Hi YouTube is Joshua Miles and welcome back to my channel Today's video is going to be yet another solved case for my curious case series make sure you're subscribed to this channel and that you've had that bat icon so you can be notified every single time that I post a brand new curious case episode just like this one if you have any cases that you want to be covered on this channel then head over to requestacase.com and send in your case submissions there and with all that being said Let's delve right into this case If I were to say Heavy-metal music I'm sure a picture of loud music Aggressive crowds and drugs races through your mind despite a lot of the stereotypes surrounding Heavy-metal music being just a stereotype There are some bands and some subgenres of heavy metal that really do live up to that reputation and in a tale of international newfound musical success church burnings suicide and murder let's discuss the case of Euronymous now Euronymous was actually a stage name for a man called Øystein Aarseth I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that right. I'll put it on the screen and He was born on Friday the 22nd of March 1968 in so Randal, Norway We're going to be referring to him as his stage name in this episode for simplicity's sake Now not all too much is known about his upbringing which added an extra Atmosphere of mystery to his character. We do know that his parents Remained in his life throughout the course of this case and played an active role in lack of a better word kind of his management kind of in 1983 while Euronymous was living in oslo. He met a man called Jørn Stubberud I'll put that on screen now I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing it right whose stage name was Necrobutcher and as soon as the pair met Their shared love for the band's Motorhead and Venom both bands that I'm sure you've heard of brought them together it was as they were discussing this love for those bands that they agreed and Decided that they wanted to start their own band though, despite their shared love their ideas The band were vastly different Necrobutcher was very much into the heavy metal mentality of Drugs and would frequently go out and party and use illegal substances Euronymous on the other hand oftentimes stayed at home Writing letters and listening to artists such as Brian Eno who was a British musician who made more ambient rock style music The bands that they formed was called Mayhem and the music they wanted to make was Nothing, like anything Norway had ever seen before the Norwegian black metal scene was practically non-existent and they initially had a lot of difficulty booking gigs and finding a stage to perform on the band had brought in a drummer called Manheim with Euronymous being the guitarist and Necrobutcher being the bassist As they had been rarely able to play live They got their start by recording demos on cassette tapes, which they traded with other bands They also promoted their bands through fanzines, which are fan made publications that were also Traded and it wasn't long before they started to form an audience Who they would sell the demo cassettes to via mail order The audience wasn't just forming in their home country of Norway, but also in places such as Russia, China Australia, and America to sing the vocals on these demo cassettes the band hired two vocalists who went by the stage names of Messiah and Maniac bringing the sirens the band in 1986, but he ultimately quit by the end of that year and then Maniac in 1987 though It is important to notes that it was Iran immerse who sang the lead vocals To begin with their ethos was rallying against religion and in particularly Christianity the bands of mayhem describes themselves as Satanists and heavily used satanic imagery though If you know about the Satanist religion their beliefs don't align with the beliefs of this band in 1987 Euronymous actually founded his own record label Which he called Poster Corpse Musical later to be renamed Deathlike Silence Productions in 1988 a German named Hellhammer joined the band after Mannheim hatch quits surely followed by a vocalist called Per Ohlin Per Ohlin was born on the 16th of January 1969 in Stockholm Sweden And when I tell you that his hobbies and interests are a little bit on the strange side I mean it. he was described by those who knew him as having a very morbid personality and having an obsession with the concept of death In fact when he was a child, he contracted an illness which brought him very very close to death though He managed to recover however he believes that he was actually now in fact dead and now lived in a different world and because of this he went by the stage name of Dead Dead had met euronymous through Euronymous' letters and Euronymous had actually written and become pen pals a quite a number of people But upon learning about Dead in more detail Euronymous thought it would be the perfect match for the band Dead reportedly carried around a dead crow in a jar which he would open and inhale the fumes from so he could always perform with the stench of death in his nostrils he also frequently made shirts with funeral announcements printed on them and Even buried his own clothing only to be dug up later so