Alvit couldn't keep her eyes off the woman sat alone in the dining hall, with a glass of wine in one hand and a book in the other. She'd arrived at the hotel earlier that day and appeared to be traveling alone, a feat which for women traveling in Norway in nineteen seventy was positively unheard of. But it wasn't just that which left the twenty one year old Alvet spellbound. It was her whole demeanor. It was pure sophistication, from the simple but elegant way she dressed to her confident
and worldly air. What do you think she does, she said to Lilian, taking a rest by the bar. I'll bet she's some kind of international businesswoman. Beats me, said Lilian, as she gave the surface a quick wipe. What I wouldn't give to be more like her, said Alvid ruefully. Just then the woman looked up from her book and winked directly at her. Shit, said Alvid, turning sharply away. Mortified, that'll teach you to stare, said Lilian with a wry smile.
Alvid soon laughed it off and got back to work clearing tables on the other side of the room, still unable to resist the occasional glance toward the beguiling new guest as she cleared away the plates. It was October thirtieth, nineteen seventy, and the woman that had so captured Alvid's imagination was Alexeya Zana Marchay, a Belgian tourist who'd recently
arrived in the country from Slovenia. Alexeya had booked a five nights stay at the Hotel Neptune where Alvid worked in Bergen, a pretty coastal town in the southwest of Norway known as the gateway to the Fiords. Earlier that afternoon, Alexeia had been shown to her room by Frank sivtson the hotel's bell hop. Like Alvid, Frank too was a little star struck by the woman's unusual presence, describing her later like something he'd only ever seen in magazines before.
Though he attempted to speak to her in his broken English, it was clear she had little time for idle chit chat, and it was the same throughout her stay with Alexeia, who was only ever seen alone, offering only the most perfunctory of replies if any one attempted to engage her in conversation, and then when her five nights were up, she was gone. It was two weeks later when a woman named Elizabeth Leanhuer, traveling from Ostend in Belgium, checked in to Bergen's Hotel hard to Hyman, barely a five
minute walk from Hotel Neptune. The receptionist couldn't help but be impressed by how swiftly she filled in the hotel's registration form, writing in all the details, including her passport number, straight from memory. Not unlike Alexia at the Neptune, Elizabeth too had an unusually confident air about her. She was clearly well traveled and multi lingual, with sharp, striking features
and dark hair, leading some to suspect an Eastern European heritage. Later, when she was shown to her room, she made a bee line for the window. After taking a moment to examine the street below and the apartment's opposite, she turned back to the attendant and asked to be moved. Moments later, she was shown into room four oh seven, which by contrast, had a largely uninterrupted view, and agreed to take it. Over the next four days, Elizabeth was seen occasionally coming
and going from the hotel. When she ate, she preferred to order room service rather than sit in the dining room. The staff thought it strange how long it would take for her to open the door when they delivered it. While sometimes she wouldn't even open the door and simply requested that it be left for her outside, on more than one occasion, the food or coffee she'd ordered would
simply stay in the corridor untouched. On November twenty third, Elizabeth checked out of the hotel and had the receptionist order her a taxi to Bergen's station. When it arrived, he helped load her two large suitcases into the back and waved her on her way. Sometime later, in the twilight hours, as gray clouds gathered in the skies above, a young man made its way across the mountain slopes just to the north of Lakes Fartetiquette, just east of Bergen.
