Sisters in crime: Representations of gender and class in the media coverage and court proceedings of the triple homicide at Orderud Farm

Introduction

On May 23 1999 three persons were found dead on Orderud Farm, 29 km from Oslo, the capital of Norway. The victims were Kristian and Marie Orderud, both in their 80s, and their 47-year-old daughter, Anne Orderud Paust, who was visiting. A murder investigation was initiated on the same day and Kripos, a national police unit set up to investigate particularly serious crimes, was involved from the start. The case was quickly taken up by the media. Two theories as to why someone would murder the three were launched. The first theory was connected to the fact that Anne and her husband had discovered an undetonated bomb under their car the year before. Anne was a personal secretary at the Minister of Defence, and her husband (recently deceased at the time of the murders) worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Though the case was never solved, there was speculation in the media that this was attempted terrorism. The second theory was that the murders were the result of a conflict within the Orderud family. When confronted with rumours of such a conflict by the media, the Chief of Police in Romerike Police District stated (NTB 1999): ‘We are aware of the fact that there has been a disagreement in the family. We have to include and consider that.’

Two weeks after the bodies were found, a woman and a man were charged with the murders or with being accomplices to the murders. The police first identified the woman in connection with a different case, and through a search of her ex-boyfriend’s apartment, where she claimed to live, they identified weapons and equipment that implicated her and her ex-boyfriend in the Orderud crime and in planting the bomb under Anne’s car. During interrogation, the ex-boyfriend implicated another man and woman in the case. These two were brought in by the police some days later. The latter two suspects were identified as the son of the murdered couple, Per Orderud, and his wife, Veronica Orderud. The first suspects were Veronica’s half-sister, Kristin Kirkemo, and Kristin’s ex-boyfriend, Lars Grønnerød.

This was the start of one of the most attention-grabbing criminal cases in recent Norwegian history. The case ended with all four being convicted. It was never established who pulled the trigger, whether one or several of the four did the deed themselves or if they hired contract killers. Instead all were convicted of being accomplices to homicide regulated by section §233 of the Penal Code. ¹ Since the time of the murder and still today, the case aroused considerable attention in Norway. There are probably several reasons for this. First, there are few multiple homicides in Norway; there are in fact few homicides at all. In the last 15 years there were between 29 and 44 murders each year in Norway, almost all of which were solved (Kripos 2011). ² Second, this case was a particularly dramatic and violent one as three people were murdered after what seemed to be extensive planning for at least six months before the crime. Most murders in Norway are committed on impulse and often while in a state of intoxication (Kripos 2011). Third, what developed into a media frenzy was fuelled by the defendants, by their portrayal of their involvement and the way they actively engaged with the media. Most people accused of homicide are not given such ready access to present themselves and their case through different media as the defendants in this case. This access was perhaps awarded them due to the perceived difference between this case and other cases and between these defendants and defendants in other cases of homicide. Perpetrators of serious crimes are often symbolically placed outside the realm of ‘the normal’ and their own accounts of their reasons and understandings are rarely given authority. A fourth reason for the great attention the case received was probably the fact that two of the defendants were women, which is rare in homicide cases in Norway, as in many other countries. As I will show in greater detail below, cultural assumptions about appropriate femininity were made relevant in both the media coverage and the court proceedings.

The article describes and analyses the way in which gender and class played a part in the portrayal of the defendants in the media coverage and in the court proceedings. As the Orderud case is quite exceptional, its news coverage does not reflect the way murder cases are generally covered in Norway. However, understanding that is not the purpose of the article. The aim is rather to treat the media and the courtroom as sites for the construction and reconstruction of cultural norms on gender and class, which are probably also relevant in less spectacular cases. The starting assumption is that the question of how crime is represented is a fruitful route to explore more general societal norms and developments. What is played out in crime and the responses to and representations of crime are seen as ‘conflicts over morality, economy, and identity’ (Ferrell et al. 2008: 206). Gender and class are central systems of inequality and meaning, both on a societal level and in social relations. A significant development in criminology, as in several other disciplines, is the realisation that the operation of gender and class mandates an analysis of how they intersect, and not only intersect, but also co-produce each other (Daly and Maher 1998; McCall 2005; Milovanovic and Schwartz 1996). The aim of the article is thus on a more general level to discuss the intersection of gender and class in presentations of crime and thus in their constructions in society at large.

Materials, methods and perspectives

This article does not deal with what really happened that night at Orderud Farm or what the four defendants are really like. Instead it questions the way the case and the implicated parties were represented in media coverage in the period from when the case was presented in the media for the first time to when the verdict was legally enforceable, and how the media coverage and representations elsewhere link to the versions of the same events told in court. The primary material is the whole corpus of written national news and feature media on the case. Newspaper coverage of the Orderud case and investigation was identified using the Norwegian media database A-tekst. A total of 1240 newspaper articles were identified by searching for “Orderud AND homicide” ³ in the database from the date when the bodies were found, 23 May 1999, to the end of the month of the rejection of the appeal by the Supreme Court, December 2002. After having surveyed this material, I chose to pay particular attention to representations in news items from the two tabloid newspapers Dagbladet and VG, in addition to the news service NTB and the broadsheet newspaper Aftenposten. The first two are the most-read newspapers in Norway (MedieNorge 2010), all four news sources are widely distributed and read, and all four covered the case to approximately the same degree. This constitutes the bulk (86 percent) of media coverage of the case, but many of the 1068 news articles were short notes summing up the case so far without in depth discussion or analysis. About one-third of the pieces described the case and the defendants in a more substantial way, and it is these articles I have analysed in terms of content. The references and quotes from the media coverage throughout the text are chosen as representations of sentiments also conveyed in other pieces, as representative either of a general trend or of a particular strand of argument.

