349. The Isdal Woman Part 4

Summary

The Prosecutors – Episode 349: The Isdal Woman Part 4 (Feb 17, 2026)

Episode Overview

In this penultimate installment of their deep dive into the Isdal Woman case, Alice and Brett meticulously reconstruct the mysterious final days and the enduring enigmas of this infamous unidentified woman found dead in Norway in 1970. They focus on the last known timeline, autopsy findings, scene analysis (with expert commentary), language clues, possible spy links, and discuss the plausibility of competing theories—suicide, accident, murder, or conspiracy—while maintaining their characteristic balance of legal logic and playful banter.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Catching Up: The Final Timeline of the Isdal Woman

• Final Days ([05:30]-[13:19])

  • On Nov 19, 1970, the Isdal Woman checks out of the Rosenkratz Hotel in Bergen, then soon after checks into another nearby hotel under the same alias ("Elizabeth Lenhauer"), behaving more nervously and refusing cleaning service.
  • On Nov 21, a man and woman are seen in Isdale Valley (possibly her) walking briskly in non-hiking attire; a woman matching her description asks for liquor store directions in broken English and buys a Norwegian newspaper, though she seemingly doesn’t speak the language.
    • Quote, Alice [07:55]: “Now look, the man and the woman not dressed for an excursion could be anybody, right?...That’s weak…The liquor store is interesting because remember, she did have a bottle of liquor…So this is consistent…”
  • Nov 23: At a bank, she exchanges Swedish money for Norwegian. The bank teller is struck by her "strange" manner of speaking.
    • Quote, Brett [10:51]: “Maybe she was putting on an accent. That’s a possibility…an intentional effort to disguise her accent or how she spoke…”
  • She checks out, leaves her bags at the train station, and seemingly disappears—presumed to travel to the Isdale Valley, likely dying within hours.

• Notable Puzzle: Her last action being a currency exchange if her intent was suicide is flagged as “a very interesting kind of last known activity.” ([13:19])

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2. Forensic Scene Deep Dive: Fire, Burns & Pills

Arson Investigator's Analysis ([14:04]-[24:43])

• Guest expert (arson investigator) offers detailed, technical review:
  • Burn Pattern: The “pugilistic” (boxer) pose is explained by heat contraction; the body’s positioning among rocks could account for inconsistent burn patterns.
  • Clothing Material: Synthetics burn more easily, explaining why certain items survived. Woolen sweater survived due to being removed before the fire.
  • Liquids & Accelerants: Debunks the notion that clear liquid (possibly gasoline) in bottles would "burn"; it’s the vapors, not the liquid, that combust. The smell of “petrol” may originate from materials (e.g., fur hat) naturally tanned with petroleum-based substances.
  • Body Fat Combustion: Detailed science of how subcutaneous fat can sustain and extend burning, leading to dripping and pooling.
    • Quote, Arson Expert (read by Brett) [21:32]: “Our bodies react the same way [as bacon fat]. When exposed to fire, adipose tissue will begin to render like bacon fat in a hot skillet. Once the liquid fat is heated enough to vaporize and ignite, it will continue to render the subcutaneous fat…”
  • Plausible Accident Theory: Suggests she may have tried to start a warming fire, ignited synthetic clothing, became incapacitated, and burned, possibly after taking off one boot and being impaired by earlier actions.

Pills & Alcohol: Overdose or Staging? ([32:27]-[35:10])

• Myth-busting: No original evidence of pills stuffed in her mouth/throat—that’s a later embellishment. But a large number of undigested pills (likely 40–50 sleeping pills) found in her stomach, and alcohol present—very consistent with typical suicide by overdose.
  • Quote, Brett [33:54]: “I think this is really important because…if that were true [pills in throat], that would actually be a pretty big deal…But…this part really feels like a suicide by overdose. It really does. It’s consistent. It’s completely consistent with that.”

Fire, Intent, and Scene Oddities ([35:10]-[47:47])

• No forensic evidence of accelerant; speculation about intent—fire wasn’t very effective at body destruction (suggesting inexperience, not sophisticated planning).
• Discussion: Why take such elaborate efforts to erase identity (removing labels, rubbing off markings, destroying paperwork), but leave traceable luggage at the train station?
• Hypotheses:
  • Fire perhaps meant for “cleansing,” in line with her prior cover-up behaviors.
  • The messy scene (half-removed boot, eating utensils out) may reflect a rushed/unexpected incapacitation after pills.
    • Quote, Brett [44:40]: “You could almost see this as maybe the ultimate conclusion to her effort to conceal who she was and to destroy every identifying marking is this fire.”

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3. Language, Identity & Spy Theories

Language Clues ([47:47]-[51:01])

• Registration cards filled out in German, but often stating Belgian nationality in subtly incorrect words or spellings (“Belgish” etc.), suggesting unfamiliarity or perhaps intentional obfuscation.
• Handwriting had features typical of French or Swiss styles; vocabulary popular in East Germany — but none definitive.
  • Quote, Brett [49:12]: “…it’s all over the place…you would think the more information you learned, the more obvious it would become. But that’s not the case here.”

Intelligence Services Involvement ([57:53]-[60:22])

• Norwegian spy agencies conducted their own investigation into her, which remains classified.
• Her visits aligned with suspicious military activities (missile squad exercises, Penguin missile tests), as well as the movements of known Russian agents—fueling speculation about her being involved in espionage.
  • Quote, Alice [59:21]: “Her visit…coincided with exercises of the 25th Missile Boat Squadron…her visit to Oslo, a known Russian agent also arrived…her visits corresponded with the Penguin missile tests.”

Nature of Her Associations ([61:01]-[65:14])

• She was seen in company of military/naval men, but never businessmen or socially. None of these men ever came forward, yet many other bystanders did.
  • Quote, Brett [62:27]: “It’s a little strange that there are multiple people that this very striking person…spoke with, and none of them ever came forward.”
• Theory: If she was a prostitute, clients might not talk. If she was a spy, handlers or sources would not. But if “just friends,” it would be odd.

The Fisherman and The Gun: Heightening the Conspiracy ([65:14]-[66:52])

• Fisherman Berthen Rot reported seeing her talking to naval officers involved with weapons testing. Norwegian Secret Police questioned him and reportedly gave him a gun, warning his life was at risk—a claim supported by some declassified records, adding weight to the “spy” narrative.

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4. The Hosts’ Reflections: Three Central Mysteries

([40:45]-[43:13] and [47:47]-[51:01])

• Three Mysteries Identified:
  1. Who was the Isdal Woman?
  2. What was she doing in Norway, traveling as she did?
  3. How did she actually die? (Accident, suicide, murder, covered up mishap?)
• Hosts lean toward a self-induced death (overdose and fire), but stress the enduring strangeness and the persistent, unanswered clue trail.

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5. Conspiracy Theory Sidebar (Listener Q&A & Tangents)

([69:51]-[87:53])

• Listener asks for their favorite and most-believable conspiracy theories (“favorite-real” spectrum):
  • Hosts discuss everything from the “pre-Younger Dryas advanced civilization” theory (Brett), Flat Earthism (Alice, tongue-in-cheek), “China’s actual population is much lower than reported” (Brett’s “most plausible” real conspiracy), and the moon landing hoax.
  • Sprinkled throughout: existential questions from children, difficulty of reconstructing history, musings on how census numbers are often unreliable.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the pill overdose:
  • Brett [33:54]: "You know, she died somehow. Was she murdered? Did she kill herself? ...It wasn’t an accident, Right. She didn’t accidentally take this many pills."
• On conspiracy and accidental fire:
  • Alice [24:43]: “That sounds kind of like when we had Joseph Scott Morgan on for Body Bags... Everything she just said. I’m like, okay, that sounds fantastic.”
• On the composite nature of the mystery:
  • Brett [40:45]: "There’s probably three mysteries here, right?...Who she is, her identity, what in the world she was doing over this period of time, and how she died. Those are the three mysteries.”
• On government secret files:
  • Alice [57:53]: “So the Norwegian spy agencies conducted an extensive investigation into this woman and these investigations have never been declassified. So we know there’s another investigation, but we have no idea what's in that investigative file.”
• On the fisherman’s account:
  • Brett [65:25]: “According to his widow, the Norwegian Secret Police would later visit him. And not only did they visit him, but they gave him a gun to protect himself with, saying that his life was in danger because of what he’d seen.”
• Iconic Closing, regarding conspiracies:
  • Brett [67:02]: “There are very few conspiracies I buy into...but this one. This one’s got a lot going on...That’s legit.”