Having set out from Arna just over a mile away. He was nearing the end of his walk when he saw a woman with dark shoulder length hair, dressed oddly for a trek through the mountains in city clothes, but more than that, it was clear from the woman's face that she was panicked and in a hurry to get somewhere. For a moment, he thought she might say something to him, But then she glanced back suddenly toward two men in
the distance, who were steadily heading toward them. Before long, the woman was past him and rushing onwards to wherever she was going. The moment seemingly missed, the man turned back toward Bergen and continued on his way. This moment, and his failure to intervene, would haunt him for the rest of his life. You're listening to Unexplained, and I'm Richard McClean smith. The young girl's feet squelched in the mud as she climbed through the long grass up into
the valley. It had just gone one on November twenty ninth, nineteen seventy, and the girl, only twelve years old, was making good headway through his Darling or Ice Valley to the south of Lakes Vartetiquette, just east of Bergen. She stopped to take a breath and gazed out at the snow and pine covered hills around her and down toward the still dark waters of the lake below. A little further down the valley, her father and ten year old sister did their best to keep pace, shouting for them
to hurry up. The girl turned and continued up the slope. A few minutes later, having stepped into a clearing, she was approaching a small scattering of boulders when she caught the whiff of something odd in the air, like charcoal. Almost it was odd since there wasn't a campfire in sight, and since it was so damp and cold, there wasn't likely to have been one any time recently. Then she
looked again at the patch of boulders and screamed. Nestled in the middle of it was the unmistakable outline of a human body lying on its back with its arms outstretched before it that was completely burned all over. One foot had fallen off, while the face had all but melted entirely revealing teeth. At the sound of her screams, the girl's father rushed quickly to get her, urging her not to look as he turned her away from the hideous sight and told her to join her sister further
down the mountain. It would be well over an hour before the family made it back to Bergen, from where they were able to inform the police about what they'd found. With every step on their return, pregnant with the terrifying thought that a killer was stalking the mountains around them. It was sometime in the afternoon that the call came into the Burgen Central Police station alerting them to the
discovery of a burnt body in the mountains. A light rain had begun to fall as the first officers arrived at the scene. What they found there was like nothing any of them adevoring counter before is Darlin, where the corpse was found, was well known to the police as a local suicide spot, with it believed that people had chosen to end their lives there since medieval times. A number of deaths caused by walkers getting disorientated in fog in the nineteen sixties had only helped to further slidify
the valley's nickname Death Valley. At the scene, police promptly got to work combing the area for clues as to what exactly might have happened. Certainly on a superficial level,
it seemed to bear all the hallmarks of suicide. There was the half drunk bottle of hard liquor, as well as a box of matches and two melted plastic bottles which police assumed had contained petrol, Some speculated that pills had probably been taken to Some fragments of clothing, or at least what was left of them, were also recovered, along with some rubber boots, an umbrella, and a fur hat, all of which, coupled with the relatively small size of the victim, led police to conclude that it was the
corpse of an adult female. However, no ide was found at the scene. As such, police were left with the unenviable task of combing through missing persons reports and hoping for a call from concerned friends or relatives looking for someone who hadn't been seen for some time. With the victim's death judged to have occurred almost a week previously, for a town like Bergen, it wouldn't be long until
the pieces would start to fit together. And yet, after two days of searching, investigators had no more what they'd started with, but also something a little odd had been discovered. Of all the items they recovered from the scene, none had any identifying marks on them at all, no labels on the bottles or even the items of clothes, all
having seemingly been purposefully removed. It was three days after the body was found when the call came in from Norway's National Criminal Investigation Service known as Krippos, who Burgen police had drafted in to assist with the unusual case. Investigators had located two suitcases at Bergen train station which had been unclaimed for over a week. Now finally it seemed they had a break. The suitcases, unsurprisingly, were full
of clothes, practical but stylish. There was make up too, of the expensive kind, brought from a well known shop in Paris. All fairly standard, you might say. From there on in, however, things began to get a little strange. A number of whigs were discovered among the clothes, as well as a pair of non prescription glasses, the kind you might wear as part of a disguise, say, as opposed to glasses that would help you see better. There was a fair amount of money too, in multiple denominations,
from Norwegian, German and Belgian to Swiss and English. They also found a tube of bet novat x macream with the patient's prescription label on it, but any hope of finding a name was soon dashed when it was found to have been deliberately scratched out, along with the name of the doctor who prescribed it. When the clothes were examined closer, they too were found to have had their
labels removed. No identity documentation was found at all, but spirits was soon raised when officers discovered a note book buried among the other items. Much like everything else, However, it only served to deepen the mystery. Inside, investigators found what looked like some kind of alphanumeric code written out in three separate columns, one reading, for example, ten M eleven M, sixteen M L seventeen M and continuing on
in a similar manner. A Swedish hiking map was also found, with the name of five train stations written at the top of it. A thumb print extracted from the glasses, matching that of corpse, provided some proof at least that
