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Welcome to the Serial Killer Podcast. The podcast dedicated to serial killers. Tonight, I have a very, very special treat for my dear listeners. Something I know many of you have been waiting for. And something I promised you a while back. This podcast has now more downloads than the population of Sweden and Norway combined.
And, to celebrate, I thought it appropriate to now present to you the saga of Norway's one and only known serial killer. The golden age of serial murder affected Norway as well, unfortunately, and tonight's subject started his reign of murder as late as 1977, perhaps earlier, when he got caught by
He first admitted to killing 27 people, and he ended up being convicted of murdering 22. However, he is suspected to have caused the death of far more people, perhaps as many as 138 people, almost double that of Norway's infamous terrorist mass murderer, Anders Bering Breivik.
His name has, oddly enough, faded into obscurity here in Norway and the world at large. But perhaps tonight's episode will once again remind people of the evil that is Arnfinn Nesset. I am very fond of doing this show, and I could not do it without you, dear listener.
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patreon.com forward slash the serial killer podcast to support the show and gain exclusive benefits as an official tsk producer in a smaller town in eastern norway an older gentleman walks his usual route from the bus station and into the church city mission he's leaned back
pale, and uses a grey coat that has seen its better days. On his head he has a tired knitted wool hat, not unlike the one Norwegian billionaire Olav Thun famously uses. Behind the round lenses there are a couple of seemingly friendly eyes. He greets the staff politely, hangs his coat over the chair next to him, and sits down alone.
The eight-year-old, who sits there eating soup in a corner of the room, is Arnfinn Nesset, the manager of Orkdal's nursing home, who is convicted of 22 killings, the first of those taking place in 1977. In Orkdal, the nursing home he worked all those years ago is renamed Orkdal Helsetun,
Over 35 years after the manager Nessa was sentenced, most relatives in the case have passed away, but many still think the issue is a difficult topic and heavy to talk about. The leader of the local history team becomes brusque when the Nesset case is brought up. Several others have the same reaction. Some wounds have been healed, but with us who remember the matter from close range,
It can be difficult to talk about, says former agriculture minister Kåre Jönnes of the Christian Democratic Party. He was the mayor of Orkdal during the period 1980-1983, during the discovery and the court proceedings of the serial killer case, and he knew all the victims by name.
The case was very dramatic when it went public back in the early 80s. The name of Nesset was on the front page of all the major newspapers and the talk of the day around most family dinner tables. People were shocked that something as horrid as a serial murderer operated in such a rural and idyllic place as Orkdal. Former head of the Pensioners Association in Orkanger,
Ragnar Albin Johansen and his wife had personal relations with some of the victims. He has said in interviews that he could hardly believe it back then, and it came as a massive shock to him, his family, and all living in the small community. His wife worked under Anfin Nesse at Orkdal's nursing home. Johansen still finds the case difficult to talk about, even though it was so long ago.
Some wounds simply stay open. Johansen recalls how Nesse was a very religious man. One night before the case was rolled up, he came and called at Johansen's home. He wanted them to sign a protest against the new law on self-determined abortion. Nesse was very much against the law. It's rather ironic.
that a man so much against ending the life of the unborn was in fact very much willing and capable of ending the life of so many living people. It is over forty years since the series of suspicious deaths at Orkdal Nursing Home started. The then forty-one-year-old nurse, Arnfin Nesse, was recently employed as a manager in a retirement home
It is not uncommon for residents to die, but this was different. Many died suddenly and surprisingly, someone with unexplained injections on the body. Several patients died after the new manager, nursing school graduate Arnfin Nesse, had been with them.
The employees increasingly got very suspicious. The most experienced caregivers began talking about the manager's strange behavior, walking around in the nursing home with his blood sample basket. Already in the spring of 1977, someone had suspected something was wrong, but no one was alerted. The suspicion contrasted with how Nesse appeared in daily life.
This gentleman, with a warm smile, who apparently always did his utmost to make the patients feel good, a man who got the trust of the older guard, with his Christian outlook and persistent struggle against free abortion, the elderly found it easy to converse with him. For hours he could stand by the bedside and talk to the residents.
or take them on a shopping trip outside the nursing home to buy clothes for them. He could be very angry at relatives whom he thought didn't care about their elderly family members. No one believed such a kind-hearted, gentle and conscientious man was a cold-blooded serial killer. However, in the space of four years, a dozen people died under suspicious circumstances.