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Timeline of Important Segments

• [02:12] – Show proper begins, recap of last episode and timelines
• [05:30] – Deep dive into her hotel movements and demeanor
• [13:19] – Notable discussion on why she exchanged money last-minute
• [14:04] – Arson expert’s forensic analysis of the scene/body
• [32:27] – Debunking myths about “pills in her mouth”; analysis of stomach content
• [35:10] – Extended discussion on fire, suicide plausibility, scene’s odd elements
• [47:47] – Language, handwriting, and nationality clues
• [57:53] – Secret services investigation and declassification issues
• [61:01] – Nature of her associates and lack of witness identification
• [65:14] – The fisherman, secret police, and the deepening spy narrative
• [69:51] – Listener Mailbag: Favorite and most plausible conspiracy theories

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Conclusion

Alice and Brett bring Part 4 to a close having skillfully laid out the forensic, circumstantial, and speculative evidence in the Isdal Woman case. They emphasize the case’s multidimensional strangeness, acknowledge its appeal to both grounded and conspiratorial thinkers, and tease that their final episode will seek to synthesize a working theory while acknowledging much of the mystery may, by design or circumstance, forever remain unsolved.

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"There are cases where if you tell me you have a conspiracy theory about them, you decline in my estimation... But this one. This one is legit."

— Brett [67:03]

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For the next and final installment, the hosts promise their best attempt at closure—sifting informed speculation from enduring enigma.

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

I think we should call a Dr. Angie. The one you trust to find the ones you trust. Find pros for all your home [e-mail].

[C]

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[A]

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[B]

I'm brett. And I'm alice and we are the prosecutors. Today on the Prosecutors, we continue our look at the Isdale woman. Hello everybody and welcome to this episode of the Prosecutors. I'm Brett and I'm joined as always by my Geheimnesville co host, Alice Brett.

[D]

No idea what you said with German.

[B]

That one was German. Okay, German. The Andreas sent that one to me. It means mysterious. Ooh, isn't that appropriate?

[D]

I'm the opposite of mysterious. But you know who's not mysterious is Dale woman.

[B]

Yeah, she's mysterious.

[D]

She's mysterious.

[B]

So are you, Alice. You're a woman of mystery.

[D]

I'm not. My life is a blank page. Like the wall behind me.

[B]

Whatever. Hey, this case is mysterious. This is our fourth episode on this case. I hope you guys have been enjoying this. I feel like these episodes have been more packed with information than most episodes we do. We just talk for like, 30.

[D]

I really actually am exhausted after them because there's so much. Like, for example, when we talked about everything that was in the suitcases, I was exhausted trying to keep all the information in my brain because I want to make sense of it. It's one of those.

[B]

Carry those suitcases with all that stuff.

[D]

Carry them all over Europe, in fact.

[B]

Well, last time we left you off, remember, we were going through sort of our second timeline. And this was a timeline the Isdel woman's travels. As she approached the day of her disappearance, you may recall we are starting to see her interacting with men, sort of mysteriously sitting in a room eating breakfast, but not speaking to the person across from her. Talking to some German naval officers, talking to people down at the pier, and as we finished up last time, having a male visitor in her room. But once again, in sort of a mysterious way. And by mysterious, I mean their encounters. They don't seem to be romantic. They don't seem to even be that familiar. They don't seem to be the kind of encounters you might have if you were a lady of the night, for instance. They just. I don't know. I don't really know how to describe them, but they. They're very serious, almost businesslike, it seems like. And we're seeing that more and more as she's traveling around Norway. And we had gotten to November 18, 1970, so we are nearing the end of her life.

[D]

So if you remember, she was at the Rosenkratz Hotel. This was one of the hotels that she stayed in for just one night. She checked out on November 19, 1970. But she stayed in town because she headed to another hotel in Bergen, the Horace, Florida, Hyman Hotel. Using the same alias, Elizabeth Lenhauer. Now, staff reported that when she checked in, she seemed nervous and watchful. While she was at this hotel, she ate very little and did not want her room cleaned. So if you remember, at the last hotel she was at, in fact, the maid had come in while she had a visitor in the room and had asked to turn down the bed for the night. And she didn't say anything, but she didn't kick out the maid in that instance. And there Was someone else in the room here? Something must have happened because she stays in the same city, checks into another hotel using the same name. But now she seems to have changed in her demeanor, maybe more anxious, more watchful, and certainly didn't want anyone in her room.

[B]

And what's interesting about her moving hotels, this is not the first time she's done this, stayed in one place and moved. You would think if, you know, her cover was blown or whatnot, that she would use a different name in the second hotel. But it seems as though when she changes hotels within one city, she often just uses or she does. We have not seen an example where she did not just use the same alias. And she's doing that again with this change.

[D]

So a couple days later, she's still in Bergen. November 21, there's a report that a man and a woman were spotted in Isdale. It looked like they arrived in a car and they walked at a fast pace, but they weren't dressed for an excursion in Isdale and Valley. And that same day, a woman fitting, who we now know as the Isdel woman's description asked a pedestrian for directions, though she asked in kind of a broken bad English to the Vin Monopolet liqueur store. She also bought or acquired in some way the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet, Saturday 21st, November 1970. And it said that it's strange that she didn't seem to speak the language. So how would she read this newspaper that she was getting now? Group of woodworkers saw a woman who fit this woman's description walking towards Isdale around 3pm okay, let's break this down a little bit.

[B]

Now look, the man and the woman not dressed for an excursion could be anybody, right? I mean, it could just be somebody who's visiting Norway and they're tourists and they're not dressed like you would expect to dress if you were going to go on a big hike.

[D]

I do that all the time, right? Like I'm driving around, I'm like, oh, this looks pretty, maybe I'll get out. But I'm actually not in hiking clothes. I'm just in my everyday tourist clothes all the time.

[B]

To me, that's weak. And we see this all the time in cases where people are racking their brain. They're trying to remember, did they see something? And they think, oh, that could be that person. Now the liquor store is interesting because remember, she did have a bottle of liquor that she purchased from a Norwegian from one of these Norwegian liquor stores. So this is consistent with it. Being the Isdel woman, the interesting that she would ask for directions in bad English as opposed to some other language. I mean, I guess it's Norway, so English would still be the sort of lingua franca, which is ironic, but nevertheless, you know, would you speak German, for instance, in Norway when you just ran into somebody, or would you try English? I don't know.

[D]

And here's an interesting thing. I don't know. I mean, there have been so many reports of people seeing her. They've described her English thus far as being accented or like a. You can't quite place the accent. But I don't think anyone has specifically said that she has poor English because those are two different things. Right. You can have great English, great mastery of the language, but have an accent. And it seems clear that you're not a native English speaker versus if you describe someone as a bad English speaker. I think of. And everyone describes things differently, but I think of someone who does not have mastery of the language and perhaps is searching for words, not just having an accent.

[B]

Yeah, that's a good point. And I don't know, I mean, it seems like accented English she has been described as speaking, but yeah, I mean, up till this point, no one has said, like broken English, for instance.

[D]

Right.

[B]

Nobody's said that. So I don't know. That's interesting. And look, once again, could just be another woman who want to go to liquor store. It's possible. This isn't even her. We know at some point she went to buy some alcohol. So even if it is her, it's not that big a deal. But I mean, look, she's not a native English speaker. Whether this is a true story or not, she's not from England, she's not British. I think we can all agree on that. Even if she lived in England for some period of time, maybe she picked up some of the language or maybe she just learned English like a lot of people in Europe do, because everybody speaks English. Right. So you could see that. This next one, I think, interesting. So on November 23rd, she goes to the bank, and while she's there, she exchanges some Swedish money for Norwegian. Now, this is November 23rd. She's exchanging money. Remember that? Because it's important. This is sort of a funny way to describe this. The bank teller would later say he found her manner of speaking so strange that he almost laughed out loud. I don't know what that means.

[D]

What? Right. Like, I don't think you'd laugh at someone just for having broken English, for.

[B]

Example, Maybe she was drunk.

[D]

Maybe she was drunk, like to make someone laugh. Right. I don't typically laugh at someone who's just struggling with the language because it's not their native language. I think of someone who is so outside the realm of like natural speaking.

[B]

Maybe she was putting on an accent. That's a possibility. Is this is another sort of attempt to disguise herself recall? I don't know if we've discussed this yet, but at some point we're going to talk about this. The check in cards, we've talked about these cards that she filled out. Well, the last one that she filled out, her handwriting is different and it almost looks like an intentional effort to disguise her handwriting. So maybe this is an intentional effort to disguise her accent or how she spoke, I don't know. Either way, she gets this money, she checks out of her room, she gets a taxi to the train station where she checks in her two bags. So the two bags that were found at the train station, she checked in on November 23rd. This was all happening the morning of November 23rd. At that point, presumably, we don't know this for certain, but no one ever sees her again. Right. So presumably at that point she went to the Isdale Valley. And one thing that may confirm that is there were several witnesses who reported seeing smoke rising from the valley that day, although the exact time is unclear. They remembered it was that day, but they couldn't remember exactly when it was. But recall, her watch did stop at 12:32. So there's a possibility that after she exchanges that money, drops off those bags, she goes to the Valley and she's deceased within hours, an hour even of when she arrived. And then her body would be found six days later on November 29th. So that is obviously the conclusion of everything we know about her travels now. The last sightings, the 23rd, she's found on the 29th. We have no idea what was happening between those six days. It's possible she died that day. If she didn't, then I mean, that's almost more mysterious, right, because then she would have had to have gone somewhere else and stayed somewhere else, avoided being seen, gone to the Isdale Valley and then it happened. But I think there's a pretty good argument that November 23rd is the day when she died.

