A little girl just vanished in a little town in Norway in 1981 in the middle of the day with lots of witness in the area, she was never seen again:
Marianne Rugaas Knudsen was seven years old in 1981. She had just started first grade, as seven was the age of elementary school enrollment in Norway at the time. Because Norwegian children traditionally walked to school, often along dark, poorly plowed roads, and through streches of forest, six years of age was seen as just a little too young. Children were generally allowed to wander around their neighbourhoods freely, in 1981. They were taught to watch out for speeding cars, not for the ones that stopped. Marianne lived in the little town of Risør, in south Norway. It only boasts a population of around 7000 today, so almost 40 years ago it would have been a very small place.
This is Marianne, on her first day of school. The dress is the same one she wore on the day she was abducted.
On Friday the 28th of August, Marianne came home from school as usual. Some time later, she decided to go to the local shop to buy an ice-cream cone and some candy. The shop was only a few minutes' walk from her home, and she had gone there on her own before. There was nothing unusual about a child going to a local shop by themselves. Even today that's far from unheard of in rural Norway. While Risør is indeed a town, there's nothing really urban about it. It's not a place you would think of as potentially dangerous. Marianne made it to the shop, where she was seen by the owner and another employee. While they didn't know her by name, they recognised her face. She suffered from strabismus in one eye, and the shop owner remembered a girl who was "slightly cross-eyed" having been there that Friday afternoon.
After Marianne left the shop, all traces of her stopped. Despite weeks of intensive searches - where practically the whole town volunteered, the Red Cross used helicopters with heat-seeking cameras, and police forces from other districts showed up to help - she was never found.
Nothing was found. "Everything" was dug up, wells were drained, ponds dredged, all of it turned out to be dead ends. Marianne was like "a drop of water that just evaporated."
Despite no actual evidence being found, a man from the next municipality confessed to killing the girl. The police soon discovered that he had been nowhere near Risør the day she disappeared, but he was charged with several other crimes, including "abusing people." He served 10 months in prison, during which he repeatedly confessed, but all his stories turned out to be made-up nonsense. The man was written off as an attention seeker. Roughly half of the town's inhabitants still believed him to be guilty, since he was the only remotely plausible suspect.
For a while, the police treated Marianne's father as a suspect. They theorised that he had abducted his daughter, and kept her hidden in "a cottage somewhere." He was cleared of suspicions shortly after.
The case went cold for over 15 years, when it suddenly took a shocking turn. In 2000, alleged Swedish serial killer
Thomas Quick named Marianne as one of almost 30 people he claimed to have killed. Among his other supposed victims was Therese Johannessen, an 8-year-old girl who vanished from Drammen in 1989, and who the police have long believed was taken by the same perpetrator as Marianne. In 1998, he was found guilty of Therese's murder. Quick revelled in the attention his confessions brought him, and went with the investigators to point out the graves of his victims. At the sites where he stopped, he would get down on all fours, sniff and growl like a dog, and generally act like a very mentally ill person. None of his alleged burial sites ever turned up a body, however, and after several years in high-security mental hospitals, he came to his senses and admitted to having made everything up. He's gone back to using his true name, Sture Bergwall.
For Marianne's parents, the case has understandably been a nightmare. Now in their early to mid 60s, they are still actively involved in trying to find out what actually happened to their daughter, hoping to finally give her a proper grave. This case is always lingering in the back of Norway's collective memory. Marianne was not the first child in the country to be the victim of a serious crime, and she would not be the last, but the sheer mystery of what happened keeps her from being forgotten. It's very rare for a case as seemingly thouroughly investigated as this one to turn up so completely blank. In hindsight, evidence suggests that the police made many and serious mistakes during their initial investigation. Despite the enormous effort put in, they may have failed to interview possible suspects, neglected to photograph areas of interest, based their work on a skewed timeline, and possibly ignored a sighting of Marianne after she left the shop.
After nearly four decades, it's very unlikely that anything short of a deathbed confession will ever lead to any answers. Marianne was a small and slight 7-year-old, not much will remain of her bones, unless she's been buried under especially "fortunate" conditions, like in a cavern. During the years, the case has drawn the attention of numerous psychics and mediums, but their contributions haven't led to anything much being discovered.
The most recent medium to look into the mystery is Michael Winger, who posted a video on his Youtube channel where he theorised that Marianne accepted a car ride from someone she either knew or thought seemed trustworthy. He also made his way to a giant heap of boulders below a road, where he feels as if Marianne could have been buried. I'm not going to tell you what you should think about this kind of investigation, and the video has been removed from Youtube, but the parents did seem to take it somewhat seriously.
Marianne's mother has recently been in touch with a private investigator (a detective, not a medium), and they are working to have the case re-opened again, to look at the many tips and clues that were dismissed back in the 80s.
no.m.wikipedia.org
