Murder of Knut Grøte

Background

Knut Grøte was a farmer from Lærdal Municipality who arrived in Christiania (now Oslo), the capital of Norway, in late July 1863. He brought several barrels of salmon, which he sold at the marketplace.

Murder and investigation

On 10 August 1863, a Prussian man named Friedrich Wilhelm Priess ordered a large quantity of fish from Grøte, pretending to be a sailor and asking that the salmon be brought out to a ship in the harbor. Priess, along with Danish shoemaker Knud Christian Frederik Simonsen from Odense, rented a rowing boat. The two men met Grøte, who followed them to the boat with the salmon, and the three rowed out into the fjord. Near the island of Hovedøya, Grøte was killed — he was shot and stabbed with a knife. The robbery yielded 140 speciedaler. The killers threw the corpse into the sea, attached to a stone with rope.

Grøte was reported missing the day after the killing. One week later, his body was found floating in the fjord. Investigators determined that the rope used to weigh down the body had belonged to the rented boat, which helped identify the perpetrators. By that time, Priess and Simonsen had already left the country, but they were later found in Copenhagen, arrested, and brought back to Christiania.

Conviction and execution

Priess and Simonsen were convicted and condemned to death by the Supreme Court on 10 February 1864. Both men were publicly beheaded at Etterstad on 19 April 1864, in front of a crowd of about 5,000 spectators. These executions were the last two commissions carried out by executioner Samson Isberg.

Priest Johann Henrik Møhne assisted Priess at the scaffold, reading the verse Romans 6:23; as Møhne recited the Lord's Prayer, Isberg beheaded Priess. After the scaffold was cleaned, priest Jørgen Tandberg assisted Simonsen, who spoke to the public about his difficult life; Tandberg then read the verse Genesis 9:6, and as he recited the Lord's Prayer, Isberg beheaded Simonsen.

Historian Simon Christian Hammer, writing on the history of Christiania, characterized the case as possibly the most sensational affair of its kind in the city during the 19th century.