the suitcases had likely belonged to the deceased. However, with no idea what the apparent code in the notebook alluded to, the only genuine clue investigators were left with was a shopping bag for the Oscar road Vet footwear store located in Stavanger, a coastal town roughly one hundred and twenty miles to the south of Bergen. This podcast is sponsored by Better help. Is there something interfering with your happiness
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and they have a special offer for unexplained listeners. Get ten percent off your first month visit beetterhelp dot com, forward slash Unexplained one zero. That's better help Help and join the over two million people who have taken charge of their mental health with the help of an experienced professional that's better help dot com forward slash unexplained one zero Rolph wrought Vett, was on duty in his father's
shop when the woman came in. He remembered her well because she took such an inordinate amount of time to choose her shoes, eventually alighting on a pair of blue rubber boots with a draw string at the front, the same that were found at the scene of her death. Rolph was the first to provide a description of the woman, describing her as being around thirty years old, of medium height, with long, dark hair and brown eyes, and having a
curvy figure. The woman didn't even buy the shoes once she'd chosen them, deciding instead to come back the next day to get them. This small detail suggested she'd likely stayed in a local hotel overnight, prompting a number of police to visit every hotel in town to see if anyone recognized the woman from Ralph's description, and finally they
got a hit. A receptionist at Stavanger's Saint smithn hotel identified her as one of their recent guests who'd stayed at the hotel from November ninth to the eighteenth, and from that they had a name, Fennella Lorc, a tourist
who'd been visiting Norway from Belgium. With huge relief back at Bergen police headquarters, investigators then began the laborious task of trying to trace her last movements, starting first of all with whether she'd stayed in Bergen before she was found there, but no one under that name came up. After consultation with police forces in Belgium, no Fennella Lork or any one matching her description appeared to being reported missing any time recently either, and so the investigators tried
something else. Armed with Fennella Lorc's alien registration form, a standard government form that all foreign guests staying at hotels in Norway were required to fill out, they requested the names and forms of any foreign females who'd stayed in Norway any time between Fenella's visit to Stavanger and late November when her body was found. What they discovered astonished them. As the forms came in, investigators trawled through each and
every one, looking for any that might match Fenella's. Incredibly, no less than seven individuals had filled out registration forms with the same, uncannily similar handwriting Genevieve Lancier stayed in Oslo from twenty first to the twenty fourth of March. Claudia Tilt checked into two separate hotels in Bergen from
March twenty fourth to April first. Some months later, on the night of October twenty ninth, a Claudia Nielsen stayed in Stavanger, while one Alexia Zanna Marshay appeared at the Neptune Hotel in Bergen the following night, staying there until
November fifth. Then there was Vera Yaral, who stayed in Trondheim, another coastal town about four hundred miles northeast of Bergen, from the sixth to the eighth of November, followed by Fenella Lorkee who was identified as the victim, who checked into the Saints Fithan Hotel back in Stevanger the following day, and then finally the wasmers Elizabeth Leenhauer, who during her time in Bergen in mid November, also stayed in two separate hotels, eventually ending her time in the city at
the Hotel Order Hymen, from where she checked out on November twenty third. All seven women had stated their nationality as Belgian, with each providing their own individual passports as I dentification, and all quite clearly were the exact same person. Needless to say, her identification as someone called Vanella Lorc
was now thrown completely out of the window. However, with this explosive new information, CRYPOS investigators took another look at the cryptic columns of letters and numbers in her notebook and quickly identified a pattern they correlated precisely with when and where the woman had stayed in Norway. On December fifth, nineteen seventy, an autopsy on the deceased's body was finally carried out and a more formal description of her began
to take shape. The woman had been one hundred and sixty four centimeters tall and was described as having a slender build with broad hips, and had brown eyes and dark brown and blackish hair. She was aged somewhere between twenty five to thirty five at the time of her death. It was also determined that she'd never given birth. Ten gold teeth in her jaw were of a kind most often used in southern or central Europe, which suggested a
possible point of origin for her. But perhaps most significantly of all were the fifty to seventy undigested tablets of the sedative phenomel found in her stomach. For the Burgen police, this was further evidence to support the suicide theory, since it was considered inconceivable that anyone could have been forced to swallow so many pills. The woman's death was officially recorded as being caused by a combination of a drug overdose and carbon monoxide inhalation from the smoke generated by
her own body as it burned. In other words, the woman had been alive when she caught fire, hinting again as far as the police were concerned that she'd done it to herself. For the next few weeks, Bergen police focused their energy on building a timeline of the deceased
woman's last known movements. Anyone they could find who'd seen or talk to her in her various guises was interviewed from Alvid Rangnus and Lillian Kohne at Hotel Neptune in Bergen, who knew her as Alexia Zana Marchay, to the taxi driver who believed he was taking a woman called Elizabeth Leenhouer from Bergen's Hotel Horde Hymen to Bergen station on November twenty third, a man who was quickly established as the last person to see her alive, or painted a
