[SPEAKER_00]: Warning, this episode contains details that some listeners may find disturbing. [SPEAKER_00]: Copenhagen, Denmark, 1948 Early on a bitterly cold February morning, a housekeeper entered an elegant apartment building and climbed three flights of stairs to the kitchen entrance of the Yackepsen's apartment, just like she's done hundreds of times. [SPEAKER_00]: She used her key to unlock the door, but found that it was locked from the inside, which was unusual.
[SPEAKER_00]: She knocked and no one responded. [SPEAKER_00]: She went around to the main entrance and used her spare key to enter, and walking down the dark hallway of the home, it was quiet in a way that was different, and then she saw [SPEAKER_00]: This is a study of strange. [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome back to the show. [SPEAKER_00]: I am your host Michael May.
[SPEAKER_00]: This episode explores the brutal and unsolved murders of Wilhelm Yoccapsen and his wife, Inger, and their Frederick Bergs apartment on Peter Bingsweide, number 74 in Copenhagen, Denmark. [SPEAKER_00]: In the late 40s, this was the case of post-war Denmark, it dominated headlines, and since it is unsolved, it has left behind just a tangled mess of evidence and conspiracy theories.
[SPEAKER_00]: Before I get into it, if you're new here, please subscribe, leave a rating and review if you so desire it really helps out the show, and you can also find other ways to support the show and get additional content by joining our sub-stack, which you can find to the support tab of our website, a study of strange.com. [SPEAKER_00]: 53-year-old Wilhelm Yoccapsen was an office manager at English House, which is a menswear manufacturer and department store in Copenhagen.
[SPEAKER_00]: His 52-year-old wife, Inger, was a homemaker. [SPEAKER_00]: They were well off. [SPEAKER_00]: Yoccapsen's job had a very good salary. [SPEAKER_00]: I wouldn't call them particularly like super rich, but they were wealthy enough to have a very comfortable upper middle-class life. [SPEAKER_00]: The couple occupied a large third floor apartment at Peter Bengsby 74 in the suburb of Fredericksburg. [SPEAKER_00]: In 1948, Denmark was still emerging from the chaos of World War II.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there were a lot of black market dealings. [SPEAKER_00]: And when we hear black market, we may think of stolen artwork or guns and ammunition and drugs. [SPEAKER_00]: There can be a black market for any saying and there definitely was during the war, including textiles, materials, food.
[SPEAKER_00]: etc. [SPEAKER_00]: In Denmark there was recently a very massive criminal case which exposed corruption among businessman police and the public trust in their institutions and the government was very low at the time of this case. [SPEAKER_00]: This context is important when you have an eventual double murder [SPEAKER_00]: already not fully trusting their authorities, they start to suspect conspiracies and cover-ups.
[SPEAKER_00]: On Thursday, February 19, 1948, witnesses reported that the Yoccapsons rose early. [SPEAKER_00]: Wilhelm caught the 736 AMS train from Peter Veng's via station to work, [SPEAKER_00]: And after seeing him off Inger had coffee around 8am and let the house keep her us to Hanson in through the kitchen door. [SPEAKER_00]: The housekeeper cleaned the apartment until about 1pm and when she left, she noticed that Inger was resting on a sofa.
[SPEAKER_00]: The neighbor confirmed that she heard cleaning noises until about 1pm and then silence after that. [SPEAKER_00]: At 240 pm, Inger left to run errands and visit her cousin in the hospital. [SPEAKER_00]: She was there until about 405 pm, and on the way home she bought some groceries including a lemon, and returned to her apartment building at approximately 420 pm. [SPEAKER_00]: Police later found a squeezed lemon peel with Inger's lipstick on it in the kitchen trash.
[SPEAKER_00]: Willham's movements were unusual for his typical day. [SPEAKER_00]: Willham left his office at one pm for a dentist appointment. [SPEAKER_00]: He returned to work at about 2.30 pm and got called into a meeting, and then he left work at 4.36 pm. [SPEAKER_00]: He normally would take the train back home and a co-worker noted that they didn't see him at his usual train stop which that co-worker also would take the same train that's how they knew that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Wilhelm was seen at a restaurant, instead, with an unknown woman and a taxi driver later remembered dropping him at Peter Beng's Vi at around 5.50pm. [SPEAKER_00]: The live-in housekeeper in the apartment below her to series of very loud thumps from the Yaccapsence apartment between 4pm and 5pm, and then silence until later that night. [SPEAKER_00]: Another witness heard arguing coming from the apartment that evening as well when they were going up the steps.
