Baneheia murderer convicted again
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Loading... - Aziza Hamdy
- 03 Jul 2024
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A Norwegian man who was convicted of the rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl at Baneheia in Kristiansand in 2000 was convicted again on Tuesday for the rape and murder of her 10-year-old companion at the same time. The so-called “Baneheia Murders” stunned the nation and have been an ongoing nightmare for both girls’ parents.
A court in Southern Rogaland claimed there is no doubt Jan Helge Andersen, now age 43, acted alone in the fatal assaults. Andersen had admitted to the rape and murder of eight-year-old Stine Sofie Sørstrønen but claimed a former friend, Viggo Kristiansen, had forced him into the crime. He has testified that the two then-young men had run into Sørstrønen and her friend Lena Sløgedal Paulsen after they’d been swimming in a lake at Baneheia, a popular recreation area in the hills above Kristiansand.
Kristiansen was ultimately convicted of raping and murdering Sørstrønen’s best friend, the 10-year-old Paulsen, and served a longer prison term than Andersen for his alleged crime. Kristiansen had all along denied having anything to do with the murders, and new DNA evidence ultimately cleared him, in what’s now considered one of the most serious travesties of justice in Norwegian history.
Andersen spent 19 years in jail himself for the rape and murder of Sørstrønen in Kristiansand in 2000. He now faces only two more years in prison after being convicted of also raping and murdering Paulsen, because the maximum jail term at the time was only 21 years and Norway doesn’t recognize multiple counts.
‘Wounds that Don’t Grow’
The judge in the latest case against Andersen also ordered him to pay NOK 650,000 (around USD 65,000) in compensation to each of the girls’ sets of parents. Judge Tor Christian Carlsen noted how murders of children are always traumatic for their parents. “They cause wounds to the soul that don’t grow,” the judge said in court.
Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) reported from the courtroom that Andersen sat calmly and looked directly at the judge when his new conviction was read aloud. His defense lawyers said Andersen was “disappointed” by the court verdict and would consider an appeal. Others, not least the girls’ parents, hope the case may finally be over, 24 years after losing their children.