Arnfin Nesse had undoubtedly ordered large quantities of the muscle-relaxing drug curacit, in English known as succamethonium chloride. This was very odd, considering that curacit has as much to do at a nursing home as hand grenades in a kindergarten. In March 1981, Arnfin Nesse, the family man, was arrested.
It came as a shock. I'm deeply disappointed with my husband, Nessa's wife said at the time. To the police, Nessa confessed to killing 27 patients with curacit. During interrogations that lasted over a total of 760 hours, Nessa admitted that he had sometimes killed patients out of pure mercy to help the old over the last hurdle.
Other times, it was to reduce the waiting lists of people wanting a place at the retirement home. Nesser said at the time, he felt it was, and I quote, "...two powers inside me that fought a fight." At the nursing home, he even handed over the death message to the relatives of the patients he had just killed.
Although some of the murders had the superficial look of mercy killings, others were simply committed for Nessed's own gratification. His most famous quote is as follows. For me, it was a thrill to be able to walk in the corridors of the sick and elderly with folded up sleeves and a syringe in my pocket. It was like walking on a knife edge. End quote.
In a written confession, he said he felt anxiety and was sweating so strongly after some of the murders he had to take a shower. Even though, he confessed to 27 kills, investigators believe he could be guilty of far more murders than those.
Nessa worked as a nurse for many years in several places, and considering how nonchalantly and routinely he murdered his victims working at Orkdal Nursing Home, it is highly plausible his kill count could be in the hundreds instead of dozens. Now, before we continue, I think it's important to understand what death by Kurasit entails. The drug is not anesthesia.
its only function is to paralyze the skeletal muscles its intended use is usually during surgery where it is used in very small measures to paralyze muscles that need to be still in order for the operation to be successful ness however used it as a method of execution
As an educated nurse, he should have been aware of Corazit's properties, and as such, I doubt his statement of mercy killings to be factual. Dying from an overdose of Corazit is one of the most horrifying and painful ways to die imaginable. The patient is immediately paralyzed and experiences locked-in syndrome, where the patient is fully aware of what is happening, feels everything.
but cannot move or communicate in any way. The lungs, unlike the heart, are paralyzed too. This results in the patient feeling the lungs shutting down and experiences a drawn-out, painful strangulation from lack of oxygen. Arne Finnesse, back in the 1980s, was a rather small man.
He was not very tall, was very thin, had large glasses, clean-shaven, and had a bald head with graying hair around the scalp and in the neck. In short, he looked very unassuming, and the last person most people would think capable of being Scandinavia's worst serial killer of all time. This summer, Instacart presents Famous Summer Flavors, coming to your front door.
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But it's good to have some things that are non-negotiable. For some, that could be a night out with the boys, chugging bears and having a laugh. For others, it might be an eating night. For me, one non-negotiable activity is researching psychopathic serial killers and making this podcast. Even when we know what makes us happy, it's often near impossible to make time for it.
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Never skip therapy day with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash serialkiller today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash serialkiller. In court, his wife described Nessa as a somewhat troublesome personality. He had acquired a parents at work as manager of a doll nursing home,
But at home, he could show an uncontrollable temperament. When it became clear that her husband was behind the killings, she immediately sought divorce. But before the trial, he withdrew the confessions in consultation with his new defense attorney, Alf Norhus, and, at his advice, declared himself innocent, claiming that the police had forced him to confess.
During the trial he did very little. He sat in a grey suit, which he had sewn in the prison at Tunga himself. Most of the time he was sitting almost immovably in the same position, half turned away from the audience, greyish and with a somewhat sad look on his face, while he noted his comments in a scrapbook. He appeared more like a suffering soul than a repentant sinner.
his body language during the court proceedings in Frostating lagmannsrecht a similar court as the american court of appeal suggested he saw himself as innocent and persecuted in nineteen eighty three when your humble host was all of two years old
The nursing home manager, Arne Finnesse, was sentenced to 21 years imprisonment and 10 years of security for premeditated murder of 22 defenseless seniors. Here I need to explain to you, dear listener, how the Norwegian legal system operates. We have much, much milder sentences than they do in the United States of America.