[D]

And this is really interesting because we'll obviously get into theories and I mean, goodness gracious, it's like such a big question mark right now. But if we were talking about that she did not meet ill will, that this was done to herself, what a Strange last thing to do, quite literally, like one of the last things you do is to exchange money for Norwegian money. You're in Norway, so for money that you can use. And she obviously had at least change on her that was Norwegian. So she had something probably enough to catch a cab or to do whatever she needed. She probably didn't need that much if her intent was to, say, end her life in an hour or so. You don't need to go on a strapping spree. So that is a very interesting kind of last known activity.

[B]

Okay, so that ends our timelines. We're about to get into sort of deeper discussion of some things we've touched on up to this point. But before we did that, you know, the great thing about having done this podcast for a while and having so many wonderful people who listen to it is we sort of developed like experts in various areas. And after we did the Floor of Fire with the girls who lost their life in the fire, we had somebody who wrote in who is an arson investigator and has done this for quite some time and she knows nothing about this case. She actually wrote in to talk about the Flora case. And I'm going to get her some stuff on that because I want to know her thoughts on it. But I was like, hey, while I have you here, I want you to take a look at something. And I sent her the police report that we read you guys in part one, which lays out sort of how this woman's body was found. And so I sent that to her. She read that she looked at photos of the scene and wrote up something on this based on. It's all she knows is what's in the report and the photographs. And so I'm going to read this to you just so you have her opinion based on that limited information. I mean, she's still just reading reports like she got to go out to the scene or anything. But I think this could be. I think it's interesting no matter what, but maybe it's also helpful. So I'm going to just read this to you. The position of the body is mostly consistent with any human body exposed to fire. The muscles contract when exposed to heat, which will draw up the arms and legs into a pugilistic posture or boxer pose. We talked about this some. We talked about this before. Her arms and neck are definitely consistent with that. Her legs appear to be pretty straight. This could be because they were prevented from contracting due to being stuck in the rock or the joints were protected by clothing. If her boots were on, it would have Protected her feet, ankles, which would have slowed the process. It sounds like her left foot was completely exposed, but her right foot was at least protected by a sock or stocking. So most likely some sort of obstruction prevented the lower limbs from contracting. And this is a good point. My Belgian friend Stephanie, who's been helping me, pointed this out as well. That upper body seems to be in the boxer pose. The lower part of the body isn't. Does that indicate anything? That there was something on top of her, someone was sitting on top of her, or something like that? I think this is a pretty good explanation why that is. If you look at the photographs, she is kind of in these rocks. And so you could imagine that the rocks themselves prevented her lower extremities from moving very much at all. Goes on to say any exposed area of skin is covered in soot, or it could be charred. It is hard to say. From the pictures, it appears that her facial features are distorted, so it is more likely to be charring than just soot on the lower arms and head. The neck muscles and her hands are also contracted, which suggests prolonged heat exposure. The areas that were described as reddish brown are likely second or third degree burns. The outer layer of her skin likely already sloughed off. I would agree that there was a more prolonged fire towards the lower portion of her body. Her rubber boots could have provided additional fuel to maintain the fire until the body could maintain combustion. And we talked about this, like, why is the lower part of her body more burned? Well, she was wearing at least one rubber boot and the other rubber boot she had taken off, but it was down there. And that makes sense that rubber burning would sort of maintain this fire at the lower part of her body that maybe not so much on the upper part. She goes on to say her left lower leg in particular, sustained prolonged exposure to fire. It looks like all of the skin and fat layers were consumed and the muscles and bone were exposed. Anything under the body would be protected from the fire by the body. So it makes sense that they found some remains of hair and more clothing left under the body. It looks like she was wearing mostly synthetic material, which burns much more easily than, say, 100% cotton or wool items would, which surprised me. I would have thought 100% cotton would have burned more than synthetics.

[D]

Yeah. Huh. Well, you learn something new every day.

[B]

Yeah. She goes on to say they mention ample remains of a woolen sweater. Any natural fabric is harder to burn than a synthetic fiber, so that is likely why that survived as well. The sweater also appears to have been removed prior to the fire occurring. And that also likely contributed to it surviving anywhere the fabric or clothing is layered or thicker, like cuffs or waistbands are more likely to survive after a fire. And sure enough, that's exactly what happened. Remember, there were cuffs of fabric on her arms. As far as the water bottles go, any plastic container that still contains liquid, even an ignitable liquid. Well, those are interesting. When exposed to heat will melt down to the level of fluid within. The fluid inside absorbs heat and will protect the plastic from melting. Further, ignatible liquids do not burn. The vapors they give off when they evaporate are actually what burns. The same occurs with solid fuels. It is not actually the wood burning in a campfire. As the wood is heated, it begins to undergo pyrolysis or breakdown. And off gas. It's the gas is produced when a solid or liquid fuel is heated that actually burns. So if you hold a flame under a piece of paper, so that is not touching the paper, you will start to see the paper discolor. That is pyrolysis. Once the paper breaks down enough, it will ignite. This occurs much faster in direct flame contact.

[D]

Fascinating. So the actual because we there was that clear liquid, and if even if it were something ignitable like gasoline, it doesn't burn.

[B]

Apparently not.

[D]

Wow. That. Did not know that. I did not know that wood wasn't what burned. That would make sense why you have to heat it up, right?

[B]

This is science Science podcast.

[D]

Amazing.

[B]

Normally it's history podcast.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

Okay, now this is interesting because this contradicts something we said earlier. Well, actually there was a report of this, but I disregarded it incorrectly. Apparently the watch definitely was removed prior to the fire. Based on the location of it. Had it still been in place, it likely would have still been on her wrist or in a closer location to her wrist. Leather is something that doesn't burn as well as other materials. And based on the photos, it would have most likely survived the fire on her wrist. So that actually is consistent with her taking off other jewelry to take off her watch. This part is really interesting. Okay, remember we said there's only one place where anyone says there's a hint of an accelerant and it's her hat. You kind of imagine like she like carrying gasoline around her hat or something. It's kind of weird, right? So she says fur hat. I have no idea what they used to tan fur back in the 70s, but in all likelihood it was something petroleum based. You would be surprised what all contains petroleum even today. So it could be that the smell of petroleum wasn't because it had petroleum on it, that was part of what lit the fire, but that it was actually because the fire released the petroleum.

[D]

Within the canning of that smell.

[B]

Exactly.

[D]

And petroleum truly is in everything, right?

[B]

Everything.

[D]

Lotions and petroleum based X, Y and z, basically. Apparently all of our clothes have petroleum in it.

[B]

Yeah. No wonder all these synthetics burn faster.

[D]

Okay, that's a good point.

[B]

Okay. The yellowish fat like material. Although our bodies cannot spontaneously combust. Apologies to all of you out there.

[D]

Good to know.

[B]

Spontaneous combustion and thought that was like a really. I mean, I love that theory. Right. It's a great thing.

[D]

Good to know that we can't just be walking down the street and, you.

[B]

Know, combust or so they want you to believe. Our bodies can sustain combustion just like any fuel once heated. The vapors given off when heated can ignite and sustain combustion. Think of our adipose tissue or subcutaneous fat, like the fat on a slice of bacon. Pleasant thought. As you begin to fry bacon, the fat begins to liquefy. Once it liquefies and continues to heat, it will give off gas and eventually ignite. If you leave bacon grease on the stove, it will eventually start to smoke off gas and it will eventually ignite. Our bodies react the same way. When exposed to fire, adipose tissue will begin to render like bacon fat in a hot skillet. Once the liquid fat is heated enough to vaporize and ignite, it will continue to render the subcutaneous fat on the body and burn. The fat drips down and will pool under the body. In this case, the fat was able to drip down between the rocks instead of pooling beneath the body and likely burned for a while below the body. With limited ventilation or airflow, it likely went out. As the body fat continued to render above, it would drip down into that space. Areas of the body that contain more subcutaneous fat will burn longer than other areas. So the thighs and torso typically will sustain more damage than lower extremities. Muscle is not a good fuel, but will break down and contract over time. If the subcutaneous fat is unable to pool below the body, though, it will be harder for the fire to sustain itself. Then we saw that, right? And we had speculated it was really.

