The false ID

The woman checked in under the name of Jennifer Fergate to a room she had ordered for herself and Lois Fergate. The address she provided in the Belgian town of Verlaine turned out not to exist. The phone number she entered on the check-in form is found two places in Belgium, but not with the area code given.

Right after the shooting the Belgian police reported that neither Lois nor Jennifer Fergate existed.

The hotel itself had registered her name as “Fairgate”, though she signed in as Fergate. VG is using the spelling she herself chose.

The autopsy answered few questions. The woman claimed to be 21 years old. The forensics pathologist thought she was older: 30, give or take five years. Her eyes were blue, her hair was dark and short; she weighed 67 kg and was 159 cm tall.

No passport, wallet, money or credit card were found.

The weapon held no fingerprints. Fingerprints were found on a glass, a potato chip bag, a cologne bottle and three soft drink bottles from the minibar. These belonged to the Plaza woman. The fingerprints were unknown to Interpol.

The woman’s dental work, in gold and porcelain, was relatively expensive, of a type widely used in the United States but also in some European countries, including the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland.

Police interviews with the hotel staff indicated that the woman spoke both English and German.

Read more about the DNA hunt

The day that disappeared

Very few people observed the Plaza woman while she was at the hotel. The investigators, who concluded she must have taken her own life, were inclined to believe she spent most of her time in her room. Was she a despondent woman who came to Oslo to die?

When she checked in on Wednesday night, she was given two key cards. The two guests were to stay until Friday. On Friday morning the woman came to the reception desk and extended the stay until Sunday, and received two new key cards.

Printouts from the door lock system show that the key cards were used only five times during the three days. The system was designed to register only entries into the room using the key card, not the door being opened from inside for someone to leave.

At 10:44 p.m. on Wednesday, Jennifer Fergate opened the door to room 2805 for the first time. A little later she (or someone else) must have gone out, since at 12:21 a.m. the key card was used again.

The next morning, Thursday, the card was used at 8:34 a.m. Had she been out to breakfast?

The next entry was registered on Friday at 8:50 a.m. This time the new card was used, so she must have visited the reception and extended her stay before going up. A hotel employee saw her enter the room and hang out the “Do not disturb” sign.

The card was used for the last time at 11:03 a.m. the same day. After that, the door was not opened until the head of security entered and found Jennifer Fergate dead on Saturday at 8:04 p.m.

VG examined the key card evidence in conjunction with the few witness observations of the woman. It became clear that she was outside the room for a long period of time:

On Thursday just before 1 p.m. the room was cleaned by steward Vigdis Valø and a 19-year-old trainee. In interviews the following week, both agreed that no one else was in the room at the time.

The door was not opened again, whether by employees or guests, until next day at 8:50 a.m.

That means Jennifer Fergate left the room sometime between 8:34 a.m. and 12:44 p.m. on Thursday, and did not return until the next day at 8:50 a.m.

The room therefore stood empty for at least 20 hours, or a maximum of 24.

On Friday at 8:06 p.m. Jennifer Fergate ordered food from the hotel’s room service. At 8:23 p.m. the food arrived. Kristin Andersen, who brought it, noticed how tidy the room was. It looked untouched, including the bed.

Read more about Jennifer’s last days

Was she alone?

The Plaza woman (if it was her) called the hotel on Wednesday afternoon, changed her arrival date to that very day, and said there would be two people coming. She gave the other person’s name as Lois Fergate.

Receptionist Sascha René Anonsen checked her in that same evening. He has a vague memory of the woman standing alone at the reception desk while checking in and receiving key cards to her room, but he is not certain.

Receptionist Evy Tudem Gjertsen is sure she saw the Plaza woman at the counter with a dark-haired man. That was her statement 22 years ago, and she stands by it today. She is uncertain whether the man accompanied her on arrival. To the police, she described the man as a little taller than the woman, about 185 cm, and a bit older, aged 35–40.

Tudem Gjertsen can’t say for sure whether she saw the pair at check-in, or later in the evening. She has a feeling the man handed some money over the counter, possibly dollars, to exchange it.

Nobody observed a male guest in room 2805. The cologne found in the room was a men’s fragrance. The only fingerprint found on the bottle was that of the Plaza woman.

The bed had been readied for two people, but the Plaza woman herself removed one of the duvets. When the room was cleaned the next day, the extra duvet was placed in the closet and the bed was made up for one person. VG’s investigation shows the woman was away from the room for 20 to 24 hours, including Thursday night. On Friday evening the bed was still made up for one person, with one duvet. When the Plaza woman was found dead Saturday evening, however, there were two duvets on the bed, one on each side.

