In a room at the luxury hotel Oslo Plaza, a young woman lies, shot in the head and holding a pistol in her hand.
It is dismissed as a suicide, but the woman is enigmatic. The way she holds the weapon, the false identity, the clothes with cut-off labels.
Who is she – and what brought her to room 2805 in June 1995?
The glass façade of Oslo's tallest building reflects its surroundings. The luxury hotel has hosted presidents, world stars, and secret negotiations between Israel and Palestine.
But the tinted windows also conceal a mystery.
In the evening of June 3, 1995, a shot is fired in a room on the 28th floor. The security guard who knocked on the door just seconds earlier becomes scared and rushes for help.
A quarter of an hour passes before the hotel staff returns. When they open the door – locked from the inside – they are met by a pungent smell. The curtains flutter in the open window. On the bed lies a lifeless young woman.
She has a gunshot wound in her forehead and is holding the pistol herself. It looks like a suicide.
The Fergate Couple
The woman, Jennifer Fergate from Belgium, had checked in to room 2805 three days earlier with her husband Lois. It is when they realize that the couple has not paid that the guard knocks on the door.
In the room, there are no ID documents, no wallet, and no personal belongings. Not even a toothbrush. Apart from a witness statement from a receptionist, there are no traces of any man.
However, there is an almost empty bottle of men's perfume and an attaché case filled with cartridges. All labels on the woman's clothes have been cut off.
Undergarments are completely missing, as is a bag containing clothes.
Staff who had been in the room for cleaning and room service tell in interrogations about a suitcase, a pair of elegant shoes, and that the woman was dressed in a long dark skirt – none of this is left in the room.
The Belgian police announce that the couple Jennifer and Lois Fergate do not exist.
Teasing the Police
The serial number on the pistol, a 9mm Browning, has been burned off with acid. There are no fingerprints.
On the woman's hand holding the weapon, there are neither bloodstains nor gunshot residue, something forensic experts later react to. Others note that the finger is still on the trigger despite the recoil.
The woman spoke English and German, according to the staff. No one has reported her missing, and her fingerprints are not in Interpol's database. She had given a false address in a Belgian small town.
Before her death, she had made two calls to Belgian, almost identical, phone numbers. Neither of them has a subscriber.
The police have several hypotheses – luxury prostitute, involved in drug deals, professional killer, or intelligence agent – but find no support for any of them.
Was she simply depressed and wanted to die?
After more than a year, the investigation is put on ice. Jennifer Fergate is buried in an anonymous grave in Vestre cemetery in Oslo.
Reporter Digs Deeper
Verdens Gang's reporter Lars Christian Wegner writes a report from the funeral and cannot let her go. Twenty years later, he initiates a collaboration with the Oslo police to solve the case.
There was much that went wrong in the investigation since they initially were certain it was a suicide, he says.
The woman, he can now establish, was away from her room for an entire day before her death. Wegner also seeks out a Belgian man who lived in the room opposite during her last night alive. Through a closed outer door, the man claims to have been questioned about his observations when he checked out – despite her dying twelve hours later.
It was a strange story, says Wegner.
In the fall of 2016, Jennifer Fergate's remains are exhumed from the ground. Bone fragments and teeth provide a nearly complete DNA profile. She is estimated to have been 24 years old with roots in Germany.
50/50
She was a young woman who must have gone to school, had friends and lovers. I believe there are people who know who she is but who for some reason do not want her identified.
Do you think she took her own life?
The experts we've spoken to say it's 50/50 between murder and suicide. Even if she did it herself, she may have been pressured or realized that the alternative was worse. I'm pretty sure there's some kind of criminal act behind it.
Despite intense scrutiny and thousands of tips, the woman in room 2805 remains a mystery. But Lars Christian Wegner believes in a solution. The hope lies not least in the possibility of searching for DNA matches in genealogy registers in the future, which is currently prohibited.
The key is to identify her. If we do, the chance is greater to find out what happened and why.
