Leipzig is the point where the investigation into the murders of Borgny Stem-Myhre and Charlotte Lolles converges with the story of Juliana Verni. Initially presented as Juliana’s home city, it becomes more consequential when investigators connect her travel to Görna and Kigali with the acquisition of the weapon used in the murders. After returning, Juliana met Tony Leike in Leipzig and was killed there. The city thus serves not merely as an address on a document but as the place where a recruited intermediary becomes another victim.

Setting and Investigative Significance

Harry Hole uses Leipzig’s history to frame his account of the city for Gunnar Hagen. He notes its association with Goethe, Bach, and the former East German state security service, STASI, whose principal archives were there. This information begins as a digression, but it sets up the investigative significance of geography: a woman apparently based in Leipzig had been identified in Görna, in Congo, only a few hours from Kigali. Her presence there, and the suspicion that she bought the weapon used against Borgny and Charlotte, made the contrast between her stated residence and her African journey central to the case.

Leipzig’s importance is therefore evidentiary rather than incidental. The city appears first on Juliana’s immigration card as her place of residence, then in the investigation of her passport and travel history, and finally in Tony’s account of where he met and killed her. The sequence changes the meaning of the original address: Leipzig is not simply where investigators expect to find a suspect, but where the trail of a murder operation leads back after its African stage.

The Passport and Travel Trail

Harry tells Hagen that Juliana’s immigration card lists Leipzig as her home. The investigators compare that information with the account that a woman with an East German accent had been in Görna, where she obtained what Harry believes was the murder weapon. Kaja Solness presents a copy of Juliana’s passport supplied by the police in Leipzig. Its description of her hair, including the distinctive color recorded in an older passport, matches the description given by the seller, van Boorst.

That match gives the travel documents a specific investigative purpose. Harry has asked colleagues in Leipzig to confiscate Juliana’s passport and check whether its Kigali stamp corresponds to the date in question. The check is not reported as completed at that point, so the stamp remains a line of verification rather than a confirmed finding. Still, the passport connects a named person and a documented identity to the suspected journey from Leipzig to Görna and Kigali, narrowing what had been an uncertain lead.

The wider travel pattern helps explain why the Leipzig connection matters. Adele Vetlesen and Borgny had both bought tickets to Ustaoset for November 7, while Iska Peller’s account showed payment for pairs of beds at four mountain huts, including Hävasshütte. Those details place other women in the same broader chain of events; the Leipzig passport trail, by contrast, points toward the person sent to obtain the weapon. The city anchors one strand of a case whose participants and movements extend across Norway and central Africa.

Juliana Verni’s Return and Death

Tony later explains that he contacted Juliana and sent her to Görna under Adele’s identity. She sent a postcard from Kigali and obtained the weapon from van Boorst. After she returned, Tony met her in Leipzig; there, she became the first person killed with the device she had brought back. Her role was thus both operational and fatal: she helped carry the murder plan across borders, but the person who had enlisted her also made her its first victim after her return.

The discovery of Juliana’s body in the Elster on December 2 initially supplies investigators with a death that might be mistaken for drowning. Harry rejects that interpretation: the forensic pattern in her mouth corresponds to the unusual injuries found in the earlier victims, and he concludes that she had not drowned in the water. This recognition recasts the Leipzig lead. Juliana is no longer only a possible link between the African purchase and the Oslo-area murders; she is herself part of the same series.

The Missing Passport and Leipzig’s Lasting Role

The passport remains significant after Juliana’s death because its whereabouts become uncertain. Harry later recalls that he asked a colleague to check for the Kigali stamp, but the police never found the passport. He believes Tony took it. In a later confrontation, Lene Galtung has the document, extending the chain of possession beyond Leipzig and turning the missing record into a clue about Tony’s concealment and Lene’s connection to the case.

Leipzig’s narrative function rests on this movement between identity and evidence. It is first the residence recorded on an immigration document, then the source of a passport copy and a proposed verification, later the city where Juliana returned to Tony, and finally the origin of a document that disappears into the hands of people implicated in the murders. The investigation does not make Leipzig the whole explanation; rather, the city marks the hinge between Juliana’s outward journey, her death, and the effort to reconstruct who arranged both.