that he could perform Smelling of death. Dead is also according to some sources one of the first people to use corpse paint in his performances Corpse paint is essentially makeup But that is worn to make you look like a corpse. Dead's obsession with death wasn't just a stage persona either it was something that was a part of who he was as a person and Dead's personality and outrageous image made the band's gigs notorious within the Norwegian black metal community Anyone who was in that scene was very much aware of the band and its reputation They had an image of taking it to the next level and Dead stopped at nothing to further this obsession with death on the stage He would cut himself onstage with shards of broken glass and hunting knives, which always garnered cheers from the crowd Encouraging the behavior further and more disgustingly the band began to bring the decapitated heads of sheep and pigs Onstage with them when they performed Staking them on mic stands and throwing them into the audience at the end of a gig It wasn't long before the band had enough money to move into our house together and they had found an old house in a forest Just outside of Oslo where they decided they would all live and rehearse and writes their music they moved to the house in 1990 and immediately began working on their first experimental album. It's important to notice that up until this point They hadn't yet released an album only these demo tapes The band though despite having enough money to rent this house didn't have much left over to buy basics like food euronymous would Constantly tell the band's that they were going to be very rich one day and they just had to wait for their big break He was a big dreamer Now interestingly despite being the one who invited Dead to join the band Euronymous did everything he could to make him feel uncomfortable on one occasion Euronymous had been playing this synth music really loudly in his room, which Dead absolutely hated and so Dead had taken his pillow outside to go sleep in the woods to get away from it Euronymous had then decided to go shoot his shotgun at birds in the woods, which kept Dead awake He couldn't sleep in the house, and he couldn't sleep in the woods. Dead suffered from depression And as I'm sure you've gathered he was a very dark person and despite his mental health He moved from Sweden to Norway far away from his home and any friends He might have had there to join the band in any support network Dead also wasn't the kind of person who easily made friends or really attempted to make friends and this meant that he had begun to grow very lonely locking himself in his room becoming more and more depressed According to some sources at one point dead actually stabbed euronymous with a knife Dead also interestingly sent his band mates Ammunition shells as gifts for Christmases and birthdays And he told one of his bandmates that he was saving one of his ammunition shells for his own death And it wasn't as if the band didn't have any weapons in their house They had an array of guns and knives to keep them entertained for lack of a better phrase Dead's depression, however got worse and worse and Euronymous played on this and would constantly tell him that nobody liked him and that he should just kill himself And sadly dead did just that on the 8th of April 1991 The band hadn't been at the house They shared leaving Dead alone there and when Euronymous returned back to the house He discovered Dead's body. The band actually only had one key to the house They shared and when Euronymous had returned that day, he'd found the house to be locked The only window that was open was the one in Dead's room and so to get back into the house Euronymous had to climb through it It was as he climbed through the window that he found Dead's body Slumped against the wall. Dead had slashed his own wrists using a butcher's knife from the band's Extensive weapons collection and he had used Euronymous' shotgun to shoot himself in the head He left a suicide note that read "excuse all the blood Nobody will ever understand this, but as a sort of explanation I am NOT human This is only a dream and soon I will awake. I didn't come up with this now But 17 years ago Let the party begin." the note further has lyrics of the song 'Life Eternal' Attached to it. after discovering this note and Dead's body Euronymous did something that was very very weird Instead of phoning for the police straight away. He left the house and drove to a nearby store to purchase a disposable camera He then returned to the house to photograph Dead's corpse According to some sources he even rearranged items in the room for the photographs. further to this he collected bits of Dead's brain matter and fragments of his skull which were later used to make a stew from the brain matter and a necklace from the skull fragments It was only after he had finished his collection of samples and photography session They decided to find for the police after which he then phoned Hellhammer who was the replacement drummer in the band To tell him what had happened Here's an extract from the book 'Lord of Chaos' which features an interview with Hellhammer Me and Euronymous and Dead were living in an old house outside of Oslo where