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To get this episode of Forensic Tales ad-free, check us out at patreon.com slash Forensic Tales. Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. On May 31st, 1995, a mysterious woman checks into the Plaza Hotel in Norway. A luxurious hotel, world-class service, fit for royalty.
The staff treats her like a queen. Just another night for the rich and famous. Until a gunshot shocks the hotel. When the police open the victim's briefcase, they find trouble. The briefcase contains 25 more bullets. This is Forensic Tales, episode number 115, The Jennifer Farragate Story.
Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell-Ariola.
Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast covering real, spine-tingling stories with a forensic science twist. Some cases have been solved with forensic science, while others have turned cold. Every remarkable story sends us a chilling reminder that not all stories have happy endings.
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You can also help support the show by leaving a positive rating with a review. Now, let's jump right into this week's case. At 10.40 p.m. on Wednesday, May 31st, 1995, a woman checked in to the Radisson Blue Plaza Hotel in Oslo, Norway. But most people simply called it the Plaza Hotel.
During the 1990s, the Plaza Hotel was Oslo's nicest five-star hotel. Kings and queens stayed at the Plaza Hotel. Celebrities stayed there. You booked a room at the Plaza Hotel if you wanted luxury in Oslo, Norway. When the hotel opened in 1989, it became the tallest building in Norway. It touched the sky with its 37 floors and 678 guest rooms.
As the woman checked in, three major airlines had just landed, which meant that the plaza was very busy checking in guests. The staff made it a priority not to keep guests waiting long. After the woman checked in, the hotel's front desk staff assigned the woman room 2805 on the hotel's 28th floor, one of the nicest floors in the entire hotel.
The woman received two sets of hotel room keys, one for herself and one for the male guest she wrote down on the hotel's registration log. After the front desk handed over her two keys, the woman headed towards her room at 10.44 p.m. Three days later, on June 3rd, just after 7.30 p.m., one of the hotel's front desk staff, Evie Jertson, realized that something was off on the hotel's books.
While checking the receipts, she realized that the woman staying in room 2805 didn't leave a credit card on file. This was entirely against hotel policy. It was expensive. The room cost around 1,800 kroner per night. In today's money, that would be around 3,100 kroner and about 330 U.S. dollars.
Jertson sent a message to the room via the room's TV. The message read, Please contact the cashier. Within just a few seconds, someone inside the room pressed OK on the TV's remote control. After looking through the hotel's message system, Jertson saw that two similar messages had already been sent to the woman's room. This woman had now stayed there three nights without paying for anything.
The first attempt to reach the woman was at 2.19 p.m. on Thursday. The hotel staff sent a message to the room's TV asking her to contact the front desk. But it wasn't until 8.50 a.m. the next day that someone inside the room responded to the message by pressing OK on the TV remote. The second message was sent later that evening at 8.57 p.m. Eight minutes later, the message was acknowledged.
Jurtson decided to call housekeeping. Maybe one of the housekeepers had spoken to the woman. Housekeeping tells her that they haven't cleaned the room since Thursday because the woman had the Do Not Disturb sign up on the door all day on Friday and all day on Saturday. Jurtson is starting to think that something might be wrong with this woman. Or maybe this woman is just trying to stay at the Plaza Hotel for free.
So she decided to call the hotel security team. At 7.50 p.m., Espen Ness, one of the hotel's night security guards, went up to the 28th floor and knocked on the door. Within seconds of knocking, the security guard heard what he thought sounded like a gunshot. He immediately stepped back from the door and waited a few minutes to see if anyone would come out.
Jertson had told him that two people were registered for the room, a man and a woman. So he waited there to see if either one of them would come out. But it was dead quiet. No one opened the door.
Ness had a radio in his pocket, but he decided not to use it because he didn't want the whole security team to hear and because he wasn't 100% sure that what he heard was in fact a gunshot. So he didn't want everyone in the hotel to start freaking out, especially if he was wrong. So we got back on the service elevator and headed down to the second floor to the hotel security room.
He told his supervisor that while checking on room 2805, he heard a gunshot from inside the room. From the time the security guard heard the gunshot until the supervisor went up to the 28th floor at 8.04 p.m., there was a 15-minute time gap.