[D]

Fat from her as it burned and then it liquefied and then as it cooled down.

[B]

Just like bacon fat.

[D]

Just like bacon fat.

[B]

Leave it on the stove after you turn the fire off.

[D]

I just cleaned off some sausage fat and that's exactly what happened.

[B]

And she recommends going to burnedbone.com if you want to know more about how the body burns. Which good for you if you want to do that. Dr. Elaine Pope, who is apparently the world's leading forensic anthropologist when it comes to burning bodies. So there you go. Okay, so she actually throws out a theory which I think is interesting. So what happened here? I have no other information on this case other than what you provided me, which was literally that police report and the old black and white photographs. I found my theory on what happened here. Remember, we all have more information than she does. So, you know, take this with a grain of salt. She was hiking and stopped to take a break. Maybe she had developed blisters and sat down for a snack. And to treat her injury, she took her boots off to assess and at least took her left sock off. She has a snack and some water gets cold and she attempts to start a small fire to get warm. It doesn't seem like she had any natural fuel with her, so she uses something she has with her like paper, map, journal, etc. And remember, there was some burned paper. She accidentally ignites her synthetic clothing in an attempt to get up to put herself out. She gets her foot stuck in a rock crevice and falls back. She would have hit her head knocking her out. Or she's overcome by the fire smoke and dies. Her body continues to burn, mostly her lower extremities where her rubber boots were. Those boots would sustain the fire long enough to get subcutaneous fat rendering and igniting. Since the rendered fat cannot pool beneath the body to further sustain combustion of her body, the fire eventually burns out. So that's her theory.

[D]

That sounds kind of like when we had Joseph Scott Morgan on for body bags. Like what? Everything she just said. I'm like, okay, that sounds fantastic.

[B]

Yeah. Now we know because we've also seen the autopsy. She didn't actually fall back and hit her head. But we do know there was something that could have incapacitated her, which we're going to talk about right now.

[D]

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[B]

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[C]

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[D]

There are a lot of unusual aspects of this case and one of the things that we do know may have incapacitated her were pills. So it's sometimes reported that pills were found in Isdale woman's mouth or alternatively in her throat. So she was in the process of, you know, maybe swallowing the pills. This just depends on the telling of this story. But this appears to be a later added embellishment. So none of the initial documentation mentions any pills lodged in the mouth, between the teeth or in the airway. There were though undigested pills in her stomach. Now this is normal in suicides by overdose because you take a lot, they're not completely digested by the time the overdose overtakes your body. So in addition to pills, there was also alcohol in her system. And this obviously makes the effect of the pills greater. You don't exactly know how it will interact, but it certainly magnifies it. This is why when you are taking strong medications like opioids after surgery, it says things like do not mix with alcohol. It says it on the pill bottle for that very reason is it magnifies whatever you have. So while the embellishments came after, I don't think it was so, you know, you can imagine we know exactly what happened. There were all these pills just in her mouth. Maybe someone had stuffed all these pills in her mouth. That's not exactly what happened. But we do see a Large amount of these sleeping pills in her stomach, some of them undigested.

[B]

Yeah. I think this is really important because you will see this if you go the more conspiratorial route. And about this case, you will see someone who will claim that she had pills in her mouth or pills in her throat. And if that were true, that would actually be a pretty big deal, because once again, if you're trying to imitate a suicide by forcing pills down someone's throat, you would expect to see things like that, Right? I mean, I guess it's possible you could see that if somebody is taking as many pills as she apparently did. But I think one thing that's really important for the purposes of this case is this. You know, she died somehow. Was she murdered? Did she kill herself? I mean, those are the big questions. It wasn't an accident, Right. She didn't accidentally take this many pills. I mean, people have said, well, you know, if you take these pills enough for the purposes of sleeping or whatever, you can develop a tolerance to it. And so maybe she just had a really high tolerance. I don't know that anybody has a tolerance this high. I mean, she took a ton of.

[D]

Pills, like 40 or 50, right?

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[D]

And those of you who've taken any amounts, I don't know how big these are, but 40 or 50 is like a lot. You can't likely eat them all at one time. It takes multiple ingestions to get it down your throat.

[B]

Yeah. At least 40 to 50 of these pills. So that's a lot. Remember the alcohol bottle? It was like three quarters gone. They did not apparently take her blood alcohol level, which I would have liked to have known. But they didn't do that. So we don't have that information. Or if they did do it, it's lost the time, and it wasn't included in the autopsy. But we know she was drinking. I think that's a safe assumption. So this part really feels like a suicide by overdose. It really does. It's consistent. It's completely consistent with that. The drinking, the fact that there are undigested pills in her stomach is consistent with some sort of suicide. And I think that is something we have to grapple with if we think this is some sort of murder. This is very consistent with suicide. Now, look, not every suicide is the same. Some people, like Erwin Rommel, killed himself. Now, he did it because Hitler told him if he didn't kill himself, he'd kill his whole family. So did he really kill himself or was he murdered? Right. That's a possibility. Like you could imagine a circumstance in which someone threatens you with something so serious that you decide the best thing to do is to go to a beautiful valley that you've been to several times and you travel Norway and take your own life. Right. So that's a possibility. But I think the pills are really strong evidence that this is some sort of suicide. And it's consistent with what our friend, the arson examiner said, like she was trying to come up with what is it that got her in that position where she would lay there and her body would burn. Maybe she hit her head, she didn't hurt her head, but it seems like pretty clearly she was severely incapacitated by these pills at around the time this fire started. Let's talk about the fire we've talked about around it. Let's talk about a little bit more. So, as we've said, officials did find burned clothing. They found her body, they found a burned area on the ground. They did find this sort of strong smell of petrol, but only really around this hat, which we now have an alternative explanation for. They found this empty plastic bottle which they speculated maybe that contained the petrol. Right. Like she took a plastic bottle of gasoline up there with her, somehow ended up on her hat, ended up on her catches on fire. We don't actually know that. There's no forensic confirmation of any accelerant at all. Such tests were uncommon at the time. So we just. We just don't know. One interesting thing about this, and we talked about this when we talked about the Mary Morris case, and I think this is worth remembering. Gasoline fires actually are not that great for getting rid of a body because they burn hot, but they burn fast and then they burn out. And that is kind of what happened here. The. The burning, it did not destroy her body. It did not destroy all her identifying features. It didn't burn for long. It was described as uneven. It really seemed like it burned sort of a surface level, clothing, hair, and then went out. So if someone was trying to destroy a body, they did a pretty poor job of it. In fact, the only parts that were really destroyed would have been these parts with her boots that may be burned for a little bit longer. And it is interesting that it seems like some of her items were burned separately, either as our arson investigator speculated, because she was trying to create some small fire or because she was trying to destroy something. Either way, small fire or trying to destroy something, you can imagine that leading to an accidental fire, particularly if she is already under the influence of a lot of pills. You could imagine her. The pills are already taking effect. She's going through the process of doing whatever it is she wanted to do before she died, maybe to destroy some things. This fire starts accidentally and she succumbs to it. And it's interesting to note that she did die partially from CO2 inhalation. So she was not dead when the fire started. Her body wasn't taken up there and lit on fire in attempt to destroy something. She was alive when that fire started, but she didn't have strong evidence of smoke inhalation or a large amount of soot in her lungs. So it means it's likely that. That she was either unconscious or minimally conscious when the fire was burning. So that tells us the fire had to start when she was still alive, but she needed to either be totally incapacitated or at the point of losing consciousness when the fire starts. And as I said, this is pretty consistent with what the police believed and what our arson person suggested, that the fire started sort of on the lower part of her body. It spreads upward, she falls backwards, and she never gets up.

[D]

And this is all really interesting because obviously we talked about the pills, how the pills seem consistent with suicide. I think this is maybe you could see two different sides, right? Like, if you're so incapacitated, how do you start a fire? Alternatively, if you started the fire but are losing consciousness, that may explain why the fire drops and starts burning. Or it may not have been the purpose to burn yourself. But if you're just burning documentation, and as you're losing consciousness because what she takes are sleeping pills, then she may be in that state of the incapacitated, but still alive. But to be that close, you still have to, like, be able to light a fire. So that's just an interesting, you know, how much is she capable of doing if she's that incapacitated?