Second, I have analysed how the four defendants were presented in the written verdicts from the District Court and the Court of Appeal as well as from the appeal to the Supreme Court. The first document is 14 pages long, the second 10 pages, while the written deliberation on the appeal to the Supreme Court is 5 pages long. These documents give only a short description of what the courts emphasised and concluded, but they give an impression of what readings of the representations given in court the judges and jurors have explicitly applied. Third, the material consists of the self-representations given by the case’s defendants in other contexts than news media and court, i.e. a series of interviews in feature pieces, gossip magazines and documentaries, and in an autobiography, ⁴ wherein particularly the women on trial have given a more ‘unadulterated’ account of the case and themselves.

Based on a reading of this material, I present an analysis of how the defendants are represented, tracing expressions of notions of gender and class in how the case was framed and how the defendants were depicted. In Cultural Criminology: An Invitation, Ferrell, Hayward and Young (2008: 126) argue the need for an analytically engaged qualitative media analysis. This invitation fits well with feminist concerns over how norms and behaviours out of the ordinary are treated in the media. Meyers notes that the way the media works plays a part in constituting ‘a framework that supports the dominant ideology while marginalizing, trivializing, and constructing as deviant or dangerous any challenge to it’ (Meyers 1997: 22). Of particular concern to me is thus whether the representations support or are different from dominant understandings of appropriate woman- and manhood.

In the Norwegian context, a highly publicized murder case is not commonplace, and the crime and the trials received unprecedented attention. Details of the case were abundant and easily accessible to all, and they indicated an especially violent crime. Terms such as execution, massacre and liquidation were used. All three victims were shot with two separate handguns, a pistol and a revolver, which were reloaded, and Kristian and Anne were shot with more shots than necessary, in police jargon an overkill. Details of the whereabouts and personalities of the defendants were also abundant due to press leakages, the openness of the family members, and indeed the publicity strategies of the defendants themselves.

For this reason, the media coverage was filled with characterisations of the defendants. Furthermore, the credibility of the individual defendants was on trial because technical evidence was scarce. It is also important to take into consideration some characteristics of the chosen material. The written news media has commercial interests that create a bias towards sensationalism and towards satisfying rather than challenging what readers want and expect. A characteristic of news media is that they need to present a narrative or story, and this gives journalists an incentive to tease out discernible characters (Morrissey 2003:14). Journalists are by their own ethical standards under an obligation to present news in an objective and sober way. ⁵ Still, as members of society, what they see as ‘true’ is produced by discourses pertaining to gender and class. This influences not simply the way journalists report a case, but also what they see and report as newsworthy, which sources are interviewed, how the people involved are described, what contexts the coverage implies and what themes emerge from the article. Taken together this constitutes a specific interpretation of the case. One way of exploring this is by identifying the ‘framing’, which ‘consists of ways to introduce bias in an article in the sense that the mere facts are imbued with meaning and evaluation’ (Bosman and d’Haenens 2008: 738). An operationalisation of this could be to explore how in news reporting ‘[depictors] locate the significant actors in a moral universe that is readily understood by an audience’ (Meloy and Miller 2009: 31). In analysing the material, I have searched for evaluative narratives and characteristics, reading them as more than the choice of individual journalists or newspapers.

Morrissey (2003) writes about the relationship between media representations and what goes on in court and argues that the characteristics of media readily reify norms of femininity and that these may influence judgments made in court about guilt, responsibility and authority. I am not going to speculate on whether or not the media coverage of the Orderud case, investigation and court proceedings had consequences for how the defendants and the case were treated in court, other than to point out how certain representations are present in both the media and court material. In any case, how female and male defendants are represented in the media is something that not only affects the people involved but is also included in society’s repertoire of cultural representations of gender and class. The portrayals of crime, offenders and victims serve as mirrors to non-crime, non-offenders and non-victims.