[SPEAKER_00]: And a run 1130 pm, the neighbor below, heard heavy, dragging footsteps moving around the occupants' flat. [SPEAKER_00]: She could tell somebody repeatedly had the water on, likely in the kitchen, and was walking back and forth until about 1230 a.m. that is when the woman below took a sleeping pill and went to sleep.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then at 8 a.m. Friday morning, [SPEAKER_00]: The housekeeper wrote her bike to the Yaccapson's home, she entered the building, climbed the three flights of stairs, and she found the kitchen door locked from the inside, which she had never encountered before, and no one was answering her knocks.
[SPEAKER_00]: So she had to go down the steps, around to another set of stairs, up the three flights, to the front main door, and she used her spare key to unlock that door and she entered a pitch dark corridor. [SPEAKER_00]: want to take a quick second here to describe the layout of the apartment and I'll provide a link in my show notes to images so you can see the whole thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: The main door opens into like a little foyer or entry hallway and then it connects to a main hallway that runs the entire length of the apartment and on one side of the hallway you have a what they call a min's room or I've been calling it a study and then like a living room on the right hand side you had a [SPEAKER_00]: bedroom, a bathroom, and the kitchen.
[SPEAKER_00]: So as the housekeeper enters, she first encounters the study, and she notices a pair of men's trousers or shoes on the floor, but she keeps going. [SPEAKER_00]: She pushed open the bedroom door, and that is where she saw anger lying on the floor covered in blood. [SPEAKER_00]: So, the housekeeper ran to a neighbors, and they returned to see these horrendous murders. [SPEAKER_00]: And then the neighbor called the police.
[SPEAKER_00]: Detective Lutkin Larson and two uniformed officers arrived at about 8.30am, and shortly afterwards the chief of police himself insisted on coming to the crime scene, which is, [SPEAKER_00]: Of course, unusual for a chief. [SPEAKER_00]: The apartment soon filled with many investigators and police from multiple departments. [SPEAKER_00]: The estimated count of people being there is 29, rummaging around this crime scene.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I even read a note that mentioned the chief stepped in blood at one point and left bloody footprints. [SPEAKER_00]: So, it's not a very well taken care of crime scene. [SPEAKER_00]: I will point out, though, that even to this day, murder is not very common in Copenhagen. [SPEAKER_00]: This case was very unique and it was terrifying for the police, so I have some understanding of why the chief wanted to go to the scene himself and why so many people showed up.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a unique case for them to be handling, and they also knew that they had their [SPEAKER_00]: but managing the public as well. [SPEAKER_00]: So here are some details from the scene of the crime. [SPEAKER_00]: And as we go along, you'll see they get stranger and stranger. [SPEAKER_00]: Investigators found Wilhelm's body in the study. [SPEAKER_00]: And he lay on the floor covered in a blanket. [SPEAKER_00]: And a bed spread was kind of wrapped around his shoulder.
[SPEAKER_00]: There were two towels with knots around his neck. [SPEAKER_00]: And a rolled up stocking had been stuffed into his mouths. [SPEAKER_00]: his right wrist was deeply cut all the way to the bone, though pathologist later determined that the cut was inflicted after death. [SPEAKER_00]: A carving knife from the kitchen lay under his right arm, and then there are a couple other details here that are very odd.
[SPEAKER_00]: One is there was a broken wooden chair on top of Wilhelm's body, and the broken arm from this chair may have been used as the murder weapon he had been beaten on his head to death. [SPEAKER_00]: Also a walking cane was placed at Wilhelm's body, and it was not used as a weapon.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now this cane is from the Yoccapsen's apartment they had a container at the front door that had a bunch [SPEAKER_00]: Inger was found face down in the bedroom, on the floor, her head pointed towards the door. [SPEAKER_00]: A pillow and bed spread were placed under her head, there was a duvet covering her body, a walking stick was also found on Inger.
[SPEAKER_00]: Also, not the murder weapon, their head and the floor were soaked with blood, and a heavy porcelain table lamp was found with its cord cut, and its lead base was blood stained. [SPEAKER_00]: Investigators believed that this lamp was the murder weapon, because it could inflict the severe skull fractures which were found on the victim. [SPEAKER_00]: It also theorized that anger had been killed in a different room.
[SPEAKER_00]: and then dragged into the bedroom itself where as Wilhelm was killed in the study where he was found. [SPEAKER_00]: Inger's body being dragged may account for the weird, draggy type noises that were heard from the neighbor below. [SPEAKER_00]: Those victims had their faces covered in the living room on a shelf above the radiator.
