coincidence, but it is a tough coincidence to ignore. Now, people who worked in intelligence circles at the time described a very specific way of life for a lot of low level operatives. If you are a low level operative working for the Soviets or for NATO, you were told to travel pretty light, right? You would use false names, pay in cash, avoid any details that might make you memorable. And if caught, they were expected to destroy anything that could reveal who they were. That description really fit the Istal woman perfectly. Yet despite how closely her behavior matched that world, no intelligence agency ever admitted to knowing her. The Norwegian Intelligence service launched their own parallel investigation into whether she was connected to espionage. Though they publicly denied any involvement for decades, some investigators later claimed their efforts to follow leads abroad were blocked by higher level authorities, which again fueled speculation that intelligence agencies knew more than they were admitting. It left investigators with only two possibilities. Either she had nothing to do with espionage, or she had been a part of something so secret that even decades later, nobody was allowed to say a word. Now, on February 2, 1971, the Bergen Police officially closed the case. And their conclusion was probable suicide. The report explained it really neatly, right? There was an overdose of barbiturates, and it was in an isolated location and the presence of petrol. This was all signs that a woman had chosen to end her life. And, you know, she wanted to erase all of her personal details, right? And that showed that she didn't want anyone to know who she was. She didn't want to bring dishonor to her family or, you know, make anyone else feel the pain of her death. And maybe to her family they could just say, oh, she ran off and she fled to America. She started a new life, when really she took her own life and no one would know the difference. But not everyone believed the story. Even inside the police department, the decision felt rushed. Later accounts show that many investigators privately questioned this suicide finding, though no formal objections actually appear in the case file. Self immolation suicides amongst women in Western Europe are extremely rare. Now, self immolation, obviously this is setting yourself on fire. Now this would be technically considered a self immolation because she was still breathing at the time of the fire. So I guess the story would be she took all these pills, covered herself with gasoline and then lit the match. Now, at the time, and even to this day, this is very, very rare, it almost never happens. And investigators found no evidence linking this case to, you know, a protest of some sort or a psychiatric illness, which is most common when looking at these self immolation suic sides. Now, behind the scenes, there was pressure to just move on. Declassified Norwegian Security Police papers later revealed that officials briefly considered an espionage link after noting her travels to these, you know, military testing areas, including sites connected to this Penguin missile program. This literally was a massive sort of top secret ship missile program that they didn't want anyone to know about. The last thing Norway wanted was a diplomatic mess over this mysterious foreign death. So the easiest path was to just close the file, label it a suicide and let it fade into history. And no one ever came forward to claim her. To this day, no family, friends, no missing person report ever matched. And when the time came, her body was placed in a zinc coffin, just in case someone might want to identify her someday. And buried in Bergen, her grave to this day has no name. So over the decades, people have tried to make sense of who this istal woman really is and why she died the way that she did. After 50 years, few main theories still circulate Each one convincing in parts, but none of them able to explain everything. Now, the first and most popular, like we mentioned, is the espionage theory. Many believe that she was a spy. Multiple identities, coded notes, and careful travel near these military sites and her deliberate attempt to erase every trace of herself all line up with this Cold War spy theory. Her dental work hinted at maybe eastern or southern European origin, and her ability to switch languages to fit the profile of, you know, whoever she was trying to be is very common amongst operatives at the time. Now, according to this theory, she may have been a courier for the Eastern bloc, for the Soviets. And either for fear of being captured or for imminent capture, she either took her own life or there was assassination attempt that was staged to look like a suicide. But the spy theory also has some holes, right? No intelligence agency ever admitted to knowing her even 50 years later. And defectors who might have recognized her have still stayed silent. But also, why would they tell the truth, you know, her multiple fake names were sort of sloppily managed. There was no consistent story or cover, no clear pattern, which seems odd for someone trained in espionage. And the dramatic nature of her death, right? The fire, the pills, this remote valley, it feels more like a message or, you know, something stranger than the efficiency of this professional hit. And then there's also the smuggling theory. Some think that she may have been a part of an underground trade network, maybe for diamonds or drugs or something else of value. Right? She had frequent travel, cash payments, shifting companions. That would, you know, make sense in that context. And maybe her death was a result of a deal that had gone bad or someone collecting a debt, or maybe fear that she would be killed by, you know, someone that wanted her dead. Still, this idea doesn't quite fit either. You know, smugglers usually keep at least one stable identity, and they don't go to such extremes to erase themselves. They don't, you know, remove every tag in their clothes or scratch the names off their prescriptions and the coded notes. I mean, it's