The Lorenskog Disappearances is a well-written, slow-burning crime drama based on a semi-fictional retelling of a high-profile case that shook Norway to its core in 2019.
For those who don’t know, here’s how the story goes: Tom Hagen, a Norwegian billionaire, left his home in Lorenskog one morning to go to work at Futurum business park. During his time away, Anne-Elisabeth Hagen, his wife, was taken and held for ransom.
Things don’t look good. There are signs of a fight inside the house, and a letter left behind says that Anne will be hurt or killed if Tom and his family call the police or the media. Not only that, but the kidnappers also want Monero cryptocurrency worth 9 million euros to be paid. Only then can she be safely brought back. They also say, which is scary, that they have been watching the family for a while and will know if he calls the police.
Tom does call the police, though, and they start a secret operation to figure out who took Anne and why. They try their best to keep it out of the news, but it’s only a matter of time before the media gets involved.
Through the eyes of different main characters, each of the 5 episodes looks at a different part of the case. Most of these different points of view are about two main characters. Erlend is a crime reporter who has a personal interest in this case because of some dark things that happened in his own life.
A woman named Jorunn Lakke is in charge of the police investigation. We follow her from the beginning and see all the ups and downs of her life, including problems at home and dead ends and false stories that are linked to this case.
As you might expect from a Scandinavian crime drama, a lot of thought went into the mood, tone, and setting of this 5-part series. The characters are well-developed, and a lot of time is spent learning about their pasts and what they have to do with Anne-Elisabeth Hagen’s disappearance.
Given the strange nature of the case and the fact that it hasn’t been solved, it’s nice to see the show take a more realistic approach to making us care about the people who are looking into it as well as the case itself.
If I had to be really harsh, though, I’d say that episode 3 is probably the weakest of the five chapters here. It comes in the middle of two episodes that almost entirely focus on Aleks and Erlend. Even though the chapter isn’t bad, it feels more like a filler before the last two episodes pick up again.
This show is a lot like HBO’s The Staircase in a lot of ways. Just like that dramatization of a famous real-life case, there are no clear answers to this question. There are a lot of different ideas floating around, and a few of them are looked into during the runtime.
The Lorenskog Disappearances, on the other hand, is a tight, moody crime drama that is a good example of a Scandinavian crime drama.
What Happens in The Lorenskog Disappearances?
The Lorenskog Disappearances is the newest crime drama on Netflix. It is a dramatic, partly made-up retelling of a high-profile case that shocked Norway in 2019. So, what really went down?
So, here’s how the story goes. Tom Hagen, a Norwegian billionaire, left his home in Lorenskog one morning to go to work at Futurum business park. Anne-Elisabeth Hagen, his wife, is kidnapped and held for ransom while he is away.
Things don’t look good. There are signs of a fight inside the house, and a letter left behind says that Anne will be hurt or killed if Tom and his family call the police or the media. Not only that, but the kidnappers also want Monero cryptocurrency worth 9 million euros to be paid. Only then can she be safely brought back. They also say, which is scary, that they have been watching the family for a while and will know if he calls the police.
Tom does call the police, though, and they start a secret operation to figure out who took Anne and why. They try their best to keep it out of the news, but it’s only a matter of time before the media gets involved.
When it seems like all traces of blood have been cleaned up inside the house and there are other strange things about this case, the clues don’t quite add up.
Tom Hagen has been found guilty
18 months into the case, the police arrest Tom Hagen, and the case is forced to become public. The police do talk to the press ahead of time, but Tom Hagen denies all charges.
Tom says that he and Anne had a happy marriage, and more research into his life seems to show that he doesn’t know much about technology. This makes it unlikely that he would be the crypto-kidnapper, so ten days after arresting him, the police let him go.
Erlend, the journalist we meet in episode 2 and later, thinks Tom is guilty. He tells his coworker Aleks that Anne-will Elisabeth’s is unfair because it only helps her. Not only that, but we also see in flashbacks that Erlend’s father beat his mother, which also makes him feel very strongly.
At the end, Erlend is seen working on an article that will question Tom’s role in all of this and look into how the mainstream media cleared him of suspicions.
What does Mattis believe? Is it true?
A bad guy named Mattis talks to the police about making a deal. He asks to be moved to a prison with fewer rules if he can tell important things about the Lorenskog case. This is where episode 5 starts.
Mattis tells them that he has known Tom for a few years when Jorunn sits down to talk. Mattis worked with a man named Peter Vam to set up a scam to steal money from rich people. Together, they would use attractive women to get these men into bad situations, then take pictures of them and use those as blackmail.
Mattis found out that Vam was close to two men named Edon Kirap and Allan Kirap. It seems that the Kirap group was told to help Edon with a plan, so one night they took a van to Lorenskog. The next morning, they came back with a woman they had taken. Is it possible that this was Anne-Elizabeth?
The police try to arrest Peter because they seem to think it’s a good lead. Even though he is in Spain, he is able to get away and fly to Dubai. Now that he is gone, the police can’t find him. Not only that, but the fact that Mattis mysteriously killed himself in prison is another thing that seems to put this case to rest. This pretty much kills any chance they might have had of following up on this lead.
How does Lorenskog Disappearances end?
After working on the case for a long time, Jorun Lakke loses hope and starts to doubt that they’ll ever be able to solve it. In the last scene of the show, she sighs and says, “I don’t know,” which is the perfect way to sum up this whole case.
Tom Hagen is still a successful businessman in Norway. He gives a live interview on TV to talk about what happened, including how he feels about the police trying to blame him. He’s not happy, which is to be expected. But there isn’t enough evidence to say if Anne-Elisabeth was kidnapped, if Tom Hagen killed his wife, or if there’s another piece of the puzzle that hasn’t been found yet.
Who was Anne? What was the case about?
In October 2018, Tom Hagen, a Norwegian billionaire, left his home in Lorenskog, which is near Oslo, to go to his office at the Futurum business park. As was their usual routine, he tried to call his wife Anne-Elisabeth Hagen several times throughout the morning, but she didn’t answer. At about 1:30 in the afternoon, he worried about his wife’s health and went home. To his surprise, Anne was nowhere to be found in the house. A letter left behind and signs of a fight in the house made it very clear what had happened: someone had taken Anne from her own house. Tom called the police right away, and they came down to the scene and started their investigation right away. But the letter that was left behind was the biggest problem. In it, Anne’s kidnappers said they would hurt or kill Anne if Tom and his family went to the police or the media. For Tom to get his wife back, they asked that he send them a ransom of 9 million euros paid in the Monero cryptocurrency. But the people who took the family also told them directly that they had been watching them for a long time and would know right away if they called the police or the press. In that case, they say in a cold way, they would put their own safety ahead of the money and run away after killing Anne.