picture of a mysterious Lona, at times a confidant, sophisticated, multi lingual woman of the world, at other times anxious and paranoid. Nothing was found, however, to help identify her. In response, an image was compiled from the various descriptions and release to the press in the hope that some
one might recognize her, but no one came forward. When news of her numerous identities inevitably made their way into the press, rumors that she was some kind of secret agent began to circulate, forcing the Burgen Police to hold a press conference to set the record straight. When asked if she was involved in espionach Oscar Hardness, head of criminal investigations, replied no, I think we can safely say
there's nothing to support this. Actually, we can completely rule it out, and when asked if it was murder, Hardness replied simply that there was no reason to assume that it was. Meanwhile, in another section of the Bergen police station, a message received via teleprinter was slowly printing itself out. It came from the security department of the Norwegian Armed Forces and seemed to paint a very different picture from
the one that Oscar Hardness was quietly giving. A few days before the police conference, sea fisher Burton Rot, working out of a port in Stavanger, approached a security officer at the uls Nest naval base, located on the city's north shore. After seeing the image of the deceased woman in the paper. Rott believed he recognized her as someone he'd seen acting suspiciously at the port in Tananger, another
coastal town just to the west of Stavanger. Tananger also just happened to be the place where a series of naval exercises involving a top secret and newly developed missile
known as a Penguin had just been carried out. The Penguin anti ship missile was one of the most advanced forms of naval ordinance in the world at the time, and it also just so happened as the message from that teleprinter was explaining that the unidentified woman had been in the precise place at the precise time on two occasions when this system was being tested, and on one occasion when Norway's twenty fifth missile boat squadron were conducting
some missile related exercises. On each of these occasions, it was reported that Soviet boats were seen in nearby waters, appearing just in time for the exercise, as if they knew when and where exactly they were taking place. Furthermore, it was also found that the woman had arrived at Trondheim Airport on the same day that two Soviet spies known as Rubenov and Popoff, were also known to have
arrived at that airport. Though they are known to have left the airport before the unknown woman arrived, there was nothing to suggest they hadn't performed some kind of dead drop for her to later pick up. Whether any of
this was taken into consideration by the Burgen police is unclear. Publicly, at least, they appeared to have made up their mind the woman, whoever she was, they believed, had committed suicide, having been suffering from some kind of paranoid delusion or state that had compelled her to not only maintain a series of multiple alter egos, complete with disguises and fake passports, but also to make continual efforts to erase all evidence of her true identity, from cutting out the labels of
her clothes to removing her name on the label of her Exma cream. Allied nations were approached and asked surreptitiously if they had any operatives working in Norway at the time, but all claimed not to know of any such thing. With over a hundred people interviewed during the three week investigation, the mysterious case appeared to have hit a dead end. On February fifth, nineteen seventy one, over two months since her body had been found. The unknown woman was laid
to rest. A short service was held at Bergen's Molndar Cemetery, led by a Catholic priest, chosen on account of the fact that many of the woman's aliases were the names of Catholic saints, after which her white coffin, laden with tulips and carnations, was carried outside into the cold and rain as twelve men and women of the Bergen police force followed behind. Another six carried it toward the unmarked
plot at the edge of the graveyard. Then, after a few more words from the priest, the unknown Woman's body was slowly lowered into the ground. The coffin was made of zinc to prevent disintegration in the event that any family or loved ones might come forward to claim the woman's remains, but no one ever did, and in nineteen
seventy three the case was formerly closed. In twenty sixteen, with the Isdal woman, as she became known all but forgotten about, a team from Norway's public broadcaster NRK decided to turn their expert eye on it in the hope that modern day forensic techniques might finally solve the mystery.
New analysis carried out on her teeth revealed surprisingly that she was in fact more likely to be forty to fifty years old, while a DNA profile successfully extracted for the first time from preserved tissue samples, along with further handwriting analysis, appeared to narrow down her place of birth to somewhere close to the border of France and Germany. Aside from that, little more concrete evidence has come to light.
Over the years, A number of people have come forward claiming to have small snippets of information that might help to identify the woman, but those two seemed to have led nowhere, and so the true identity of the Isdel woman and what happened to her which continues to haunt all those who glimpsed, if only for a moment, this most beguiling and enigmatic figure, from the numerous hotel staff to the anonymous man stricken with guilt that you might
have well passed her in the mountains only hours before her death, remains a mysstory. If you enjoy Unexplained and would like to help supporters, you can now do so via Patreon. To receive access to add three episodes. Just go to patron dot com forward slash Unexplained Pod to sign up. Unexplained. The book and audiobook, featuring ten stories that have never before been covered on the show, is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase through Amazon,
Barnes and Noble, and Waterstones, among other bookstores. All elements have Unexplained, including the show's music, are produced by me Richard McClain smith. Please subscribe even rate the show wherever you listen to podcasts, and feel free to get in touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation of your own you'd like to share. You can reach us online at Unexplained podcast dot com, or Twitter at Unexplained
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