very elaborate for just a simple criminal operation. Also, the remote, isolated location where her body was found also wouldn't make a ton of sense for, you know, a typical drug, you know, gang execution. Now, the official version, of course, is the suicide theory, right? She's a troubled woman. She's fleeing something in her life. There's, you know, no medical or testimonial evidence of mental illness, but she still decided to die alone and unnamed. The fake identities may have reflected, like, a fractured sense of self. Maybe she's, you know, manic Maybe she has, you know, multiple personality disorder, but then you have these coded messages that could have maybe just been the meaningless scribble of, you know, a disturbed mind. Maybe she thought she was a spy and was writing down, you know, a very simple cipher that she read in a book or saw in a movie. Once again, the absence of struggle and the presence of these barbiturates seem to support this view. But even that explanation is sort of incomplete, right? Traveling across Europe for months, managing, you know, foreign currencies, having money in the first place, and then also maintaining these multiple aliases takes somewhat of a clear mind and careful planning. This is not the chaos of someone with, you know, a psychological crisis or an underlying mental illness. And if her goal was to simply disappear, why leave behind these notes and these traceable hotel stays? And then, of course, there is this assassination theory, which is tacitly connected to the other ones that we've mentioned, that she didn't die by any type of choice at all, that maybe she had seen something she simply wasn't supposed to or failed a dangerous assignment, or someone was trying to silence her. So the pills may have been forced down her throat, and, you know, the fire was set afterwards to basically erase any type of evidence. And the codes were planted to throw off investigators because maybe the person that did this was also aware that there was this, you know, Soviet Cold War thing happening, and they could maybe just say, oh, she was a rogue spy, and that will do it. Now, it's a chilling thought, right, that, you know, that someone would go to such lengths to, you know, erase a person off the face of the earth. But there are some of these details that support it, right? You know, even the uneven burn pattern, the reports of these men that she met along the way, the timing of her movements near these facilities. Again, there's no solid proof of. Of a murder that ever surfaced. And the autopsy found no signs of restraint or struggle. And the carbon in her lungs showed that she was still breathing when the fire started, which would have been pretty difficult if she was already unconscious or dead. So, once again, each theory will solve part of the puzzle, but every answer just raises new questions, right? Spy, smuggler. Just a wandering woman that saw the wrong thing. Someone that just took her own life. None of it fits perfectly. And decades later, the Istal woman still remains a mystery, suspended between fact and speculation. Her story is kind of frozen in that Norwegian valley where she was found. But in spite of all that, there is still new evidence that is coming forward even to this day in 2016. Norwegian public broadcaster NRK launched a journalistic investigation into the Isdal woman case, prompting police to re examine a lot of the old records without formally reopening the file. And this time, investigators had something that the original team never did. This is modern forensics. Using isotopic analysis, a technique that studies chemical traces in tooth enamel, they hoped to find where she had come from. The isotopes in a person's teeth carry the signature of the water in the soil from the region where they actually grew up. And the results pointed to southern Germany or a border region of Switzerland or France. Her tooth chemistry was consistent with someone who had grown up in that area. But it still wasn't enough. German authorities searched their records. Yet the post war years had left countless gaps. Refugees, displaced families, a lot of undocumented people had moved into the region. I mean, even by some estimates, into the millions. So if she had been one of them, she might have never appeared in any database at all. And then, a year later, in 2017, the BBC released a documentary that reignited the interest in this case. Suddenly, people across Europe began calling in with memories and stories, and a few witnesses thought that they actually recognized her face or recalled details from old newspaper photos. One woman said that she had seen a stranger in Bergen just days before her death, arguing in German with a man near the harbor. Another remembered her in a cafe. She seemed anxious and glancing towards the door, as if someone was going to walk in. Which once again, corresponds with a lot of the earlier eyewitness testimony. Now, the new leads are intriguing, but once again, it doesn't solve the mystery. The BBC team also spoke to retired intelligence officers from several countries. Each of them agreed that during the Cold War, it was entirely possible for an operative to just vanish from the agency, if the agency wanted it that way. One former MI6 officer put it very bluntly. He said, that's the pattern of a courier who knew she'd been compromised, but didn't yet know how bad it was. Modern forensic artists later rebuilt her face using scans of her skull. And the reconstructions are very lifelike and they spread quickly online. And for the first time, people could look into the eyes of the Isdal woman, not as a file number or, you know, a loose sketch, but as an actual person. But still, no relatives came forward. No missing persons report ever matched. DNA testing brought the most promise, though. Scientists were actually able to extract a viable genetic profile from her bones, something that was completely impossible in 1970. And that DNA could one day identify her if a relative sample ever turns up in A compatible database. But for now, the results are sealed in a storage unit, waiting for a match that may never come. The new evidence gives us details today that the original investigators could only have dreamed of, Right where she grew up, what she looked like, and even her genetic DNA signature. Yet the mystery is still unexplained. And decades later, we still don't know who she was, what brought her to Norway, and why she died alone in that cold, silent valley. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the story of the istal woman. Now, I. I feel like the tendency here is to be like, oh, she was obviously spy, obviously espionage. And to me, I'm like, yeah, I get it, okay? But it's also possible that she was, like, a traveling woman that saw the wrong thing, that, you know, people have been killed for much less. You know, like, is it possible that she was just, like, traveling near one of these sites and saw missile testing that she wasn't supposed to see? And they were like, how did you get in here? It's. I mean, that's not crazy. Like, again, is it possible that. I mean, why would she have, like, these pills from England, though, and then take them with her to Norway and then use that? I'm like, that's a little weird. I don't know. I mean, I think we can all agree it's not a suicide, right? Like, I don't think anyone really buys that. Like, who's removing the tags off their clothes, scratching the name off of their prescriptions. This is obviously someone that did. Didn't want to be caught, or if they were caught, they wanted to have some deniability about who they were. You know, like, if someone were to, like, seize her bag or, like, guess her bag stolen, or they capture her and they look through her belongings, they don't want any type of link to who she actually is. So in that regard, I'm like, this seems like someone trying to cover their tracks. Is it a mentally ill person, Like, a crazy lady that thinks that she's a spy? Maybe. How often are, like, agencies coming out being like, yep, that was ours. Our bad. I wonder. Ooh, I wonder if. I wonder if, like, I'm trying to think why the Norwegians would have an interest in covering this up, like, the Norwegian government at that time. And I wonder if it's because, like, ooh, I doubt this stuff is planted. To me, that doesn't seem like the most obvious thing, like, someone removing all the tags after they kill her or, like, you know, like, scratching the name off of her stuff. I mean, Maybe they're trying to like cover themselves up. Like, but the coded notes is so weird. Like that part is like you would have to be truly diabolical if you were just a random dude killing someone or like over like a drug debt to do that. To make it look like it has nothing to do with you. You know what I mean? Like more often gangs will just pull up and shoot someone. But I guess they probably don't have access to guns in the same way that we do in America. I don't know. I'm trying to think. I feel like the Norwegian government has a reason to cover it up. Up. They don't want to set off a skirmish. Cuz it's like, oh, you guys had a spy over here from the Soviet Union. We killed her. But like why would they just leave her body like in a valley? What if she was a double agent? Oh, I like that. But then again, originally Norwegian found out she was also working for the Soviets. But she's not originally Norwegian because her teeth records show that she was from like potentially Germany or maybe even Swiss, French. So she's triple agent. Oh, I don't know. I feel like what likely happened in my professional estimation as a private detective and an investigator, professionally, as one of the. As professionally as this is my professional opinion on the record. Use it in court. I mean. No. As someone that knows literally nothing, my theory is that. That she was working as an agent for the Soviets, for the Norwegians, for someone was afraid of getting caught or was. I think she was afraid of getting caught and basically took herself out. Like she was like getting closed in on or like her cover had been blown. It was like, I need to take myself out. I'm going to kill myself and burn all of my stuff. I feel like it was a suicide, but it wasn't a manic moment where a woman tried to, you know, just like in a depressed state try to kill herself. It was like under duress of being discovered as an agent. That's my professional theory. Thoughts? It makes sense if she knew she was going to be tortured for what she did or thrown in jail, something like that, right? Because again, it's like I don't know what the enhanced interrogation status of Norway was at the time, but I can't imagine any government's gonna be too nice to a spy. So I bet you she was like, my cover is about to get bl alone. That's why she's so nervous the whole time because she's expecting foreign agents to show up at any moment and The Norwegians are like, oh, this whole thing blew up. Like, we found this girl, we're about to get her, and then instead of us getting her, she kills herself. That looks terrible for us because we're doing like all this missile testing. We're doing our own stuff. Like, we're still in like the post war, kind of like, you know, Cold War kind of reconstruction phase of Scandinavia. They're sharing a border with the Soviets. They're like, we don't want to prompt any aggression. We don't want it to make it look like we messed up by not capturing her when we had the chance and that we lost all the, like, the information that she had, all of the stuff that we could have gotten from her. And so they just were like, cover it up. Hey, it was a suicide. That's always because I think it technically was a suicide, but because the Norwegians were going to catch her. And I bet you, like, you know, I bet you there were like intelligence officers that were just like eviscerated by their higher ups for being like, you let this woman get away. We knew where she was. She had info for us about the Soviets and you guys let her get away. And so they got chewed out. But publicly they had to be like, nope, whoops. Just a regular old sui. Call it a day. That's my theory. What do you think?
