Chapter 1: What is the background of the Isdal Woman case?
Hi, I'm Juliet Cowley, a retired FBI profiler and host of the True Crime podcast, The Consult, Real FBI Profilers. If you're fascinated with true crime and criminal profiling, then join us as we discuss real cases and examine the behavior exhibited before, during, and after the commission of the crime. You can listen to The Consult wherever you get your podcasts.
It's as close as it gets to being in the room with the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit.
I'm Brett.
And I'm Alice.
And we are The Prosecutors. Today on The Prosecutors, we continue our look at the Isdale woman. Hello everybody and welcome to this episode of The Prosecutors. I'm Brett and I'm joined as always by my geheimnisvol co-host, Alice.
Brett, no idea what you said. German?
That one was German. Okay. German. Andreas sent that one to me. It means mysterious.
Ooh.
Isn't that appropriate?
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Chapter 2: What mysterious behaviors did the Isdal Woman exhibit during her travels?
And this is really interesting because we'll obviously get into theories. And I mean, goodness gracious, it's like such a big question mark right now. But if we were talking about that she did not meet ill will, that this was done to herself, what a strange last thing to do. Quite literally, like one of the last things you do is to exchange money for
For Norwegian money, you're in Norway, so for money that you can use. And she obviously had at least change on her that was Norwegian. So she had something, probably enough to catch a cab or to do whatever she needed. She probably didn't need that much if her intent was to, say, end her life in an hour or so. You don't need to go on a strapping spree.
So that is a very interesting kind of last known activity.
Okay, so that ends our timelines. We're about to get into sort of deeper discussion of some things we've touched on up to this point. But before we did that, you know, the great thing about having done this podcast for a while and having so many wonderful people who listen to it is we've sort of developed like experts in various areas.
And after we did the floor of fire with the girls who lost their life in the fire, we had somebody who wrote in who is an arson investigator. And has done this for quite some time. And she knows nothing about this case. She actually wrote in to talk about the Flora case. And I'm going to get her some stuff on that because I want to know her thoughts on it.
But I was like, hey, while I have you here, I want you to take a look at something. And I sent her the police report that we read you guys in part one. which lays out sort of how this woman's body was found. And so I sent that to her. She read that. She looked at photos of the scene and wrote up something on this based on it's all she knows is what's in the report and the photographs.
And so I'm going to read this to you just so you have her opinion based on that limited information. I mean, she's still just reading reports like she got to go out to the scenery thing, but I think this could be interesting. I think it's interesting no matter what, but maybe it's also helpful. So I'm going to read this to you. We talked about this some. We talked about this before. Right.
And this is a good point. My Belgian friend, Stephanie, who's been helping me pointed this out as well, that upper body seems to be in the boxer pose. The lower part of the body isn't. Does that indicate anything that there was something on top of her? Someone was sitting on top of her or something like that. I think this is a pretty good explanation why that is.
If you look at the photographs, she is kind of in these rocks. And so you could imagine that the rocks themselves prevented her lower extremities from moving very much at all. It goes on to say any exposed area of skin is covered in soot or it could be charred. It is hard to say from the pictures.
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Chapter 3: How did the Isdal Woman's hotel stays reflect her state of mind?
She goes on to say they mentioned ample remains of a woolen sweater. Any natural fabric is harder to burn than a synthetic fiber. So that is likely why that survived as well. The sweater also appears to have been removed prior to the fire occurring. And that also likely contributed to it surviving anywhere.
The fabric or clothing is layered or thicker like cuffs or waistbands are more likely to survive after a fire. And sure enough, that's exactly what happened. Remember there were cuffs, uh,
of fabric on her arms as far as the water bottles go any plastic container that still contains liquid even an ignitable liquid well that was interesting when exposed to heat will melt down to the level of fluid within the fluid inside absorbs heat and will protect the plastic from melting further ignitable liquids do not burn the vapors they give off when they evaporate are actually what burns the same occurs with solid fuels it is not actually the wood burning in a
it begins to undergo pyrolysis or breakdown and off gas. It's the gases produced when a solid or liquid fuel is heated that actually burns. So if you hold a flame under a piece of paper so that it is not touching the paper, you will start to see the paper discolor. That is pyrolysis. Once the paper breaks down enough, it will ignite. This occurs much faster in direct flame contact.
