THE SERIES CONTAINS RECONSTRUCTIONS.
THE VICTIMS IN THE CASES MENTIONED HAVE BEEN ANONYMIZED.
We were best friends.
Two peas in a pod.
We trusted each other.
Or… so I thought.
I keep blaming myself for not picking up on any of the…
the signs, any of the small clues.
Cases like this are rare in Denmark.
They're extremely rare.
This case has also created a sense of insecurity.
And a very long time passed before the killer was found.
A perverted sexuality with sadistic tendencies
has been at the foundation of this whole trial.
The… absolute ruthlessness of these violent crimes
that have been committed.
Murder, attempted murder, rape, kidnapping… The list goes on and on.
A FRIEND, A MURDERER
I was born and raised in West Zealand.
DENMARK
COPENHAGEN
West Zealand is a very tight-knit community.
If you walk down the street, you'll probably see somebody you know,
or are friends with.
It's a safe place to grow up.
I think I was pretty carefree then.
I didn't have a lot to worry about,
as far as me walking down the street or walking home late at night.
I wasn't afraid of those things.
I just enjoyed my life.
Summer of 2015,
I met my boyfriend.
AMANDA'S BOYFRIEND
And he had two really good friends from high school,
Nichlas and Philip.
Then when Nichlas started dating his girlfriend,
it felt… totally natural for all of us to be hanging out together all the time.
NICHLAS'S GIRLFRIEND
All five of us bonded really quickly,
and as we continued to hang out and do more and more things together,
we got to know each really well.
We were all really super tight,
and I think we liked hanging out together so much
because we could… be ourselves,
and we could always be honest with each other
and say what was on our minds.
Anything we wanted.
JULY 10TH
ANNA HELLEBERG KLUGE LOCAL PRIEST
I wasn't the priest that day,
not the 10th.
That was my day off.
But after the service, I had a call from a colleague.
I can tell he's worried, and he says, "It's weird."
"I missed one of the girls at choir practice today."
It was frustrating and odd, and he was just about to call her
when her mom came running in asking if her daughter was there.
And she's frightened, upset.
And everyone got concerned.
JANE VALSTED VOLUNTARY SEARCH COORDINATOR
It was sometime around noon
that I read in one of the Facebook groups, KORSØR "right now",
that a woman is looking for her 17-year-old niece.
She hasn't come home after a night in Slagelse.
On Sunday afternoon, I get in my car and go driving,
and as I pass the train station,
I can see that the police are there with search dogs,
and they've closed off the Kodak Path.
The Kodak Path runs from Korsør train station
to the center of the city.
Crossing Motala Road.
If she was walking home from the station, she'd go down Tårnborg Road.
HOME OF THE 17-YEAR-OLD
The police report a 17-year-old girl missing.
She was last seen at 4:00 a.m. this morning at Korsør station.
At the same time that all that's going on,
people are posting in online groups
that the old Basta factory is burning.
JULY 10TH HEAVY SMOKE DEVELOPING
The fire department expects the fire to be put out tonight.
Our theory is that the fire was deliberate.
I get this horrible feeling that somebody might've hurt or harmed her,
and left her in the Basta factory.
I get to work, and my editor says there's a case in Korsør,
where a young woman's missing,
and my editor wants us to focus on that and follow up.
It's all very mysterious.
Where is this girl?
Is she with a friend? Did she go home with some guy?
Maybe she's not coming home because she doesn't want to.
I found out on July 9th, 2016,
that this girl was going to meet two of her girlfriends,
and that they had decided to go to Slagelse
and hang out in a hookah bar there.
THREE HOURS BEFORE THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE 17-YEAR-OLD
At some point during that night,
the girl starts texting this guy she's been seeing for a while.
But he ends up telling her that he doesn't want to see her anymore,
which makes her very upset.
After the hookah bar, they go to McDonald's
before walking to Slagelse train station to take the train to Korsør.
On the train, one of the girls calls a taxi.
VOICE OF THE FRIEND
I ordered a taxi to my house, but I was like,
"Do you want to go with us and then just walk home from my place?"
But she didn't want to.
I asked her four to five times.
I think she just wanted to be alone.
If you're mad because some guy dumped you,
it's not like you're gonna feel like drinking and partying.
I think she was just over it at that point.
I wish I could've convinced her to just walk home from my place
instead of walking all the way back from the train station.
TEN HOURS AFTER THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE 17-YEAR-OLD
You've gotta do something.
You have to help these people who are, all of a sudden, missing their daughter,
sister, niece.
