The Hävasshütte Sting Operation turns a witness’s return to an isolated mountain hut into bait for a suspected killer. Its design depends on deception at two levels: the police advertise a seemingly ordinary reconstruction of the night at Hävasshütte, while concealed teams wait in the surrounding snow. The operation’s central gamble is that the killer knows the terrain, will believe the witness is exposed, and will come close enough for the police to intervene.

The Hut and the Witness

The operation grows out of a pattern connecting the murders to Hävasshütte and the journeys that brought people there. Borgny Stem-Myhre disappeared after leaving the Mono in Oslo; no taxi driver questioned by investigators recognized her or recalled a trip to Sagene. Two Polish builders later found her fully clothed in a cellar. The medical findings made the case especially disturbing: she had been drugged, and blood from wounds in her mouth had caused her to drown. Investigators found 24 evenly distributed punctures, each seven centimetres deep except those that passed through her face, but could not identify the instrument.

A search of railway-ticket records supplied another link. Adele Vetlesen, a missing 28-year-old from Drammen, had bought a ticket to Ustaoset for November 7—the same date that Borgny had bought a ticket to the same mountain region from Kongsberg. Iska Peller’s account records showed payments for two beds in each of four mountain huts, roughly a day’s walk apart; the final hut was Hävasshütte, about half a day’s walk from Ustaoset. The bookings and shared destination gave investigators a route and a place to revisit, but did not by themselves settle what had happened there.

A further clue came from Elias Skog, who had spoken to a woman in Stavanger on the evening he was murdered. He told her that, during the night at Hävasshütte, he had woken to noises outside a bedroom window. In moonlight he saw a man holding a woman’s mouth and dragging her into the outhouse. At the time, Elias mistook the scene for sex; after reading about the murders, he reconsidered whether the woman had been struggling to escape. His account made the outhouse part of the police’s reconstruction and gave the planned return to the hut a specific investigative purpose.

The Public Bait

At a press conference, Bellman announced that Iska Peller had contacted the police and would arrive in Oslo from Australia that evening. The next day, she would go to Hävasshütte with an investigator to reconstruct the night as far as possible. Bellman said the police hoped she could describe the other guests. The announcement disclosed a witness’s identity and plans—information the police would ordinarily keep confidential—because its intended audience included the killer.

The wording was calibrated to make the visit appear less important and less protected than it was. The police had discussed how to suggest that Peller might help bring the killer down without drawing attention to the danger of sending her into the mountains with only one investigator. Harry Hole particularly valued the phrases that introduced the matter as the final point about witnesses and described the police as merely hoping she could help. Those choices were meant to imply that Peller was not regarded as a crucial witness and that no major security measures were considered necessary. The real plan was the opposite: Bellman’s announcement was a lure, and the apparent lack of protection was part of its design.

Bellman then reinforced the impression before the television microphones. He said Peller would travel with one of the police’s most experienced investigators and remain at the hut for 24 hours. Harry Hole, standing at the back of the room, acknowledged the signal. The number and apparent simplicity of the arrangement were crucial to the deception: the killer was meant to picture one witness and one officer alone in a remote place, not a coordinated police presence.

Concealing the Trap

The terrain made Hävasshütte both useful and dangerous. The hut sat in a hollow accessible from the northeast or south; steep cliffs blocked an eastern approach, while fissures and crevasses made the western ground treacherous for anyone unfamiliar with it. The police hoped the killer’s knowledge of the area would encourage a sense of security, while the restricted approaches made it possible to watch the likely routes.

Harry Hole, Kaja Solness, and Jussi Kolkka reached the hut after a helicopter landing near Neddalsvannet and a ski journey across the plateau. Other officers were concealed in groups of four, about three kilometres apart, dug into the snow around the valley. The night’s brilliant glare reflected from the snow made even looking out of the hut difficult. In the isolated mountains, only the Telenor network was available; some officers used walkie-talkies because their mobile contracts relied on other networks. The conditions turned communications, visibility, and distance into operational constraints rather than background details.

The visible scene was staged to match the press conference. Kaja Solness played Iska Peller, and Kolkka took the role of the lone investigator accompanying her. They periodically went outside, gestured toward the hut and the route they had taken, and pointed in the direction of the outhouse, as if retracing the events of the fateful night. Harry Hole stayed hidden inside, and he brought his skis and poles in with him so that only Kaja’s and Kolkka’s equipment showed outside. From a distance, the evidence of a small, unprotected visit was meant to look convincing.

Harry had insisted on Kolkka as the apparent escort not because he had forgotten the earlier incident at Justisen, but because Kolkka’s close-combat experience might prove valuable if the plan failed. Harry hoped the killer would approach during daylight, when one of the teams in the snow could overpower him. If the killer came at night and was not spotted until he reached the hut, the three people inside would have to handle the danger themselves. The plan therefore rested on both concealment and readiness for the possibility that concealment would not be enough.

What the Operation Can and Cannot Establish

The sting is a calculated response to the gap between what investigators know and what they can prove. The killer’s earlier first-person account presents a wall of photographs of victims alive, before their families’ lives were shattered, and claims that the police have not yet recognized the connection between the murders. The operation answers that vulnerability with a public signal: the police have found a witness from the hut’s guest list and are returning to the scene. But that signal is also a performance designed to shape the killer’s expectations, not a neutral account of investigative progress.

The scene Elias described was itself open to misreading. He first saw what he thought was a sexual encounter; only after learning of the murders did he consider that the woman might have been resisting. Later, Harry Hole abruptly recognizes that the episode was not a rape—and that this was the motive. That reversal underscores the limits of the reconstruction on which the bait depends: the police can stage a return to the hut and invite the killer to act, but the meaning of the original events is still being revised. The available account establishes the trap’s preparation and its risks, not whether the ambush succeeds.