Public broadcaster’s documentary raises considerable doubt that young boy committed suicide in 1994

One of the most shocking and tragic episodes in Denmark’s modern history has resurfaced in the news this week, after a documentary by public broadcaster DR looked closely at the case over the last year.

In 1994, 7-year-old Morten Würtz was ‘the boy who committed suicide’ in Danish media, after the child was found hanged from a tree by his own belt, halfway between his school and home outside Århus.

After an autopsy and preliminary search of the scene for any suspects, police investigating the case determined that the death was a suicide – or possibly an accident that was the result of a game gone terribly wrong.

Yet according to DR, police continued to investigate the case as a possible murder, although the public and media were never informed.

Not long after Morten’s death, police investigated a series of violent rape cases and focused on one suspect, known to the media only a ‘K’. The 18-year-old suspect was taken into custody, but hung himself in the holding cell before he was ever tried for his alleged crimes.

Detectives working on the case said they believed K was also the man likely responsible for the death of Morten Würtz.

But the case will not be reopened, primarily because crucial evidence such as the boy’s belt and clothes were inexplicably destroyed by Århus police just five months after the incident.

A spokesman for Eastern Jutland police told Jyllands-Posten newspaper that it was ‘unfortunate’ that the evidence was destroyed, but said it was ‘the decision those in charge made at the time’.

Professor Jørgen Lange Thomsen, expert in forensics at the University of Southern Denmark, said there was no question that the destroyed material could probably have solved the mystery behind young Morten’s death – particularly because police had DNA samples from K.

‘If we still had the belt, I think it could be proven whether there was physical contact between Morten and his killer,’ said Thomsen, who believes the boy was in fact murdered.

Thomsen and forensic experts in the DR documentary also point to the belt’s knot and the actual logistics of the hanging. They argue it was physically unlikely Morten himself could have managed such a complicated manoeuvre.