After being discovered by a caretaker nine years after his death, the Norwegian police investigated. The man was found when the caretaker requested that the police open the apartment so he could do maintenance work. The police believe that the man died in 2011, and an autopsy showed that he died of natural causes:
His pension was stopped in 2018 when the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration (NAV) could not get in touch with him but his bills continued to be paid automatically from his bank account.
Oslo police inspector Grete Lien Metlid told NRK she and her colleagues had thought a lot about how somebody could have lain dead for so long without being missed.
“This is a special case and it has made us ask questions about how it could happen,” she told NRK. “Based on the picture we have, he was obviously a person who chose to have little contact with others.”
Arne Krokan, a professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, said the man would unlikely have lain dead undiscovered for nine years if he had died 30 years ago.
The failure of new technological systems to raise red flags when someone did not make physical contact was “the price we’ve paid for digital services”, he said.
Image via The Guardian