Even for very serious crimes, the culprit often only serves a couple of years before being released. For a long time, Norway had only regular sentences of prison for a certain amount of time. As it stands, a regular prison sentence is automatically reduced significantly if the inmate behaves well in prison. Usually this amounts to one third of the sentence being reduced.
If, for example, Nesse had been convicted of only 21 years imprisonment, he would be more or less guaranteed to be released after about 14 years at the longest. Inmates who show clear signs of rehabilitation are often released even earlier. In order to ensure that Nesse served at least 10 years, he had 10 years of what is directly translated as security.
A year of security always counted as a full year. It was not possible to get the security part of a sentence reduced. It was mandatory. As such, when Nesse got his sentence of 21 years imprisonment and 10 years of security, it was the absolute maximum sentence allowed in Norway, while he was sitting in prison.
Nesse fought a fierce battle to keep the values he owned with his divorced wife, including a cottage in Bergkork in south Trøndelag. He was allowed to keep the cabin where he sought refuge under administrative leave from prison. During his incarceration, Nesse was considered a model prisoner. He did not spend long in regular prison,
but was, after a few years, transferred to Norway's minimum security prison called Bostøy Prison. Norway's minimum security prison is quite unique compared to other countries. It's called Bostøy Prison and is basically a very idyllic village on a very idyllic island in the middle of the Oslo fjord.
In 1993, after having been incarcerated only ten years,
Arnfinnesse was transferred to what is called open serving. It's similar to the American version of not being free, but being able to work and live at home as long as you wear an electronic bracelet. However, in Norway there is no such bracelet, and Nesse was left in the care of the deeply religious Pentecostal Missionary Center at Dahl in Eidsvolle.
After staying with the mission center for 11 years, Arnfin Nessa was finally, fully released in 2004, 21 years after his conviction. During the trial, it emerged that Nessa was indeed a deeply religious man. He has had faith in God all along. After his release, he resumed his work as a soldier in the Salvation Army.
Today, he is also affiliated with a local mission house in the community where he lives. In this unnamed town in eastern Norway in 2017, eight-year-old Arnfin Nessa walks out from a café, out into the good weather, and sits down in a nearby park. He picks up a heart-shaped leaf from the ground, gently slides it through his fingers.
The shadow of a smile playing in his mouth. He opens his hands and the blade disappears in a small gust of wind. He gets up and walks toward the bus stop on his way home to continue his favorite job, gardening. In the neighborhood, Arnfinn Nesse is a protected man. I know he's convicted of 22 killings, even though it's hard for me to believe it.
"'He is such a friendly soul who only thinks the best of others. He likes to have it neat and tidy around him, and he seems to like it here. His garden is the nicest in the neighborhood, and he is always helpful with tips in case we are wondering about something. Besides, he seems genuinely happy to live right near the playground and have some children's laughter around him. Often I see him smile.'
said one of Nesse's close neighbors, to journalists that had managed to track down Nesse, who now lives under an assumed name in an undisclosed location. Another neighbor said he found it uncomfortable at the start when Nesse moved there. A serial killer in the neighborhood seemed dangerous. This being a small rural village, there was quite a bit of whispers and rumors between the villagers.
Jokes such as, take care not to be poisoned, when a woman told her husband she was going to help Nessa with an errand, was common in the beginning. However, the neighbors now seem to be embarrassed at their behavior at the time, and now see him only as a very nice old man. None of them have ever heard of him talking about his past. Does time heal all wounds?
Is it possible to put a series of 22 murders in the past? When will a story that has created so many wounds get its period? Did he ask for forgiveness, to higher powers, with the victims' families? How does he make the days go? What turn took his new life after over ten years of being incarcerated?
How do people around him relate to him being Norway's only known serial killer? These were the questions journalists wanted answers to from Nessa himself, and a letter was sent him informing him of an article being written. He could contact the journalists any way he wanted, either by phone or by meeting one of them at a specified location at 12.30 on a given day.
