State prosecutors have finally indicted Jan Helge Andersen for the murder of 10-year-old Lena Sløgedal Paulsen, 24 years after she and her eight-year-old friend Stine Sofie Sørstrønen were both found raped and murdered at Baneheia in Kristiansand. Andersen’s trial, expected to wrap up the sensational case, is due to begin in mid-April.
Andersen has already been released from 19-year prison term after confessing to the rape and murder of the younger girl and for being an accessory to Paulsen’s rape. He blamed Paulsen’s murder, however, on alleged accomplice Viggo Kristiansen, who ended up spending 21 years in prison but was later fully pardoned and compensated based on new DNA evidence.
Prosecutors now believe Andersen acted alone in what’s known as the Baneheia murders, named after the lake and hills above Kristiansand where the two girls had gone swimming on a warm evening in May 2000. After Kristiansen was found to have been innocent all along, and the victim of a travesty of justice, the case against Andersen was reopened.
He’s now charged with stabbing Paulsen with a knife in her chest and neck after he’d sexually assaulted her. Kristiansen, meanwhile, has also accused Andersen of falsely involving him in the case but prosecutors aren’t indicting Andersen on that, after the statute of limitations has expired.
NewsinEnglish.no staff