[B]

And I think there's several things worth noting here. I mean, there's probably three mysteries here, right? We've been describing this sort of two, but I think there's actually three. And I think the more we've talked about this, the more obvious it is that there are three mysteries. Who she is, her identity, what in the world she was doing over this period of time, and how she died. Those are the three mysteries. When you think about this, the how she died part, I'm more and more convinced. We kind of know generally, in general. I mean, I don't know. I mean, we're gonna go through theories, and one of them will be that she's Murdered. And so maybe she was. But it feels like this was largely self induced, you know, it feels like something someone would have done to themselves. But the fire aspect is strange, right? I mean that's, it's not a typical thing that people do. Not that no one's ever lit themselves on fire though. It's pretty rare right now. What's interesting though, when you think of fire, like fire cleanses, fire destroys, fire erases. Right. Fire purifies. I mean there's all sorts of things, like symbolic things about fire. We've been operating under the assumption that this is some sort of accident, that she was doing something else, maybe as she was passing away from the pills and then the fire started. But recall the labels. She took so much effort to destroy the labels in her clothes, to rub off the identifying markings on the various physical items. She had to disguise her name and her identity everywhere she went. The fire could have been not an accident, but actually sort of the last thing she did and the last intentional thing she did for the purpose of, of cleansing her, destroying any identifying aspects of her. She obviously wouldn't know and could do nothing about it after she was already deceased. As far as destroying her body, Right. Like, I feel like most people, myself included, don't actually know how to burn a body to the point of destroying it. Right. Like a lot of people probably just think if you pour some gasoline on the body, body light on fire, the whole thing's going to burn up. And that's not true. Right. So you could almost see this as maybe the ultimate conclusion to her effort to conceal who she was and to destroy every identifying marking is this fire.

[D]

And while that may very well be the case, if that is true, it is still a strange scene because it looks like she did stop, take off one boot, maybe have a snack. She certainly had like a spoon and a cup out or something along those lines. So it's not a clean scene in the sense of I'm going to build this cleansing Phoenix fire and I'm going to walk into the middle of the fire and let myself be overtaken. It's interesting that that is not the scene in which it is a clean burning.

[B]

Let me address that for a second because I think there is a possibility there. And this is speculation, but it's also possible she really had no idea how little time she had. She took the pills. I mean, maybe she's taken the pills before to go to sleep. She takes the pill an hour later, she's drowsy and she falls asleep. She thinks she's going to take the pills and she's going to have some time to do the various things she's doing. And it's one of those things where she takes all these pills, she drinks the liquor, she takes off one boot, and by the time she got that one boot off, she's already feeling it. It's already hitting her. And then it becomes sort of a rush and she's trying to burn the last documents, and then this all happens. I mean, you're right, it's not. It's certainly not a perfect scene. And she did not accomplish her goal, if that's what she was trying to do. And there's definitely the interruption aspect of one boot off and one boot on is weird, but I almost feel like it has to be something like that. Like it just started to overtake her more quickly than she expected.

[D]

And if this was an attempt to do the ultimate, like, you know, erasing of who she is. What a strange thing to not dispose of your luggage, which has so much information. Now, clearly it hasn't pointed us to who she is or what she was doing, but this was everything on her. And she didn't say, try to toss it somewhere. Now, she did separate it from her body, which makes it much more difficult to identify it. And there's a world where they never would have put the two of the things together if she had been more successful in, say, burning her body. But what a strange thing to leave behind a treasure trove of. Of potentially identifying information.

[B]

That is weird. I mean. Yeah, I mean, it is funny that she spent so much time trying to conceal her identity and then did things like leave two bags full of stuff, including a notebook that's going to point people to exactly where she went. Right. But that is weird. There are weird things about it. I'll say this. And, you know, some of this may just be chalked up to things are never as clean as they are in books and movies and everything else. You know, we always expect everything to be clean, and it's not. Sometimes I think we overthink that. One thing that's definitely not clean, though, as you've noted, is the scene. And I do wonder somebody mentioned if you've listened to Death in Ice Valley. Like, they taught some people who had some pretty radical ideas. And one person, like, well, maybe they drugged her and then they gave her the pills. You know, it's like everybody gets. It gets more and more complicated. It's like the opposite of Occam's razor always. It's like, what. What More could we add to this story to make it even more, you know, complex? Okay, sure. Maybe they did that. If somebody did that, if they went to the trouble to drug her, then put the pills down her throat in a way that many of them would digest, but not all of them. Which means whatever you drugged her with didn't kill her. It just sedated her. So you're putting these down her throat so you could do this, then you're catching her on fire, but not really, and only barely. And when you did it, you only took one boot off. For some reason, you didn't take the other boot off. Like, does any of that feel like a stage scene? It seems like the scene would be a lot cleaner if this was that thought out. If it was two lovers and Isdale who got in a fight and it somehow ended in murder, Okay, I don't necessarily think you could see that much. But if it's someone who went to this much trouble to murder her, stage it, make it look like a suicide, do it out where two kids could come upon you while you're doing it, and then light her on fire, which, by the way, sends up a bunch of smoke and says, hey, look over here. Something crazy is happening. Right? If you went to all that trouble, you would think you would have done a little bit better job of both destroying things and making it look more like whatever. You're trying to make it look like a suicide. And by the way, if you're trying to make it look a suicide, would you really light her on fire? Like that seems like the kind of thing that would happen if you actually did kill yourself, not as someone was trying to make it look like a suicide. But anyways, probably getting a little bit of ahead of ourselves because we got to talk about all this again, we talk about theories, but, like, as far as this part of the story goes, I think it's only a third of the mystery and so much more of it is, who was this woman and where was she from and what was she doing?

[D]

And part of that goes to, of course, her language. We've heard about maybe having an accent in English, maybe a funny way of speaking, so much so that someone was going to burst out laughing. Someone else said that she had broken English. So this Isdale woman tended to fill out all those registration cards. Remember when she signed in or checked into the hotels in German, despite indicating that she was Belgian on at least two of these cards. And she specifically wrote belgish. And I have trouble saying it because guess what? It's not really a word. Belgi on another, belge on another, and belgish with like a B, E, L, G, I, S, H, C, H on another card. Now that is correct. So she kind of misspells it or kind of makes up these words. And it might not be that she's trying to make them up, it might just be that she in fact is not Belgian and she doesn't know what the word is. As she's filling out on these cards, her nationality, Some of the words she used were popular in East Germany, which indicates she may have spent some time on the Soviet side of the wall. However, her style of writing was said to be typical of French speaking countries. So I don't think we fully pinned down what exactly her language is, except that English was likely not her first language.

[B]

Yeah, and this, I mean, there's a lot going on here. And this is one thing that's really interesting about this woman because once again, and we've talked about this before, there's so much about her that as you learn more information, you would think, okay, we're about to get it right. We're gonna look at the way she speaks, the way she writes, what she says, and that's gonna tell us who she is. Right. But it just, it's all over the place. You know, there have been people who've looked at her handwriting and have noticed, I think, that she like crosses her T's. She has like a double cross on the T's, which I guess is, I think Switzerland, they do that in Switzerland. So maybe she's been to Switzerland. Right? Maybe she was educated in Switzerland. And the way she, she puts herself as Belgian, but it's just a little off and it makes you think, well, maybe she was in Belgium or close to Belgium, but wasn't really from Belgium. And so she still doesn't have the whole thing down. You know, maybe she was educated in different places and that's what's leading to this being kind of all over the place. Like, she starts her education in Germany and then she's in France, and maybe she spends some time in Belgium, maybe she's even in England for a little while. She picks up a little English, maybe then at some point she ends up in East Germany. Maybe then she becomes like a Stasi agent or a member of the KGB or something, and that's where all this leads to. But none of this is giving you any kind of definitive answer. No piece of information is pointing you to anything. So that's why this is, it's just Wilder and wilder. Like I said, you would think the more information you learned, the more obvious it would become. But that's not the case here.

[D]

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So another thing is at the same time the police services were also investigating the Isdale woman. The secret services were also on the case. So the Norwegian spy agencies conducted an extensive investigation into this woman and these investigations have never been declassified. So we know there's another investigation, but we have no idea what's in that investigative file.

[B]

That's interesting right? Now look, in the United States everything's classified. We have over classification as such a problem in the United States. If you've ever dealt with any secret stuff, you know this. It's just everything in the world's classified. There's so much stuff that's classified, particularly from the Cold War era. It doesn't necessarily mean anything. People would classify things and would get declassified. People like, oh my goodness, the CIA has a letter about how the ship and the Orang Medan was taken by aliens. That must have been what happened. And it's like, no, there's some crazy person sent a letter, right? Like so it doesn't necessarily mean anything. But obviously some of you have already speculated that she's a spy. Seems like there were some people in Norway who were like this is weird enough, we should look into this. Maybe she is a spy. Maybe we should open an investigation now. The fact that they open an investigation doesn't necessarily mean anything. Maybe they looked at it and they're like she's not a spy. And they closed it, no big deal. And they just never declassified it. Right?

[D]

And it may not have been declassified because there was no identity. Like they needed the identity to definitively rule her out for Whatever classification it.

[B]

Was or the documents, they could have gone and spoken to a bunch of double agents they had and asked them all about her, and they said, no, there's no way she's a spy. And they put that in the report. But they don't want to declass the fact that they had these double agents or the manner means they conducted their espionage. All sorts of things. Right. There's all sorts of reasons you might not declassify that have nothing to do with her actually being an interesting person at all.