Now, it's unclear why it took the security supervisor so long to get up there. But this is an important detail in the story because we know that for 15 minutes, the room was left unwatched. When the supervisor finally got to the woman's room, he knocked on the door and noticed that the door was double locked from the inside. So whoever was inside the room didn't want anyone to come in.
After waiting several moments for someone to answer, the supervisor unlocked the door. When he got inside the room, he was hit with a smell, the smell of death. He took a few steps forward and saw a woman lying on the bed. The room was so dark, so he called out for the woman. But she doesn't say anything because the woman was dead. The supervisor quickly shut the door and called the police.
30 minutes later, the Oslo police arrived at the Plaza Hotel. When they got up to the 28th floor, they found a woman lying face up on the hotel's bed with a gunshot wound to her forehead. In her right hand, they found a 9mm Browning pistol. After searching the room, the police didn't find any evidence of a struggle. And they didn't find any evidence that suggested anyone other than this woman had stayed in the room.
The TV was still on and the room was squeaky clean. Because the gun was still in the woman's hand, everything looked like this was going to be an open and shut suicide case. In one of the official police reports, investigators wrote, quote, they were 99.9% certain that she took her own life, end quote. But before the police could close this as an open and shut suicide case, they needed to identify her.
So they searched for something that could identify her. Maybe a wallet, ID, something that had this woman's name on it. But after searching the entire room, they didn't find anything. She didn't have an ID, no wallet, no passport. The woman didn't even have a car key or a house key. But that wasn't the only thing the police found strange.
Investigators knew the woman had already stayed three nights at the plaza. But when they looked in the bathroom, they didn't see any toiletries. No hairbrush, no toothbrush. The only thing they found was a half-empty cologne bottle on the counter. The next strange thing was her clothes. They noticed that the labels on all of her clothes had been removed.
Investigators also noticed that the woman had many tops, but didn't have any bottoms or pants. Inside the room, investigators found a green travel bag, one blouse, four bras, long silk underwear, stockings, high-heeled shoes, four jackets, a gold ring, and a Citizen Aqualand diving watch, but nothing that identified her.
How could she get a hotel room if the woman didn't have any identification, ID, or even a passport? Remember, we're talking about a five-star luxury hotel. A hotel that back in the 1990s attracted celebrities. For a guest not to present a credit card or ID or passport at check-in was entirely against hotel policy.
So why was this mystery woman the exception? The only explanation that hotel staff could tell the police was that they were completely swamped when the woman checked in on Thursday night. Multiple flights had just landed in the area and the hotel was overwhelmed. So although it was against hotel policy, it could have simply been an oversight that they didn't collect a proper ID or credit card from this woman.
So the police examined the hotel's guest log. The room was registered to Jennifer and Louis Fairgate. The woman checked in under the name of Jennifer Furgate, but the hotel itself registered her name as Jennifer Fairgate.
On the log itself, Jennifer provided an address for the small Belgian town of Verlaine. She also provided a phone number. Date of birth as August 23rd, 1978, which would have made her 21 years old. What was missing from the log was Jennifer's passport number.
On the card, you can see that one of the hotel staff had put an X mark next to the passport box, indicating that the box was a required field at check-in. But Jennifer's passport box was left blank. The police quickly found some major issues with Jennifer's information. First, the address she wrote down in Verlaine didn't exist.
The zip code 7968 also didn't exist. The correct zip code for Verlaine is 4537. Then there was the phone number she provided. The number did belong to two places in Belgium, but the area code was wrong. Finally, the name. Jennifer Fairgate or Jennifer Furgate as she wrote it down,
Well, that name didn't exist either. This meant the woman who we will call Jennifer provided a fake name, a fake address, and a fake phone number. Oslo investigators discovered that the woman called the Plaza Hotel two times before checking in on Wednesday, May 31st. Her first phone call to the hotel was on Monday, May 22nd.
On this phone call, the hotel staff said that the woman spoke English. According to the staff, the woman asked about room availability and she didn't seem to care about the room price. Then she called the hotel again for a second time on Wednesday the 31st. This time she spoke perfect German without even so much as an accent.
She told the hotel that she needed to move up her reservation and that she needed a room for tonight. She also said that she'd be coming with a man named Louis Furgate. Louis Furgate was also on the hotel's registration log when she checked into the hotel at 10.40 p.m. on May 31st. But was there really a man with Jennifer when she checked in?
