Norway police drop case against a tycoon suspected in connection with his wife's disappearance

COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Norwegian authorities said Friday they have dropped the case against a real estate tycoon who had been suspected of murder or complicity to murder in connection with his wife’s disappearance almost six years ago.

Police initially said Anne-Elizabeth Falkevik Hagen, 68, had been abducted from her home on Oct. 31, 2018. But in April 2020 her husband Tom Hagen, a media-shy real estate investor and one of Norway's wealthiest men, was arrested on his way to work with police saying suspicions against him “have gradually been strengthened.”

The case had gripped the small, wealthy Scandinavian country of 5.3 million people, where homicide rates are among the lowest in Europe.

Tom Hagen was released in May 2020 when a court said there wasn't enough evidence to detain him. Hagen has repeatedly claimed his innocence.

Police had continued considering Hagen a suspect since but on Friday they confirmed that the case against him was officially dropped.

“There is no evidence that Tom Hagen was involved in his wife’s disappearance,” police spokeswoman Vibeke Schøyen told a news conference that was broadcast on Norwegian media. The Norwegian Prosecution Authority has ruled that “no criminal matter is considered proven” hence the decision by the police to drop the case, Schøyen said.

Police has conducted nearly 700 interviews, gathered more than 26,000 tips, obtained more than over 6,000 hours of video surveillance and carried out extensive technical investigations. The investigation had been “extensive and complex” and it “has been one of the most important projects we have carried out in recent years,” Schøyen said.

“This is a total acquittal of Tom Hagen,” Holten’s lawyer, Svein Holden, said Friday.

The woman that Hagen had married at age 19 disappeared from the couple’s home in Loerenskog, east of Oslo on Halloween 2018, but police did not go public with the case until Jan. 9, 2019, after which hundreds of tips poured in.

Police said at the time that a ransom for her release was demanded, but officials declined to give the amount. Norwegian newspaper VG reported that the ransom was for 9 million euros ($9.8 million) to be paid in cryptocurrency.

Police eventually released security videos of men walking back and forth outside Hagen’s workplace after his wife's disappearance. Officers and police dogs were also seen scouring the grounds around the couple’s home, and divers went into a nearby pond as police led a large investigation at home and abroad.

In June 2019, police changed their main hypothesis because of the absence of any signs that the missing woman was still alive or of any recent contacts with the alleged kidnappers. They believe Falkevik Hagen, who has never been found, had been killed and said they “cannot exclude a staged kidnapping to hide it.”

Tom Hagen, the second-oldest in a farming family of 12 children, struck it rich in the real estate business he started in 1978.

Police stressed that case has not been closed and police said that there were three suspects. None were identified.