[SPEAKER_00]: They found Inger's earrings, some combs and dinchers, and they were arranged neatly on the shelf [SPEAKER_00]: The cords to lamps and electrical devices throughout the apartment were cut in several rooms. [SPEAKER_00]: The blinds were drawn closed. [SPEAKER_00]: Importantly, valuable antiques, jewelry, and money were not taken. [SPEAKER_00]: The only items that... [SPEAKER_00]: have been discovered to likely have been taken that night.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're two blank checks number eight four four five one and eight four four five two torn from a new checkbook that will have received only two days earlier. [SPEAKER_00]: There was a receipt for one of those checks and it was made out for 8500 Crohn. [SPEAKER_00]: Many, many, many, many, many people were questioned, including co-workers, servants, neighbors, everyone. [SPEAKER_00]: I say many, many times, because authorities questioned [SPEAKER_00]: maybe thousands of people.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's so many people that I questioned. [SPEAKER_00]: Witness statements, of course, varied as witness statements do, but from those investigators did piece together the information I provided earlier about the couple's movements over the last day of their lives. [SPEAKER_00]: It is suspected that anger was killed first, and that Wilhelm arrived home.
[SPEAKER_00]: The killer or killers were inside, [SPEAKER_00]: A few witnesses mentioned saying police stationed outside the apartment building the day in the night of the murder.
[SPEAKER_00]: This should be taken with a grain of salt because witnesses as they commonly do misremember things, and the timing of events could be getting confused when they think about it, and they might have seen police outside the apartment building after the murder had been discovered in the police for their investigating, but it's worth mentioning because if true and that were police at the apartment building, that's very strange.
[SPEAKER_00]: uh, and very odd and brings up a lot of questions like were the police involved or were the killer killers did they dress up as police officers to be able to actually enter an apartment building without anyone knowing who they were. [SPEAKER_00]: Medical examiner's Harold Gormson, on Anderson and Professor Sand performed all top-sees the afternoon of the discovery, and they concluded that both victims died from massive skull trauma inflicted by a blunt instrument.
[SPEAKER_00]: William's wrist wound was, in fact, post-mortem, and either wore two pairs of underwear, both turned inside out a detail that no one has been able to explain if it's even related to the murders in any way, shape or form. [SPEAKER_00]: No evidence suggested that she had been sexually assaulted and police found no usable fingerprints at the scene only a few bloody glove prints.
[SPEAKER_00]: The glove, along with other details that I've shared here today, [SPEAKER_00]: point to me to a type of pre-meditation, especially when there wasn't really a set, because if you think this is a set that's gone wrong, the killer or killers were in the apartment for a very long period of time, they were able to leave, why didn't they take anything of them?
[SPEAKER_00]: So, I do think that robbery was not the main goal of whatever was happening with pre-meditation, though, if it was planned to kill the yuck up sins. [SPEAKER_00]: Why didn't the killer or killers show up with a weapon? [SPEAKER_00]: Because they murdered them with objects found in the house, so if it was pre-meditated, what was the point of this whole situation? [SPEAKER_00]: What was the point of this crime? [SPEAKER_00]: That's one of the very strange mysteries of this case.
[SPEAKER_00]: I should also mention if you look at how Wilhelm's body was found with a gag essentially and the broken chair. [SPEAKER_00]: It says, if Wilhelm was tortured, there are countless theories and conspiracy theories and there's so many books with ideas and documentaries and things like that with this case. [SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of like here in America, we talked about the zodiac killer, we talked about Jagdh, the Ripper all the time, there's always a new theory.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's very similar with this case in Denmark, and I can't go over all of the theories today, because there's way too many, so I'm going to point out some of the few primary ones here today. [SPEAKER_00]: The first deals with a very early suspect in the case, Eric Rumbdahl. [SPEAKER_00]: Eric Rumbdahl was one of the couple's closest friends, and he became the focus of Detective Paul Dam's suspicions even years after the murder.
[SPEAKER_00]: Rumbdahl arrived at the crime scene shortly after the police, and he introduced himself as one of the oldest friends of the couple, and offered to assist in any way that he could. [SPEAKER_00]: He had a club foot, which I'm mentioning because it gave him this dragging gate, which matches the neighbor downstairs reporting this heavy or dragging type foot steps that she heard around 11pm the night of the murders.