Women who kill

Much criminological literature on crime and media deals with how news reporting of crime plays a part in constructing something as a social problem in need of the intervention of politicians through the establishment of ‘signal cases’ (see e.g. Cottle 2005; Innes 2004; Seal 2009). I would argue that the Orderud case does not bear the traits of a ‘signal crime’ in this sense. Rather the case can be seen as a ‘mega case’ (Peelo 2006) in the sense that it was horrific to readers because something which was mundane – Norwegian country life, home and family relations – was brutally interrupted by a crime most usually associated with milieus and people from ‘outside’ (see also, Ellis et al., 2012). The Orderud case was presented as an exceptional case with few references to societal problems or developments, and stands out as a case about four individuals who for different reasons were involved in a triple homicide. However, the news coverage of the case can be analysed as an expression of public concern over law-and-order and as part of a discourse that functions in disciplining and normalising ways (Ericson et al. 1991). Accounts of homicide in news media do more than establish that homicide is wrong. They also play a part in setting the boundary between what is considered normal and what is not in a wider sense. As mentioned above, the fact that two of the defendants were women received much attention, and so did the class difference between the women and the men and the social mobility of one of the women. Social mobility is seen as positive in Norwegian society and many government schemes are set up to achieve it. Achieving class mobility purposely through marriage is not in line with ideals of modern marriage in Norway which is associated with romantic love between two equal partners (Mühleisen et al. 2012). Even though the socially mobile individual is construed as a hero within neoliberal logic, taking responsibility for his or her own development and position (e.g. in Beck 1992: 93), there is something suspicious about this mobility; people moving from and between positions and identities risk been seen as inauthentic (Lawler 2008).

Cases where women kill are extremely rare in Norway, as they are in most other places. The fact that men are overrepresented as perpetrators in homicide and other serious crimes has consequences not only in terms of visibility in media coverage of crime, but also in theory development on crime. Feminist criminology grew out of concerns over how women were missing from general theories of crime, thus establishing men as the norm (Schram and Koons-Witt 2004). This was problematised, applying gender perspectives to the study of crime and its causes and consequences. Today, bringing in gender includes more than women’s crime and victimhood in theorisation. Rather it involves a focus on gendered meanings and implications of crime and victimhood and policies thereof and on how gender intersects with other inequality regimes or identity categories whereby perceptions about gender-appropriate behaviours and roles are intersected by norms and practices related to class, ethnicity, ‘race’ and sexuality (see e.g. Daly and Maher 1998; Rice 1990).

Even though women who kill are scarce in numbers, such cases are often highly visible in media. As female perpetrators of serious crimes are the exception to the rule, they are not only sensational, but fascinating (Daly and Maher 1998). Several scholars have written about what sets media coverage of women’s serious crimes apart from that of men (see e.g. Birch 1994). Much of the literature deals with the murder of family members, especially husbands or partners and children, and with how representations of such murders position the woman as mad, evil and/or a victim herself (Allen 1998; Meloy and Miller 2009). Jewkes (2009: 123) argues that this is due to the way ‘the media tap into, and magnify, deep-seated public fears about deviant women’. Jewkes (2009) shows how female perpetrators are described through the use of some standard narratives on sexuality and sexual deviance and makes relevant the woman’s physical attractiveness or the lack thereof. Through this, they are turned into stereotypes, such as the femme fatale who transgresses ideals about female sexuality and passivity, the bad wife who transgresses codes of female domesticity, and the bad mother in breach of gendered norms on women being maternal and nurturing, as well as creating associations with mythical monsters and madness. Humphries (2009a: 19) identifies similar processes whereby media coverage of crimes involving women, either as victim or perpetrator, draw on readily available dichotomies. At the core of these interpretations is the way a division is made between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ women. These interpretations are not based on gender alone, but are created in the intersection of gender, ‘race’, ethnicity, sexuality and class, and are made possible by the way scholarly knowledge on crime and victimhood is gendered. Female perpetrators of serious crime draw attention for their gender alone (Humphries 2009b), and even more so if they fit into one of the stereotypes created through the narratives outlined above (Jewkes 2009).

Women who commit serious crimes are often framed as dominated by men in their surroundings (Morrissey 2003; Sjoberg and Gentry 2007). When female killers are portrayed as exceptional, it is necessary, as Morrissey (2003) does, to ask why we are so reluctant to believe that women can mean to kill. It has even been argued that feminist scholars have stayed away from the issue of women’s violence for political reasons, as victimisation of women serves a better purpose within feminist activism (see e.g. Shaw 1995).

Gender is not the only symbolically important difference that is relevant to how the defendants in the Orderud case were represented. As I will detail below, the class positions of the defendants were referred to both in the media and in court, and so was the social mobility of Veronica Orderud. By rehashing the claim that she had married the much older property owner Per Orderud for gain and security, it was implied that she might also be capable of murder to secure that investment.

While representations of gender and crime are becoming a central part of criminological research, there is no similar focus on the way that class and class mobility play into representations of serious crime and its perpetrators and victims. Even though many contributions in criminology and sociology, in reality, show how working-class individuals are vilified and pathologised, their crimes represented as irrational and dangerous, and how discernible stereotypes appear in this (see e.g. Nayak 2006; Tunnell 2004; Webster 2008), such representations are not themselves the object of a strand of scholarship.