[D]

But there's more, because some of her visits coincided with interesting other incidents. Now, we can't definitively tie her to the timing of these other incidents, but because we know nothing about her, despite having so much information, it's interesting how this may kind of feed the spy narrative. So her visit to Stavanger coincided with Exercises of the 25th Missile Boat Squadron there. The day she arrived in Oslo, which is a known Russian agent, also arrived, staying only a few hours before leaving. And a number of her visits corresponded with the Penguin missile tests. So it may have been nothing to do with this at all. But as we're trying to draw these lines and figure out what she's doing in all of these travels, why she's writing coded in her journal, it's interesting to note that there were these kind of, you know, secret things happening, military exercises, and she would be in the place where they were happening.

[B]

You have someone who's acting very strangely, who's doing strange things, he's using multiple aliases, who doesn't seem to have anywhere she's from or anywhere she's going. She dies under mysterious circumstances. And she just so happens to be all these places where things that someone who's interested in secret Y type stuff would be. So you can see why they opened the investigation. I mean, to me, the fact they opened the investigation doesn't tell us a whole lot. I mean, a lot of people see that. They run with, oh, my goodness, I opened investigation. She must be a spy. You can totally see why they opened it. I mean, this is enough.

[D]

You should definitely open it if this is happening.

[B]

I don't. I hate to say this, given what we're talking about, but this is enough smoke. There's probably fire, right? If you're looking in, and maybe you look at it and there is no fire, but it, it bears investigating. So the fact they investigated it doesn't surprise me. There are some other things, though, that make you wonder that go along with this. We talked about these men she met with People speculated, you know, could she have been some sort of sex worker, some sort of high class prostitute, right? She's traveling around, she's staying at nice ish hotels, she seems to have plenty of money, she's well dressed, she's sophisticated, all of this stuff, right? And she did meet with men. But it's interesting, the men she met with, because it doesn't seem like they're businessmen or lawyers or anything. They tended to be military ish people. So she was occasionally seen with men. She was seen speaking to two naval officers at dinner. Another time, as we mentioned earlier, there was a young man in her room, but he was simply sitting in a chair. And another time, she was seen at breakfast with an older man, though they were described as serious and not really speaking to each other. And then we also know there were sightings of her speaking to people down by the docks. Who were these people? Who were these men? They never came forward. People came forward and said all things about her, right? That they were the chambermaid, they sold her the boots, they checked her in, they served her dinner, they served her breakfast, they cleaned her room, you know, they drove her in the taxi, all these things. They sold her liquor, they exchanged her Swedish whatevers for Norwegian whatevers, right? Like you had all of this, but nobody ever came forward and said, oh yeah, I had breakfast with her. Oh yeah, I had dinner with her. Oh, I was in her room. I know who she is. What are you talking about? She's this person. None of these people ever came forward. And this was a famous case at the time in Norway. It got a lot of press, a lot of attention. It wasn't buried. People were talking about it. The Norwegian police were all over the place. Now, obviously, if she's a sex worker and you're one of her clients, you don't want to come forward for obvious reasons. Obviously, if she's a spy and you're one of her sources, you don't want to come forward for obvious reasons. But if you were just her friend or someone she knew in Norway or someone who met her, why wouldn't you come forward? I think it's a little strange that there are multiple people that this very striking person who everybody else remembered spoke with and none of them came forward. It'd be one thing if she was seen with one person and that person never came forward. Okay? They might have went back to Germany or whatever and had no idea. But she was seen with a lot of people very close to the time she died, and none of them ever said anything. About who she was.

[D]

Yeah, it's kind of a conglomeration of all those people who don't come forward. It's like, huh, what do they all have in common? Nor did she ever seem nervous or embarrassed to be seen with these men. In fact, it was very blase and almost didn't acknowledge the third person that came in, the maid, the server. Right. So there was no embarrassment.

[B]

The one in the room was the only one in a relatively private place.

[D]

Right? Yeah.

[B]

All the rest were in public. So, you know, I think that's interesting. Now, the most conspiratorial aspect of this, and we'll end with this pick up and finish next time. I think we'll definitely finish next time, is a man named Berthen Rot. And this is where you go down the rabbit hole with Berthen Rot. So Berthen Rot was a fisherman. And he reported to the military police that in 1970 he had seen a smartly dressed woman matching the description of the Isdale woman on the docks talking to naval officers who were involved in weapons testing. They were involved in this whole penguin program. So he sees someone matching her description down at the docks, not only talking to naval officers, but important naval officers. And he thought this was so unusual that he should report it. Which says something to me. I mean, maybe he's just a busybody.

[D]

But he probably sees this all the time too, though. He's a fisherman. You know what you do, you sit on a boat and you wait for the fish to bite. You're seeing this scene, or you're at least seeing naval officers all the time.

[B]

So he reports this. According to his widow, the Norwegian Secret Police would later visit him. And not only did they visit him, but they gave him a gun to protect himself with, saying that his life was in danger because of what he'd seen. They didn't really explain what that meant or why his life was in danger. And he never would tell her any other details about what was discussed in the meeting. All she knew was they gave him this gun. He ended up, like, throwing the gun in the bay. He just wasn't comfortable with it. I don't think that's unusual in Europe. Like, he just wasn't comfortable with the gun and so he gets rid of it. Obviously, he's never, you know, murdered or anything. Now you may be thinking, sounds like a crackpot. Why would we even take this guy seriously? Well, some documents have been declassified and we know for a fact that Rot was interviewed by the Norwegian Navy's security department. So he absolutely had a Meeting with who he would have thought of as the secret police from Norway. Whether they gave him a gun or not, I can't say. But he absolutely had this meeting. He absolutely told this story to them. All this is true. Whether it ultimately has anything to do with the Isdale woman or not, that's crazy. I mean, that's like. Well, just when you think. Oh, it's.

[D]

When you don't. When you don't want to have a conspiracy theory, like, just keeps coming and knocking back on the door.

[B]

And that's one thing I love about this case. Y' all know how we feel about conspiracies.

[D]

We don't believe in them.

[B]

Not a huge conspiracy theorist. There are very few conspiracies I buy into. Right. About any case. And usually my goal and including in this case, is to try and knock down conspiracies as much as possible, because I just don't think it's that likely. Right? But this one. This one's got a lot going on. It's got a lot going on. There are cases where if you tell me you have a conspiracy theory about them, you decline in my estimation. Like, I'm like, okay, well, remind me not to take your advice on anything. Right? But this one. This one is legit. That's legit.

[D]

Definitely a lot of smoke.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

So much smoke that subcutaneous cutaneous fat is burning and pooling. Oh, my gosh. I'll never look at bacon the same way.

[B]

All right, well, next week's episode is going to be a big one. We're going to wrap this up, gonna tell you exactly what happened. We're gonna explain the whole thing to you. It's gonna be amazing. Just wait for Alice's closing. She's already done it for me. Blew my mind, right? So we're gonna wrap it up. We're gonna. We're going to do the best we can. I think we are going to nail down some things. I think we're going to have some pretty. Pretty interesting thoughts on what all's going on here. And we'll give you a theory, and we'll give you what our theory is. I don't know, Alice, if you have your theory yet. Mine's been sort of forming in my mind the whole time we've been talking about it. But we want to hear what you think. If you have any thoughts on this, any thoughts on the way she described herself on those various hotel entries, the different term she's using. She always wrote in German, which is interesting. They're obviously German speakers. In Belgium as I'm learning more and more about Belgium in this language. But Flemish, apparently it's the main language but there are some German speakers and maybe she was one of them. So I don't know. But shoot us an email Prosecutors [e-mail] with all your thoughts. If you want to discuss this case in the gallery, join the gallery. That is our fan run fan created Facebook group on the gallery. Lots of crazy discussions have been going on there. You should join that. Or you can follow us on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, all that stuff. At Prosecutors Pod we have a sub stack where we write a ton of stuff. If you want to read our thoughts on various issues and legal things, you can join that. It's called the True Crime Times. If you want to get these episodes early and ad free. Only $3 to do that and for the same price, if you are foolish enough to want to do it, you can watch us record these live and in person for only $3 a month. What a deal. What a steal. Just to see Alice's smiling face. Alice, you want to ask a question? I have a.

[D]

Let's do it. Yes, absolutely.

[B]

So I forget who it was. I didn't write down their name, but we had a question that fits in perfectly with this and so I thought I would ask it. It is. It's a two parter. The first part is what is your favorite conspiracy theory and what conspiracy theory do you think is true? If any.

[D]

Hmm. Favorite. Oh man, I feel like you have so many answers for this.

[B]

I really do. And I've been noodling this one for a while. This is why it's a little unfair because I get them and I'm just like sitting around thinking for days like what is the answer to this? And so I do. I have a lot. I'll tell you this. It was much harder for me to think of when I think is true.