Read more about the employees at the Oslo Plaza

The watch

Update (24th of June 2017): The watch was a Citizen Aqualand, model CQ-1021-50. The serial number was C022-088093 Y, 2010779, GN-4-S. If any of our readers have a similar watch in the same number series, please let us know where it was bought.

On her left wrist, the Plaza woman wore a bulky Citizen Aqualand diving watch. In Tokyo, Interpol conducted an investigation at the Japanese watch factory and reported that the watch in question was three years old, having been produced in January 1992. The manufacturer could not say where the watch had been purchased.

Inside the watch were three 370-type batteries made by the Swiss battery factory Renata. An imprint on each of the batteries showed they were made in December 1994. The factory informed investigators that the batteries had been sent out to wholesalers and dealers in December 1994 and January 1995. The factory produced a million batteries a month.

Each of the batteries also had the hand inscription “W395”. The investigators learned that this was how watchmakers often notated the date of a battery change. The inscription W395 likely meant the battery had been replaced in March 1995 by a watchmaker with the initial W, either in his own name or that of his business. The police never found the watchmaker in question.

The trail to Belgium

1Non-existent: Rue de la Stehde doesn’t exist in Verlaine, but could it be that the Oslo Plaza woman was trying to write something else?

2Browning: The weapon that took the Plaza woman’s life was produced at the Browning factory in Herstal, just outside Liège.

3Nearby towns: The Belgian telecom company suggested seven phone numbers nearly matching those that the Plaza woman tried to call. All were located in the neighbouring towns of Grâce-Hollogne and Seraing.

4Turning point: Julie Lejeune and Melissa Russo were only eight when they were killed by sexual abuser Marc Dutroux. The case led to a major change in the way missing persons reports and alerts were handled in Europe.

The hotel registration form that the Plaza woman filled out contains nothing but false information, including the names of her and her mystery companion.

The Belgian town she named as her home, Verlaine, does exist, but the postal code she gave is incorrect. The town of 3,000 residents is located in the eastern Wallonia region, about 20 km from the city of Liège.

The phone number she has entered is off, too. The area code is wrong for Verlaine, but does apply to another area. The six-digit local phone number exists in two places in Belgium, but not with the area code provided.

The street address that she put down, Rue de la Stehde 148, does not exist.

Nor did the company she said she worked for, Cerbis. But there was a big Belgian company with almost the same, Cerberus.

According to a police document the Plaza woman tried to call two phone numbers in Belgium from the hotel. The numbers were identical except for one digit. Interpol quickly determined that neither number existed. At the request of Norwegian police, the Belgian telecom company Belgacom created a list of the seven phone numbers most closely matching those the Plaza woman tried to call. VG has looked into the areas indicated by the numbers, with no new information coming to light.

At that time, Belgium still had two police authorities: the police and the gendarmerie. If a person went missing, the notifier was almost always told to wait 24 hours. Communication between the two police authorities was imperfect. The 1990s abuse case in which Belgian Marc Dutroux was sentenced to imprisonment for kidnapping, torturing and sexually assaulting six young girls led to a new set of police procedures in missing persons cases in a number of European countries.

The Oslo Plaza death occurred before this change of procedure.

Read more about VG’s trip to Belgium

The pistol grip

Two shots were fired in room 2805. The police investigation concluded that the first bullet went through the pillow, mattress and bed frame, and stopped against the concrete floor. The next bullet ended the young woman’s life.

It entered through the forehead and exited the back of the head. When the woman was found dead, she was still holding the weapon in her right hand. Her grip on the weapon was reversed, meaning she used her thumb pull the trigger, with her other fingers clasped around the back of the grip. Her right hand, the one holding the weapon, rested on her chest.

The bullet’s path indicates that the shot was fired as the woman lay on her back in bed. In the crime scene report the grip is described as follows: “The right thumb of the corpse lay against the trigger, which was thus held in the posterior/fired position. When the weapon was released from the corpse’s hand, a ‘click’ could be heard as the trigger moved towards the forward position.”

The top of the pillow was spattered with blood from the victim. On the underside were soot marks from the weapon, indicating that the pillow must have been turned after the first shot was fired.

Both bullet holes in the mattress were located under the dead woman’s head, about 7.5 cm apart. Blood loss was substantial. The bed linens and mattress were soaked. Back spatter was found on the pillow, the telephone, the bedside table and the wall up to the ceiling, with some drops even on the ceiling.

In the autopsy report the forensic pathologist writes, “There are no signs of back spatter or singeing on the hands.” Torleiv Ole Rognum, a professor of forensic medicine, finds it “striking” that there is no back spatter on the hands:

“We know there was powerful back spatter with blood way up on the ceiling,” he says. “The victim still had her thumb on the trigger, and her fingers around the stock. So it’s strange there is no blood trace on her hands.”

