Isabella Mueller (crime writer)
An eight-month-long account by 40-year-old Inger Lise Bakken has gone down in Norwegian criminal history; it was so gruesome and yet so heart-rending that the public dubbed it ‘The Diary of Horror’. In it, Inger recorded her ordeal right up to her slow and agonising death. The man responsible for this was, of all people, her neighbour and former fiancé, Terje Wiik. It all began with a fairytale love story that no screenwriter could have written better. Inger, an attractive, divorced woman and mother of two daughters, had made herself comfortable on her balcony in her stylish terraced house in Trondheim on a warm summer’s day in the early 1990s. At that moment, her neighbour Terje, a handsome, successful engineer in his mid-40s who was also divorced and the father of three adult children, was on the balcony too. When their eyes met by chance, it was love at first sight for both of them. A harmless flirtation quickly turned into a serious relationship, which was to be crowned with a wedding. But by New Year’s Eve 1997, arguments between the two lovers were becoming increasingly frequent, culminating in Inger wanting a temporary separation. Terje, who was not used to not getting his way, could not accept this. He threatened Inger with suicide and stalked her and her daughters relentlessly until Inger suddenly fell ill. She suffered from severe pain and intense nausea, accompanied by vomiting and diarrhoea. Inger’s hair fell out; she experienced paralysis and panic attacks that made it impossible for her to cope with daily life without help. Terje offered this help, devotedly caring for Inger from then on. Yet Inger’s condition continued to deteriorate. The doctors were at a loss until they discovered that Inger, who had been recording the progression of her illness in a diary, had been poisoned with thallium. Suspicion quickly fell on Terje, who was arrested whilst Inger was still alive. The doctors administered the antidote ‘Berlin blue’ to Inger. But this was no longer effective, as Inger had been poisoned with thallium for too long. The months-long poisoning caused one organ after another in Inger’s body to fail. Inger was put on a ventilator and was eventually declared brain dead, which is why the machine was switched off at around 11.33 pm on 17 February 1999. Just a few days later, Terje confessed to having bought thallium and mixed it into Inger’s drinks. He had only wanted to annoy his ex-girlfriend by causing her hair to fall out, thereby making her unattractive to other men. Terje insisted that he had never intended to kill Inger, who wept in pain before his very eyes as he cared for her. On 17 February 2000, one year after Inger’s death, the trial of 51-year-old Terje Wiik began at Trondheim City Court. During the trial, Terje denied all charges. The court saw things differently. Terje was an engineer who worked in a research laboratory and was therefore well versed in chemistry. Furthermore, he had repeatedly searched the internet for information on thallium poisoning. If he did not want to kill Inger, why had he administered 40 times the lethal dose of thallium to her? Terje was extremely eloquent; he even gave interviews during the trial, in which he portrayed himself as an innocent lamb who was only allowed to go jogging once a week whilst in custody, which was why he had put on weight. Yet all his protests of innocence did not help Terje in court. For Terje received the maximum possible sentence in Norway of 21 years, followed by 10 years of preventive detention. Terje Wiik appealed against this verdict. In fact, the preventive detention was removed from the sentence, as Terje Wiik was no longer classified as dangerous at the age of 71, following his 21-year prison sentence. One can only hope that this is the case.