[D]

It was the true one because like the closest I can say is the owl theory.

[B]

Oh.

[D]

But it's not necessarily that I believe it's that it's possible. Right. So it's not like more you can.

[B]

Say for most conspiracy theories.

[D]

Right, Right. So I don't know about the true, but I do. What is your favorite conspiracy theory? Bigfoot? Loch Ness?

[B]

If you define conspiracy theory, what is a conspiracy theory is also another thing that makes it because my favorite sort of woo woo pseudo scientific theory is that there was an advanced civilization before ours. So like 12,000 years ago there was an advanced civilization and then that advanced civilization was destroyed. In a great cataclysm during the younger Dryas period, which resulted in both sort of a diaspora of people. I mean, it's basically like Noah's Ark, right? A diaspora of people, some of whom took technology to various places like Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, these other places. And the reason that all societies seemingly at the same time developed in these places is because they all had a head start. Like, it is quite a coincidence that basically at exactly the same time, in all these different places, people pop up independently developing writing. Like, writing has only independently occurred in like, four places in the entire history of the world. Everywhere else it's derivative, right? But China, Mesopotamia, Egypt or three of those places. There's a couple others. And it's, like, weird that that just all happened to happen at the same time, particularly given that China it like Mesopotamia and Egypt, maybe there could be a little bit of interaction, but I mean, China's just off doing his own thing, right? And all of a sudden it's developing this independent language. And so this whole theory that there was sort of a mother civilization that was destroyed, I really like that theory. I would love to say that's the one I think is most likely to be true still. I'm waiting for the proof, but that is my favorite theory.

[D]

I think that's a good one. I don't know. I have something to follow up on that.

[B]

I mean, but I also don't know if that's a conspiracy.

[D]

Right? That could be, you know, I mean.

[B]

Now it may be a conspiracy of mainstream archaeologists and scientists to cover it up. I could buy that. But.

[D]

Okay, so my favorite. Okay, my favorite conspiracy is that I don't think. Okay, it's not a conspiracy. I'm going to piss off some people, maybe some loyal listeners. I think I've talked about this before, but I truly. Well, this is not my real answer. I love the Flat Earthers. I think it's hilarious. I like, I could laugh all day. I could watch all the videos. There is nothing more entertaining to me than the Flat Earthers. And I got documentary.

[B]

It's so good on Netflix. So good.

[D]

It's so good. And I'm not laughing at them. I just. I think it's so interesting. Like, that's the thing you're gonna stake your life on, that the Earth is flat. So that. That is not my answer. That just popped up in my head because I find it endlessly entertaining that there is a real subset of people out there who make a living. Yes. What do I know?

[B]

The Earth is not round.

[D]

It's not round.

[B]

That is a myth.

[D]

It's spherical, right?

[B]

It's an oblate spheroid.

[D]

Yes, it is spherical.

[B]

You know what else is a myth? A falsehood taught to children around the world on a daily basis. The Earth does not revolve around the sun. Did you know that?

[D]

What do you mean by revolve?

[B]

It does not go around the sun.

[D]

It does not, because it's actually the. What is it called? The gravitational pulls.

[B]

Exactly. Gravitational center of the solar system.

[D]

Right.

[B]

Which just so happens to be, like, you know, 0.1 millimeters from the center of the sun because of Jupiter. Basically. Jupiter and Saturn pull the gravitational center out of the middle of the sun, and that is where the Earth rotates around. The sun actually rotates around it, too, but it's not much of a rotation, so.

[D]

So while we're on this, these were not my answers. I've now actually forgotten my answer. But, like, I also love the conspiracy. I don't think it's true whatsoever that we never went to the moon. Like, the. The immense. I mean, again, I've probably now my. Like, I'm pretty sure my social media feed is going to be all messed up now because it's listening to me talk right now.

[B]

Have you seen the documentary once again on Netflix? It's called, like, Room. I can't remember the name of the room, but it's the room in the Shining. It's all about the conspiracy theories about the movie the Shining, which include that Stanley Kubrick, throughout the movie is giving you clues that he didn't. The moon landing.

[D]

Right. That it didn't have. I mean, it's. It's incredible. No, I haven't seen that documentary, but I'm probably gonna watch it tonight.

[B]

Watch it.

[D]

I'm probably gonna watch it tonight.

[B]

So good.

[D]

But like, that where it's like, this is again, when we go through our conspiracy theories with all the steps that have to be taken, all the people that have to be part of it, like the Karen Reed conspiracy to make it true. And I'm like, or we landed on the moon, y'. All.

[B]

Yeah, it actually would be more impressive if we faked it.

[D]

That's what I'm saying. Like, that's actually the harder conspiracy to pull off is to say that we didn't. Rather than we just straight up, we broke the atmospheric pressure, went up into space, and successfully landed on the moon. I mean, it still blows my mind, but it also blows my mind that, like, airplanes can take off, too. So, like, I still don't understand the physics about airplanes in the air. I'm always basic. Life also blows my mind, but those are a couple.

[B]

I consider myself an intelligent person, but I just. The physics of something.

[D]

I've thought about this. I'm like, I hope the world doesn't end. There's not a zombie apocalypse where I'm one of the few, like, 100 people live. I hope I'm not one of the 100, because I will have nothing to add. I'll be like, I can't build a plane. I don't understand physics. I can't get us to the moon. The earth might be flat. I don't know. I watched a lot of YouTube videos when YouTube existed.

[B]

Look, if you want to feel like an idiot, have children. Because when you have children, they ask you questions. They will start asking you questions, the most basic questions. And you're like, I mean, can I.

[D]

Tell you, this is. This is like, literally a question. I'm kind of proud that he just thought of it. So Squanto is just. He's always thinking. He's six years old now. And I want it to be like, people have debated this for millennia, and there have been fractures.

[B]

Yeah, my daughter.

[D]

Exactly. And, like, entire wars have been fought about this, quite literally in the back of the car. He's, like, eating goldfish, you know? And he's like, do, do, do, do, do. We're talking about nothing. We're listening to, like, Daniel Tiger songs, right? Nothing intellectual about what is happening. Driving down the highway, and he just goes, how do we know what happened in the Bible happened? And who decided that that was the definitive text? And he literally said, definitive text. And I was like, we have fought wars over this. And, like, you know, just, like, that popped up in his mind. He's like, how do we know that there was a whale and that Jonah was in his belly? Like, Jonah didn't write that passage because it's not written in the first person. I'm extrapolating what he's saying, but he's asking. I like, I kind of poke. And I'm like, why do you ask that? He's like, well, Jonah didn't write it from the belly of the whale, so someone else wrote it. And I was like, holy crap. All of a sudden, right?

[B]

My daughter asked me why she was her and not someone else. And I was like, that's.

[D]

I mean, that's an existential question.

[B]

Yeah, that is an existential question.

[D]

That is such an existential question.

[B]

You know, that's a great question.

[D]

Why am I. Wow.

[B]

And she was like, why am I not my brother? Why am I me? That is, why are you Deep dad and not someone else? Yeah, Like, I'm just like. I mean, it's a miracle. Literally, it's a miracle.

[D]

All the conspiracies that have to do with dinosaurs, I love it. That they didn't exist millions of years ago, that they existed like 5,000 years ago, and then Noah's flood made the bones all look old, and then carbon dating is not real. All of that fascinates me because, again, to pull that off is way harder than the reality that these giants did exist millions of years ago.

[B]

Are you familiar with the Tartarian conspiracy?

[D]

Tell me more. That sounds familiar, actually.

[B]

So, you know the Russians are kind of crazy, right? So they've adopted this conspiracy. So they're. You've heard of the Tartars, you heard the Tartars, right? They made the sauce.

[D]

Yeah, so.

[B]

So the Tartars are real people, right? But there's this theory that there was. It kind of goes along with what I was talking about, but it's much more recent. And this sort of goes to a really interesting question about how do we know anything, right? And the theory is that there was this empire called the Tartarian Empire that were the Tartars, and the Tartarian Empire basically ruled the world and built all these incredible structures, basically every incredible structure anywhere. And then at some point, there was this natural disaster, and we're talking like in 1850, there was some natural disaster that brought down the Tartarian Empire and that the rest of the world has spent the last 175 years rewriting history to write the Tartarians out of history. Now, why exactly they're doing that, I don't know. Now, the Tartarians would have been in Russia. So recently the Russians have started, like, pushing this. It's like, this is reality. And the Russians are really like this great empire and it goes into all this stuff. It's like all these great buildings that. There's one in Birmingham. So in Birmingham, there was this beautiful train station, right? Gorgeous, amazing train station, and they tore it down to, like, build a tunnel. In truth, they were just a bunch of idiots who weren't even thinking, right? And they tore down this incredibly beautiful building they could do all things with to build a tunnel, right? But for the Tartarians, that was a Tartarian building and they had to destroy that to cover up the existence of the Tartarians. And there's all these videos on YouTube you can watch, where all people do is they look at photos from like, 1880. And they're like, look at this amazing building in Nashville. Nashville had a population of 4,000 people, and they built this building. They wouldn't have built this building. This is a building that was already there. This was a tartarian building. Anyways. It's like this. It's wild. It makes no sense. It's totally insane. Definitely not the one I believe, but just crazy along the lines. What you're saying you still haven't picked a favorite? You want to tell you my favorite?

