Comment by owenversteeg | Hacker News Reader

Comment by owenversteeg | Hacker News Reader

The multiple passports are fascinating, and that's probably the best thing that limits the search space.

The number of white, brown-eyed, 164cm tall women between 25 and 40 with many fake passports is very small: almost certainly with a state-sponsored intelligence service. Add in the gold crowns, and you've got a pretty good profile of this woman.

You can rule out small countries and countries with bad intelligence services at the time. With her European ancestry you can probably rule out her working for African, South American, or Asian governments. That leaves European and North American governments.

The list then is pretty narrow: America, Canada, USSR/East Germany, West Germany, France, the UK, Italy, Spain. Canada, Spain, Italy, and France almost certainly wouldn't be spying in Norway.

Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, and Denmark are all unlikely, as she seemed "foreign" to the Nordic region. Belgium and the Netherlands don't have much of an intelligence service to speak of, especially during the time, and almost definitely wouldn't be spying in Norway.

That gives the final list of America, USSR/East Germany, West Germany, and the UK.

"English with an accent" (probably) rules out the UK and America. So that leaves us with the USSR/East Germany or West Germany.

Anyone on HN want to solve a murder? My email's in my profile :) I feel like that'd be a really interesting group, even if none of us could put much time into it.

I don't think Israel can be ruled out due to 'European ancestry'. Israel did not exist until WW2 and in those post war years anyone in Europe with Jewish ancestry could migrate to Israel and get citizenship, complete with a passport. The 'English with an accent' would fit with Israel too.

Around twenty years ago I did have some friends where all kinds of unusual contraband items were exchanged, up to and including passports. I was not in the market for buying one myself, however, this just seemed to be standard capitalism as applied to the black market - you could get a good fake passport or pay more and get an even better fake passport, i.e. from a decent country. I doubt that the lady was an international cocaine dealer on the run and in need of lots of passports to get across Europe but stranger things have happened and you cannot just assume the lady was a spy.

I have not studied the story any more than the article, however, the travel pattern is that of someone on the run. If you are up against a police (or intel. service) that has proper resources to track you then you are obligated to move every day. This is the most expensive lifestyle to have, not a sustainable existence. In this existence you need to be totally unpredictable, so where you stay may not have much significance other than a need to hide. In this mode of existence you also run out of friends quite quickly so staying in hotels becomes how it is done until the money runs out or you get caught.

"Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, and Denmark are all unlikely, as she seemed "foreign" to the Nordic region."

One of these countries is not like the others… Switzerland is not a "Nordic" country by any stretch of the imagination.

Not that it's likely that the Swiss secret service had any business in that region.

Hahahaha damn, brain fart. I've been to Switzerland, Norway, Denmark and Iceland, don't worry I'm not one of those people who can't distinguish them :)

"The multiple passports are fascinating"

1. This is a broad assumption. "this means she would have had several fake passports." Make this a "should". I have checked so often into hotels that either did not check my passport or did not look at it.

2. 70ies passports were easy to fake. In fact, I knew somebody who "professionally" faked and manipulated passports to help people escape from the GDR (East Germany) when he was a student.

FWIW, I have also checked into hotels that don't check my passport (or look at it) but the vast majority of them do check and write down the info. Especially in Nordic countries I find people do check the insides of passports. Six days ago I checked into a hotel in a Nordic country and they checked both of my passports and looked carefully at the photos, in sharp contrast to the rest of the world.

I think, especially for a foreign woman in small Norwegian places in the 70s, that people would check passports.

And yes, 70s passports were easier to fake. Still, if she had multiple fake passports, as well as with the circumstances from the article, I have a feeling that this isn't just some independent person playing spy. Using a fake passport to escape the GDR makes sense: that's something a non-spy would do. Using multiple fake passports to check into hotels in a foreign country, meeting with Germans in Norway, evading detection, then getting killed by someone who knew what they were doing? That doesn't sound like a non-spy.

But yes, the problem here is that if each of my assumptions has a 10% chance of being wrong, and I make 5 assumptions, my final categorization has about a 60% chance of being correct. Still, it can put the search on the right track: searching a small list of people (short female aged 25-40 that was a USSR, GDR or BRD spy in the year 1970 with gold teeth and brown eyes) makes the search a hell of a lot easier.

It sounds odd for a suicide, I admit that.

I was several times in the situation that I had to check into Hotels without a passport or with "modified" data (don't ask). It is nearly always possible. Even in CHINA I was able to stay into hotels without a ID/passport. Something that should not be possible by law.

"Still, if she had multiple fake passports" You phrase this like a fact. If you tackle such a problem the right thing would be "she might have had..". You can never take such information as "proven facts". If I would assign something then: a 50% chance that she had faked passports.

Also, spies normally don't use so many different passports in the same country. Looks odd to me.

Really? Not a "continental" country I assume

You're leaving out South Africa, which would explain the english plus german/Afrikaneer accent.

South Africa's intelligence service at the time was pretty small and had a small budget, and seemed mostly constrained to domestic matters. Why would they have a spy on an apparently risky mission deep in Norway?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_Bureau_of_State_...

This lady died just around the time that South Africa's nuclear program started to weaponize. She died in November 1970, Wikipedia says that South Africa started nuclear testing in 1971. Norway would be a good place to meet Russians, for instance.

It mentioned she was seen sitting next to two German naval officers, but not talking.

Pretty tenuous but I guess some support for Germany.

Solve a murder? In what sense?

By finding the killers? I doubt that very much.

By identifying the corpse? This alone doesn't quite solve the murder, but only unravels the depth of the incident. Really, to do so, someone has to spill the beans, much less than help discover a thread that cracks the case.

Sounds like what you're really doing is inviting a leak. I don't see what else would work.

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