The police are working intensively to find information that might strengthen the DNA evidence that led to the new arrest of the former exonerated 38 years old man.
Vestfold Police have called back investigators from vacation and deferred holiday for others.
– Have you questioned witnesses who had not previously made statements in case?
– It is natural that we do all investigative steps, including making contact with new witnesses, said Acting Deputy Police Ole Bjorn Sakrisvold.
Roar Juel Johannessen, father of murder victim , have for years investigated the case on its own using some helpers. The results of this investigation will be handed over the police.
The proximity of the scene
According to Aftenposten, included it in this material information about witnesses who may have made important observations near the scene that fateful day 5. in August 1999, when 12-year-old Kristin Juel Johannessen was killed sometime between 18:30 pm and 21:00
When 38-year-old in 2001 was prosecuted and convicted for the murder, the police had what they thought was a strong chain of circumstantial evidence against him.
Later, he was acquitted because of weaknesses with DNA evidence from a hair found at the crime scene. A new test showed that the hair was not his.
Deputy Chief of Police would not comment Aftenposten information about new witness observations.
The chain of circumstantial
The then 24 years old man ran in 1999 moped of motocross type. One of the witnesses in the case observed a mopedfører which she later pointed out that the murder accused man. These observations were along highway 40 in Lågendalen, all 14 kilometers from the scene.
Larvik district court sent the judgment in 2001 stated that the so-called “Lågendalsmannen” was the accused in the case.
The observation of Lågendalen was in the judgment connected with observations from three witnesses who passed on Reppesgård road right by the scene between the hours of 18:40 and 19:00.
All three witnesses a moped of motocross type there. Some of the witnesses also saw a bag that matched the description of a sack as “Lågendalsmannen” had. Home of the accused, police found a similar bag.
Then the next witness passed the scene in time 20, was not moped there.
Escape Route not investigated in 1999
These circumstantial evidence was not enough to prove the accused’s guilt when DNA evidence lapsed, said prosecutors in 2002, and he was then acquitted.
Central to the work of Kristin’s father has been trying to find other witnesses, including those who have made observations in 1999 an not think was important.
Police called namely witnesses who had seen people between the scene and the highway in the dark outside Larvik.
First later one became aware that there was another escape route which the perpetrator could have taken away from the murder spot: Forest road north.
One of the investigators at the time was Jørn Lier Horst, who later left the police and was full-time author.
Arrested in Stockholm
Horst was one of the investigators who in 2000 traveled to Stockholm and was there when Swedish police arrested the man who then was charged, convicted and then acquitted murder, the man who now therefore remand prison in the same case again.
– It is an issue I have dwelt very long, thought about what we could do differently, and one of those things is another escape route . We urged the to witness sightings along the county road, says Horst Aftenposten.
Executable with cross moped
Reppesgård road looping and returns on the road both just south of the scene, where police concentrated effort, and 2.3 kilometers further northwest.
The second escape route, fully executable with a moped of motocross type, is a dirt road which you enter by taking off from Reppesgård road and drive through a farmyard.
dirt road ends in a road coming into the Trollsås road, county road 210. From there, among other things, running northeast to Kodal or any other place in the inner parts of Vestfold.
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