we rehearsed But I was at my parents house in Oslo when it happened I was planning to go back but Euronymous called me and said "You can't go back because police have closed the house." "Why?" I said "Because Dead has gone home." "He went back to Sweden?" I asked "No, he blew his brains out." Euronymous then phoned up Necrobutcher, the band's co-founder and bassist, to tell him What had happened and that conversation was just as strange as the one he had with Hellhammer Euronymous called me up the next day recalls Necrobutcher and says, "Dead has done something really cool He killed himself." I thought have you lost it. What do you mean cool, he says, "relax I have photos of everything." I was in shock and grief He was just thinking about how to exploit it. So I told him, "OK. Don't even call me before you destroy those photos." But Euronymous didn't destroy the pictures and instead asked Hellhammer to go get them developed which he did. the pictures were in full color and showed the suicide in graphic details taken from a range of angles When Euronymous had been given the developed photos back He began to show them off to his friends and other bandmates. according to some sources Necrobutcher would later Tell the media that he believed that Euronymous lived in this fantasy fictional world in his head and by forcing others to see what he had seen That was his way of coping with the shock and grief Euronymous after backlash from his bandmates then promised to destroy the photographs. Dead's Suicide was a critical turning points for Euronymous as its triggered a change in his mentality and saw him become Obsessed with all things satanic and evil. He moved back into Oslo two months after Dead's death and opened a shop with the name of Helvetii which translates to hell. The shop was Decorated satanically, with medieval weapons hung on the black walls and a polystyrene Tombstone in the window of the shop. The photographs that he had promised to destroy Earlier were secretly kept in an envelope in the shop Euronymous also ran his record label Which he had now named to 'Deathlike Silence Productions' from the basement of the shop Which saw his bandmates frequently hanging out there along with other people in the Norwegian black metal scene Not only did Euronymous mentality change so did his looks according to an article in interviewing Necrobutcher Euronymous began to create a persona as the embodiment of an ancient evil Promo photos from the time shown him dressed in a black cloak holding a rapier the corpse paint has become more stylized; his gaze, distance, and Remote. He looks like a character from a German expressionist movie. Euronymous had also invited his pen pals to come and work in his shop including a young man who when they're first Started talking was 13 years old He began to surround himself with a lot of yes men and the group he was involved with began to create this idea Of hatred and frustration towards the rest of the world. The hateful Christianity grew and developed Euronymous had also began telling people that Dead had committed suicide because he believes that black metal had become trendy and commercialized. At some points in 1991 Necrobutcher had enough He was stricken with the grief and shock from the loss of his bandmates and was furious at Euronymous his actions And so he left the band which left just two people in Mayhem Euronymous and Hellhammer. As they previously mentioned Euronymous would frequently have people hang out at his shop from the black metal scene Including members of other bands in the genre. One of these members was a man called Louis Cachet. He also went by Varg Vikernes and Count Grishnackh as his stage names though He had been born on the 11th of February 1973 in Bergen, Norway and had been in bands since the age of 14 by 1991 Louis had formed a one-man band called Burzum which was a bands that would go on to be one of the most influential acts in the history of black metal This was despite the fact that Burzum has never and had never played a single live show It's unclear when exactly your honest first met Louis But they quickly began frequently hanging out at his shop along with another man He went by the name of Blackthorn. Louis soon became Dead's replacement in the band Mayhem, playing the bass guitar and Black Thorn was then brought in as the rhythm guitarist They also met and hired a Hungarian born singer called Attila Csihar to be the vocalist There are a lot of names in this case So I'm just going to quickly recap the important names for the remainder of this episode So in the band Mayhem there remains a Euronymous as the guitarist, Hellhammer as the drummer, Louis aka Count Grishnackh on the bass guitar Blackthorn as the rhythm guitarist, and Attila as the vocalist I'm going to refer to Louis as his real name for the remainder of this episode just for Simplicity's sake. And it's Louis that plays a major role in the remainder of this case He was described as being a person that always stood out from the crowd he never drank alcohol at parties preferring to drink cartons of milk and was by all accounts a very productive and enthusiastic person when it came to music Euronymous was actually five years older than Louis and when Louis joined the