So one group will meet at the train station
and walk to the center of the city,
and another group will start at the center of the city
and walk to the station.
They agreed to meet at the library.
The weather was terrible that night,
so I drove to the library myself, because I'm thinking,
"Maybe there's something I can do to help."
Today, family, friends and police have searched,
but have yet to find her.
We've searched with dogs. We've also used a helicopter
but had to ground the helicopter due to the storm.
Even though I didn't know her,
I thought a lot about what might've happened to her.
But those feelings fade a little bit
because maybe she's just gone home with a guy
and didn't want her mom to know.
I mean, I know that from my own experience,
since I was also 17 at the time.
So it wasn't till later in the afternoon,
when she still hadn't gotten back in touch with anybody,
that I started thinking something might've happened to her.
Nobody has seen her since 4:00 a.m. this morning.
If you have any information about the 17-year-old,
please call the police.
31 days, 24 teams, and 50 matches.
In a moment, referee Mark Clattenburg will start the final and defining match…
We'd watch soccer together all the time,
and July 10th was the European Championship finale,
and we wanted to get together and watch it.
We were planning to go to Copenhagen and watch it on a big outdoor screen,
but the weather said it was going to rain.
SIXTEEN HOURS AFTER THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE 17-YEAR-OLD
So my boyfriend said that we could go over to his parents' campsite
and we could all watch the game there.
We'd set up a TV and watch the soccer game under an awning.
Philip picks up Nichlas and his girlfriend,
and they drive to the campsite together.
The boys sit on one side of the table.
Nichlas's girlfriend and I sit on the other side.
So we're chatting about whatever,
talking about life and what's going on and stuff,
and I ask her if she's heard about the 17-year-old girl
that hadn't come back home after a night out.
We were obviously both getting a little worried.
We didn't talk for very long about it because it was intense.
And it was raining and dark, and kinda ruining the mood, you know?
Yeah.
The boys were really focused on the game though.
The match is about to start…
My boyfriend and I stay the night at the campsite,
and that's something we've always done, whenever we hang out there.
I was afraid to go outside,
since it happened so close to where we were in West Zealand.
BOESLUNDE CAMPSITE
When you have to pee at night at a campsite,
you have to walk a few meters to the shared bathrooms,
and for the first time, I was scared to walk that little bit.
That's never happened before,
but I woke my boyfriend up so he'd come with me.
ONE DAY AFTER THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE 17-YEAR-OLD
Comwell Grand Park offered coffee, tea and shelter,
so we all went there.
We stayed all night.
Jane Valsted coordinates the volunteer search.
She hasn't slept since yesterday at 8:00 p.m.
She does it for the same reasons as everyone else.
I have three daughters, 17, 23, and 27,
and it could easily have been one of them who didn't come home.
All kinds of people helped.
Young, old, some with walkers or strollers.
Some brought their older kids.
Can you search the shipyard and then check all the smaller streets?
And so, at one point,
I decided to go and get some fresh air,
and I go outside to the police.
We're standing there chatting a little bit,
and I ask, "Who's this girl?"
That's when I realize that she's my colleague's daughter.
And I mean,
it was just
like a punch to the gut.
At my age, I think all young people are beautiful,
but she was really lovely.
With her beautiful brown, straight hair.
She was sweet.
She was particularly interested in animal welfare,
and along with that came a strong sense of justice.
She gave up meat because she thought you shouldn't kill and eat animals.
She didn't think it was fair.
The police officer in charge comes in.
He pulls me aside and tells me that the girl has done this before.
And he says something about it being boyfriend problems,
and so I think, "Yes! We'll find her soon."
It's clear that this young girl is having a problem with a boyfriend.
ON-SITE COMMANDER
Maybe a broken heart.
Then somebody noticed she's active on Messenger,
and people wrote on her Facebook page, "Please come home."
I think people were thinking that
she just needed time alone.
There's some indication she might've taken a train to Copenhagen.
We ask the police for details regarding those statements.
"You say she's done it before? What's that about?"
"Do you know for certain? Do you have any footage?"
And it turns out they haven't even seen anything at all from the CCTV.
Not from the Korsør train station or Copenhagen Central Station
or any other station on that route.
It's not until Tuesday,
more than 48 hours after she was last seen,
that they check the footage.
When they check the footage, they see that she didn't go back to the station.
And that kind of thing makes me really wonder,
"Why are the police making a statement
about something they haven't properly investigated?"
"What happened in the last two days?"
"If she didn't take the train to Copenhagen, where is she?"