Evie Jertson, the front desk supervisor, thought she saw Jennifer with a man a few hours after she checked in on May 31st. She thought she saw the couple exchanging currency at the front desk. Back in the 90s, it was super common for hotel guests at the plaza to exchange money at the front desk. Jertson described the man as being somewhere between 25 and 40 years old.
But she said that she didn't see the man anytime after exchanging the money. And she wasn't 100% sure that Jennifer was actually with this person.
When police spoke with other hotel employees, most of them had very similar stories. Most of them said that they didn't remember seeing Jennifer with any mail. In fact, most of the employees didn't see Jennifer at all during her stay at the plaza. When Jennifer checked into the plaza hotel on Wednesday night, the staff handed her two room keys. The hotel kept an electronic record of every key's use.
At 10.44 p.m., she opened the door to room 2805 on the 28th floor for the very first time. Then at 12.21 a.m., she or someone else must have left the room because the room key was used again. On Thursday, the next day, her room key was used at 8.34 a.m. Maybe she went downstairs or outside for breakfast.
Then a little before 1 p.m., hotel housekeepers cleaned the room. 19-year-old Vigis Vallow was the housekeeper taking care of the 28th floor. That particular day, she was training a new housekeeper. Room 2805 was opened three times between 1244 p.m. and 1250 p.m., most likely because of the housekeepers.
When the police spoke with these two housekeepers, they said that the room was empty. They said the room was spotless and it was tidy. But besides being clean, there was one thing that really stood out to them. And that was the bedspread inside of Jennifer's room. At the time, the plaza used oversized quilted bedspreads.
According to one of the housekeepers, she had this to say about them, quote, They were big and heavy and a bit awkward. They were form-fitted with rounded corners and covered the whole bed down to the floor. It was quite a nuisance. They were supposed to be folded around and under the pillows, end quote.
So what the housekeeper is basically telling the police is that these particular bedspreads were really hard to put back on the bed. And because they were so hard to put back on, most people who stayed there just left them either on the floor or on the chair after taking them off the bed.
But when the two housekeepers got to Jennifer's room that day, the bedspread was still neatly folded on top of the mattress. So, according to them, it didn't look like anyone had slept on the bed. After Thursday at 8.30 a.m., no one used the room key until Friday at 8.50 a.m. So, presumably, when Jennifer left the room on Thursday morning, she was gone until Friday morning.
This means that room 2805 was empty for almost 24 hours. Where did Jennifer go? Where did she stay the night? And why didn't she stay in the room she booked? What's different about using the room key on Friday at 8.50 a.m. is that a new room key was used to open it.
On Friday morning, Jennifer spoke to the hotel's front desk and extended her stay through Sunday. Her original itinerary was to check in Wednesday night and check out Friday morning. Now, it's unclear why the hotel staff didn't ask for a credit card to put on file when she came down to extend her stay. But for some reason, they didn't.
and therefore the front desk issued her a new set of room keys because now she was staying until Sunday. Later that night at 8.06 p.m., Jennifer ordered room service. She ordered a bratwurst sausage with a side of potato salad. Unfortunately, this would now become the last sighting of Jennifer alive. The room service shift supervisor, Kristen Anderson, was assigned the order.
But when she brought the food up to the 28th floor, she accidentally delivered it to room 2804 across the hall instead of 2805. The guest in 2804 told Kristen that she had the wrong room. Once the mix-up was cleared up, Kristen delivered the food to Jennifer at 8.23 p.m. When the police interviewed Kristen, she said, quote, What I remember most is that I got such a big tip.
She had a 50 kroner note ready. It was unusual for us to get so much of a tip. If we got 10 kroner, we thought that was a lot. End quote. So Jennifer gave Kristen a tip that was five times higher than usual. Kristen also said that it was clean when she dropped the food off.
Jennifer didn't seem interested in making small talk, so Kristen simply just brought the food in, dropped it off on the table, and then turned around and left. Forensic technicians collected fingerprints from inside of Jennifer's hotel room. They found fingerprints on three empty bottles from the room's minibar. They all belonged to the same person.