The Orderud case as it unravelled

To return to the case itself, I will in the following describe the chain of events as they were represented in the media coverage of the investigation and court proceedings and in the court documents, making explicit where explanations diverge between the defendants. After the police had arrested the four in June 1999, information about the defendants was all over the Norwegian media. The first piece of information that was leaked about Kristin Kirkemo was that she in the past been a nude model. The front page of a major newspaper featured one of these pictures, with her eyes blacked out. Kristin and her ex-boyfriend, Lars Grønnerød, were described as known figures in Oslo’s criminal underworld. When the identity of the two last defendants, Per and Veronica Orderud, became known, details of a conflict between Per and his father over the ownership of Orderud Farm became the focus. As I have already mentioned, the Orderud couple became involved in the investigation as Lars, confronted with the fact that technical evidence tied him to the homicide, said that he had sold guns to Per. Both Kristin and Lars admitted to being involved in acquiring the guns. Lars argued that he believed that Per and Veronica wanted them for self-defence as Per’s sister had been the target of a possible terrorist attack. Kristin stated that after the handing over of the guns she had understood that they were part of a plan to kill Per’s family. Kristin detailed that Per and Veronica were given instructions on how to use the guns on the night they were handed over by Lars, and that they asked for advice on how to commit a murder without being found out. Kristin said she was shocked when she heard that the three planned the murder. Lars, Per and Veronica denied that any weapons training and planning session had taken place, and Per and Veronica denied any knowledge of the guns. The police found the statements by Kristin and Lars to be credible, especially since for a limited period there had been extensive telephone contact between Lars and Per. Lars had said under interrogation that Per had contacted him to request a more powerful gun. After repeated requests from Per, a switch was made whereby a new gun was delivered to Per in return for one of the guns handed over previously. This new gun was proven to be one of the guns used in the homicide.

The police also found this version credible because they had identified a plausible motive for an involvement in the homicide on Per’s part. A conflict over who owned Orderud Farm was so serious that Per and his parents had not been on speaking terms for several years leading up to the murder, even though they continued to live only 300 metres apart. The house in which Kristian and Marie Orderud lived was a traditional building that is part of many Norwegian farms and used to house retired farmers after someone else, often the eldest son, has taken over the daily management of the farm. Per and Veronica lived in the main farmhouse. Per had spent his whole adult life working at the farm on the assumption that his father would eventually transfer the farm to him. The legal conflict between father and son had begun in 1997 when Per subpoenaed his father, declaring his ownership of Orderud Farm based on a purchase contract from 1995, in which the farm had been transferred to Per for a low price. The father argued that he had not signed such a contract or had signed it while very ill, and said that he objected to it as Per’s sister, Anne, was eligible for a share of the farm. Per won the civil case in 1997 in the District Court under doubt, but an appeal against the judgment in the case was scheduled to start later in the spring of 1999. Per later admitted that his father’s signature to the contract had been forged, but would not say by whom. It was suspected that this conflict over the ownership of the farm and fears about disclosure of the forged signature were so strong as to constitute a motive for Per to kill three members of his own family to resolve it.

Veronica’s motive was thought to be the same as Per’s: to keep the farm. She came to Orderud as an intern while at veterinary school, and a few weeks later she ended a relationship she was in and instead became involved with Per. They married secretly shortly afterwards. The relationship between Veronica and her father-in-law was strained, and a member of Per’s family told the police and media that one possible reason was because he saw her as a fortune hunter.

It was not only family relations within the Orderud family that became relevant to the investigation, but also the relationship between the two sisters, Kristin and Veronica. They were from a working-class family in Oslo. Though born only 14 months apart, they had different fathers. Together with their mother and two other siblings they lived together with the extended family throughout childhood. In the mid-1990s Kristin gave birth to a son, whom she cared for alone. She had been involved in criminal milieus and for some periods, at least, had been a heavy drug user. This led the extended family to become involved in bringing up her son. At the time of the Orderud homicide, her son lived with her father and his girlfriend. The son also had a close relationship with Per and Veronica, who did not have children of their own. This relationship was important to the case, as a will was found at Orderud Farm wherein the boy was designated the sole heir of Per and Veronica and there was speculation whether the will (which turned out not to be valid) was something Kristin received in return for her involvement in the plot.

Technical evidence and information from witnesses could not link any of the four to the crime scene itself, but the court found that the evidence and presumed motives were strong enough to charge them all. All four were charged in January 2001 with premeditated homicide or aiding and abetting such homicide. Lars was the person most directly implicated in the case by technical evidence, and the theory was that he became involved in order to hold onto Kristin, the much younger beauty whom he professed to being head over heels in love with. Kristin’s implication in the case was by her own statement that she had handed over two guns and that she had understood that they were part of a plan to commit homicide. She argued that her only crime was in not reporting this to the police. Per was implicated by his motive, Kristin’s testimony and his extensive contact with Lars, and Veronica by the testimony of her sister and by sharing her husband’s motive. Lars had a solid alibi for the night of the murder, while Kristin’s alibi was doubtful. The Orderud couple had no alibi. They claimed to have spent the evening and night in question in their house next to where the murders had taken place.

By the time the case reached the District Court in April 2001, most of the details, witness statements and arguments had already appeared in the media. All the defendants pleaded not guilty. The public prosecutor asked for 21 years’ imprisonment for all four, the maximum sentence in Norway. When the verdict of the District Court was read out in June, Kristin was sentenced to21 years’ imprisonment. The court believed Kristin to have been involved in the planning of the murder based on a series of witness statements that she had approached people in her network to locate guns and to search for contract killers. Supposedly, Kristin had offered sex and marriage to several men in return for committing the murders with her (Hagen and Hjukse 2001: 8). Witnesses also testified that she had talked about having planting a bomb in Anne Orderud Paust’s car in 1998, an act for which she was also convicted. Her credibility was low throughout the trial and her character and drug use were recurring issues.

