On December 6, 2018, 29-year-old Ole Henrik Golf deboards a plane in Oslo. He's on his way back from a startup conference in Helsinki, where company founders from around the world have just spent two days discussing their projects. Golf runs a co-working space in his home country of Norway, and now he wants to go home. He walks down the steps leading from the plane intending to continue to the arrivals hall when a woman stops him.

"Are you Ole Henrik Golf?"

When he says he is, the woman introduces herself as a police officer. She asks him to follow her.

Golf doesn’t resist. He's surprised, but not alarmed. He is the young founder of a tech company, married – he has nothing to hide. But it was strange, he says, being loaded into a police car without being told why. On the way to the station, the police officers also don’t give him any information about why he has been detained. "Deep down, I knew that it couldn’t be about me," Golf says today, four years later. "I didn’t break any laws. But what was it about?"

Ole Henrik Golf didn’t suspect at the time that he was involved in one of the most mysterious crimes in Norway. A crime that he hadn’t heard a word about until that point – yet one that still today remains indelibly linked to his name.

On October 31, 2018, a women disappeared in Lørenskog, a city east of Oslo. Her name was Anne-Elisabeth Hagen, and she was both extremely normal and exceptionally unique at the same time.

Hagen lived in a single-family home in a quiet residential area. She was 68 years old, the mother of three children. Photos of her show a smiling woman with wavy hair, the kind of woman who might work in an elementary school – friendly, open, unobtrusive.

The unique part of Anne-Elisabeth Hagen is that she was married to one of the richest men in Norway. Tom Hagen comes from a modest background, but he is the founder of an electric company and, according to estimates, has earned several hundred million euros in his career. The couple had recently celebrated their 49th anniversary.

Nine Million Euros in Cryptocurrency

At 9 a.m. on the morning of October 31, 2018, Tom Hagen left the house located at Sloraveien 4 in Lørenskog and drove to work. When he returned home at 1:30 p.m., his wife Anne-Elisabeth had disappeared. He found a ransom note on a chair in the hallway demanding that he transfer 9 million euros in cryptocurrency – or else his wife would be killed. Hagen called the police.

In the ensuing months, the police did all they could to find Anne-Elisabeth Hagen. They searched the lake in front of the family’s home and the sewer below it. They analyzed the ransom note left behind by the kidnappers and set up a 3-D model of the crime scene. Every centimeter of the house was forensically examined. Tom Hagen even transferred 1.3 million euros to the presumed kidnappers over a crypto platform, demanding a sign of life from his wife before sending the rest. But Anne-Elisabeth Hagen’s whereabouts remained unknown. And she still hasn’t been found today.

The police now believe that Anne-Elisabeth Hagen is dead. But who killed her? And why? They are questions that the entire country of Norway is asking.

Rarely has a criminal case gripped the nation to the degree that Hagen’s disappearance has. Hundreds of articles have been written about the crime, there are books about it, and Netflix even produced a series about the mystery. Interest in the country is so great that the New York Times referred to it as a "national obsession." "People talk about it at their kitchen tables, in cafés, over dinner," says Sven Harald Brurås, a retired media studies professor. "Everyone is wondering: What happed in Lørenskog on October 31, 2018?"

"The perpetrator must have driven along here," says Ådne Husby Sandnes. He and his colleague Gordon Anderson are standing on an unpaved road in Lørenskog, the town where Anne-Elisabeth Hagen lived. To the left is a small lake reflecting the winter gray. There's a copse of trees on the right. The dirt road runs for about 140 meters right between them, leading directly to the Hagen family’s home.

Sandnes and Anderson have been down this road several times. As criminal reporters for the newspaper Verdens Gang, more commonly known as VG, they've been reporting on Anne-Elisabeth’s disappearance for years. "At times, we would write a story a day about her," says Anderson, who, with his tattoos and golden earrings, looks more like a rock star than a reporter. "I have worked on this story around the clock on occasion." He did so in part because reader interest was so great, but also because the story transfixed him and his colleagues more strongly than almost any other they had ever worked on.

