What happened
Seventeen-year-old Birgitte Tengs was found murdered on Karmøy in 1995.
The investigation
Her cousin was initially prosecuted after a disputed confession but was acquitted criminally, while a civil finding against him created a long legal controversy. Decades later DNA evidence led investigators toward Johny Vassbakk.
What the courts or investigators concluded
Vassbakk was convicted in district court in 2023, but the conviction did not stand: he was acquitted on appeal later that year. No one currently stands convicted of Tengs’s murder.
Why the case remains significant
The case illustrates both the damage caused by unreliable confession evidence and the limits of complex forensic evidence when a cold case is retried decades later.
Case context
Crime by Region organizes cases geographically so readers can move from one file to other investigations from the same country. For unresolved or contested cases, the wording above reflects the distinction between confirmed events, investigative theories and findings actually established in court.