Lars, on the other hand, was believed to only have supplied the others with guns, without any knowledge of their intended use. The court concluded that he probably would not have assisted had he known, and also that his participation in supplying the guns was due to his relationship with and love for Kristin, and the fact that he was dominated by her. Subsequently he received a sentence of just two years and six months for negligent homicide. He was described as cooperative in the judgment, and the media reported on how well-spoken and convincing he was.

Per and Veronica were both sentenced to 21 years’ imprisonment, and Per was also deprived of the right to inherit from his parents and sister. The written verdict treats them both as responsible for the murders, but at the same time it particularly mentions: ‘Veronica had obviously hooked up with Per in the belief that he owned the farm, and with a prospect of a secure life, also financially.’ The media had for a long time presented Veronica as the driving force, and throughout the trial she was portrayed as ambitious, controlling and manipulative. Witnesses were brought in to shed light on why Veronica had married Per in the first place, to substantiate the claim that the prospect of losing the farm was so terrifying to her that she would be willing to kill to stop this happening. Particularly important was the testimony of her former boyfriend, a janitor she had broken up with to be with Per. He claimed to have been given the impression that he was not good enough for her, and that, together with the timing of the break-up, was taken as an indicator of her ambition to achieve social mobility through Per. The public prosecutor in the District Court went so far as to ask: ‘Would Per have been interesting to Veronica without farm and fortune? I would not be optimistic on his behalf’ (Johansen et al. 2001: 9).

While Per and Veronica had argued that they had no motive as Per had won the case against his father in the District Court, the court concluded that the forgery would have been disclosed when the case reached the Court of Appeal. The conflict and the fear were thought to be so strong that it had made the conventional, rational and careful couple able to kill.

Kristin, Per and Veronica appealed their verdicts, while the Attorney General appealed the verdict against Lars. The appeal case started in January 2002. The court proceedings were televised to a large crowd of journalists gathered in a media centre. All defendants pleaded not guilty. The relationship between the four defendants was made relevant by the prosecutors, but not by the defence attorneys in the District Court. In the Court of Appeal, all but Veronica changed their strategy. Per’s attorney claimed that Per was dominated by Veronica, Lars’ attorney claimed that Lars was dominated by Kristin, and Kristin’s attorney claimed that Kristin was dominated by Per and Veronica together, and Veronica especially.

During the investigation and the first court case, the media and its interviewees had implied that Per and Veronica were not equally responsible for the homicide as Per was seen as dominated by Veronica. Per had previously spoken out against such accusations (Øystå and Lynau 2001: 29): ‘I want to correct the false image that is created in the media of Veronica and me. That she is manipulative, cold and ruthless and that I am a submissive man that she wraps around her finger.’ The media had commented upon how Per’s and Veronica’s lawyers cooperated in the District Court and how the case could develop in a very different way if that cooperation ended (e.g. Versto 2001a). Before the appeal case came up, the media therefore speculated on whether Per’s lawyers would change their strategy to redistribute guilt between Per and Veronica. In summing up how this could be achieved, one reporter noted (Skartveit, 2002: 17): ‘In that case, they can present Per as a man shy of conflict who has subjected himself to the will of a headstrong wife. Everyone can see that Per is shy of conflicts and that Veronica is headstrong.’ When the appeal case was heard, Per’s lawyers did indeed try to shift the blame, and in the opening statement they suggested:

Per has under the presentation of evidence wanted to be considerate towards his wife. His background and upbringing at home with his parents until he was 36 years old, and the entry of Veronica [into his life], has played a role in this. The conflict with the father developed after she came to Orderud Farm and entered a difficult, and after a while, problematic, relationship with her parents-in-law. And, as the conflict over the farm developed, the husband appeared weak, hesitant and indecisive, while she was determined with a wish to be in control and to have financial security. The Court of Appeal have to relate to this role division when determining an appropriate and fair sentence for Per.

Per was not happy about this shift in strategy and tried to dismiss his lawyers. He was not able to as defence lawyers are publicly appointed, not only to protect the interests of the defendant, but also the public’s right to the truth. On why Per did not favour this strategy, the newspaper Aftenposten concluded (Andenæs 2002: 3): ‘Per chose the marriage and the hope of a future with Veronica over what his lawyers regard as his best defence. No one can suspect him of being an opportunist.’ Lars’ defence lawyer similarly argued that ‘Lars was dependent on Kristin and was because of that involved in the case. He was a tool without a will of his own.’

In the media and in statements by the defence lawyers in court, the two women were presented as the main culprits through their domination of their men. And Veronica was in addition claimed to have dominated her sister. Kristin’s defence lawyer said in his opening statement: ‘Kristin was tricked and manipulated by her close family. She was vulnerable and an easy target for the couple [Per and Veronica]. They have used her son whom she loved more than anything. The farm became a refuge where she could be with him. The couple exploited this and used her as a tool.’