What's interesting isn't where the police found fingerprints in the room. It's where they didn't find any prints. The police didn't find any fingerprints on the gun in Jennifer's hand. There wasn't a single fingerprint on the gun itself or on the magazines. It had been wiped completely clean.
When investigators ran the fingerprints through Interpol, the International Fingerprint Database, they didn't get a match. The prints didn't match any known person in the database. So, the true identity of Jennifer Fairgate remained a mystery. The next thing investigators studied for forensic evidence was the gun itself. The gun was initially identified as a 9mm Browning pistol.
Authorities would later say that this particular gun was used by the military and quote high-end criminals. What was really strange about the gun was that someone had professionally removed the serial number. And when I say professionally removed, someone used acid to get rid of the number completely, making it impossible for the police to recover it.
The gun was sent to CRIPOS, the National Criminal Investigation Service, for analysis. They managed to recover six digits of the serial number, but not the entire number. They were three characters short of getting a complete serial number.
Besides the partial serial number, the only thing they figured out was the gun was made in Belgium between 1990 and 1991. But that was it. They couldn't find out who purchased the gun or who the registered owner was. Investigators learned that two shots were fired inside the room, not just the one gunshot the security guard heard.
The first shot went through the pillow, mattress, and bed frame and then was stopped by the concrete floor. The second bullet was the one that killed Jennifer. The bullet penetrated her skin, continued through her brain, and out the back of her head. It then traveled through the bed, down through the mattress, and ended up on the floor just underneath of the bed. Based on the bullet's path, she would have been killed almost instantly.
The police found the gun in her right hand, resting on top of her chest. Based on where the bullet ended up, the woman would have been shot while lying on her back in bed. In the official crime report, investigators had this to say about her grip on the gun. They said, "...the right thumb of the corpse lay against the trigger, which was this held in the posterior fired position."
When the weapon was released from the corpse hand, a click could be heard as the trigger moved towards the forward position. End quote. On the top of one of the pillows next to Jennifer's body, forensics found blood spatter. But when they turned the pillow over, they found soot marks from the gun.
So to investigators, this discovery suggested that the pillow had been turned over after the first shot because it had blood spatter on one side, but the soot marks from the gun were found on the opposite side. The police also saw that the next bullet in Jennifer's gun had moved up and into place.
indicating that number one, the gun had fired properly and was ready to be fired again. And that number two, and this is a really important part of this, is that once investigators got into the room and saw Jennifer, she's got the gun in her right hand and it's resting on top of her chest. She's got her right thumb against the trigger.
So when investigators took the gun out of Jennifer's hand, that's when they heard that click sound. The click sound is the trigger moving towards the forward position and moving the next bullet up into the chamber.
So what this means is that after Jennifer allegedly shot herself using her right thumb to press down on the trigger, her thumb stayed and had enough pressure on the trigger to keep it down. And it was
stayed there. It remained there until investigators pulled the gun out of her hand, at which time the pressure on the trigger was released and the gun clicked forward, bringing the next bullet forward. Now, what's also interesting when investigators looked at the gun is when they opened it, they saw that the gun still had seven more rounds in it.
Now, next to the bed, next to the bed where Jennifer's body was, the police found a black briefcase. On the front of the briefcase was a tiny Buffalo logo in shiny metal. After a little bit of investigation, they find out that the logo was for a German maker of luxury leather goods. Inside of the briefcase, they found another 25 bullets.
It was also the bag that carried the weapon. So this meant, this discovery meant that Jennifer brought with her a total of 34 bullets, 34 rounds. Now, it seems a little bit overkill, right? To bring 34 rounds with you if in fact you booked a hotel room just to go there to kill yourself, right?
You probably only need one, maybe two bullets to do that, not 34. The police found a USA Today newspaper inside of Jennifer's room. Every guest staying at the Plaza Hotel received a free newspaper at their front door each morning. Now, what's so special about this particular newspaper?
Well, what's strange is that it had a different room number on the front. It was addressed to room 2816, not room 2805, the room that Jennifer stayed in.
Room 2816 was on the opposite side of the hallway and actually on the other side of the hotel's elevators. So it's a room that's a little far away for one of the hotel staff to accidentally deliver it to the wrong room. Now, we don't know who stayed in room 2816 if anyone ever did that weekend.
