The Kriminalamt’s attempt to assume control of the murder investigation is both an administrative power struggle and a practical obstruction to solving the case. Mikael Bellman’s push to centralize authority collides with Oslo police’s insistence that the force closest to the crimes must retain a say in how they are investigated; as the agencies contest control, information is withheld and the investigation stalls.

Background to the dispute

The conflict predates the murders. Gunnar Hagen describes an old rivalry between the Oslo police’s Morddezernat and the Kriminalamt, sharpened by debate over whether Norway has enough resources to maintain two specialist units with overlapping powers. A proposal to consolidate murder investigations in a single competence center promised more centralized use of limited resources, but also threatened the local department’s authority and continued existence.

Bellman, newly returned to the Kriminalamt as its deputy head after working at Europol in The Hague, became the principal force behind the agency’s bid for greater control. His first controversy concerned the proposed appointment of his former Europol colleague, Jussi Kolkka, a Finnish-trained officer who lacked the formal qualifications required to hold police status in Norway. After the union objected, Kolkka was brought in temporarily through an exchange arrangement. The episode establishes a pattern: Bellman presses against existing rules, and institutional resistance produces a workaround rather than ending the conflict.

The change in authority

Bellman’s next move was to interpret the regulations so that, in major murder cases, the Kriminalamt could decide whether a case belonged to the agency or to the relevant local police force. Previously, that decision rested the other way around. The shift was not merely a technical adjustment: it would let the national agency determine the reach of its own jurisdiction.

Hagen argues that the Oslo police must be able to decide which cases it can handle alone, when it needs assistance, and which cases should be transferred altogether. In his account, the Kriminalamt was established to support local police with specialist expertise in difficult investigations, not to place itself above them as an authority with final say. He also objects to Bellman drawing the Norwegian Ministry of Justice into the dispute, because the ministry’s interest in consolidating all murder investigations could convert a contested interpretation into a lasting institutional settlement.

The disagreement is therefore about more than which team gets a particular case. Hagen warns that concentration in one center risks narrowness and professional insularity, while reducing the value of local knowledge, broad competence, and recruitment of new investigators. The proposed system may be presented as rationalization, but from the Oslo department’s perspective it threatens both investigative diversity and its own role.

The murders become a jurisdictional test

The conflict becomes acute after Charlotte Lolles is found dead behind a Datsun and the Oslo investigators recognize a resemblance to the earlier murder in the basement of a new building. Although both bodies were found in Oslo, the Kriminalamt claims the linked double murder as its responsibility and begins investigating on its own. Hagen understands the case as a test: the Ministry’s future support for the agency’s expansion is expected to depend on the outcome.

That political pressure changes the meaning of investigative success. Harry Hole asks whether the contest is now about solving the case before the Kriminalamt does. Hagen resists reducing the issue to a simple race, but confirms that the agencies’ conduct has made cooperation difficult. Bellman refuses to share information with Oslo police, and the investigation there comes to a standstill. The agency’s bid for control thus produces the very practical consequence that the dispute ostensibly ought to prevent: investigators working on the same murders cannot freely pool what they know.

The Oslo police chief then receives a call conveying that the Ministry of Justice would welcome the Kriminalamt taking over the case until the jurisdictional question is finally settled. This is a proposed interim transfer, not evidence that the larger dispute has been resolved. For Harry, the sequence makes the institutional stakes plain: Bellman’s agency has an opening to establish control, while the local department is left trying to investigate without access to the other side’s information.

Public statements and contested knowledge

Bellman’s public handling of a later death reinforces the conflict over who controls not only the investigation but also its account. At a press conference, he says that police have neither a lead nor a suspect and that suicide has not been ruled out. When a journalist asks whether the death may be connected to the other two, Bellman answers that the police have not excluded a connection, while rebuking the reporter for treating that qualification as a statement of belief.

The exchange distinguishes carefully between what investigators know, what they are considering, and what they are willing to say publicly. Bellman’s insistence on that distinction is procedurally defensible, but the press conference also shows how institutional authority is performed: he controls the wording, interrupts a question, and declines to turn uncertainty into a public conclusion. Against Hagen’s account of information withheld within the police, the scene makes uncertainty itself part of the contest.

The murders’ wider pattern emerges through evidence rather than through the agency’s public declarations. Borgny Stem-Myhre was last seen after leaving the Mono, where she had attended a fashion event; two Polish bricklayers later found her in a basement. The forensic investigation identified a narrow time of death, traces of a fast-acting sedative, and an unusual pattern of mouth injuries, but no usable fingerprints, DNA, or footwear impressions. Those facts show why recognizing links between cases matters, while also underlining how little a public statement about the absence of leads can convey about the work still required.

Wider investigation and significance

The inquiry subsequently connects Borgny’s movements to a larger set of questions. Adele Vetlesen, reported missing by her partner, had bought a train ticket from Drammen to Ustaoset for November 7, the same date Borgny had bought a ticket to the same mountain area from Kongsberg. Investigators also find that Iska Peller’s account was charged for pairs of beds in four association huts, roughly a day’s walk apart; the final hut, Hävasshütte, lay about half a day’s walk from Ustaoset. These details broaden the case beyond the Oslo crime scenes and make the investigation’s coordination more consequential, though they do not settle the jurisdictional argument.

A later account by Elias Skog adds another troubling element: at Hävasshütte, he saw a man take a woman into the outhouse and initially interpreted the scene as sexual activity. Only after reading about the murders did he reconsider whether the woman might have been trying to escape. The episode demonstrates how an apparent explanation can conceal a different event, and why investigators need to compare testimony and evidence rather than rely on first impressions. Much later, Harry’s sudden recognition that the encounter was not a rape reframes the episode as relevant to motive, showing that the investigation’s most important conclusions may depend on interpreting the evidence correctly rather than merely claiming institutional possession of it.

The takeover dispute therefore remains more than a contest between Bellman and Hagen. It sets centralized authority against local responsibility, resource efficiency against breadth of expertise, and public certainty against evidence that is still changing meaning. The Kriminalamt’s claim to the case creates a test of institutional power, but the investigation’s progress depends on connections across people, places, and records—precisely the work that the refusal to share information puts at risk.