TWO DAYS AFTER THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE 17-YEAR-OLD
Police still have no leads and ask the public for any information.
Tuesday, it comes out that while the police thought
she was reading her messages, it was a mistake.
So, at any rate, the police retracted that statement.
It turns out it was actually the police who were active on her profile.
So when they saw her logged in online,
it was actually them, looking at themselves.
So this whole narrative of, "She's out there,
she's alive, she's okay,"
it starts to fall apart more and more as Tuesday becomes Wednesday.
THREE DAYS AFTER THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE 17-YEAR-OLD
There are indications she might've been spotted
in the area near Tårnborg Road.
THE KING'S BRIDGE
Police wish to speak to anyone who was in the area
south of the corner of King Bridge and Tårnborg Road on Sunday.
The case is reassigned from local police to a different department,
the criminal investigations.
And when it's handed over to the criminal investigation department,
it's because they need to investigate
whether this could be something other than a simple disappearance.
Meanwhile, more and more people come to Korsør to help find her.
More people join the search.
If you find her, please come to us.
If you need a psychologist, we can help.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of volunteers
turn up in Korsør, all there to help find her.
We'll always be right here if you need us.
I had a friend that was asking me
if we should maybe try to get Missing Persons
and Sofie Sønderup to come help us with the search.
SOFIE SØNDERUP FOUNDER OF MISSING PERSONS
I've been involved in other searches for missing persons.
I've done searches like this before.
I could tell that people in Korsør really wanted to help.
They were very kind, they donated food and all sorts of stuff.
People were really, really helpful.
Okay, welcome, everybody.
It feels really good to see so many volunteers here.
In the beginning, people came to search, but I think it grew into something bigger.
We all had the same goal,
which was to find anything that would help the police,
or to find her ourselves.
If you bake, or can bring a thermos, great. Everyone can help.
ONE WEEK AFTER THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE 17-YEAR-OLD
I'd never been to Korsør.
You'd just drive through there on your way to Funen.
After about a week of working on the case,
I remember posting on Facebook,
"If I ever move from Amager, it'll be to Korsør."
Because people were so helpful and accommodating.
That was my first impression of Korsør.
After not having any luck on one of our searches,
I got really discouraged and thought, "Is any of this doing any good?"
But then I just slept on it and I was back in the saddle again.
So now I know it wasn't as simple as her staying over at a friend's house
or that she's with a new boyfriend or something.
This isn't going to end well.
But we kept going.
Seven drones are searching where the Basta factory used to be.
The factory burned down the day she went missing.
Right now, this is what the family wants us to do,
and as long as that's the case, that's what we'll do.
At that point, there were many reported sightings.
Some saw her on a train, some say they saw her in Jutland,
so we have to search in Jutland.
A group of volunteers
searched for the girl in a forest in East Jutland.
I heard that a clairvoyant had a vision about this.
I get a surprising number of clairvoyants that contacted me.
If there's a chance, we should keep looking.
So the search does continue in a number of different places, of course,
but we don't usually interfere with private searches,
as long as they're conducted lawfully.
POLICE
THREE WEEKS AFTER THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE 17-YEAR-OLD
It wasn't easy being 17 after she disappeared.
You couldn't be on your phone or be outside, walking down the street,
without constantly being reminded that there's a girl missing,
that's your same age.
And so time just went by.
FOUR WEEKS AFTER THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE 17-YEAR-OLD
You'd rarely hear the helicopters flying around anymore.
It was happening less and less.
And so, we were slowly realizing that
we'll have to… live with this for a while.
And so many of the parents living in Korsør now
were completely consumed by this fear.
We drove our kids everywhere.
Parents were constantly on their phones,
making arrangements for who was going to be responsible for each other's kids
and when.
We were so scared for our children
and, I guess, scared for ourselves too.
It made us look at each other and think, "Is it you? Or you?"
People began to snitch on each other. They started to suspect each other.
So it all took a turn.
So my initial thoughts on Korsør being such a lovely town to be in
just take a violent and nasty 180, and I think,
"Wow, if I ever move from Amager, it won't be to Korsør."
The whole town was on edge. You could feel it.
Most of the girls going out to bars or clubs at night felt that way.
And just like that, everyone at the bar was suspicious of everybody else.
We'd always be keeping an eye on all the older men hanging out at the bar
or big, tough-looking guys covered in tattoos.
We all had this image in our heads,
this idea of what a criminal might look like.
I was used to walking home, but that freedom was taken away from me.
I only lived a couple of hundred meters from the bar
but would take a taxi home.