But we do know who stayed in the room next door, which is room 2818. This hotel guest, which was a woman, told the police that she saw a couple that caught her attention while staying at the plaza. She said the couple was acting strangely around Jennifer's room a week after her death.
This woman also said that when Jennifer stayed in 2805, a strange Belgium man stayed across the hall from her. Let's call this man, so this man that the woman describes as a strange Belgium man who stayed across the hall from Jennifer, let's call him Mr. F.
Now, we're calling this man Mr. F for two reasons. Number one, we don't know his true identity. And number two, any reporter who has covered this case, they all refer to this man as Mr. F. So we'll do the same. Based on hotel records, Mr. F checked out of the Plaza Hotel on Saturday morning, hours before the woman in 2805 was found dead.
When Mr. F was tracked down, this is what he told the VG, a Norwegian newspaper. When he checked out on Saturday, the hotel staff informed him about a woman found dead in one of the hotel's rooms. The only problem with Mr. F's statement to VG is that Jennifer wasn't found dead until hours after he checked out.
So how could the front desk staff have told him about the death before it occurred? When Mr. F was asked this very question, he told VG, quote, I don't know anything about that. I just remember they asked me. That's all I know. Who is Mr. F that stayed in the room directly across from Jennifer? Is he Louis Fairgate? Louis Furgate?
When the forensic technicians walked into the room, the first thing they saw was blood. The entire area where Jennifer was shot was covered in blood. But although blood was everywhere, they didn't find any blood on her hands, which is strange. If a woman shot herself in the head, you'd expect to find some blood on her hands.
Torleve Rognum, a professor of forensic medicine who assisted on the case, had this to say to VG. Quote,
As a forensic expert, I find that striking. I would have expected to find it, end quote. He went on to explain this to VG, quote, 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 9mm pistol gives a powerful recoil, end quote.
The lack of blood or GSR on Jennifer's hand doesn't prove or disprove suicide. Yes, it's surprising not to find any, but the absence of both simply suggests that she didn't shoot herself. But it's not proof. The autopsy didn't provide much information about who this woman was either. The biggest piece of information the forensic pathologist found was Jennifer's age.
Although she told the hotel that she was 21 years old, the forensic pathologists believe she was a little bit older, probably around 30 years, give or take five years. The autopsy also revealed that the woman had expensive dental work done. She had gold and porcelain fillings, which back in the mid-1990s was primarily done in the United States.
But other than that, the age and the dental work, the autopsy didn't reveal much. Her fingerprints didn't match anyone in the Interpol database, so her true identity remained unknown. One of the housekeepers told the police that she remembered seeing a pair of vivid high-heeled shoes in Jennifer's room when she cleaned it on Thursday.
She said the shoes stood out to her because they were high heels that she had never seen before, and she liked them. But when the police searched the room and collected the belongings after Jennifer's death, the heels were gone. The only shoes inside the room were the pair of black shoes she had on when she died.
When the police showed this woman a picture of the shoes and asked her if these were the shoes that she was talking about, she said absolutely not. She said the shoes weren't black. They were this vivid, bright color.
So if the woman left the room on Thursday when the housekeepers were there, she must have gone barefoot or had on another pair of shoes, a pair of shoes that are now missing after she died. Besides the missing shoes, there was something else investigators found strange.
When the forensics team documented the room, they noted in their report that half of the food Jennifer ordered through room service remained uneaten on her plate. Now there's a picture of the food that I'll post to our website if you want to check it out for yourself.
But what's important here is that at the woman's autopsy, the pathologist found 50 milliliters of undigested food in her stomach, including pieces of bratwurst sausage. Human digestion typically works much faster than that. If she ordered the food 24 hours before her death, you wouldn't expect to find that much undigested food in her stomach.
So what could this mean? Some argue that if she ate the food when it arrived, she must have died much earlier than when the security guard heard the gunshot. However, this doesn't add up to the forensic pathologist's findings. He found that much of the food hadn't been digested yet when she died.
So let's examine this for a moment because this is one of a hundred things that make this case so interesting. If she died around 7.50 p.m. on Saturday night, that's when the security guard said he heard the gunshot. She would have had to have eaten the food almost 24 hours after it was delivered to her room.