band Euronymous brought him under his wing The Euronymous even signs a Louis' one-man band Burzum to his record label, Deathlike Silence Productions But their friendship soon morphed into a competitive rivalry Louis was recording and producing two albums a year for Burzum while Euronymous was struggling to finish Mayhem's first a full album. This quickly meant that Euronymous began to see Louis as his rival and Their rivalry wasn't just a creative one It also became a competition for who could be more evil on the 6th of June 1992 Louis took the band's hatred for Christianity to the next level He travelled to Bergen and set alight a 12th century church called Fantoft Stave Church This would be just the first church burnings by many members of the black metal scene in Norway it was initially believed by the authorities that Fantoft Stave Church had burned down due to a lightning strike or electrical failure But as seven further churches were burned down between June 1992 and January of 1993 It quickly became clear to the authorities and media that there was a direct attack taking place During this period Euronymous had actually closed his shop in Oslo citing police suspicions as his reasoning though It will later emerged that it was actually his parents who had instructed him to do so. In January of 1993 Not long after the last burning of a church in Norway Louis invited a reporter from a local Oslo newspaper to his apartment His apartment was a loft apartments and was decorated with Nazi paraphernalia weapons and satanic symbols The windows in the apartments had all been blacked out with carpets It was described as entering a different world when you stepped foot in the apartments like walking into Hell itself Louis then spoke to this reporter and proudly informed them on record that It was the black metal scene that had burned down the churches and that they had declared war on Christianity and Norwegian society He further told the reporter that they intended to Continue their campaign of terror against Christianity on top of all this, Louis claims the black metal scene to have been responsible for the murder of a man in Lillehammer We'll come back to this in a moment. After this article was released The police began to try to find any evidence that could directly link Louis to the Fantoft Stave Church arson attack But were unable to find anything Though in1993 Louis released a EP for his one-man band and this EP was called 'Ashes' and it featured a photograph of the Fantoft Stave Church Burned, burned down in ashes which is why I guess the EP was called ashes as the album art But his believes that Louis had taken that photograph himself. This article placed a massive magnifying glass on the black metal scene in Norway from both the authorities and the media The Norwegian authorities were quick to bring the band Mayhem, its associates, and other bands in the black metal scene in for questioning They even set up a specialized task force just to investigate the criminal happenings going on in the black metal scene. The police began to suspect from these interrogations that Necrobutcher had actually been responsible for the church burnings, but they had no real evidence against him Necro butcher would later reveal in an interview with The Guardian that he and Hellhammer Had both been against the church burnings. He also reveals that he had met a girl at a party Who he had taken back to his place and the following morning She had told him that she had in fact a burnt down some of the churches the police had suspected him of destroying Necrobutcher later described this girl to have been a black metal girl at the time who was now a Nazi girl but these church burnings were not by any means the most evil action taken by the band mayhem and Surprisingly it was neither Euronymous or Louis who took it to the next level one of the people that Euronymous had been pen pals with and had hired to work at a shop, the same young man who had been 13 when he had first started talking with Euronymous was called Bård Guldvik "Faust" Eithun, I'm just gonna refer to him as Eithun in this episode, Eithun had been visiting his family in Lillehammer on the 21st of August 1992 and had gone to a local pub to hang out though on his way back home from the pub He passed through the Olympic Park which was a popular gay cruising spot at the time Eithun was approached by a man called Magne Andreassen who was drunk and he asked Eithun for sex Eithun said sure and they walked together into the nearby woods That was when I then pulled out a knife and stabbed to Magne 37 times Even after Magne had been murdered he continued to kick him in the head Eithun returned to Oslo the following day and the murder actually went cold for about a year he had told Euronymous, Louis, and other people in the black metal scene what he had done and he Expressed and showed no remorse whatsoever the police wouldn't find out that he was responsible till the year after when He was brought to trial and sentenced for the murder. Following Louis article and the subsequent media Spotlights on the band the, European press quickly began to associate the church burnings and the black metal scene with theistic satanism Louis, mayhem and other bands began