[D]

Okay. I mean, I think I listed a bunch. I think I picked a bunch that.

[B]

Are these. Oh, no. The one that you think is true.

[D]

Excuse me? The true one. That's. That's hard.

[B]

You want me to tell you which one I think is true?

[D]

Okay.

[B]

Oh, I'm interested in what you think about this.

[D]

I'm excited. I'm listening. I'm all ears.

[B]

So there's this little town in Massachusetts called Kenton, and that is not what I want to talk about. My favorite conspiracy theory. This is a conspiracy theory that's been around for a little while, but I've actually started seeing it kind of pick up on Twitter, is that there aren't as many people in the world as we think there are, that in particular, China lies about its population.

[D]

So China says that's probably 100% true. They absolutely are like, they absolutely are lying about it. Right.

[B]

How much they're lying?

[D]

I don't think they're necessarily like a shell. Like, there's nobody there, but I don't think.

[B]

Because they say they have like 1.4 billion people or something. Right. Well, let's say they have half that. They still have 700 million. Right, right. And somebody did the calculations that for that to be true, that for the last 50 years, every woman in China would have had to have had five children who lived.

[D]

Which we know that is definitely not true. Right. Because of policy.

[B]

At the same time, they have the one child policy.

[D]

Right.

[B]

Like, it doesn't make any sense, and yet they have this huge boom. And people are like, well, yeah, but the Chinese, they put out these statistics about how much food they buy. And so that's consistent. It's like, well, hold on a second. Why would we assume those statistics are true if they're lying about how many people they got? And I don't.

[D]

Have.

[B]

You spent much time in China. I know you've been to Taiwan a lot.

[D]

Yes, like a ton of time. But, yes, if you go to China.

[B]

And this is a lot of rural parts, everyone who is afraid of China or thinks China is awesome. Go to China. Go to China and see it for yourself. Because number one, China is incredibly backwards, incredibly rural. Like 80% of China is like mountains. Yeah, mountains. Empty plains, rural areas.

[D]

That's by the. Why they had to. They had to build the Great Wall of China because there were so many stretches of land that no one was so anyone could infiltrate.

[B]

So if you go to China, obviously on the coast, you have these massive cities. I mean, you have cities that are huge, that you've never heard of. Like, cities you've never heard of. You go to. And they have like, you know, 50 million people in them or whatever. Like massive cities. Not to mention, like Shanghai. Right. Incredible city, beautiful city. And they obviously have a ton of people. There are a lot of people there. But then if you start to go to the interior, it's like driving through Nebraska, like, you don't see anybody and you just start to wonder, like, where.

[D]

Are all these people?

[B]

Yeah. Like, if you actually have. Because imagine if you went to New York City and that's all you saw. If you go to New York City, you probably think, man, the United States must have. Given how big it is and how.

[D]

Many cities it has so populous, it.

[B]

Must have a billion people in this country. And now we got 300 something million. And, you know, the United States has like a thousand airports and China's got like 50 or something. I mean, like, a lot of it's because they can't. It's so poor. China's actually really poor, you know.

[D]

Yep.

[B]

China's.

[D]

We're getting totally censored right now, you know.

[B]

Yeah. And when China. I mean, the Chinese are going to be angry about this because the. The Chinese are just, they're. I'm not saying it's not a great nation. They don't have great power and all this other stuff. Nothing. Their propaganda is fantastic. The reality of China, which we also know.

[D]

Right. Like, whenever it leaks out, like, oh, they didn't have enough baby formula during COVID so they just mixed a bunch of cement in there. That is actually factually true. And when it comes out, they're like, yeah, we did that.

[B]

Yeah, we kind of did that.

[D]

Yeah, we totally did that.

[B]

So I'm convinced. And so then, I mean, some people are ridiculous and they say there's like fewer than a billion people in the world. I don't believe that. Right. Like, but do I think that China is lying about how many people they have? Absolutely.

[D]

And I also think they're not the only ones lying. Yeah.

[B]

India really know. I mean there are all sorts of reasons to lie about it. Right. Because it makes you seem more powerful. Exactly. Bigger.

[D]

I mean the states did that back in the day when we were trying to figure out how much representation you got in the Senate in Congress. Right. We like the census.

[B]

I mean this is half made up, you think? I was a census enumerator.

[D]

People.

[B]

And I can tell you they ain't going around counting every single person in the United States to come up with those numbers.

[D]

Full circle.

[B]

It's an extrapolation.

[D]

Just shows you kids really are the smartest. Because the same six year old who asked about, you know, the canon of the Bible has asked me since he was 4, but how do you know how many people are there? Because he asked me. He's like, how many people live in our city? How many people live in our state? How many people live in the. He's asking and it goes bigger and bigger and he's like, but who is the person going around and counting so that we know this? And I was like, nobody counts. And then his conclusion is then we don't know. And he's not wrong. And he's not wrong.

[B]

He's right. And particularly lots of like India has no idea how many people they have.

[D]

They actually have no idea.

[B]

They're worse off than China when it comes to life.

[D]

To be fair. Also there's no way that China would know because the one child policy did have so many exceptions. And also people who hid children or pretended children were, or they got rid of children, like kept children, then put them in orphanages because they were not the children that they wanted within the one child policy. So there were people who just like were erased as well. And then who. I mean real crisis of what is a person here.

[B]

Yeah. My greatest concern about China is not that China is one day going to invade, you know, California with its non existent navy, is that China's going to collapse. That's my China. That was the China will collapse. So we'll, we'll see what happens with China. But anyway, would you have a name? Do you, do you have one you thinks true? Have you come up with one? We're talking about that.

[D]

I mean that, I don't think that's a conspiracy theory. I think that is probably completely accurate. Now it might be like around the margins because who actually knows?

[B]

Well, it's definitely the case. We don't have as we do not have an accurate count. But that's like a trivially true thing.

[D]

One that I think is true. I don't know. I'm gonna have to. I might have to come. This might have to be a revisit.

[B]

Okay. You think about it?

[D]

Yeah. I believe a lot of things, so.

[B]

I believe a lot of things. Yeah.

[D]

I 100%. This is not a. We've talked about this in our exorcism episodes. I 100% believe, and I don't think it's a conspir. Conspiracy theory that Ouija boards are portal to like hell. So there's that. So I don't play with Ouija boards, but that again, and you do. So I'm warning you yet again, I've.

[B]

Been in a long time. So you have dead eyes, so it doesn't matter. All right, guys, well, what is your favorite conspiracy theory, and which one do you think is true? Ride us, prosecutor spot. I'd love to hear it.

[D]

I feel like we could do a whole episode of Bloopers on people's favorite conspiracy theories. Because now I'm like, what other ones? I'm going to remember, like 10 of them as soon as we stop recording.

[B]

Yeah. All right. Okay, guys, this is awesome. We're going to finish with this great conspiracy case next week. I hope you'll join us for that. But until then, I'm Brett.

[D]

And I'm Alice.

[B]

And we are the prosecutors.

[D]

Can you tell a difference in my sound with what I've put up? The doors, the paneling, and the pillows? Is it better?

[B]

I think so.

[D]

Okay.

[B]

It's hard to say for certain. You still need something behind you because you got that wide open wall behind.

[D]

You, which is not helping with the sound.

[B]

Yeah. So basically, whatever what's in front of you doesn't catch will bounce back and.

[D]

Forth, but it's a process because the room is deep. So I might just need to, like, get something that's like a. Like a pull down. Like I could do green screen screen or something. Sam, Does this. Is it okay not to use the spit guard? I think the spit guard deters me from using to getting too close.

[B]

So the spit guard, it stops plosives. So whenever you go, oh, okay, it.

[D]

Prevents that I should use it, then.

[B]

I'm gonna go ahead and go live.

[D]

Okay. Thank you. You, of course. Thank you for your patience. Pluto TV has thousands of free movies and TV shows. This is the mantra. This is the. With movies like Joe dirt, pixels and 50 first dates. This is awesome. And TV shows like Survivor, SpongeBob SquarePants, the Fairly Odd Parents, and Ghosts. Pluto TV is always free. Huzzah. Pluto TV stream now pay. Never.

[B]

You're welcome.

[A]

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[D]

Org.