Warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This article contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.

In 2011, terrorist Anders Breivick embarked on a killing spree, setting off a car bomb in front of the Norwegian Prime Minister’s Office, which killed 8 and later in the day made his way to an island where a youth summer camp was under way. He killed 77 people and injured 319. He was dressed as a police officer and began shooting people at random. He shot countless numbers of youths and ended up killing 69 people using a mini 14 semi automatic assault rifle and a glock semi automatic pistol.

 

And with in the question ; why had Brevik waged  a three and a half  hour war on his own innocent countrymen ?

 

And committed history´s deadliest  killling  spree

“who did  this? who is behind this ,where did the hatred come from?”

A scandinavian admired for its landscape, high living standards and for having one  of the lowest murder rates in the world.

 

In the capital city of Oslo , the day had begun like  any other.

22nd of july it´s   in the middle of the main holiday in Norway and of course the weather was pretty bad  as i t always is . but it still summer so most of the people were  actually at hollyday , pretty normal summer´s day in Norway .

 It was   quite a busy  friday people were  all  looking   forward to the weekend.

At 3:18  p.m .a white van is captured on CCTV,parking  nect to norway´s government headquarters.

it´s driver is 32 anders   breivik and cameras record him leaving the scene armed and dressed in police style uniform.

Minutes later at 3:26 p.m the country will be changed forever as the worlds worst killing spree began.

 

suddenly there was just like a pressure wave, big pressure wave that just kind of felt blue through the building , there was debris and duist everywhere in the air.

the massive deadly blast killing eighy  , transformed Oslo from from tranquil to  terrifying

People thought it was a truck that run into the building or an earthquake, every people just froze,  they didn´t know what to do.there were people laying  on the street,

it was qiuet . only the  fire alarm inside  the buildings could be heard.

 

authorities beginning to arrive. the scale of he task facing them  quickly became  apparent .

It was vacation ,it was the summer afternoon ,most of the people were not at work  so most of the offices were empty.

 the doors the walls ,everything swas smashed in so you couldn´t see that it s has  been an office.

 people were resally scared in town ,for mor bombs or for who  did it .

 

The 

white van parked outside the government buildings had been packed  with almost a ton of  fertilizer based explosives,it´s detonation had left  8 dead and more than  80 injured

Norways´s capital city of Oslo had been devastaded by a massive car bomb.

it was a day  anders breivik  had been preparing fot months and the bombinh was merely   the beginning of his killing spree.

 the 13th February 1979 ,Oslo

 

Anders Brevik is born to a diplomat and a nurse,his childhood was marked by the divorce of his parents  and worrying behavior that would draw the attention of the authorities at a very young age.

He was under observation by child psychiatrist when he was  at  the  age of three or four years old and they all  gave him a quite serious diagnosis, at  age of four  breivik was assessed by psychologists because they became  quite concerned about the home life his mother  was bringing him up, they thought that he´d been sexualized in some way and  that his mother was projecting  her own ideas onto him that weren´t appropriate for a four-year -old  boy.

The family unit would quickly begin to dissolve leaving anders in  the care of his increasingly unstable mother and isolated from his father.

Breiviks father is present mostly in form of  his absence.He was not there for breivik. He certainly didn´t have much , of a family  to live with . he was  of a neurotic background,he was an individual who was prone  to outbursts or dramatic scenes and shows of largesse

As the dust began to settle in   Oslo City centre the investigaton  had begun into hwo  could be behind the the atrocity. 

 It was a violent and surreal picture, this is not what you expects to see in Oslo , not in Norway and not in Scandinavia.

Oslo was  completely unprepared for something  like this and very much  taken with  their pants down.

One of the interesting things about breivik spree of course ,is that he bought himself  extra time for a while the  police are only  taken calls about the bombing and nothing else.

There was little information available in the early phase,  but  after a while  police discovered  people had  called in to report  different  movements.

Pictures coming through  to the police control room, would offer the first  crucial clues in their hunt of the perpetrator..

 

police would hear where the perpetrator had been. which car was  parked outside whitch had  then exploded.

The registration  number , sot that this was  sent  to those managing the research at the  Police HQ

But the culprit was already one step ahead  of the  authorities and what he had planned next would dwarf the carnage in the city and shocked  the entire world.

Breivik was driving out of town when  his bomb exploded.  and  he enjoyed the  deception,  he was  absolutely relishing the artistry of what he was doing.

He was driving for about 40 minutes until he came to the nearby lake. with confusion and tensions  mounting across the country  breivik would begin to execute the second stage of his plan.  the island of Utøya was hosting was hosting a summer camp of  young labour party activists . and breivik was headed straight for them

And he parked his car on the ferry crossings over  to Utøya and he presented himself as security police officer  ,there to instruct them about  security meassures that needed to be taken in the light of the  explosion that just happened in Oslo.