As they walk down the road, the two journalists talk about how the crime on October 31, 2018, might have unfolded. A car drove up the narrow road, stopping shortly before the Hagens' home. Then, the perpetrator or perpetrators made their way into the building and took the woman with them – though it is unclear whether she was dead or alive. Although Tom Hagen is a multimillionaire, the family lives in an inconspicuous home with a tiled roof, wood siding and a hedge to keep away prying eyes. When Anne-Elisabeth disappeared, the house was protected by neither fences nor cameras – and that apparently hasn’t changed since. You can still just walk into the Hagens’ driveway and ring the doorbell. The reporters stop a few meters in front of Sloraveien 4.

"That’s where the bathroom is," says Sandnes, pointing to a window on the ground floor. The police found drag marks in the bathroom and it is likely where the millionaire’s wife met her murderers. "But we still don’t know who he was or what happened to her afterward," says Sandnes, shaking his head in frustration. "Four years after the crime, we're almost as smart as we were on day one."

Was It Really a Kidnapping?

In the weeks following Hagen's disappearance, police launched a search for an unknown kidnapper. They treated the case as though Anne-Elisabeth’s life was at stake, including complete silence about the investigation, with the press muzzled from reporting on the abduction. Neighbors were questioned under an assumed pretext and investigators used unmarked cars with fake license plates when driving to Lørenskog. They were deeply concerned that the kidnappers may have been keeping the house under surveillance and might kill Anne-Elisabeth Hagen if they realized that the police were involved.

But the more time passed, the stranger the behavior of the apparent blackmailers became. They were demanding millions in ransom, but made no effort to access the money. They only rarely got in touch and responded slowly to messages, even remaining silent after Tom Hagen transferred the initial amount. "Their behavior made no sense," says VG reporter Gordon Andersen. "It seemed as though they didn’t even want the ransom money."

The scene of the crime inside the house at Sloraveien 4 seemed odd to the police. Investigators found hardly any clues at all. Indeed, about the only valuable pieces of potential evidence are the ransom letter and a footprint from a size 45 shoe. The police still don’t know who it might belong to.

The house showed no clear indications of having been broken into and there were no signs of a struggle either, nor was any DNA from a stranger ever found. The neighbors were unable to remember anything suspicious. How is it possible for a woman to disappear without a trace? "It was a mystery for the investigators," says journalist Gordon Anderson.

Rather than clues as to who might be behind the kidnapping, police instead found something else in the Hagens’ home: divorce papers, signed by Anne-Elisabeth. Apparently, she was thinking about leaving her husband. And the investigators found something else as well: Proof that Tom Hagen met with a crypto expert in summer 2018, several months before his wife disappeared. Is it just by chance that her kidnappers later demanded payment in cryptocurrency? The Norwegian police don’t think so.

On April 28, 2020, one-and-a-half years after his wife disappeared, Tom Hagen was arrested. Investigators had come to believe that his wife had never really been kidnapped and that the ransom demand was merely supposed to send them down the wrong path. In truth, they believe, Anne-Elisabeth had been murdered. Either by her husband or by contract killers hired by him.

A Motive but No Proof

It was a spectacular twist in the case and seemingly every media outlet in the country reported on the arrest. But soon it became clear that the police had very little evidence. There was no body and Hagen had an alibi for the morning of October 31, 2018: He had been at work. It was possible that he had assistance or had contracted someone to commit the murder on his behalf. But who or how – the police were unable to say.

"All indications point in the direction of Tom Hagen," says VG journalist Sandnes. "He had a motive. Had they gotten divorced, his wife would likely have received a lot of money. But a motive isn’t proof. And that’s how the judge saw it as well."

Tom Hagen spent a few days in investigative custody, but a court soon ordered that he be released. Officially, Tom Hagen is still a suspect in the case, but charges have never been filed against him. The presumption of innocence applies to him without restrictions.

Hagen is a free man who continues going to work and still lives in the house at Sloraveien 4. According to media reports, he continues to insist that he had nothing to do with his wife’s disappearance. His lawyer did not respond to a query from DER SPIEGEL.

