Fritz Yngvar Moen (17 December 1941 – 28 March 2005) was a Norwegian man wrongfully convicted of two distinct murders, serving a total of 18 years in prison.
After the convictions were quashed, an official inquiry was instigated to establish what had gone wrong in the authorities' handling of the case, and on 25 June 2007 the commission delivered harsh criticism to the police, the prosecution and the courts in what was immediately termed Norway's worst miscarriage of justice of all time.
In the childhood years when hearing children learn to speak and understand concrete and abstract concepts and nuances, Moen grew up without adequate opportunities and had a stunted development.
The forensic evidence indicated that the perpetrator had pursued the victim across a field, knocked her down, and then tied her with her own clothes — Moen was partly paralysed and physically incapable of these actions.
In December 2005, it became known that Tor Hepsø, a convicted criminal with a long history of violence, had made a deathbed confession to killing both Sigrid Heggheim and Torunn Finstad.
On 15 June 2006, the Criminal Cases Review Commission formally accepted the application, and on 24 August 2006, the Frostating court posthumously acquitted Fritz Moen for the rape and murder of Sigrid Heggheim.
These two acquittals are widely attributed to the work of Moen's defence lawyer John Christian Elden and private investigator Tore Sandberg.
[3] On 25 June 2007 a commission headed by Henry John Mæland, professor of law at the University of Bergen, delivered its findings to the Norwegian Minister of Justice Knut Storberget.
[4] Mæland stated that witnesses had been coaxed by the Trondheim police force, while at the same time significant evidence proving Moen's innocence had been withheld from the defence and the courts.
A book called Overgrepet (Infringement) by Tore Sandberg, the private investigator involved in Moen's case, was published in October 2007.