[SPEAKER_00]: Investigators initially accepted Rumbdahl's alibi, he claimed that he and his wife visited a nearby orphanage at 440pm, and then he skipped his usual Thursday evening music club because he wasn't feeling so well. [SPEAKER_00]: However, police in 1948 never checked on his alibites. [SPEAKER_00]: So years later, when questioned again, Rumdall changed aspects of his story.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes saying that he had attended the music club after all, and later claiming that his wife had been with him, and he also admitted that he regularly visited Inger on Fridays to deliver food. [SPEAKER_00]: His story kept changing, which is very suspicious.
[SPEAKER_00]: Detective Dan believes that Rondo was the killer, but there was no physical evidence or motive, though some theory suggests that he was English lover, but even that to me doesn't provide the same motive for the way that this couple was brutally killed. [SPEAKER_00]: Physically, I also have many doubts that Rumbdahl could be the killer due to how brutal and violent these murders were I don't think he could have done it at least by himself.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nonetheless, Eric Rumbdahl lived into very old age, and he was constantly talked about and linked to this case as a prime suspect. [SPEAKER_00]: Rumbdahl, he was a unique fellow. [SPEAKER_00]: And he seemed to actually like the attention that he would get. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think he liked being a suspect, but I think he somewhat enjoyed the attention.
[SPEAKER_00]: Before he had passed away, he had made a comment to detectives that if he did kill the occupants, he promised he would leave a note as a confession. [SPEAKER_00]: And then when he died, he did not leave a confession, though. [SPEAKER_00]: He did have a collection of documents and information on the case that had never been released publicly. [SPEAKER_00]: and it has since been shared with certain investigators and writers that have studied this case.
[SPEAKER_00]: Which also makes me realize I need to clarify something. [SPEAKER_00]: A lot of information in this case has never been released publicly. [SPEAKER_00]: So, having a folder with information that I'm sure the police had, but it had never been out to the public, that's a big deal, especially for the armed shared detectives out there to start to get information that Rumbdahl had that the police had never shared.
[SPEAKER_00]: Another theory which was proposed by a Danish author suggested that double murder was linked to the spider-black market ring. [SPEAKER_00]: This is part of that major criminal case that I mentioned earlier at the top of the show.
[SPEAKER_00]: In this scenario, Wilhelm secretly kept two sets of accounts, one official, and one covering illicit activities which could include counterfeit currency trading or unauthorized [SPEAKER_00]: even materials used to make clothing that could sell at the department store that Yocups and worked in. [SPEAKER_00]: During World War II, it was very hard to buy and source materials. [SPEAKER_00]: Allegedly, Yocups and was very good at his job.
[SPEAKER_00]: And during the war, he was able to procure things to keep the department store running. [SPEAKER_00]: So there is some validity to this theory. [SPEAKER_00]: After the war, he could have still been mixed up with unscrupulous people, or owed money to a certain group, etc. [SPEAKER_00]: So this theory suggests that Yoccapsen threatened to expose his criminal partners, unless compensated.
[SPEAKER_00]: The author that first started to propose this suggested that furniture dealer Johannslinda, a key figure in that spider case, ordered a hit to recover incriminating documents. [SPEAKER_00]: And then while this is happening, anger returned home unexpectedly was struck with the table lamp, panicked, the guy inside then calls his bosses. [SPEAKER_00]: He's like, oh my god, this is literally, she showed up at home. [SPEAKER_00]: This is terrible. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know what to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: So his bosses send two men, Olsen and Eorgensen. [SPEAKER_00]: who was later convicted of another double murder aboard the fishing boat elo in April of 1948. [SPEAKER_00]: So these two gentlemen show up at the apartment will help show up and they subdue him. [SPEAKER_00]: According to this theory, the criminals beat Wilhelm to force him to reveal these documents, and then they accidentally kill him in the process.
[SPEAKER_00]: They then staged the scene and removed the documents they were there for. [SPEAKER_00]: There is no definitive evidence. [SPEAKER_00]: Linking this gang, where those suspected killers I mentioned to the Yoccapson's death, but the theory is compelling. [SPEAKER_00]: Even if just certain aspects of it, maybe it's not that group specifically.