It has been more than four years now since Anne-Elisabeth was last seen. And Norwegians have been wondering for that entire time: Is Tom Hagen a brilliant criminal who has committed the perfect crime? Or is he a victim of the judiciary who not only lost his wife, but who is now being unjustly pursued by the police?

Norway is one of the safest countries on earth. It is extremely rare for a murder case to go unsolved. Plus, Tom and Anne-Elisabeth may have been wealthy, but they lived modest lives. "Many Norwegians see themselves in the Hagens," says reporter Sandnes. "Tom Hagen looked like the nice older gentlemen you might meet on the ski slopes in winter." Could a man like that commit a murder so well planned that an entire armada of police fails to solve it?

"When I first heard of the crime, my initial thought was: It must have been the husband," says Jørn Lier Horst. "Statistically, the husband is most frequently the perpetrator when the wife goes missing."

The 52-year-old is sitting in the front room of a television studio in Oslo, and he doesn’t have much time. The cameras are about to roll. Horst appears every week on the show "Åsted Norge," a true-crime show similar to "Unsolved Mysteries" in the United States. As an expert, he goes on the show to discuss criminal cases that have remained open for years in the hopes that the viewing public might provide a lead.

Horst began his career as a commissioner in the Norwegian police before deciding to translate his experience into the world of fiction. Today, he is one of Scandinavia’s most successful crime thriller authors. He insists that he doesn’t have any detailed knowledge of the case in Lørenskog. "Only the police have that." But, he says, he has spent a lot of time thinking about the crime in recent years – "like pretty much everybody in Norway."

He still remembers the exact moment when he first heard about Hagen's disappearance. He was out walking his dog when his mobile phone rang. A journalist was on the line wanting to know what the ex-commissioner had to say about the case. But Horst could hardly think of anything to say. "I had never heard of a similar crime," he says.

A crime scene with no DNA traces from others? Kidnappers who don’t seem interested in the ransom money? "It was strange." Horst was also astonished by the approach taken by the Norwegian police. "When Tom Hagen was arrested, I was certain that they had hard evidence against him," Horst says. "I was surprised when it turned out that they didn’t."

For the last four years, a special commission has been pursuing every lead in the case, no matter how small. Tom Hagen’s home has been bugged, his car tracked via GPS. The police have analyzed all important pieces of evidence several times and the police even assigned an undercover officer to the case. But they have yet to find even a shred of evidence to support the idea that Tom Hagen really was involved in the disappearance of his wife.

A Digital Trail

"Whoever planned the crime thought of every little detail," says author and ex-police commissioner Horst. "That makes it difficult for the police." But there is one lead that gives him hope. "What perpetrators are unable to predict are technological advancements," says Horst.

In his show, he has frequently seen murders solved decades after they were committed because a certain forensic technology had been further developed. Clues that couldn’t be used suddenly became legible, leads that led nowhere suddenly pointed to a specific perpetrator. "Especially in the digital world, things are moving quickly," says Horst. Police have hopes for precisely such a digital trail in the case of Anne-Elisabeth Hagen. And it leads to a murky place. The darknet.

When a police officer intercepted young startup founder Ole Henrik Golf in December 2018 at the Oslo airport, Anne-Elisabeth had been missing for around five weeks. The public still knew nothing, with investigators continuing to keep the case secret. It was during those initial weeks that they still believed they were dealing with a kidnapping case, and they didn’t want to do anything that might endanger the woman’s life.

Golf was taken from the airport to a police station in Oslo, where an officer asked him to take a seat in a room carefully monitored by video. The questioning began harmlessly enough: What was his life like? Who were his friends? The young man told them that he used to work in the advertising industry and as a designer and reported on his trips abroad to Beijing and Bucharest. "But the police soon began asking about cryptocurrency," says Golf.

The entrepreneur belongs to the first generation that grew up with the internet and he spends a lot of his time online. Golf’s startup, Remote Norge, helps Norwegian companies manage employees who work remotely – which is one significant reason that Golf is interested in digital trends and in cryptocurrencies. He has invested in Bitcoin privately and leads a crypto club at a school.