Fascinating. So the actual, because there was that clear liquid, and even if it were something ignitable like gasoline, it doesn't burn?
Apparently not.
Wow. That, did not know that. I did not know that wood wasn't what burned. That would make sense why you have to heat it up.
This is a science podcast. Normally it's a history podcast. Okay, now this is interesting because this contradicts something we said earlier. Actually, there was a report of this, but I disregarded it incorrectly, apparently. The watch definitely was removed prior to the fire based on the location of it.
Had it still been in place, it likely would have still been on her wrist or in a closer location to her wrist. Leather is something that doesn't burn as well as other materials, and based on the photos, it would have most likely survived the fire on her wrist. wrist. So that actually is consistent with her taking off other jewelry to take off her watch. This part is really interesting. Okay.
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Chapter 4: What significant events occurred on November 23rd, 1970, related to the Isdal Woman?
Then we saw that, right? And we speculated.
It was really fat from her as it burned and then it liquefied and then as it cooled down.
Just like bacon fat. Just like bacon fat. If you leave it on the stove after you turn the fire off.
I just cleaned off some sausage fat and that's exactly what happened.
And she recommends going to burnedbone.com if you want to know more about how the body burns, which... Good for you if you want to do that. Dr. Elaine Pope, who is apparently the world's leading forensic anthropologist when it comes to burning bodies. So there you go. OK, so she actually throws out a theory, which I think is interesting. So what happened here?
I have no other information on this case other than what you provided me, which was literally that police report and the old black and white photographs I found. My theory on what happened here. Remember, we all have more information than she does. So, you know, take this with a grain of salt. She was hiking and stopped to take a break.
Maybe she had developed blisters and sat down for a snack and to treat her injury. She took her boots off to assess and at least took her left sock off. She has a snack and some water. It gets cold and she attempts to start a small fire to get warm. It doesn't seem like she had any natural fuel with her, so she uses something she has with her, like paper, map, journal, etc.
Remember, there was some burned paper. She accidentally ignites her synthetic clothing. In an attempt to get up to put herself out, she gets her foot stuck in a rock crevice and falls back. She would have hit her head, knocking her out, or she is overcome by the fire, smoke, and dyes. Her body continues to burn, mostly her lower extremities, where her rubber boots were.
Those boots would sustain the fire long enough to get subcutaneous fat rendering and igniting. Since the rendered fat cannot pool beneath the body to further sustain combustion of her body, the fire eventually burns out. So that's her theory.
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Chapter 5: What evidence was found regarding the Isdal Woman's death?
One thing that's definitely not clean, though, as you've noted, is the scene. And I do wonder, somebody mentioned, if you've listened to Death and Ice Valley, like they taught some people who had some pretty radical ideas. And one person was like, well... Maybe they drugged her and then they gave her the pills. You know, it's like everybody gets more and more complicated.
It's like the opposite of Occam's razor, always. It's like, what more could we add to this story to make it even more complex? Okay, sure, maybe they did that. If somebody did that, if they went to the trouble to drug her, then put the pills down her throat in a way that many of them would digest, but not all of them, which means... Whatever you drugged her with didn't kill her.
It just sedated her. So you're putting these down her throat so you could do this. Then you're catching her on fire, but not really. And only barely. And when you did it, you only took one boot off for some reason. You didn't take the other boot off. Like, does any of that feel like a stage scene? It seems like the scene would be a lot cleaner.
If this was that thought out, if it was two lovers in Isdale who got in a fight and it somehow ended in murder. OK, I don't necessarily think you could see that much. But if it's someone who went to this much trouble to murder her, stage it, make it look like a suicide, do it out where two kids could come upon you while you're doing it.
And then light her on fire, which, by the way, sends up a bunch of smoke and says, hey, look over here, something crazy is happening. If you went to all that trouble, you would think you would have done a little bit better job of both destroying things and making it look more like whatever you're trying to make it look like. A suicide.