He adds: “Some suicide victims also get scrapes or marks on their fingers from the recoil. In this case, there are no marks on the finger or the trigger. A 9 mm pistol gives a powerful recoil.”

Forensic technicians took samples from the skin of both hands using carbon tape. The tests revealed no sign of gunshot residue. This, too, Rognum finds odd.

Senior physician Bernd Karger at the Institute of Legal Medicine at the University of Münster, in Germany, describes the lack of back spatter and gunshot residue as “surprising”.

“If everything else at the scene indicated suicide, and afterwards I saw this, I would say it made me uncomfortable,” Karger tells VG. “I would not have declared it not a suicide, but I would have considered it a problem. I would have advised the police to investigate further.”

Read more about the evidence in the hotel room

The weapon

The weapon that ended the young woman’s life was a 9 mm Browning pistol.

The serial number had been etched away. “The removal was done very professionally,” according to the report. Experts in the laboratory at Kripos, the National Criminal Investigation Service, managed to recover parts of the serial number. There are two rows of numbers and letter combinations imprinted over each other. In each series the experts managed to recover six digits or letters but remained three characters short of a complete serial number.

The weapon is a powerful, semi-automatic pistol. When a shot is fired, the next bullet is automatically pushed into the chamber. The magazine holds nine bullets.

The weapon was produced in large numbers at the Browning factory in Herstal, Belgium. Belgian police determined the weapon had been manufactured in 1990 or 1991, but otherwise could not help their Norwegian colleagues.

A total of 6,000 serial numbers were stored in three different weapons archives: the factory’s own registry, the central weapons registry and the registry of stolen weapons. Since the records were not digitized, it was an impossible task for the police to manually search the countless possible combinations.

Read more about the weapon

The missing clothes

There was nothing in the room to reveal who the Plaza woman was. The police found no handbag, no driver’s license, no keys. The elegant young woman was carefully made up and obviously concerned with her looks, clothing and style, but no toiletries or cosmetics were found. The only personal item was a bottle of men’s cologne, Ungaro Pour L’Homme 1.

Anything that could identify the dead woman had been taken away. All logos and labels, with one exception, had been systematically removed from the woman’s wardrobe. Some were snipped off, stitch by stitch. Other were cut or sliced away.

The only clothing label left was on a grey women’s blazer hanging in the closet. The jacket was from German fashion house René Lezard, and it would have been impossible to remove the label without cutting the lining. The police learned that it had been sold in Germany. A turquoise-green travel bag was from the German manufacturer Travelite.

On the leather insoles of the Plaza woman’s black shoes, the manufacturer’s name was gone, with only “Made in Italy” remaining, printed in gold.

The police found no other pairs of shoes in the room. When steward Vigdis Valø, 52, cleaned the room on Thursday, she noticed a pair of shoes under the luggage shelf “because I thought they were nice”. Valø has seen photos of the shoes the woman was found wearing, and is sure they are not the same.

On the luggage shelf there was a cotton sweater and a long, elegant black leather jacket. In the closet hung a sleeveless blouse, the grey blazer and a somewhat longer trench coat. The cloth turquoise bag, which lay in an armchair, contained black pantyhose, a black silk top, and three blonde-coloured bras.

Otherwise the only clothes present were those she was wearing: shoes, socks, bra, longish silk undershorts and a thigh-length cotton jacket. All in black.

No panties were found other than the shorts she had on. Nor were there any skirts or trousers present.

A Norwegian 50-kroner note that she gave as a tip the evening before she died is the only trace of money in the case.

After a year, the police gave up. None of the clues investigators followed brought them closer to resolving the case. The Plaza woman remained as big a mystery as when she was found.

Read more about her minimal luggage

The final day

On Friday 2 June, 36 hours before the Plaza woman was found dead, she was observed by room steward Karin Løvbrøtte, who saw her hanging out the red “Do not disturb” sign on the door.

At one point, the Plaza woman must have gone out, because at 11:03 a.m. she (or someone else) entered again. From then on she never left the room, unless she went out and someone let her back in without needing to use her key card.

At 8:06 p.m. she ordered food from the hotel’s room service, a “Hotbite” of bratwurst and potato salad. Shift supervisor Kristin Andersen brought the food up and was let in at 8:23 p.m.

The Plaza woman was ready with a 50-kroner note, an unusually generous tip. Andersen recalled that no belongings were visible in the room; it appeared almost sterile.

A day later, when forensic technicians documented the scene, half the food remained.

In the autopsy, 50 ml of food, including sausage bits, was found in the woman’s stomach and had undergone very little digestion.

This is interesting. If the food had been eaten on Friday night, it would long since have been digested. The forensic pathologist who conducted the autopsy declared Saturday night as the time of death, so she must have eaten the food that day, almost a day after its delivery to the room.