And they sent the ferry to collect him, what  would come next would be an act  so sinister, it would strip a generation of its  innocence.

 

located 50 minutes outside of Oslo, the picturesque island of Utøya is famed for its outstanding natural beauty.

Utøya is actually like a whole Norway,just placed within a couple of thousand square feet.

playing host  to the annual summer camp for the youth  division of the labour party ,Utøya seemed a perfectly formed  paradise.

From air it looks like a heart just dropped into the ocean

But this  island idol would soon be transformed into a nightmarish vision of violance

by anders breivik.

people were playing football ,volleyball,everything was just  normal perfect.

 No one could have imagined that the  man behind the bombing in Oslo  had his  sights set on the island of the  Utøya

Anders breiviks  position as an outsider  had been defined at an early  age. he grew up  in a very affluent part of town. aged  just 14 ,he had sought acceptance by joining nationalist gang ,but his natural demeanour set him apart  from the other gang members.

however there wass one aspect of youth culture that that breivik did excel.One  which demonstrated his ability to prepare and execute a plan in extreme  detail.

He would salso try to establish a reputation as  a grafiti artist, so he was apparently according to people he met at  a time planning his  graffiti raids like a general. extremely good with the logistics getting   the number of cans and planning  his missions.

He was definitely searching to get some recognition  to be someone.

As it happened all the time with him ,he worked very hard for recognition but  he ended up  being rejected by also by this people .

Breivik  has certainly made reference to being isolated when  he was younger and in his teens ,but he also showed  adept skills  at beloning when he needed to. so allthough he postures himself as being the outsiders outsider as a narcissist he´s also very capable of working on  the inside when he needs to.

such  capabilities would  prove crucial in carrying out the second stage of a killing spree that has already eight dead.

At 5:17 p.m. on the 22nd of july 2011 ,the ferry arrived at  the island of  Utøya. 

Disguised as a police officer and claiming an obligation to keep  Utøya´s inhabitants safe from harm ,breivik was welcomed.

They sent the ferry over , and they carried his big suitcase with his ammunition.

 At 5:21  the first shiots were fired .beginning what would be over an hour of uinimaginable horror.

The first thing he did was to go  and ask for the guardsmen of the island  to come with him and the women who was the head of the camp  and then  he drew his pistol and shot them both in the head

Utøya survivor:i could see people running and him shooting and i could see three people fall just  right here.

 

At 5.23  anders breivik approched the  cafeteria a building busy  with youngsters.

Utøya survivor#2 :i  saw many people  that  were running outside and i called to them. because there were no reason  to run, like they were doing and one of them told me that´s a guy were shooting them and  took  it serious because  he had very stressed voice but i  also thought it was a joke.

Utøya survivor#1 : i thought  maybe this one was an act , i thought this day has been already so absurd   it couldn´t get  any worse

 

Utøya survivor#2 :i run outside of the building and then  they were  people that were lying ioutside that were  killed and then …that wass the moment that i understood this was  for real.

 

As confusion spread amongst the campus ,breivik maintained a menacing  calm, his  singular  purpose the intention to kill .

 

Utøya survivor#1 :”There was this girl approching him from a distance looked like a policeman and this man walked normally with speed  towards this girl and this girl was  just walking normally towards him.

he pulls up  his gun that he held in his hand down by his taies, he points it up at this girl,she stops  and slowly started walking backwards, he continues with the same speed towards  her . and a series rounds goes off and he shoots her down into the ground .

 

 there were around 500  young people gathered around the cafeteria  and and the campsite.

 

Utøya survivor#1 : ” it was  like nothing , not even a single leaf or straw grass moved , everything just stood completely still  and at the same time that girl hit the ground it seemed like the ground just lifted itself up and started   running away and  that was all the people running 

 

At 5:31  breivik began working his way through the campsite towards the woods. the gunman had  already shot and killed 21 .as he made his way through   the woods towards the  southern tip of the island ,he would take 15  more lives . 

 

Rumors of  the atrocities unfolding  on Utøya began to circulate across Norway.

Journalist  marius anderson would be dispatch in a helicopter to investigate. 

marius  told the pilot to start circling the island.

 

Marius:i need a overview , i need overview pictures  , i need to understand what´s going on. because i had no idea.

 

for many on the island the only option was to swim for their lives

 

marius: i started seeing people in the water and the strange thing about your mind is that you  dont expect people to be  swimming away from an island like  scared.this was a summer camp in my head and my head  told me ” ah, they´re taking a swim ” and  it takes like second and you´re know ,they´re not swimming, they ´re not bathing. they´re  swimming away from the island.

 

Utøya survivor#1 :  i couldn´t breath  so after 50  maybe 100 meter i turned back i realized this was going to be too far and i also realized that i was probably going to drown.