The questions fired at him by the police in Oslo quickly grew technical in nature. What does Golf know about this and that digital currency? How do they work? Golf readily answered their questions, even though he didn’t know why they were so interested. "The only thing they would tell me was that it was a matter of life and death," Golf recalls. "But they didn’t tell me what I had to do with it."

Ultimately, Golf spent six or seven hours answering questions at the police station before he was allowed to go. They booked him a hotel room and a new onward flight to Mandal in southern Norway, where Golf lives. Later, they confiscated his hard drive and laptop. But then, says Golf, he didn’t hear anything more from the investigators for several weeks.

In early January 2019, the Norwegian police went public with the kidnapping, with the case landing on front pages around the country and in special televised reports. Like most people in Norway, Golf was fascinated by the crime. "I read everything I could about it," he says today, four years later, during a meeting in his office in Mandal. And at some point, he stumbled across his own name in an article about the case: Ole Henrik Golf.

In preparing the crime, accounts were set up in crypto indexes – platforms where digital currencies are traded. The perpetrator or perpetrators would later use the accounts to communicate with Tom Hagen. To set up such an account, an email address is necessary – and the presumed murderers of Anne-Elisabeth Hagen used the email address ohgolf@mail.com. The name they entered: "Ole Henrik Golf."

The email address didn’t exist before it was used to open a crypto index account; somebody created it specifically for that purpose. But the police are certain it wasn’t Golf who did so. Somebody else was using his identity.

Why Was He Chosen?

It has since become clear that Golf’s passport was copied some time ago and sold on the darknet, that part of the internet that isn’t easy to access for those who aren’t digitally proficient. Perhaps a hotel worker scanned his document when Golf was traveling through Asia several years ago and then offered it up for sale on the darknet, which hosts a flourishing trade in falsified or stolen documents. It’s possible to buy countless identities and use them to commit crimes. But why did the perpetrators from Lørenskog choose Golf?

"Perhaps it was just by chance," he says today. "Maybe they just needed a Norwegian."

Yet there is one rather odd detail. The perpetrator or perpetrators used a street address when preparing their crime. In one crypto index, they used the address Store Elvegate 16A, the building where Golf's office is located. To find the address, they would have had to have specifically gone looking for it on the internet.

Furthermore, Golf’s address was only listed from July 2, 2018, which is when his company, which he just been launched, went online. Just five days later, on July 7, the presumed killers of Hagen used the address Store Elvegate 16A to open a crypto account.

How did the perpetrators learn within just five days that Gold had posted his company headquarters on the internet? Did they have him under surveillance? And did they know that Golf was involved in cryptocurrencies in his private life, or was that merely a coincidence? "It’s not impossible that the criminals followed my actions at least for a time," says Golf today. "Or that they were actually at my office."

The Norwegian police have discovered that Golf’s identity has also been used for other crimes, with at least one man being charged. But it remains unclear today who might have used his identity for the abduction of Anne-Elisabeth Hagen.

Investigators hope that these digital clues might one day lead to Hagen's murderers. Thus far, they haven’t been able to crack the crypto code, but several officers are still working on the case every day. "We are determined to solve it," says lead investigator Lars Reinholdt-Østbye. "Whoever committed this crime will be held accountable."

Many Norwegians, though, have grown skeptical and doubt that Hagen’s disappearance will ever be solved. "Early on, I thought: The best investigators in the country are working on the case. They will find out what happened," says reporter Sandnes. But after hundreds of days of investigating, officials are just as confused as they were in the beginning. "I have lost faith that they will ever be able to solve the case," says Sandnes. "As sorry as I am to say so."

"How is it possible for a woman to disappear and to be unable to find the people behind it?" wonders entrepreneur Golf. "Despite years of investigations, despite all the effort that has gone into the search?"

Golf is not a fearful person, and after four years, his memories of his police questioning in Oslo have dimmed. But he still finds himself wondering sometimes, as he is sitting in his office in Mandal, whether the criminals who used his name, his passport and his address for Norway’s most perplexing crime might actually be quite close by.