Gorilla Lodge matters to the investigation as a trace left by a false identity: its guest card, compared with a postcard attributed to Adele Vetlesen, helped show that Juliana Verni had traveled under Adele’s name. The hotel’s record turned a suspicious itinerary into evidence of impersonation and possible collaboration.

The Guest Registration

In reconstructing the journey, Harry Hole and Kaja Solness connect Verni’s use of Adele’s identity to a registration at Gorilla Lodge. The person who checked in under Adele Vetlesen’s name completed a guest card, creating a written record that could be compared with other documents attributed to Adele.

The comparison undermined the apparent consistency of the trip. A postcard had been posted in Kigali on the day Adele was supposedly arriving there, but its photograph showed Nyiragongo, a volcano in Congo rather than Rwanda. Jean Hue compared the postcard’s signature with the signature on the hotel guest card and found that they were not written by the same person.

Evidence in the False Itinerary

Kaja’s account clarifies the hotel’s place in the scheme: Juliana Verni traveled to Africa under Adele Vetlesen’s name, registered at Gorilla Lodge using that identity, and sent a postcard that the real Adele had written earlier, probably under coercion. The registration therefore linked Verni directly to the use of Adele’s name, while the mismatch between signatures exposed the paperwork as a constructed trail rather than reliable proof of Adele’s movements.

The investigators’ reconstruction places the hotel evidence within a larger deception. Verni was found dead in Leipzig three days after returning from Kigali, and Harry and Kaja believed she had worked with another person who later killed her to erase traces of their joint crime. Gorilla Lodge is not presented as the site of that killing; its significance is that the guest card helps establish Verni’s role in the false journey and gives the investigators a concrete lead in searching for her unknown associate.