On October 15, 1994, five-year-old Silje Marie Redergård was found dead in a sledding slope at Rosten in Tiller, a suburb south of Trondheim. She was partially naked and had extensive injuries. The day after, police identified three of her playmates, boys aged four, five and six, as responsible for her death.
The boys were below the age of criminal responsibility, which is fifteen in Norway, so they could not be prosecuted. But the consequences for them were immediate and severe. The five-year-old and six-year-old were removed from their families and placed in foster homes. In a small, tight-knit neighbourhood, everyone knew who they were. They grew up branded as child killers.
From the very start, the boys had told police that older teenage boys had attacked Silje. Separate witnesses had reported the same thing. But police never followed up on this. Instead, officers interrogated the small children using leading questions and psychological pressure until their stories changed. Experts who later reviewed the interrogation records concluded that the methods used were illegal and that the boys' confessions were unreliable.
For 28 years, the case was considered closed. Then, in November 2021, NRK's investigative documentary series Brennpunkt aired "Drapet i akebakken" (The Murder in the Sledding Slope). Journalists went through the original police documents with forensic experts and found that there was no technical evidence connecting the boys to Silje's death. The investigation had relied entirely on the coerced statements of small children.
The case was reopened. In February 2023, the prosecutor in Trøndelag formally closed it and declared all three boys innocent. By then, they were men in their thirties who had spent their entire adult lives carrying the stigma. Two of them, Trond Petter Gulltveig and Kenneth Hagen Brattetaule, went public with their names. In April 2026, they reached a settlement with the state and each received compensation of around 1.1 million kroner.
The case drew comparisons to the James Bulger murder in England in 1993, where two ten-year-old boys killed a toddler. The key difference is that in the Norwegian case, the children were innocent all along. What happened to Silje Marie Redergård remains unsolved.
The boys were below the age of criminal responsibility, which is fifteen in Norway, so they could not be prosecuted. But the consequences for them were immediate and severe. The five-year-old and six-year-old were removed from their families and placed in foster homes. In a small, tight-knit neighbourhood, everyone knew who they were. They grew up branded as child killers.
From the very start, the boys had told police that older teenage boys had attacked Silje. Separate witnesses had reported the same thing. But police never followed up on this. Instead, officers interrogated the small children using leading questions and psychological pressure until their stories changed. Experts who later reviewed the interrogation records concluded that the methods used were illegal and that the boys' confessions were unreliable.
For 28 years, the case was considered closed. Then, in November 2021, NRK's investigative documentary series Brennpunkt aired "Drapet i akebakken" (The Murder in the Sledding Slope). Journalists went through the original police documents with forensic experts and found that there was no technical evidence connecting the boys to Silje's death. The investigation had relied entirely on the coerced statements of small children.
The case was reopened. In February 2023, the prosecutor in Trøndelag formally closed it and declared all three boys innocent. By then, they were men in their thirties who had spent their entire adult lives carrying the stigma. Two of them, Trond Petter Gulltveig and Kenneth Hagen Brattetaule, went public with their names. In April 2026, they reached a settlement with the state and each received compensation of around 1.1 million kroner.
The case drew comparisons to the James Bulger murder in England in 1993, where two ten-year-old boys killed a toddler. The key difference is that in the Norwegian case, the children were innocent all along. What happened to Silje Marie Redergård remains unsolved.