Once on Friday and once on Saturday, the Plaza woman used the hotel’s pay TV service. The police documents contain no information as to the channel or language selected.

When Jennifer Fergate on Wednesday afternoon informed the hotel that she would be arriving with a man that evening, room steward Vigdis Valø was told to add an extra duvet, soap and towel, since the room had been prepared for one person.

When the room was cleaned the next day, only one pillow and duvet had been used. The extra duvet was folded up and put aside. Valø placed the unused duvet in the closet and made the bed for one person.

We know now that the Plaza woman was away for almost 24 hours from Thursday to Friday. Since the “Do not disturb” sign hung on the door for two days, the room was not cleaned either Friday or Saturday.

As the Plaza woman was getting ready for bed on Friday night, the bed was still made up for one person. When the police photographed the dead woman on the bed on Saturday night, both duvets were in place again.

The duvets were lying next to each other. The bed was mussed.

Nothing in the documents indicates that the bedding was examined for hair or other biological traces.

A few hours after the woman’s death, the bed and bedclothes were discarded.

During the course of Friday and Saturday, three bottles of soft drink from the minibar were emptied – a Coca-Cola, a Coca-Cola Light and an Asina orange drink – and a bag of potato chips was opened. The beer in the minibar remained untouched.

It would appear that during the same period the Plaza woman either ironed some clothes or planned to do so. In the police photos an ironing board can be seen leaning against the wall between the desk and the wardrobe. On the luggage shelf, next to Jennifer’s elegant leather jacket, an iron is visible. Room 2805 was apparently the kind that required guests to order an iron and ironing board from the front desk if they wanted to press their clothes.

Someone in the room has also showered or bathed. When the Plaza woman was found dead, the hotel’s white bathrobe lay on one of the duvets. In the bathroom a used bath towel lay on the floor mat. Beside the sink was a bar of soap, and one of the small bottles was open, possibly the shampoo. In the crime scene photos the woman appeared well dressed – all in black – and lay on her back on the bed. She had make-up around her eyes, but it’s hard to say how old it was.

For three days the Plaza woman lived for free at the luxury hotel, without settling the bill. At 2:19 p.m. on Thursday the front desk sent her a message via the TV screen in the room, requesting that she contact reception. The message was acknowledged from inside the room at 8:55 a.m. the following day.

Message number two came on Friday at 8:57 p.m. Eight minutes later, it was acknowledged with “OK”.

On Saturday evening, receptionist Evy Tudem Gjertsen discovered that something was seriously wrong. Twice, the guest in 2805 had failed to come to the front desk despite acknowledging the messages summoning her.

At 7:36 p.m. the receptionist sent the guest a third and final message, which, like the others, was acknowledged with “OK”. When Tudem Gjertsen learned that the “Do not disturb” sign had hung on the door for two days, she sent up the security guard.

That’s when the shot rang out, at about 7:50 p.m.

For 15 minutes afterwards, the room was unwatched.

An hour later the first police unit was on site, and determined that there was a dead woman on the bed, shot.

At 2:40 a.m. the body was taken away in a hearse.

At 4:10 a.m. the mattress and bed were removed from the room.

At 5:00 a.m. the police were finished, and the room was released to the hotel.

Read more about the final mysterious 24 hours

The attaché­ case

The black attaché case which held the cartridges, and may also have carried the weapon, had an identifying feature – a tiny little buffalo, in shiny metal. A modern image search conducted by VG has shown it to be the logo of Braun Büffel, a German maker of luxury leather goods. At the time of writing, VG is awaiting information about where this briefcase was sold in the period leading up to 1995.

Read more about the hotel room

The neighbours

ROOM 2801: Newlyweds Tore Øyvind Nilsborg and his then wife. Observed nothing of importance.

ROOM 2807: Swiss couple Ruth and Werner, on holiday in Norway. Observed nothing of importance.

ROOM 2806: Reidar Hogstad and his then wife, on honeymoon. Observed nothing of importance.

ROOM 2816: Guest unknown. In the dead woman’s room (2805) a plastic bag was found with an issue of USA Today inside. The bag was marked “2816”. An unidentified fingerprint was found on the bag. Oslo police have made an international fingerprint inquiry via Interpol.

ROOM 2818: Borghild Strandenes. Called Oslo police six days later to say that a foreign couple had caught her attention while at the hotel. The police never contacted her.

ROOM 2804: Directly across the corridor from Room 2805 was Mr F, from Belgium, who checked out of the hotel on Saturday morning, half a day before the Plaza woman was found dead. He now tells VG that when checking out on Saturday morning he was informed that a woman had been found dead at the hotel. When VG questions how the desk staff could have asked him about the death before it even occurred, Mr F replies: “I don’t know anything about that. I just remember they asked me. That’s all I know.”

Read more about the other hotel guests