The Orderud Murders

The victims and the farm

Orderud is a farm in Sørum, in what was then Akershus county, north-east of Oslo. In 1999 its legal owners were Kristian Magnus Orderud, aged 80, and his wife Marie, aged 83, who lived in the farm's separate house for retired owners. Their son, Per Orderud, ran the farm and wanted to take it over, but his parents still held the title. A long-running disagreement over ownership and inheritance had soured relations within the family, including between Per and his sister, Anne Orderud Paust, 47, who was visiting her parents on the weekend she died.

The months before the killings were already troubled. In July 1998 dynamite was found under Anne Orderud Paust's car, and in August 1998 her husband, the diplomat Per Paust, discovered that someone had tried to set fire to a gas container in the couple's Oslo building. Per Paust died of cancer in the spring of 1999; the encyclopedia Store norske leksikon dates his death to 6 May, while a 2012 News in English report put it roughly two months before the murders.

The night of 22 May 1999

During the night of 21 to 22 May 1999, Kristian, Marie and Anne were shot dead inside the retired owners' house. There were no eyewitnesses. Two different firearms were used, and the murder weapons have never been recovered. From the outset, the central questions were who had pulled the triggers and who, if anyone, had helped to prepare the killings.

The investigation and charges

Police treated the dispute over the farm as the likely motive. In June 1999 four people were charged with premeditated murder or complicity in it: Per Orderud, his wife Veronica Orderud, Veronica's half-sister Kristin Kirkemo, and Kirkemo's former partner Lars Grønnerød. Kirkemo and Grønnerød later testified that they had helped acquire two guns that were handed to Per Orderud around Christmas 1998. Per and Veronica Orderud have always denied any involvement. Prosecutors argued that all four had taken part, but neither the investigation nor the trials established who had actually fired the shots.

Trials and verdicts

The case was first heard at Nes district court in 2001. Per Orderud, Veronica Orderud and Kristin Kirkemo were each sentenced to 21 years for premeditated murder or complicity. Lars Grønnerød was acquitted of the main charge but given two and a half years for negligent complicity. When the case went to Eidsivating Court of Appeal in 2002, all four were convicted of complicity in premeditated murder. The Orderud couple received 21 years each, then the maximum ordinary prison term in Norway; Grønnerød received 18 years and Kirkemo 16 years.

The outcome was unusual: the courts were satisfied that the four had contributed to the killings, yet nobody was ever convicted of carrying them out. That gap has shaped public debate about the case ever since.

Release, review applications and the 2024 decision

Kirkemo, who later took the surname Haukeland, was released in 2011 and Grønnerød in 2013, each after serving about two-thirds of the sentence. Per Orderud left prison in January 2015 and Veronica shortly afterwards; Store norske leksikon describes them as having served nearly 16 years, counting time in custody from 1999. They moved back to the farm. Grønnerød died in 2019.

The couple have repeatedly sought a new trial. An application failed in 2005, and in 2006 they hired the private investigator Tore Sandberg. Grønnerød applied separately in 2006 and was unanimously turned down in 2010. In 2012 the Orderuds withdrew a request that had been pending for years, citing frustration with how the review commission had handled it. In June 2018 they filed a fresh application of more than 700 pages, arguing that they now knew who had shot the victims and presenting new witness interviews.

In September 2023 it was reported that Kristin Kirkemo's DNA had been found on pieces of tape used to fix the dynamite under Anne Orderud Paust's car in 1998. Store norske leksikon notes that Kirkemo had been charged over that attempted attack, convicted at district court level and acquitted on appeal, so in law she is not guilty of it. The Orderuds cited the DNA finding in support of their application. On 17 June 2024, after six years of work that its chair, Anne Kamilla Silseth, called the most extensive in its history, the commission unanimously refused to reopen the case. The state prosecutor acknowledged that the identity of the killer remains unknown but said the four had rightly been convicted of complicity. The convictions therefore stand.

Why the case matters in Norway

The Orderud case is among the best-known criminal cases in modern Norway and has been the subject of books, documentaries and extensive media coverage. Lawyers often cite it in debates about convicting people as accomplices when a court cannot say who committed the act itself, and about how far circumstantial evidence and motive can carry a verdict. It also became a test case for Norway's Criminal Cases Review Commission, an independent body that began work in January 2004. Before then, the decision on whether to reopen a final criminal judgment rested with the courts themselves; the Orderud applications, culminating in the commission's largest ever review, show how the newer, separate route for examining possible miscarriages of justice works in practice.