Geomatics-Ivar is NMBU’s Sherlock Holmes

Tun&Tre has scored an exclusive interview with no other than Ivar Maalen-Johansen. He is an ace up the sleeve of the police when they need help solving difficult crimes! It all began with one of Norway´s worst serial killers.

Text and photo: Simen Walbækken Tangen
Translator: Thea Samskott

The serial killer in Tistedalen
Tistedalen is a small village not far from Halden. In the early 90s, we witnessed a violent serial killer harassing the otherwise innocent village. It started in 1991, two siblings in their seventies were found brutally murdered by knife in their own house, which was swept for money, 60.000 NOK are still missing! The police called in over 700 witnesses for interrogation but got nowhere.

The investigation came to a halt.

One year later, a 71-year-old man was reported missing, a rifle was gone, and his car was found near a forest. The police deemed it a disappearance but did not commence the investigation. Seven months later, the man was found by some neighbor kids looking for a lost football. He was found with terminal knife wounds and dumped in his own compost. Simultaneously, Glenne Sparebank, about 5 km away from Tistedal, was robbed with a rifle. There were good videotapes and sound recordings from the bank, which turned out to be quite important.

The day before Christmas in 1992, a 54-year-old grocer in Tisedal was shot in the back. It turned out to be a robbery, but the robber grabbed the wrong bag and did not collect the 79 000 NOK from the register, but 2 liters of milk and some lamb ribs. The cases were eventually seen in relation to the previous murderers, and Kripos were called in. When the sound recordings were played on NRK, the police got many tips that Roger Haglund could be behind the robbery.

This is where Ivar enters our story. Ivar’s boss at the time, Øystein Andresen, approached Ivar (who was new to NHL (which was NMBU’s name at the time)). He brought a report from the geomatics firm Metumir from Gothenburg which stated that the robber in Tisedalen was 12 cm taller than Roger Haglund, the police’s main suspect. Ivar and Øystein rolled up their sleeves, and Ivar energetically explains how they faxed the police their results. The new height matched Roger Haglund, and 20 minutes later he was arrested. After a longer trial he was given the strictest sentence of 21 years of prison and detainment.

Ivar was suddenly an ace up the polices sleeve. The following 10 years he worked on over 30 robberies.

The method
So how does this simple method actually work? Ivar receives a video of the robbery, which he goes through to see if it is possible to determine the robber’s height. Then he goes to the bank (which hopefully has not moved the camera), bringing a 2-meter leveling rod. He records a new VHS-videotape where he places the 2-meter leveling rod at the exact same location as where the robber was standing. Now he can compare the images and interpret the pixel coordinates in the photo of the robber. By using the same pixel coordinates in the photo of the leveling rod he can decipher how tall the robber is. Ivar cleverly explains “The entire purpose with geomatics is that one single measurement is no measurement”, which is why he always takes multiple photos and in time can do a 95% certain estimate of the robber’s height.

It becomes apparent that when Ivar worked the robbery cases, the technology was old fashion, even in the 90s. According to him, most camera systems were installed in the 60s and the VHS-tapes were played so many times, they were in poor condition. Besides, VHS is not a pixel format we find in digital cameras today. VHS is made on a magnetic tape, thus a lot of time was spent transferring images from VHS to PC, where Ivar could compare the imagery. For some time, Ivar was in contact with security firms working on camera systems, working out solutions to improve image quality. One can ask oneself whether the quality has improved when one sees photos from newer cases. There are literally memes about how poor the quality of security footage is compared to the images we have of Mars.

Expert witness in court
Ivar informs how he usually just sent the police a report with the probable height. The robbery network in the 90s and 00s was so compact, the police had a short list of robbers, Ivar’s reports crossed out many because of their height. The report was very handy for the police in the early investigations when they had not yet crossed of any suspects.

In some cases, Ivar had to show up in court, and it was important to seem more serious than how he describes himself; as a man with timely and untimely jokes. He recalls once preparing with the prosecutors ahead of a case where a famous lawyer John Christian Elden was the robber’s defender. Ivar was strictly told to only answer when he had professional opinions. If he commented anything else, Elden would question his abilities to estimate heights. Ivar was not fooled by Elden, but on his way to another court session he messed up.

Ivar had been at work at TF before heading into Oslo for court, but suddenly, the court time approached rapidly. The decision to speed towards Oslo seemed to work well up until a patrolling vehicle waved him in. Luckily for Ivar, he was just a bit too slow to lose his license on the spot. The disappointment was however, considerable when he arrived and the court clerk told him the trial was behind on time, and Ivar did not have to enter for another two hours.

Cash money flow
Ivar has worked on many cases throughout his time. During the opening ceremony for the Lillehammer Olympics in 1994, Pål Enger openly stood on a ladder outside the National Gallery. He stole The Scream while the police were busy with the opening ceremony. The theft gave The Scream a lot of media attention and it gained way more recognition. Here Ivar discloses that he measured the height of the man on the ladder. “The images were relatively bad, but I got the entire body, so it was possible to get a decent calculation of the height”.

One of the things that astounds me while interviewing Ivar is now many robberies there were in the 90s and early 00s. Ivar explains that every post office and bank had way more cash. The debit card that almost everyone uses today, was not particularly popular. Therefore, the vendors and businesses had gathered a lot of cash by closing time. When the money was moved to banks or in-between two banks there suddenly was a lot of money in one place. In newer times and with less physical cash, there have been fewer robberies of that kind.

Ivar explains that he also was sent a tape from the fatal NOKAS robbery in Stavanger. The robbery was very professional, the 5-6 robbers in the locale were dressed the same and impossible to differentiate. Thus, it was impossible to determine the robbers’ heights with enough certainty.

This would be the last robbery case Ivar was involved in. He has, however, been a part of solving some border cases and a case on low-flying helicopters these last few years.

The kidnapping
When we meet to take photos for this article a couple of days later, Ivar remembered that he has helped the police in the ongoing investigation of the Lørenskog disappearance. Anne-Elisabeth Hagen disappeared October 31st, 2018 and has yet to be found. Since then, her husband Tom Hagen has been charged for murder or accessory to murder, but a final conclusion has not been made yet. In most cases, he could have taught the police how to do what he does, but the police wanted him as an independent witness. Ivar was sent a report where the police had tried to estimate the height of a possible perpetrator using some low-quality images. “They had cropped the photos” Ivar says, clearly not impressed by their technique. He has now also tried to measure the height, but it is not too certain, given the photo’s low quality. All that remains is seeing if we get to watch Ivar as a witness in the Lørenskog case.