If the forensic pathologist found over 50 milliliters of undigested food in her stomach, which he did, then that means she ate the food almost a day after it was delivered. The police also looked at missing person reports. Surely this woman had family out there looking for her and would have reported her missing by this point.
She was described as having blue eyes with short, dark hair. She weighed around 150 pounds and was 5'2". But when they searched through the missing person reports, they didn't find anything. So not one single person reported this woman missing. What started out as an open and shut suicide case was turning out to be anything but that.
The Oslo Police Department investigated the woman's death as a homicide for the next several weeks. Suicide just wasn't adding up, and the police still had so many unanswered questions. Like, why did she book a room for two people but show up by herself? Where did she stay Thursday night? Why did she bring 34 bullets to kill herself? Why did she use a fake name, address, and fake phone number?
Who is the real Jennifer Fairgate? And the list doesn't stop there. Why were all the labels on her clothes missing? Why didn't she have any pants? And what happened to the pair of heels that the housekeeper saw? Did she professionally remove the serial number on the gun? Why didn't the police find her fingerprints on the gun? Or GSR on her hands, gunshot residue?
Why did she eat her room service 24 hours after she ordered it? And who is Louis Fairgate? After a year of searching for those answers to those burning questions, the Oslo police essentially gave up. On Wednesday, June 26, 1996, 13 months after the mystery woman's death, they closed the case as a suicide.
even without knowing her true name, where she came from, or why she booked that room at the Plaza Hotel. The only logical explanation was her death seemed to be a suicide. In 1996, the police buried her body. There was no priest, no funeral. They simply buried this woman without an identity or a clear explanation as to why she was dead.
No family was there. This person was utterly alone. And because the police didn't know who she was, they buried her without a headstone. She was laid to rest in an unmarked grave. Although the Oslo police officially closed the case, not everyone could forget about the mystery woman who allegedly took her own life in room 2805 of the Plaza Hotel.
And after hearing about this story, I am one of those people. Since her mysterious death almost 30 years ago, there's been no shortage of theories about who this woman really was and why she ended up at the Plaza Hotel. One theory is that she was a spy. She was a spy on a mission gone wrong.
Those who believe this theory point to several clues. The missing labels on all of her clothes. The use of a fake identity. The briefcase full of ammunition. The professionally removed serial number on the gun. The room was left unattended for 15 minutes, making it possible for the real killer to escape undetected.
Was the real Jennifer Fairgate an undercover spy? And her death was a murder, not a suicide. A second theory is that Jennifer Fairgate was murdered. Louis Fairgate is the second name listed on the hotel registration card. Those who point to this theory point to these clues. Jennifer's grip on the gun, the lack of blood spatter and GSR on her hands,
The only person who saw Jennifer with a man was the hotel employee who saw them exchanging currency at the front desk. After that, no one saw him again. Theory number three, Mr. F killed her. This is the Belgium man who stayed across the hall from Jennifer, the same man who said that he heard about Jennifer's death before it even happened.
He's also the same man one of the hotel guests who stayed down the hall said was acting strange. Theory number four, she was a sex worker or involved in drug trades. Maybe she was a high-end escort or involved in drugs, and that's what led to her death.
Theory 5. She was killed by the person who stayed in room 2816. Inside Jennifer's room, the police found a USA Today newspaper addressed to room 2816. Theory 6. The police's final theory. Jennifer's death was a suicide.
It's hard to believe that in a high-end hotel with guests, employees, all bustling around, gunshot deaths can still happen. But equally hard to believe is that 30 years later, we are no closer to solving this mystery. The facts remain. Someone shot this woman in a luxury hotel. So it doesn't matter which theory you believe,
There's still one question left unanswered. Who is the real Jennifer Fairgate? The mystery continues. To share your thoughts on Jennifer Fairgate's story, be sure to follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at Forensic Tales. Why do you think she booked the room at the Plaza Hotel? And what do you think is the cause of her death?
To find out what I think about Jennifer, sign up to become a patron at patreon.com slash forensic tales. After each episode, I release a bonus episode where I share my personal thoughts and opinions about the case. To check out photos from the case, including the half-eaten room service order, be sure to head to our website, forensic tales.com.
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