 

marius: at that time we started to realize that this is aa process that that goes over time because it doesn´t really  add up.your head doesn´t really want to believe it , you think  it´s reported shooting it might be someone playing with fireworks on one side of the scale. on the other side of the scale it might  be a  mass murderer.but that´s highly unlikely.

 

 

Utøya survivor#1 : suddenly the same man that i saw earlier comes out ofthe woods just right next to me , eight maybe ten meters away  and started  screaming that….umh …that ” i´m going to kill you.then you must  all die today.”

 

 

 

At 3.26 p.m. on the 22nd of july 2011  ,the Norwegian capital of Oslo was devastated by  a massive car bomb.eight would die and more than 80 would be injured.

Nearly two hours later a new  horror had  begun 25 miles away .

When a gunman began running amuck on Utøya,

a small island packed with young  people attending a left -wing labour party camp.

jorunalist marius anderson was in a helicopter above the island but was as confused as the people on the ground.

marius:at that point we had no idea if there was 15 people shooting, one person shooting.we didn´t know that  there was one guy dressed  as a cop.but i remember i saw a big tall character which i then thought   “okej,  that might be a police .”

the gunman dressed  as a police officer was 32 year old anders breivik and he had already taken the lives of 36 people on the  island.

at 5: 40 p.m. he began  shooting at the youngsters  in the water.

 

Utøya survivor#1 :he started shooting into the water after the people that was swiming sand when you saw the columns of the water that were rising from the bullets  ,you realized  “this is hapening for real.” and after he finished  shooting ,he turned around towards me and  aims at me,you could see into the barrel, i don´t know why  i screamed but i did , but i screamed that   

“no, don´t shoot me” in the blink of  an eye  he pulls down his riffle turns around and walks away

 

 

later  breivik would claim that he hadn´t shot adrian  at that moment because he looked  right- wing in appearance

 

when he was 27 years old ,breivik  hasd left his shared flat andbegan detaching himself from the world .he moved into his mother´s  apartment and began immersing himself in a world of online gaming and extremist internet sites

 

He was isolated ,living with his mother , staying mostly in his room playing computer games  almost incessantly visiting extremist websites ,he also started to behave  rather oddly, He would be sometimes very angry with his mother and when she was ill he would used a face mask to avoid  contamination somehow

 

and he would go around in the  apartment dressed up in some of these uniforms that he purchased  it was really props for this character he was building for himself

friends would notice a  change  in the anti-islamist , describing him as  increasingly withdrawn and reclusive.many spree killers have  undergone a period of social withdrawal and social isolation in the few monts before they actually engage in their lethal attack

It could be that while breivik was in  his period of isolation he began focusing more and more on his spree as the only solution.but it could also have been a very canny way for him to go off the grid

Years later he would turn his violent gaming into reality

6:08 p.m. the 22second of july ,Utøya island. anders breivik had already taken lives of 49 people

With the police occupied by events in Oslo local residents took to the water in boats  in a bid to begin a relief effort. plucking those that  are chosen to swim to safety from the freezing lake.

 one of those residents was  local hotel worker viggo larsen.

Viggo:  there must have been fifteen -twenty boats .. i think…that searched around the island  in a lll directions …when i started to get close , i saw a  t-shirt floating in the water so i slowly glided towards it , what i first thought  was a t- shirt …but it was a person who lay on their stomach in the water and was dead.

 

The local police  dispatched officers to the island norway´s specialist counterterrorism unit Delta force  would also be called into action.

 

Utøya survivor#2: i called the police  several times and they said they were on the way  but it took more than one hour so…we were completely helpless.

 

around 6:10 p.m a large group of youngsters were at the pump house when a police officer arrived and informed that the culprite had been caught . as they  gathered together he opened fire. It was breivik and 14 would die at that moment.

The really striking aspect about the massacre  on Utøya is how calm  breivik was ,how methodical   he was and how carful he was.

 

craig jackson/criminal psychologist:One of the common misstakes that journalists and media  reports make particularly in  the immediate aftermath of a spree is they believe that the killer was crazed ,deranged and shooting victims at random , we certainly see time and time again in  spree killers that they  are  focused and calm and very much in control of both their emotions and the situation .

 

For Adrian and those still trapped on the  island the terror would continue

 

By  6:30 p.m ,breivik had circled the island and returned to the southern tip where he began shooting again. the moment was captured from the circling helicopter.

 

Utøya survivor#1 :and the first shot was so  loud,before i even i opened my eyes i felt something warm next to my head . it felt like my head exploded. now i was convinced i was dead.

Adrian had been wounded in the shoulder  ,five of those  around him would die.

 

 

Utøya survivor#1 :from what i know ,the last bullet that wads fired was the bullet that hit me  in the shoulder and still is there. he was captured one minute and 20  seconds after  the last shot.

