The Victims

Two Norwegian women attacked by a midnight robber

Karen Christensen had come from her native Norway scarcely two years earlier. A dour and homesick woman of 35, she found work as a maid at the large tourist hotel at Appleddore Island.  Tragically, Karen was fired not long before the murders and was sleeping in the kitchen on Smuttynose Island when a robber entered the house. Her sister-in-law Anethe Christensen, 25,  was sleeping in the next room. Anethe was killed with an ax after she jumped out her bedroom window to escape. Karen was later found cut and strangled on the other side of the house. The bodies of both victims lay for days on the isolated island before they were ferried to Portsmouth, New Hampshire and later buried in South Cemetery. (Photo courtesy Portsmouth Athenaeum)