[SPEAKER_00]: But something else associated with black markets, again during the war he allegedly was able to source materials somewhere hard to come by and maybe some of that is coming back to haunt him now in post war denmark. [SPEAKER_00]: One of the things I like about that theory is the crime scene is so confusing.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have this walking canes, you have the faces covered up, you have blankets with both bodies, you have towels, you have one of the bodies moved into the bedroom, all the cords being cut around the apartment. [SPEAKER_00]: It's almost as if somebody committed the murders, and then wanted to make the crime seem really confusing to make it hard to investigate, and that seems to be [SPEAKER_00]: part of that overall theory.
[SPEAKER_00]: Another theory that often comes up is that Inga had a secret lover. [SPEAKER_00]: She was a very social person. [SPEAKER_00]: She had a lot of friends. [SPEAKER_00]: She was very likable. [SPEAKER_00]: Will helm was very much about work. [SPEAKER_00]: Go to work. [SPEAKER_00]: Come home. [SPEAKER_00]: And while there have been many theories about who Ingers' secret lover was, including Rumbdahl that I mentioned earlier, some people suspect he was, a lover.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there was a mysterious telephone number in Ingers' pocket diary found at the scene. [SPEAKER_00]: And it belonged to a younger, divorced factory owner who has not been named, who worked closely with the English House where Wilhelm worked, [SPEAKER_00]: and he drove a large car similar to one that was seen near the apartment building on February 19th.
[SPEAKER_00]: Police tried to investigate this gentleman even sneaking into his home at one point, but as with Rumbdahl, officers never thoroughly checked the factory owner's alibi.
[SPEAKER_00]: and a journalist who first brought this story to the attention suggests that the man visited anger that afternoon, killed her during an argument over something, and then waited for Wilhelm to come home, killed him, and then left to establish an alibi, and then returned later that night to stage the scene and plant misleading clues.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think this is a little far-fetched because even [SPEAKER_00]: have a lot of misleading information, I think you really have to force details to fit your theory with the lever. [SPEAKER_00]: I just think the manner in which the couple were brutally killed doesn't fit some kind of X or jealous lever. [SPEAKER_00]: It just doesn't line up for me. [SPEAKER_00]: But if you like this theory, let me know. [SPEAKER_00]: Send me an email. [SPEAKER_00]: I study if strange at gmail.com.
[SPEAKER_00]: I won't mention there's some others just very quickly, there's a theory about a green grocer that lived nearby that was involved with German intelligence, and that connected somehow to Wilhelm, and, you know, there's a cover-up in conspiracy, and so they're killed. [SPEAKER_00]: Speaking of spies, there's also another gentleman named her who was supposedly a German spy, and he killed Enga because she knew his secret.
[SPEAKER_00]: He drove a large Russian car that was unique in the neighborhood and was seen by witnesses before the murder. [SPEAKER_00]: Wilhelm in this situation would have come home, right in the middle of this brutal act, and so then Wilhelm is also killed because he stumbled home at the wrong time. [SPEAKER_00]: Now I mentioned those two theories about the German spies.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't even provide cliffnotes versions of these spy theories, I just kind of mentioned them, and I do that because [SPEAKER_00]: I do think there's some validity to considering espionage being part of this double murder. [SPEAKER_00]: You're in Denmark which was occupied by the Nazis, you have an executive and a big company that may have been involved with black markets.
[SPEAKER_00]: or espionage in general, as well, his company did create some uniforms for the Nazis, so he had some direct tie to Nazis, whether he supported them or not. [SPEAKER_00]: I actually don't know, but I just think there's some validity to some kind of connection to espionage, and I believe whatever your theory is. [SPEAKER_00]: You have to take into account the strange stagings of the crime scene.
[SPEAKER_00]: The body's covered in blankets, the gag, and his mouth pillows under the heads, walking canes, which no one has ever been able to explain, and will helm potentially being tortured and night. [SPEAKER_00]: So I believe these details explain a lot about the killer. [SPEAKER_00]: not that it helped solve the case. [SPEAKER_00]: The double murder on Peter Beng's thigh remains unsolved.
[SPEAKER_00]: In 1954 the Danish Justice Minister ordered a special commission to reopen the case, but the final report produced no definitive assessment. [SPEAKER_00]: limitations in forensic technology, early mistakes at the crime scene, such as allowing many people to walk around in the apartment, and the failings to check alibites when people are questioned, all of this hampered the investigation. [SPEAKER_00]: The case continues to be the most polarizing, unsolved case in Denmark.
[SPEAKER_00]: You've just listened to a study of strange, consider helping us keep the lantern lit, illuminating the unexplained by subscribing to our sub-stack, just head to the support tab at a study of strange.com. [SPEAKER_00]: Until next time, stay curious and stay strange.