The Baneheia Murders and Wrongful Conviction

Two girls at the lake

On 19 May 2000, two girls from Kristiansand in southern Norway, eight-year-old Stine Sofie Sørstrønen and ten-year-old Lena Sløgedal Paulsen, went to swim at a lake in Baneheia, a wooded recreation area above the city. They did not come home. After a large search, their bodies were found several days later. Both had been sexually assaulted and murdered. The case shocked Norway and, over the following quarter of a century, became one of the most serious miscarriages of justice in the country's history.

A confession and an accusation

Police charged two young men from the area: Jan Helge Andersen and his former friend Viggo Kristiansen. Andersen admitted taking part in the crimes and confessed to killing the younger girl, but he told investigators that Kristiansen had been the main perpetrator and had forced him to take part. Kristiansen consistently denied any involvement.

On 1 June 2001 the Kristiansand district court convicted both men. On 13 February 2002 the Agder Court of Appeal upheld the verdicts. Kristiansen was sentenced to preventive detention (forvaring) for 21 years with a minimum of ten, the most severe sentence available at the time. Andersen, whose cooperation with investigators was taken into account, had his sentence raised on appeal from 17 to 19 years. Norway's Supreme Court rejected appeals from both men in 2002.

The case unravels

Kristiansen sought to have the case reopened. On 18 February 2021, Norway's Criminal Cases Review Commission voted three to two to grant a retrial, and Kristiansen was released from prison later that year after spending close to 21 years behind bars. The reopened case seriously undermined the account Andersen had given: DNA evidence did not support the theory that two perpetrators were involved, and data from Kristiansen's mobile phone placed it far from the scene at the time the crimes were alleged to have taken place.

In October 2022 the prosecution dropped its case and asked for an acquittal. Attorney General Jørn Sigurd Maurud apologised on behalf of the prosecuting authority, the national police and the local police district also apologised, and Justice Minister Emilie Enger Mehl announced an independent inquiry. On 15 December 2022 the Borgarting Court of Appeal formally acquitted Kristiansen. The state later awarded him 55 million kroner in compensation, the largest award ever made in a Norwegian miscarriage-of-justice case.

Andersen tried again

The collapse of the case against Kristiansen raised an obvious question about the second girl's death. In June 2023 the Review Commission unanimously reopened Andersen's earlier acquittal for the murder of Lena Sløgedal Paulsen, and in January 2024 he was charged with her murder. He now denied this charge. On 2 July 2024 the Sør-Rogaland district court unanimously found that he had acted alone and had killed both girls. Because the maximum prison term at the time of the crimes was 21 years and he had already served a 19-year sentence, the court could add only two years, and it ordered him to pay compensation to both families.

Andersen appealed. On 30 June 2025 the Gulating Court of Appeal in Bergen reached the same conclusion: he alone had sexually assaulted and murdered both girls. Instead of a plain prison term, the court imposed two years of preventive detention, which can be extended if a person is judged to remain a danger, and ordered him to pay more than eight million kroner to Lena's parents. He was taken into custody at the courthouse.

The Supreme Court's final word

Andersen's further appeal to the Supreme Court concerned the preventive detention sentence. The legal question was whether a prison sentence he had already served in full prevented a court from imposing preventive detention in a later supplementary judgment. On 22 January 2026, in case HR-2026-167-A, the Supreme Court dismissed his appeal by four votes to one, leaving the Court of Appeal's judgment in place and bringing the criminal proceedings to an end.

What the case changed

The Baneheia case is now the central Norwegian example of how a co-accused's account, accepted by investigators and two levels of court, can produce a wrongful conviction that stands for two decades. In February 2023 the government appointed a Baneheia committee to examine why Kristiansen was wrongly convicted. The regional newspaper Fædrelandsvennen also commissioned a review of its own coverage, which concluded that the press had contributed to pre-judgment and had failed to question the police account critically. For the families of Stine Sofie and Lena, the legal process lasted more than 25 years.