Arnfin Nessa did not meet. But a man of about sixty years old turned up looking annoyed and unfriendly. It turned out he had been sent by Nessa to talk to the reporters. He told the reporters he considered himself a close friend of Nessa, and that his view was that Nessa had served his sentence and was a free man. Also, he pointed out how important Nessa was to so many in the village.
when the reporters asks more questions. He turned even more annoyed, and told them there was no reason to rip up an ancient case, informed them that Nessa had never talked with the press, and he had no plans on doing so now either. This latter bit was incorrect. In 1995, after being released from prison into the care of the Pentecostal Mission,
He did give a brief interview with the newspaper Dark Brother. I quote, "'I live here with my cat and the guitar. A garden spot allows me to care for flowers, which is something I love. I have served my sentence. Now I want to be left in peace.' End quote. Nesset's friend said the following before he brusquely ended his conversation with the reporters.
Arnfinn doesn't want to be reminded of this ancient case. He is tormented by it. I think the media is cynical and rotten that digs it back up. I don't know what kind of news value an old man who has served his punishment can have. The only thing that brings with it is more hatred and more grudge against a man who has long since finished his prison sentence and sought forgiveness from God.
Although we have never talked about his actions, I believe he has not done what he has been convicted of. And after having known Arnfinn for years, I think I'm right in my thoughts." Today, Nesset's ex-wife lives in central Norway, as do the two adult children. Arnfinn Nesset currently has several grandchildren,
But it is uncertain whether he spends time or has any kind of contact with them or their two children. At Orkdal Church's cemetery in Vanrem are several of the victims in the Kurasit case. Among them is his last victim, the 89-year-old woman who received a syringe from Nesse on the 11th of November, 1980.
Former leader of Orkanger Pensioner Association, Roger Albin Johansen, is quoted saying that the generation who experienced what happened up close is now old and rarely talks about what struck the small village all those years ago. Many of the village elderly meet at the former Domus Café in Orkanger. Now the eatery Gla i Dei
The name is a pun, as «dæ», which means «dø», sounds identical in Norwegian as the word for «dæ», which means «you». So the current name of the café sounds like, if translated directly, «love you». It is cosy around the tables, but the atmosphere quickly turns when the Nesse case is mentioned. No one wants to comment on the matter on the record.
But those who remember the case well agree that it was a terrible time. Most of the villagers seem to agree that although it is somewhat strange that a man guilty of killing so many people is living a free and prosperous life among them, the sentiment is that he has served his punishment, and that is enough for them.
Börre Husse Börn has 40 years of experience as a law psychiatrist and has been an expert witness in 1,300 court cases, of which 145 are murder cases. In 1983, he was one of four forensic psychiatrists who both investigated the Nesset case and participated in the trial against him.
I have never spent so much time on a case. In murder cases, it is common to have two to five conversations with the suspect. But the Nessa case was, of course, very special. I will never forget it. To authorities, Nessa was submissive, servile, careful. But to the staff at the nursing home, he showed another side.
There, he could be very determined and aggressive, but never openly violent, Huseber says. Huseber adds that Nesse was professionally skilled in his job, but a riddle of a man. He concluded at the time that Nesse was well aware of the difference between right and wrong, and not criminally insane. He did show traits aligning with serious personality disorders, but this was never specified.
Forensic psychiatrists found that Nesse, on the subconscious level, had a constrained aggression against older women. It was suggested that the murder impulse was related to his upbringing, when he had to nurse his sick grandmother. Going around in the nursing home with a curacit syringe in the breast pocket,
on a white coat and calling home to the wife to say, "'I don't think I'm coming home for dinner, because he or she is ill,' before deciding if he should end the life of the person or not, probably gave Nessa considerable excitement that he could be a kind of master of life and death."
The psychiatrists found no signs of guilt or remorse. He was introverted and isolated, and enjoyed his own company. During the trial, it was revealed that Arnfinn Nessa, in one case, called home to the relatives of a patient, and told them the patient had become seriously ill. In reality, the patient was not deadly sick at all. But before the relatives arrived—
The patient was dead. The forensic psychiatrist Huseber is on record as having said he has thought a lot about the Nessa case. He has concluded to himself that Nessa deserved to be seen as an ordinary person that does not pose any danger to other people today. Huseber said he wishes him all the best.
The latest news in the story of Arnfin Nessa is that the Norwegian TV broadcaster TV2 is planning to produce a true crime series dedicated to the Nessa case. Its scheduled release is autumn of 2019. Arnfin Nessa, for all I know, still lives in his modest house in the small village somewhere in the eastern part of Norway, quietly tending his garden.
Whoa, easy there. Yeah.
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