And by the way, if you're trying to make it look like a suicide, would you really light her on fire? That seems like the kind of thing that would happen if you actually did kill yourself. Not as someone was trying to make it look like a suicide, but anyways, we're probably getting a little bit of ahead of ourselves because we got to talk about all this again.
We talk about theories, but like, as far as this part of the story goes, I think it's only a third of the mystery and so much more of it is who was this woman and where was she from and what was she doing?
And part of that goes to, of course, her language. We've heard about maybe having an accent in English, maybe a funny way of speaking so much so that someone was going to burst out laughing. Someone else said that she had broken English.
So this Isdale woman tended to fill out all those registration cards, remember, when she signed in or checked into the hotels in German, despite indicating that she was Belgian on at least two of these cards. And she specifically wrote Belgish. And I have trouble saying it because guess what? It's not really a word.
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Chapter 6: How do the circumstances of the Isdal Woman's death raise questions of foul play?
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Chapter 7: What theories exist about the Isdal Woman's identity and background?
You have someone who's acting very strangely. Who's doing strange things. Who's using multiple aliases. Who doesn't seem to have anywhere she's from or anywhere she's going. She dies under mysterious circumstances. And she just so happens to be all these places where things that someone who's interested in secret-y type stuff would be. So you can see why they opened the investigation.
I mean, to me, the fact that they opened the investigation... doesn't tell us a whole lot. I mean, a lot of people see that and they run with it. Oh my goodness, they opened an investigation. She must be a spy. You can totally see why they opened it. I mean, this is enough.
You should definitely open it if this is happening.
I hate to say this, given what we're talking about, but this isn't enough smoke. There's probably fire, right? If you're looking and maybe you look at it and there is no fire, but it bears investigating. So the fact they investigated it doesn't surprise me. There are some other things, though, that make you wonder that go along with this. We talked about these men she met with.
People speculated, you know, could she have been some sort of sex worker, right? Some sort of high class prostitute, right? She's traveling around. She's staying at nice-ish hotels. She seems to have plenty of money. She's well-dressed. She's sophisticated. All of this stuff, right? And she did meet with men, but it's interesting the men she met with.
Because it doesn't seem like they're businessmen or lawyers or anything. They tended to be military-ish people. So she was occasionally seen with men. She was seen speaking to two naval officers. Another time, as we mentioned earlier, there was a young man in her room, but he was simply sitting in a chair.
And another time she was seen at breakfast with an older man, though they were described as serious and not really speaking to each other. And then we also know there were sightings of her speaking to people down by the docks. Who were these people? Who were these men? They never came forward. People came forward and said all things about her. Right. That they were the chambermaid.
They sold her the boots. They checked her in. They served her dinner. They served her breakfast. They cleaned her room. They drove her in the taxi. All these things. They sold her liquor. They exchanged her Swedish whatevers for Norwegian whatevers. Right. Like you had all of this. But nobody ever came forward and said, oh yeah, I had breakfast with her. Oh yeah, I had dinner with her.
Oh, I was in her room. I know who she is. What are you talking about? She's this person. None of these people ever came forward. And this was a famous case at the time in Norway. They got a lot of press, a lot of attention. It wasn't buried. People were talking about it. The Norwegian police were all over the place. Now...
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Chapter 8: What conclusions can be drawn from the investigations into the Isdal Woman?
The reality of China is completely different.
Which we also know, right? Like whenever it leaks out like, oh, they didn't have enough baby formula during COVID. So they just mixed a bunch of cement in there. That is actually factually true. And then when it comes out, they're like, yeah, we did that.
Yeah, we kind of did that.
Yeah, we totally did that.
So I'm convinced. And so then, I mean, some people are ridiculous and they say there's like, fewer than a billion people in the world. I don't believe that. Right? Like, but do I think that China is lying about how many people they have? Absolutely.
And I also think they're not the only ones lying.
Yeah. Does India really know? I mean, and there are all sorts of reasons to lie about it, right? Because it makes you seem more powerful. Exactly. Bigger, stronger.
I mean, the states did that back in the day when we were trying to figure out how much representation you got in the Senate and Congress, right? We lied. Like, the census.
I mean, the census is half made up. You think...
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