 

 

after an hour and nine minutes of unchecked bloodshed

Delta force would arrive on the shores of Utøya to face down  anders breivik.

 

marius:  the last thing that we were actually able to see was the police walking like in tactical formation ,like terrorists , like terror cops do and checking  out stuff.

 

 

Then ,the man responsible for a massacre would surrender without  a fight .

 

craig jackson/criminal psychologist: spree was  certainly  different from  many other sprees that have  gone before it , predominantly spree killers either kill themselves or they are killed by law enforcement , clearly breivik wanted   to be taken alive so he could give his ideological views a platform.

 

 

 

Utøya survivor#2 : i was rescued  by the police and they took me away and i was taken by a private boat but when we came to the hotel where everybody was gathered  those that survived i immediately that the numbers  of the  killed will would be extremily  high.

 

In one afternoon ander breivik had claimed lives of 77 of his countrymen .  8 in Oslo  and 69 on Utøya Island . he claimed  to have commited the massacre as a  political act .

 

 

several months  prior to the attacks ,the reclusive right-winger had moved from his mother´s  Oslo flat to an isolated farm two  hours north all the while he kept a diary of his preparations .

these  would form a significant part of a large manifesto , one that he intended to publish.

 

 

 

craig jackson/criminal psychologist:he played a very savvy game of taking lots of media-friendly pictures of himself posturing with guns  ,posturing in  uniforms , looking wery Aryan on some occasions, showing his blue eyes  ,he´s blond hair ,he saw himself being suitable for breeding almost like a stud for future generations of the Aryan race , so he´s clearly very  narcissistic individual who knows how to sell the  image  of what he was trying to pass on.

 

 

Under the guise of becoming a vegetable farmer breivik would used his seclusion to his advantage gathering ammunition and planning his  attack.This is  when he researched and planned and  got  there with all his equipment and started  manufacturing his bomb.

 On the 21st  july 2011 the day before his killing  spree  breivik completed a  final recce in Oslo city centre before returning to the  farm one last time.

 

 

craig jackson/criminal psychologist:breivik  claimes that  he spent 11 months preparing for  his  spree and bomb. attacks. he clearly knew what he was  doing and he knew the best way to go about it. he could  effectively disapear while he ordered  the parts and stockpile the weapons and bomb-making equipment that he would need.

 

 

22nd july 2011.

at 2:09 p.m. breivik make his motivatios public sending out his 15,00 plus page manifesto to suppose sympathizers across europe.just over  an hour later his killing spree, the deadliest in  world history would begin.But what  driven  anders breivik to commit such an unimaginable  crime.

On the 22nd of   july 2011, Norway had  changed forever  ,anders breiviks´s attackss in Oslo and on Utøya had left an nation in mourning.

22nd of july is about  those  who lost their lives

In court breivik would  attempt to use his trial as a platform to promote his twisted ideology

It seemed like the court was  kind of theatre for him .what the whole trial was about  for him was to get recognition as a political   terrorist as an extremist as a militant and not to be somehow written off as   crazy.

 

craig jackson/criminal psychologist:That picture of breivik giving the fisted salute probably did  as much  for his PR as his 15 hundred page manifesto did and again ,that is one of the legacies of previous murders, is that he´s been allowed to live and allow to publicize his  his deranged beliefs .

 

Anders behring breivik would befound guilty of the murders of 77, 8 losing their lives in Oslo  and 69  on the island of Utøya.

He would receive a 21 year sentence,the maximum possible  under Norwegian law

A questioin that still puzzled however was what  could have caused this man to commmit such chilling crimes.

 

johan tandberg/rescuer:to try  to understand,people like this , i dont think its´posible ,it´s like trying to understand the Ted Bundy or adolf hitler.it´s impossible.

 

marius/ journaslist: that´s i guess the question that most of us has been asking us how can one person  do this, how can you be ablte to do it as a human .

 

 AAGE BORCHGREVINK/ author ” norwegian tragedy”: The core, the essence of the  hatred of breivik stems from   child abuse  and was somehow   refined over the years

 

craig jackson/criminal psychologist:breivik wasn´t mentally ill but there is evidence to suggest he was either a paranoid personality type or indeed  he was more likely to be someone with a  narcissistic personality disorder.

 

AAGE BORCHGREVINK/ author ” norwegian tragedy”: if you think about you know  ,could he have been stopped  earlier is that the  one time he was really within the system when somehow the norwegian stte authority recognized there were something wrong was at the time when he was really young , when he was 3 or 4 old ,but the system let him go.

 

adrian/ Utøya survivor: he explain in court ,after a week that he remember why he  spared me and he said i looked like one of his , like a lot of right-wing extremists , i didn´t look like a  marxist and he thought that i should stay alive.

 

Although the innocence of Utøya may have been lost on  22nd of july,its beauty will  remain

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