Oslo, where a body lay undiscovered in a flat for 9 years, police believe
(Picture: Pixabay)Police in Norway are investigating how man’s body could have lay undiscovered in his Oslo flat for nine years.
The man had been in his 60s when he died and no-one reported him missing.
Officers found the body in December last year in an apartment block in the Norwegian capital.
The body was found when a caretaker needed to enter the apartment for maintenance work, according to the country’s broadcaster NRK.
Police say milk cartons and letters in the home suggested that the man had died in April 2011.
Oslo police inspector Grete Lien Metlid told NRK: “We have thought a lot about it, my colleagues and people who have worked with this for many years.
“This is a special case, and it makes us ask questions about how it could happen...based on the picture we have, it is obviously a person who has chosen to have little contact with others.”
An postmortem showed the man, who police say had been married a number of times and had children, had died from natural causes. A neighbour said: “He was not interested in talking to anyone.”
The Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration (NAV) stopped sending his pension in 2018 when they could not contact him, police said.
But because his expenses were being paid from automatic direct debits suspicions were not raised.
“All his expenses were paid automatically from his bank account, everything was automatic,” said Prof Arne Krokan at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
“That’s something that would not have happened in the past. So if something strange happens, it’s possible nobody will notice.”
