Habersaat’s letter to the investigators

Habersaat’s letter to the investigators is both a confession of investigative failure and the final written account of how Christian Habersaat came to identify his son, Bjarke Habersaat, as the killer of Alberte Goldschmid. In a small, handwritten message dated April 29, 2014, Habersaat sets out the suspicions and clues that led him first toward other explanations and finally toward a motive within his own family. Its arrival turns a long, troubled inquiry into a conclusion, but not a clean one: Habersaat acknowledges that he had tried to implicate an innocent man, apologizes, and admits he cannot bring himself to go after his son.

The envelope and its discovery

The letter reaches Carl Mørck and Assad in a crisp white envelope, without dirt, dust, or cobwebs, appearing as untouched as something taken directly from a drawer. Habersaat’s distinctive handwriting identifies the intended recipients on its front. Inside is a compact handwritten page that has been used before; printed material is visible on its reverse. The physical modesty of the document contrasts with the weight of what it contains: a private account prepared for investigators, found after Habersaat’s death and read aloud by Carl at Assad’s urging.

The page is addressed to the investigators again at its top and ends with Habersaat’s signature and date. Its opening acknowledges that they have worked out the case and that the mission is complete. From there, it does not offer a detached report. Habersaat traces the changing direction of his own suspicion, explaining what he noticed, what he misunderstood, and why the evidence ultimately changed the meaning of the earlier clues.

How Habersaat’s suspicions shifted

Habersaat writes that his suspicion of Bjarke strengthened after Alberte’s death when he found an object that Bjarke had apparently used in selling Christmas trees. He had a recollection of his son working on something of that sort and found the object while the island was searching for it. Yet the clue did not settle his thinking. Suspicion of his wife’s former lover remained strong, and Habersaat says that his island network had supplied indications that this man was the same person who had met Alberte and was associated with the VW Kombi Van.

A splint discovered at the crime scene, along with other details, then gave Habersaat reason to hope that Bjarke was not responsible. He describes the pull between revenge and the instinct to protect as especially difficult when the suspected person is one’s own child. He could find no apparent motive for Bjarke to kill a girl he did not know, and his understanding that Bjarke was not interested in women seemed to make the accusation less plausible. Habersaat also recalls that June found this difficult to accept, a subject on which they had argued. These judgments did not prove Bjarke innocent, but they helped sustain Habersaat’s attention on the other suspect.

The letter makes clear that Habersaat’s investigation continued to point toward the man associated with the van until he uncovered what he calls the crucial evidence. A month before writing, he had taken over Bjarke’s old room to store investigation materials. In a box of old PC games, he found the paper whose reverse carried Bjarke’s poem about his fascination with the man. The poem did not merely add another clue: it supplied the emotional connection that Habersaat had not understood and recast the earlier question of motive.

The motive disclosed by the poem

After finding the poem, Habersaat understood that Bjarke had been in love with the same man as June. He concluded that Bjarke killed Alberte because she had displaced him in the man’s affections. Habersaat presents the motive as newly legible in retrospect: what had seemed to lack any explanation now appeared clear and logical to him, even as the recognition broke his heart. The poem, preserved among old computer games, therefore links the personal history of Bjarke’s desire to the murder investigation that had occupied his father for years.

The explanation meets details from other accounts of the case. Inge Dalby recalls that Christian Habersaat repeatedly asked about the name of the man Alberte had been seeing, returning to the question after others had already spoken to police. She remembered that Alberte thought the name sounded exotic, though she could not later recall it, and described a man apparently from Copenhagen who had a VW resembling the one in a photograph. Inge also said Habersaat kept returning to the school, trying to get people to identify someone among them as responsible for Alberte’s death. The letter gives these repeated inquiries a new context: Habersaat had been following the van connection, but the evidence he eventually found at home redirected the case toward his son.

June’s account further clarifies the emotional triangle underlying Habersaat’s conclusion. She says she followed the man after realizing that he had been seeing a younger woman while involved with her. She watched him and Alberte exchange notes beside the large boulder outside the school; she and the man had also used notes to communicate, leaving theirs where they met to make love. June says she once went to the commune at Ølene, where the man told her he loved Alberte and planned to take her back to Copenhagen. This testimony supplies a concrete history behind the relationships Habersaat summarizes in the letter, though the letter’s specific conclusion about Bjarke’s motive remains Habersaat’s own reconstruction from the poem and the other evidence.

Admission, apology, and unresolved duty

Habersaat’s final paragraphs turn from deduction to responsibility. He apologizes for insisting on pinning a crime on an innocent man when, as he now believes, his son committed it. He does not present the letter as an excuse for his earlier certainty or his repeated efforts to obtain a suspect from the people at the school. Instead, he records the mistake and names the evidence that overturned it.

The case is handed over with an admission of personal incapacity: Habersaat leaves Bjarke’s fate to the investigators because he cannot bring himself to go after his own son. His closing declaration that it stops here makes the letter an endpoint to his pursuit, not a report that resolves every consequence. Carl and Assad stand silent after hearing it, sharing the same thought. The document thus completes Habersaat’s account while transferring the burden of action to the investigators: it explains why the evidence points to Bjarke, but it cannot make a father carry out the pursuit he has written down.