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I think she sounds like a piece. I mean, her picture is pretty cute. Her pictures. Can you pull up a picture again? I mean, especially if she's a spy. That adds to her, her mystique a lot. I mean, yeah, she cute. She cute. Some kind of Russian something, right? East German possibly. Could be East German, dude. Man. But I wonder. I. I feel like at a certain point they ought to just come out and be like, yeah, those are out. I mean, the Soviets must know who she was if she's a Soviet spy. I don't know. What do you guys think? I mean, please, I would love to know your theories. I. I'm always a fan of, you know, if you know more about this, this story than I do, maybe you've done your own deep dive. Please drop a comment. Is there anything I missed? Anything overlooked? I'm always open to a gentle Correction. Drop your theories in the comments. I will read all of them. And the top comment on this video and future ones will begin. Free merch. That's right. I will track you down. CIA stuff style, KGB style, Norwegian intelligence style. And I will remove the tags from the merchandise and I will bring them to your home. Or we'll just mail them to you. Whatever. Anyway, thank you guys so much for tuning into another episode of Camp. This has been truly wonderful. I appreciate you guys for supporting this show. It truly means the world to me. That these crazy, weird theories and deep dives that I find interesting are also interesting to you guys makes me feel less alone in this crazy, mysterious world. World. Also, come see me on the road. Mark Agon Live. You can get tickets there. I'm coming to a bunch of cities before the end of the year. I'd love for you all to pull up. Thank you guys so much for just supporting the show, for giving me a roof over my head, a tent over my little cap here, and I will see you guys once again in the future. Peace. What's up, people? I'm coming on the road. That's right. My very first headlining tour, where I'm going to every city that will possibly allow me to go there. I'm going to Salt Lake City. I'm going to Washington, D.C. and Charlotte, North Carolina, in February. Those tickets will be announced soon. You can get all the tickets at Mark Yagnon Live, and I'll see you guys there. What's up, people? We're gonna take a break because we got new merch. That's right. It is the holiday season. And the good folks over at Camp R and D have been cooking up in the lab. We got the Christmas sweaters with the aliens. We got the Christmas sweaters with the conspiracy vibes you already know. I mean, this one might be my favorite one. A Christmas tree full of aliens. Full Christmas sweater energy. And then, of course, if you just want something simple, you know, you bust out the camp logo tea with the little Christmas lights on it. Come on, bro. Get cute for Christmas, ok? It is a holiday season, all right? We're celebrating the birth of the savior, okay? And what better way to do it than to cop a couple threads for the person in your life that you know that loves a campsite that loves hanging with us every single week. And right now, we're running a promo through the holidays. That's right. Use the promo code christmascamp for 15% off. I just made that up on the spot. But I think we can do it right I'll call some people. Christmas camp for 20, for 15% off. Sure, 16% off. Whatever you say, Mark. Should we give them more? One more. 17% off. People, we don't. I think this is gonna work. I'm not positive we're gonna see if we can do it, but I'll. Yeah. Check it out, guys. We got all the camp stuff going until the end of the year. Check it out. Thank you guys so much for supporting the show. I love you all. God bless. Here we have the Limu Emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mut Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug Limu. Is that guy with the binoculars watching us? Cut the camera. They see us. Only pay for what you need@libertymutual.com Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Savings variant by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates. Excludes Massachusetts.
- [42:51]
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And Merry Christmas.