November 25

November 25 is the date that appears to place missing Norwegian Adele Vetlesen in Kigali, turning a disappearance into an international lead in Harry Hole’s murder investigation. The records connect her to a flight and a hotel, but they do not settle whether Adele herself made the journey; that uncertainty keeps the date both consequential and open to doubt.

The Recorded Journey

Adele’s November 25 itinerary emerged after investigators found that she had been listed as a passenger on a Brussels-Airlines flight to Kigali, with a stop at Entebbe Airport in Uganda. Interpol’s hotel search also found an Adele Vetlesen registered as an overnight guest at the Gorilla Hotel in Kigali. These records gave the missing-person inquiry a documented route beyond Norway, though the hotel match did not by itself establish where Adele was or what had happened to her afterward.

The date belongs to a wider, unresolved chronology. On November 7, Adele had bought a train ticket from Drammen to Ustaoset, while Borgny Stem-Myhre had bought a ticket from Kongsberg to the same mountain region. Investigators also found that Iska Peller’s account had been charged for two beds in each of four mountain huts, including Hävasshütte, where the travelers were recorded on November 7. The shared journey connected Adele and Borgny to an earlier strand of the case; November 25 instead pointed toward Kigali.

From Passenger Record to Police Inquiry

A Norwegian police commissioner explained that Adele’s mother had recognized her handwriting on a postcard bearing a Kigali postmark. The postcard and travel records seemed to support the possibility that Adele had gone to Rwanda, but her whereabouts remained unknown. The commissioner stressed that an overseas postcard did not remove her from the missing-person list, since it could not show where she was now. He also raised the possibility that she had been abducted and forced to write it, though this was presented as a possibility rather than an established fact.

At Kigali airport, Harry sought a copy of the immigration card associated with Adele’s arrival on November 25 and offered the officers a finder’s fee. The request brought the date into direct contact with the investigation: it was no longer merely a line on a passenger list, but a record Harry hoped could help establish who had passed through the airport.

The Uncertainty Behind the Date

The airport discussion exposed a weakness in treating the passenger record as proof of Adele’s presence. A person could, the officers explained, travel under Adele Vetlesen’s name while presenting a different genuine passport at immigration. Airline checks of a name and photograph might not expose the substitution; passport numbers would be checked later, as travelers left the airport. The possibility meant that a record of travel under Adele’s name did not necessarily identify the traveler as Adele.

To persuade the officials to help, Harry falsely claimed that his public assignment had been in Congo. He described Adele as a possible victim of a serial killer who had already killed at least three other women, including Norwegian parliamentarian Marit Olsen, and argued that waiting to return home and follow official procedure would give the killer more time. His account impressed the officers, but the exchange did not resolve who had traveled on November 25. The date therefore functions as a hinge in the investigation: it supplies a concrete international lead while preserving the central uncertainty over Adele’s identity, location, and fate.