The Court of Appeal reached its verdict in March 2002. While Lars had received a lenient sentence in the District Court, this was set aside by the Court of Appeal, which instead sentenced him to 18 years’ imprisonment. He was no longer believed not to have understood what the guns were for and his contacts and skills were deemed necessary for the crime. Kristin was now believed to be the most honest of the four and she was rewarded for her cooperation. She was sentenced to 16 years as the credibility of several of the witnesses who had spoken out against her was weakened. She was also acquitted of the 1998 attack on Anne. Per and Veronica were sentenced to 21 years’ imprisonment, and Per lost the right to inherit from his parents and sister. The court did not buy in to the description of Per as less responsible than Veronica as it concluded that it ‘could not assume that Veronica had been the driving force … that had made him participate in something he did not really want to participate in’.

Kristin appealed the verdict to the Supreme Court on grounds of the application of the law. She instead wanted to plead guilty to negligent homicide, but the Interlocutory Appeals Committee of the Supreme Court rejected her appeal.

See you in court, sister!

The relationship between Kristin and Veronica took centre stage throughout the investigation and trials. The media seemed fascinated both by the fact that they were sisters and that they were so different. Reporters often referred to this conflict and difference with headlines such as ‘Sisters at war’ (Kringstad and Johansen 2002: 16). The contrast between the two sisters was established immediately after their arrest (Tangnes et al. 1999: 8): ‘While her half-sister Kristin (26) is blond and outgoing, Veronica is a very different type. Quiet and homely. Dark and small. While her sister liked to show off and dreamt of a career as a model, Veronica found the prince of her dreams at Orderud farm.’ Terms such as ‘dignified’, ‘conservative’ and ‘eloquent’ were used when describing Veronica, while Kristin was described as ‘boundary-less, dishonest and deceitful’ in the written deliberation from the District Court.

As technical evidence did not tie any of the women to the case, the litigation and their own strategies in the media were all about establishing credibility and destroying the credibility of the other. When the case reached the Court of Appeal, this conflict escalated further, especially as Kristin’s lawyer chose to downplay the role of Per. He went so far as to argue that Veronica had done the deed itself alone. At the start of proceedings in the Court of Appeal, he stated: ‘I will prove that the footprints in the house show that there was only one killer. The prints are from a woman, and that woman is Veronica.’ ⁶ This strategy coincided with the shift in the strategy of Per’s lawyers described above, and the second trial was all about convincing the court that Veronica was a lot less innocent than she appeared. The prosecutor, on the other hand, continued to argue that Per and Veronica were equally responsible.

The challenge for Kristin was to undermine the credibility of a sister who appeared to be a model citizen. The way they were falsely posed as opposites was part of a pattern going all the way back to their childhood, Kristin argued (Tumyr et al. 1999: 11). Their mother took the side of Veronica long before the case reached the court, arguing that Kristin had always been prone to lying. She was sure Kristin had implicated Veronica in a crime she had not committed as revenge because she had reported Kristin to the child welfare services. Establishing herself as someone with moral authority was difficult under such circumstances. In her later autobiography Kristin writes on the way they were presented as opposites by Veronica’s defence lawyer:

As the court proceedings progresses, he [Veronica’s defense lawyer] will present a picture of the decent and conscientious, cultured Veronica who married a respected farmer. Together they have run a model farm. In stark contrast to this, I trample into the idyllic farm life, the blond sister, the drug addict, nude model with the criminal friends. Who has most credibility; the blond or the brunette, lawyer Sulland will ask in court, as in his opinion, the answer is a given. (Haukeland, 2002: 9)

In contrast to what she perceived to be the public’s opinion of her sister, Kristin described Veronica as manipulative and cold. She also positions herself as authentic through describing Veronica as inauthentic (Haukeland 2002: 16): ‘[Veronica] gives the impression of a warm person who cares for her fellow human beings. She talks about how she as my big sister took care of me when I struggled with drug problems. Bullshit.’ While Veronica’s self-control and life story were a contrast to Kristin’s, Kristin’s lawyer argued that the same characteristics indicate that she was capable of murder (NTB 2001): ‘A psychiatric expert witness might have given us the answer to the enigma Veronica Orderud. Her diary displays cynicism, hate and grievances. And who has shown extreme impulse control and an ability to execute power and control over other persons in this case?’

Dichotomies such as control/lack of control, dark/blonde, cold/warm were definitely brought into play in the media coverage and court strategies, posing the two sisters as opposites in every way. Morrissey (2003) points to how a polarisation between women takes place in the media response to female murderers; they are either totally innocent or totally guilty, in contrast to men’s deviant acts that are rather placed along a continuum. The defence lawyers were perhaps playing on such a polarisation in presenting both Veronica and Kristin as innocent.

