Christian Habersaat’s suicide at his retirement reception becomes the shock that reopens the unresolved death of Alberte Goldschmid. For years, the former local officer had pursued the case with unusual persistence, but his theories had not established who struck Alberte or why. After his death, the investigators inherit not only an old file but also Habersaat’s final, painful correction: the person responsible was his son, Bjarke Habersaat.

The death that disturbed an old case

Alberte’s death had begun as a tragedy that seemed, to those around her, far removed from any warning of danger. On November 20, 1997, the roughly fifty students at Bornholm Folk High School were passing an ordinary day of courses in music, glasswork, painting, and pottery. They did not yet know that Alberte, remembered as gentle, beautiful, and popular, had been killed in a traffic collision that morning. More than a day passed before she was found high in a roadside tree. The person who looked up and saw her was Christian Habersaat, then a uniformed officer from Nexø.

The discovery tied Habersaat personally to the case. He continued to pursue it long after the initial investigation had settled on a hit-and-run, repeatedly returning to witnesses and pressing for more answers. The records later examined by Carl Mørck showed that the files had not been updated since 2002, and that investigators had never formally considered premeditated murder. Police in Rønne had agreed on the hit-and-run theory, but had not identified either the vehicle or its driver. Habersaat’s persistence had narrowed the inquiry in some ways, yet it had not made his conclusions reliable: the reopened investigation had to distinguish his investment in the case from evidence that could be tested.

A difficult legacy among witnesses

Habersaat’s determination left a divided impression. One witness recalled that he repeatedly visited the school, trying to get its people to identify someone among them as Alberte’s killer; when his questions produced nothing, he returned again and again. Inge Dalby likewise remembered that he had asked her many times about a man Alberte had been seeing. She could recall only that Alberte had once mentioned an unusual-sounding name, apparently from Copenhagen, and that the man had a Volkswagen. When shown a photograph, she could say only that the vehicle seemed to have a similar color and shape. Such fragments kept the case alive, but years of repetition did not turn uncertain memories into a confirmed identification.

Habersaat’s personal relationships further complicated the picture. Inge Dalby spoke with hostility about both him and the renewed attention to Alberte, while insisting that her feelings were not what Habersaat had believed. Another acquaintance described Habersaat as difficult to befriend in his later years; playing cards with Uncle Sam seemed to be about the extent of their connection. These recollections depict a man whose case had become a persistent presence in other people’s lives, but who was not necessarily trusted or understood by them. His death therefore generated fresh attention without making his old methods or assumptions automatically persuasive.

The question of the pistol also returned after the suicide. A later report, passed along through a relative of a teacher who had died at the school, held that the teacher had owned two nearly identical pistols. Habersaat had obtained one and used it to kill himself; the other had not been found among his possessions. The detail raised a question about the weapon’s history, but it did not by itself explain the suicide or establish a connection to Alberte’s death. Carl initially regarded the distinction between one pistol and another as beside the point: his concern was the cold case, and Rose’s belief that he owed Habersaat a full investigation of the suicide was not his understanding of why they had come.

The case reopens

Despite Carl’s reservations, Habersaat’s death changed the case’s standing. Carl and his colleagues took up the investigation, established a situation room in the basement of Police Headquarters, and brought Alberte’s parents up to date, beginning with the suicide. For the Goldschmids, Habersaat had brought sorrow as well as renewed attention to their daughter’s death; the investigators had to explain that they wanted to build a fuller account of Alberte, not simply continue Habersaat’s pursuit of a suspect.

That distinction matters because the inherited investigation contained both valuable effort and unresolved error. Habersaat had devoted time and energy to the hit-and-run theory, but the local police had never found the vehicle or driver, and no premeditated-murder theory had entered the official inquiry. The old case therefore reopened in an uneasy double light: Habersaat’s persistence had prevented it from disappearing entirely, while his manner and unverified suspicions had made people wary. The new inquiry could not treat his conviction as proof; it had to revisit the witnesses and clues without assuming that his preferred explanation was right.

The final letter and reversal

The decisive change comes with Habersaat’s written account, dated April 29, 2014. He acknowledges that he had been determined to pin the crime on an innocent man, and apologizes for the harm implicit in that insistence. He then leaves the investigators to decide what should happen next, explaining that he cannot bring himself to pursue his own son. The letter identifies Bjarke Habersaat as the person who killed Alberte.

This admission transforms the meaning of Habersaat’s long attachment to the case. He had not simply failed to solve it: by the end, he understood that his effort to accuse someone else had obscured the truth closest to him. His decision to leave the matter to the investigators marks the limit of what he could do as a father and as a former officer. The date on the letter fixes that final confession in the very period when the case was being taken up again, making it both an apology for the past investigation and a handover of its unresolved consequences.

Significance

Habersaat’s suicide is the hinge between a case treated as an unsolved hit-and-run and an inquiry that must confront the possibility of murder within his own family. It prompts renewed scrutiny of Alberte’s death, brings the old files and witness memories back into circulation, and gives the investigators a confession that corrects Habersaat’s earlier accusations. Yet the correction arrives through a man who is no longer available to explain or pursue it. His final act does not settle the case by itself; it leaves the truth, and the fate of his son, in the investigators’ hands.