It was always easy to get a taxi before,
but all of a sudden you had to wait in a long line.
The girl has been missing for a month,
and the police still haven't made any notable discoveries.
You can tell when you're talking to people that she's on everyone's mind.
CITIZEN OF KORSØR
It's a sad feeling around here.
TÅRNBORG ROAD
Police would still like to hear from anyone with pertinent information.
FIVE WEEKS AFTER THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE 17-YEAR-OLD
Um, the first Sunday in August
I was at the Smukfest,
and somebody from Korsør got in touch, saying they wanted to talk.
She's pretty sure her neighbor is holding the girl hostage.
She can hear someone crying for help,
crying and whatnot.
There was actually a good chance she might be there
because she did walk past that house.
She tells me that she's already contacted the police,
and that two officers have been to her neighbor's house without dogs,
and the whole thing lasted only ten minutes.
Then they turn around and ask her if she could gather more evidence.
Audio recordings or something like that.
That's illegal. Why would the police ask for that?
My head is just spinning while I'm talking to her,
and I'm thinking,
"What do I do?"
Now she's taken a brick out of the wall,
and then at one point, I think it was an iPhone 4,
she took the phone and put in the hole in the wall so she could record.
Then she sends me these audio files,
but I can't hear a damn thing except for the traffic from Tårnborg Road,
and I'm just thinking…
"If I don't do anything, it's wrong. If I do something, it's wrong."
So I reach out to Sofie Sønderup,
telling her that this woman has gotten in touch with me
saying she believes the girl's next door to her.
Over a month has passed,
and we've heard from clairvoyants and somebody that could talk to a radio.
I mean, there's a lot of special talents in Denmark, and particularly in Korsør.
So I'm thinking, "Isn't it just some nutjob?"
And she says, "I'll look into it."
Then somebody goes over to the house,
and they meet with this lady
so that when they record, they can make sure
that there's no way that these audio recordings can be faked.
I'm sent an audio file,
so I connect my phone to my speaker and turn up the volume.
And my husband freezes,
and we look at each other and then he says,
"You have to go to Korsør right now."
We meet at the fire station.
We agree that three people should go to the garage again,
but specific questions need to be asked,
ones we don't have answers to yet.
The girl's mom's there too.
Are you in a basement?
AUDIO FILE FROM THE GARAGE
What's your little brother's name?
And then they ask for the girl's personal ID number.
And so there is somebody we know in the search party
that has a son with autism,
and they say that he can hear most of the numbers that are being said.
When they come back, we're placed in different rooms
and get sent the audio file,
which is just an ordinary recording made on a phone.
We listen and write down what we hear.
I still can't hear shit.
I hear the brother's name.
Seven of the nine of us heard it, without talking about it.
I call 1-1-4.
I think it's around two in the morning or something
when two police officers show up.
What's your brother's name?
Your little brother?
And then one of the officers makes kind of like a…
Because he says he can hear someone saying, "Help".
And I'm thinking…
"Fuck. She's in there."
The officer was enthusiastic,
so before searching the house, he said to the girl's mom,
"If she's in there, I promise you, we'll find her."
I remember holding her and saying, "It'll be over soon. It'll be over soon."
Then time passed really, really slowly, until they came back.
They hadn't found anything,
and they couldn't hear anything, and…
So we go from this high feeling, thinking it's over,
to questioning what it was that we heard.
So we go back and forth for a bit,
and they say they need to brief their task-force leader.
They go outside to call him,
and when they come back, they tell us to keep up the good work.
"You can't say anything about this to anyone."
"We need to figure this out because the police won't stop."
Fourteen days later,
South Zealand and Lolland-Falster Police move in with full force.
Armed with crowbars and shovels,
the officers have searched the house and the garden at the address.
Everybody knew where it was in Korsør.
They could see the police tape and they knew when it was happening.
I remember thinking that it wasn't him.
But I thought,
"Take him anyway because we have to do it."
"I mean, we all need to get some sort of order back."
Everything was just so out of balance.
Something in nature had been shifted.
I mean, a young girl with such a good life,
and for her to simply disappear is just flat-out wrong.
"It'll be an eye for an eye, and we'll take your life,
even if it's not fair, even if it's not right."
"There's nothing we can do, so we'll hang him,
and then we're… We can move on."
"Maybe it was the wrong person, but we have balance."
That's just how we felt.
But fortunately, there's a legal system in place to help,
to save us from ourselves.
We've drilled through the foundation.
We've had cameras in there,
we've had audio listening devices in there.
We've even looked down in the sewer to see if we could get in through there.