Insignificant men: The construction of gender and class in the newsroom

So far, the question of how the media and lawyers represented Kristin and Veronica has received most attention. What about their two co-defendants, Lars and Per? Gendered assumptions could have placed the two women as secondary to the crime, understanding them as only complying with the commands of their male partners. As described earlier, much analysis of media on female perpetrators of serious crime places them as victims of men (Morrissey 2003: 17). This was not attempted in the Orderud case. Instead, the women were represented as the driving force. In addition, in their own testimonies the two women contributed to this by treating each other as their main opponent. As the men in the case were quite a lot older and came from different class backgrounds than the women, it might well have been the other way around. Lars was 15 years older than Kristin, came from a rich family and was well-off for a small-time criminal with a drug habit. He was described as suave and resourceful and, more than any of the other defendants, he knew his way around a courtroom (see e.g. Versto 2001b: 11). Per was not in a similar way represented as charming and resourceful, but the fact that he was 18 years older than Veronica, had a law degree and at least had a right to half of a large farm, placed him in a much more privileged position than his wife. However, the two men were reduced to mere helpers or even manipulated victims of the two women who in different ways were portrayed as using their femininity to get their way: the men could not control but rather had to succumb to Kristin’s greed and Veronica’s ambitions. There were some similarities in how the women were presented as dominating; in this they appear as two versions of the femme fatale. Veronica was described as dominating Per, as a prolongation of the domination he had been subjected to by his father. In her autobiography, Kristin speaks of the relationship between Per and Veronica (Haukeland 2002: 154): ‘It pained me to see Per. I only think about what that bitch has tricked him into doing!’ Like Veronica, Kristin was described as a femme fatale who made men do what she wanted. Her mother, when they were all in custody, described Lars as dominated by Kristin (Søreide et al. 1999: 8): ‘Kristin wrapped Lars around her little finger. He would do anything she asked him to.’ Lars described her as uncontrollable, sexual and fun, and as someone out of his league. Lars said, of why he was so swayed by her (Gander et al. 1999: 14), ‘Kristin is the most exciting and crazy woman I have ever met.’

In the media, class was either mentioned explicitly or implied in how the defendants were described. This was particularly evident in the case of Lars who was several times referred to as upper or middle class. The way he behaved with confidence in court was explained by some as an effect of his privileged background, while others attached it to the fact that, as a repeat offender, he was quite experienced in being on trial. Kristin claimed that class is relevant to how the court took the side of Lars in the District Court (Haukeland 2002: 208): ‘The whole sentence reeks of the judges’ sympathies with the rich man’s son and posh boy and their equally strong antipathies towards me, the drug addict mother and nude model.’ Veronica and Kristin’s mother commented upon what she saw as the unfairness of the District Court’s sentence (Hagen 2001: 10): ‘If Kristin is guilty, so is Lars and even more so. But maybe he is from a better family than ours?’

In contrast to this, Kristin and Veronica’s background was described as working-class, but not only that, it was also described as marked more by poverty than ordinary Norwegian working-class lives. Veronica described a home with fighting, alcohol, violence and lack of parenting where she had to take responsibility for her three younger siblings (NTB 2002). She admitted that her background had made her controlled and security-seeking. About why she fell in love with Per, she stated (Kringstad and Johansen 2002: 16): ‘He was handsome, and kind and calm and considerate. He gave me security. That was what I needed in my life.’ Veronica’s ambition and control were represented as dangerous, argued her defence lawyer in his closing statement (Tangnes et al. 2002: 10). Those characteristics can be seen as a result of a childhood with few resources and boundaries, and the understanding of her as dangerous is similar to how in fictional accounts socially mobile working-class individuals are represented as willing to do anything to reach their goal, such as Ripley in The Talented Mr. Ripley or Gatsby in The Great Gatsby.

Kristin appeared as someone who had responded to such surroundings in a very different and perhaps also less disturbing way. Kristin was represented as without boundaries and morals. In this scenario, she was the unrespectable working-class girl with no pretentions of being anything else. Veronica, on the other hand, wanted social mobility, and was accused by Kristin of not respecting what she was and where she came from. Believing she was better than her working-class origins was what drove her to the crime.

Of particular interest to an analysis of representations of gender and class in the Orderud case is how the men’s position in terms of age, gender and class seem to be treated as of little importance while the power the women were believed to hold over the men by way of domination and sexuality takes centre stage. Remembering Jewkes’ (2009) statement above, we may suspect that Kristin and Veronica got attention, not because they represented ‘otherness’, but rather just because they were women. The men implicated in the case did not meet any criteria of ‘otherness’, and being a male offender is in itself not enough to attract attention. In addition, the classed experiences of the women made them easily vilified in two different versions of the femme fatale stereotype: the blonde bombshell Kristin who was nothing like the women Lars had previously known, and the dark domineering Veronica who gave Per the love he craved as a middle-aged bachelor still living with his parents. The femme fatale is an available character in a stock story wherein the unsuspecting man is lured into trouble by the sexy and manipulative woman. The power of this stereotype might, once it had been brought into play, have made it difficult for the women to present themselves as victims of the men. But the women each describe themselves as a victim in one sense: as victims of a witch hunt by the media and by the strategies of the lawyers representing Lars and Per.

