Satellite People

Epilogue

No new interesting murder cases landed on my desk in 1969. For the rest of the year I could rest on the laurels of the Schelderup case. The story continued to cause a stir in the media, especially during the major court case in the autumn. To my deep frustration, but in line with what the defence had claimed, both Maria Irene and Sandra Schelderup were sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment.

My frustration had peaked before the trial even started, however. On 7 October 1969, I awoke to the headline: ‘Eighteen-year-old accused of murder now Oslo’s richest woman’. Underneath was a photograph of Maria Irene. The report stated that her brother, Fredrik Schelderup, had been killed in a crash, in an excessively large car with excessive amounts of alcohol in his blood, on the way from a bar to the beach in Rio de Janeiro. And with that, several months after the main event, another of the satellite people from Magdalon Schelderup’s last supper bit the dust.

Ingrid Schelderup was admitted to hospital again when the court case caused the circumstances surrounding the deaths of her former husband and her son to be splashed across the front pages of all the newspapers once more. When I called her sometime later, I was informed by the hospital that it was not the best day to disturb her. But when I offered to call another day, I was told that it was not the best week or month either. So I took the hint and never rang back.

To my surprise, Petter Johannes Wendelboe was in the courtroom on 3 November, the first day of the trial. He looked exactly as he had before, and shook my hand with the same firmness. When I asked after Mrs Wendelboe, he replied shortly that she had unfortunately gone from ‘bad to worse’. She had, as had Ingrid Schelderup, been exempted from appearing as a witness for health reasons. I could not help but ask if he had been in touch with Magdalena Schelderup. He told me curtly that he had apologized on behalf of his wife and himself, and that this apology had been accepted. So Petter Johannes Wendelboe was himself to the last, and a remarkable man in my eyes.

Hans Herlofsen told me, when I called one day to ask some routine questions, that he had never been better. He had resigned from Schelderup’s company and had found himself a far better-paid job with a company car, thanks to all the coverage the case had been given in the press. The balance of his personal account was already 17,782 kroner. So some of the satellite people from Magdalon Schelderup’s last supper had managed to find themselves a better orbit in the new universe that opened up when the circumstances surrounding his death had been established.

I received a letter from Mona Varden thanking me wholeheartedly for the ‘somewhat late, but remarkable’ unmasking of her husband’s murderer. There was also a sentence to say that she had now, finally, been able to clear his room. She enclosed a photograph of the grandson who was apparently the spitting image of his grandfather. A few days later, I received a postcard from Maja Karstensen in Rodeløkka, to thank me for redeeming Arild Bratberg’s ‘honour and memory’. There was a PS to say that Bratberg’s siblings had dropped their claim on his flat, following all the coverage of the case.

On 10 November 1969, I myself stood up in court to bear witness against the Schelderups. And I rather reluctantly had to admit that Maria Irene played her part very well from her place in the dock. She was surprisingly convincing as the remorseful and bewildered offender who had been led astray by her mother. The press even managed to photograph her with tears in her eyes as she spoke about the murder. But when I passed Maria Irene on my way to the witness stand, at barely an arm’s length, I saw the shadow of a lioness’s smile on her lips. Our eyes met a moment later. And I am certain that I detected something that she herself would never admit – that despite the discomfort of the court case and prison, it had been worth it, now that she had the whole inheritance and would have more than enough time to use it when she got out.

It somehow felt unnatural for me to contact Patricia without an ongoing murder case to discuss. Through the autumn I increasingly pondered over how early on Patricia had realized the truth about how the father and son had died, and how different the story might have been if she had confided in me before the murder of Synnøve Jensen. As far as Maria Irene was concerned, I was eternally grateful to Patricia for revealing her egoism and ruthlessness to me in time. There were occasions later on in November when I even suspected that Patricia might have held back the explanation of the earlier deaths on purpose, in the hope that Maria Irene would commit a murder.

I never considered asking Patricia about this. I was too grateful to her for all the help she had given me with my first two murder investigations, and too conscious of my own dependency in the event of future investigations. For reasons I have often speculated on without drawing any conclusion, Patricia never contacted me on her own initiative. Our somewhat hasty and confusing goodbye shortly after midnight on Sunday, 18 May 1969 was therefore the last time that we saw each other in the 1960s. It was not until seven months into 1970 that a sensational new murder investigation, which had a very dramatic start for me, brought us together again.