The people in question have been cleared?
CHIEF SUPERINTENDENT
Actually, we don't have any reason at all to believe
that there is anybody being held against their will at this address.
I'm really shocked.
VOICE OF NEIGHBOR
Well, as you could imagine,
it just really hurts that anybody around here
would think that about me.
I feel absolutely awful.
I'm just shaking.
I'm not functioning the way I used to anymore.
You don't do that to your neighbor.
A sound specialist has listened to the recordings,
concluding the girl's voice can't be heard in the audio files.
This story shows how eager the town was, as well as the police, to find her.
So eager, they could hear her when she wasn't there.
FOUR MONTHS AFTER THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE 17-YEAR-OLD
In the fall of 2016,
I moved in with my boyfriend in Copenhagen.
And even though I moved away,
the case in West Zealand still really affected me.
I can't even step out the door
without starting to feel edgy and paranoid.
I work in Copenhagen
and a lot of the time I have to head back home at night.
And I'm scared of everybody I pass by.
I'm either on the phone with somebody when I'm going home,
or my boyfriend will use the "Find my iPhone" app,
which we both have downloaded, so he can see where I am.
It's a…
it's a horrible time.
FIVE MONTHS AFTER THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE 17-YEAR-OLD
Months go by, and it's winter now.
Snow's falling, and by now, at this point, I think there's maybe
ten of us left searching.
Comwell Hotel starts to back out,
and so all of a sudden we don't have a place to hold our briefings.
I notice that
I'm not motivated anymore to keep searching
because I don't believe we're gonna find her.
We've searched every last bit of Korsør.
On the water, land, and the sky.
It's always a dog walker.
December 24th, 2016,
a couple of hours before sitting down for Christmas dinner,
a family is out walking
in a nature reserve called Regnemark Hill,
near Borup in the middle of Zealand.
It's a mom, a dad, and their daughter.
And on their way back to the parking lot where their car is parked,
the mom sees something lying in the grass.
What she sees
doesn't look like it should be there.
It's something her daughter really shouldn't see.
And as she gets a closer look, she can actually see that it's a leg.
A human leg.
She calls the police immediately.
Police are considering this death to be suspicious,
and there are indications
that the body has been in the water for quite some time.
It has now been sent to the Department of Forensic Medicine
for an autopsy, where the gender and cause of death will be determined.
December 25th was a very intense day.
I had been thinking a lot about the body that they found in Borup,
so I was really glad that Philip invited us to a party.
We didn't waste any time saying yes.
Philip's party invitation was a great distraction for us,
from our thoughts, from all our worries.
And that night, we actually decide to not talk about the case at all
because it's been so intense for so long,
and we just want to enjoy the party.
Christmas Day, 2016.
It's early morning, and my phone rings.
It's the girl's mom.
She calls, very upset, and she says, "Sofie, police are coming. They called."
I remember my world coming to a complete standstill.
And so I say, "Well, what did they say?" "We should find a sitter for the kids."
And then,
at 7:00 p.m.,
there's a press release that has been issued,
um, where they're saying that…
We've called this press conference for a very sad reason.
The fact is that we've just been informed
by the Mid and West Zealand police
that they've found a body near Borup.
It has been identified
with 100% certainty to be the remains of our young girl.
Fifty red roses have been laid in the water at Regnemark Hill,
where the body of the girl was found.
A huge torch procession stretches from the station to St. Paul's church.
Jane, you've helped organize this event.
Why is it so important to hold an event like this tonight?
This gives all of Denmark the opportunity to say their final goodbyes
and pay their respects.
And none of them came out of curiosity.
Nobody was there because it was exciting, or sensational,
or because something finally happened.
There was a deep sense of humanity
and overwhelming grief.
An unbearable grief.
Yeah.
It's actually incredibly beautiful
that one human being…
that one human being can mean so much.
What has happened has instilled us with fear.
Help us free ourselves from the fear that paralyzes us.
Deliver us from evil.
If this can happen once,
it might happen twice,
or three or four times.
When I think back through all those memories and experiences
that I have from that time,
it's absolutely surreal to think
that the man I'd been fearing the most out there
was right next to me.
South Zealand and Lolland-Falster Police have been confronted with the criticism
raised against them in the documentary.
They have declined to be interviewed.
The woman who taped her neighbor has been informed by her lawyer
of the criticism raised against her in the documentary.
She has no comment on the matter.
The district court found the woman guilty
of attempting to illegally record her neighbor,
but she was exempt from punishment
because the police were aware of the recordings. ntary.