Discussion

Gender and class are central to the way the two conflicts described above were formulated, first in the media and then in court. The first conflict was the one between the sisters, and central to the media coverage and the defence was the very different ways the sisters performed and made use of their femininity and sexuality. The blonde extrovert Kristin was described as someone with a strong sexual power over men, while the more introvert Veronica offered Per love and companionship in return for security. Why they had become so different was explained by how they had related to their working-class background differently, but both sets of behaviours were explained by class. While Kristin lived on in a lower working-class milieu, Veronica strove for something ‘better’. Veronica’s social mobility was rendered suspect, as it somehow tarnished what, under other circumstances, could pass as respectable femininity, being a monogamous farmer’s wife standing by her man. Kristin was by no means represented as a respectable woman, but still she came across as authentic and truthful as a working-class individual.

The other conflict was that between the men and their partners. In this the focus was on how the women related to the men. Under other circumstances, being a property-owning older man of upper or middle-class origin would position the man as more powerful in his relationships. In this case, the way the women used sex and love was thought to make them more powerful than their men. Their working-class background was essential to the attraction but also to the content of their demands. The men were powerless against the women’s greed and ambition that sprang from their working-class background, but they were also powerless due to the attraction that the women’s difference from what they were used to entailed; they were a breath of fresh air. Class position is not only something that points to material resources and power, but also relations of meaning that together with sexuality and gender can change the power balance in surprising ways. This points to how intersectionality is something else than adding up systems of inequality. The consequences of how gender works is co-constructed by class; being working-class does not necessarily render people powerless and without recognition in all situations. As class intersects with gender, class positions and how people live with them are given new meanings. In the same vein, while women as a group in many instances are dominated by and lose out to men, femininity can, through the way it intersects with class, render individual women powerful.

Concluding remarks

The Orderud case is now a part of the national memory as an exceptional murder case and a media spectacle. The farm and the four people sentenced as accomplices to the murder of Kristian and Marie Orderud and their daughter Anne Orderud Paust still attract attention many years after the crime and the trials. Together with the terrorist attack of 22 July 2011 in Oslo and at Utøya island, the Orderud case has been claimed to have shifted the boundaries of what can and cannot be written in Norwegian crime fiction (Bergesen 2012: 5). The Orderud farm continues to be presented as a site of mystery and horror in feature pieces asking how its new tenants can stand living in a place with such a ‘bloody past’ (Hagesæther 2011: 58–65) and in a ‘house of evil’ (Nilsen and Bondø 2001: 26). The attention given to the crime and the crime scene is still nothing compared to the public’s continuing fascination with Kristin and Veronica. The media have covered their life in prison and how it affects their personal lives. Both women have been able to present their stories and claims to truth through authoritative media channels. Veronica has been interviewed on several occasions on prime time talk shows on NRK, the public service television station. Kristin had throughout the years given many interviews to tabloid magazines with large readerships, and Norway’s largest gossip magazine bought the rights to her wedding.

Kristin was finally released from prison in 2011, with a job as a toolmaker waiting for her. She received good credentials from the prison, and she argues that what happened actually saved her. Veronica is still in prison. She took a Bachelor’s degree in theology during her early years in prison and has been a private guest of the Bishop of Oslo while on leave. She is still married to Per but is hesitant as to whether she will live with Per upon her release (Ertsås 2011: 22): ‘We have grown apart a bit. I still care about Per, but I am not in love.’

How Lars and Per have fared, we know less about. It is still Kristin and Veronica who fascinate and who take centre stage. It is also they who have actively engaged with the media and through that continued to try to sway the Norwegian public to accept their individual truths.

The visibility and importance of the case is not only to do with characteristics of the case itself. It also has to do with the role the media played. First, the media made a spectacle of the case by the attention it gave it and the level of detail the readers were presented with. During the trial the media reported daily on what had been said, who had worn what and who had looked at whom. The verdict was televised live to the public on the two largest television channels. All media reported on the reactions of the defendants when the verdicts were read out, commenting on displays of emotions, or lack thereof. Thomas Mathiesen (2001: 18), Professor in Sociology of Law at the University of Oslo, has pointed to how the media focused on the suspense and the characters in the case as if it were a crime novel. Second, the media made its mark on the case by how it played the role of investigator; launching and discussing various theories of what had happened. The media actively promoted some theories over others, and advocated changes in the defence and prosecution strategies. Two conflicts were portrayed early on in the media: one between the sisters and one between the men and their partners. These conflicts were later taken up in the strategies applied by the defence lawyers. Through this, the media set the interpretive framework for understanding the crime by presenting clear-cut characters and storylines early on. As one of the supporters of Per and Veronica said to VG (Milli et al. 2001: 3): ‘It is as if VG has written the verdict.’

Everything might have played out very differently had it not been the case that there were no next of kin to the three victims for the media to relate to and be considerate of. They could more freely than in other cases of homicide make entertainment of the case, and they could make Kristin and Veronica into national celebrities without the normal concern for the close family of the deceased. It is impossible to know whether this served as a vehicle for the class and gendered representations of the defendants, as posing women as responsible for homicide would have been even more shocking had there been next of kin, and they would in that case appear more like monsters than femme fatales.