VW Kombi with the peace sign

The VW Kombi with the peace sign is both a possible piece of evidence in the Alberte Goldschmid case and the clue that gives Department Q a way to pursue Frank Brennan. A roof painted with a large peace sign distinguishes the van from the hundreds of similar vehicles investigators might otherwise have struggled to identify. Yet its apparent usefulness as a lead does not prove that it was involved in the collision: the investigation has to test what the vehicle could have done, who used it, and how the scattered evidence fits together.

Identity and provenance

The van belonged to Egil Poulsen, a committed peace activist until the mid-1980s. He had died, but his wife still lived in the family’s old house in Brønshøj. Their daughter, Kitte Poulsen, told Department Q that the Kombi had been put on blocks in the garden. The last time she had seen it was when she came home for Christmas; the evidence does not establish which year that visit took place.

Kitte lived in Kuala Lumpur and watched TV2 News online during her lunch break. She did not recognize the man in the photograph that Department Q circulated, but she recognized the vehicle because of the peace sign on its roof. That distinction mattered: the man’s face remained uncertain, while a conspicuous feature of the van connected the appeal to a family and a location. Within about an hour of Carl Mørck’s televised appeal, the department had received this lead.

The van in the Alberte investigation

The case files Carl received from Superintendent Birkedal had not been updated since 2002, and the original investigation had never considered premeditated murder. Alberte’s death had therefore remained classified as a road casualty rather than being pursued as a possible killing. The photograph of a man beside the Kombi gave Carl a reason to challenge that settled account. He brought it to the chief of homicide, Bjørn, and asked permission to seek information on TV2’s Station 2; Bjørn refused, insisting that Bornholm Police had already dismissed the 1997 case and that there was no murder investigation to reopen.

The van also shaped the technical questions Department Q put to the specialists. Carl asked them to examine the drawings made by Christian Habersaat and check their archives for earlier analysis of the wooden board. If Habersaat’s theory about a shovel blade was sound, they were to assess how thick a board would have to be to survive a collision, and whether such a board could be attached securely to the hood of a VW Kombi without leaving marks on the body. They were also asked whether Alberte’s body could have been thrown toward the windshield and broken it, given the drawing and the vehicle’s probable speed. These were investigative tests, not findings that the Kombi had been used in the collision.

The Frank Brennan lead

A witness who had taught Frank described him as unusually inquisitive and recalled that he seemed to have undergone an awakening. When Assad showed him the photograph, the witness said that, after more than eighteen years, the man could very well be Frank. The identification was cautious, but it gave the name a human connection to the image.

Department Q later established that Frank’s surname was Brennan and that Dagmar Poulsen had had an affair with him. She confirmed that he matched the known descriptions of his appearance and personality and said he had used the Kombi from the spring of 1997. He had rented it rather than borrowed it. Dagmar suspected that her husband had discovered the affair and disapproved of Frank, though she could not be sure because the subject had not been discussed between them.

The arrangement ended around Christmas of that year. The van had a dent in its fender when Frank returned it, and Dagmar quarrelled with him about the damage. Afterward, she never saw him again. The dent and the quarrel gave the vehicle a specific, traceable history, while the gap that followed sharpened the question of where Frank had gone. Neither detail, by itself, proves that the dent came from Alberte’s collision or that Frank was responsible for her death.

What the vehicle can and cannot establish

The Kombi joins several different kinds of evidence: a photograph, a distinctive roof marking, a family’s recollection of ownership, and testimony about Frank’s rental of the vehicle. Together, these details make it an unusually productive investigative lead. They also show why identification and proof are not the same thing. The peace sign helps locate the van; the rental and damaged fender connect it to Frank; the collision theory still requires independent examination.

That distinction remains important as the case changes direction. Carl tells June Habersaat that the police have seen the car and the snowplow, but June insists that she, not her son Bjarke, killed Alberte. Christian Habersaat’s letter had earlier concluded that Bjarke was the killer, a conclusion prompted by his reading of Bjarke’s poem about Frank and the family’s entanglement with him. The evidence about the Kombi helps expose the relationships and suspicions surrounding Frank, but it does not settle who killed Alberte. Its narrative force lies in making an old, misclassified death investigable again—and in showing how a vivid clue can open a case without, on its own, closing it.