to gain a cult following and many people began to idolize them Some copycats church burnings also followed as a result according to an article on missmephistopheles.com it was these church burnings that allows allow me to exercise an insatiable need for Control, the church burnings had been the first step for his learning process of instrumental aggressing Instrumental aggression is the acts of utilizing force or violence to obtain a readily apparent goal such as power, money, Sexual gratification and Louis in this recurring case was social power Louis even shared after the church burnings to those in the black circle that he would not ever be caught for what you've done Because he had gained the respect in the Norwegian black metal scene Thus nobody would dare to expose him of his actions, through the power he had gains from the church burnings It allowed him to live his fantasies as this master of the universe That he desired to attain, but despite his newfound fame which brought a lot of attention to his one-man band Burzum he still was in the shadow of Euronymous who many in the scene hailed to be the leader and it became common knowledge that this rivalry between Louis and Euronymous would eventually results in bodily harm or even death They knew that there was no avoiding A final fight between the pair that could result in neither of their deaths and you can't forget that Louis band Burzum was still signed to Euronymous' record label which further concreted his position as the leader of the scene Euronymous were still very threatened by Louis and due to this insecurity He began to send death threats to him. According to one source Euronymous had wanted to start focusing more on the business side of music and had become increasingly annoyed at Louis for developing and Further creating this edgy and scary image by burning down churches and being violent Louis was very much aware that Euronymous wanted him gone and he had told people that Euronymous was just a poser and he wasn't true to the scene He began to make plans to get euronymous removed and kicked from the community This played on one of Euronymous' biggest securities that people didn't see him to be genuine and that he had to prove he was part of the Norwegian black metal scene all this came to a climax when in August of 1993 Euronymous sent a death threat to Louis that stated "I'm going to send people to Torture you until you die" Louis allegedly saw this as a real threat and decided that he would much rather It be Euronymous that died than him and so on the nights of the 10th of August 1993 Louis travels to Euronymous' apartment with fellow and Mayhem band member Blackthorn Louis had asked a black thorn to come with him to Euronymous' Apartment for moral support But Blackthorn agreed to go with him But he refused to go inside. when they arrived at the apartment, Louis rang the intercom doorbell and asked to come in Though Euronymous said that he didn't want to and he had just gotten to bed Louis has a brought a contract along with him that Euronymous had sent to him to sign And he told Euronymous over the intercom that he had brought this contract with him And so Louis was let into the apartment Blackthorn remained in the stairwell of the building Smoking a cigarette waiting for Louis to return and when he did Louis was covered in blood. He had stabbed Euronymous 23 times They then fled to the scene of the crime and disposed of the murder weapon in a small pond on the drive back home Euronymous' death rippled through the black metal scene at top speed and it was obvious to a lot of people that Louis had been the one responsible Somebody in the black metal scene, after the murder had been reported on the news and the authorities were asking for Anybody with any information to come forward, went to the police and told them that Louis was Responsible. Louis was arrested a few days later on the 19th of august 1993 The majority of the more prominent people in the black metal scene were also arrested and questioned in connection to not only the murders but also the church burnings This included Blackthorn and another person who was aware that Louis had plans the murder It wasn't long before holes began to appear in Blackthorn's and Louis' stories after intensive Interrogations lasting over seven hours. When Louis was arrested and his home was searched They actually found 150 kilograms of explosives and over 3,000 rounds of ammunition according to the encyclopedia of white power, Louis had intended to blow up a location popular with radical leftists and anarchist communities. The trial against Louis began on the 2nd of May 1994 and he claims that he had an intended to murder Euronymous he told the courts they had gone to the apartments to hand Euronymous the contract and when he stepped forward and Confronted Euronymous about some royalty money that he owed him Euronymous panicked and kicked him in the chest Euronymous then ran into the kitchen and grabbed a knife Louis and Euronymous then according to Louis got into a fight switch resources in Louis getting a knife from Euronymous and stabbing him to death He also claims that Blackthorn had only come along to show Euronymous some new guitar riffs Blackthorn also testified in courts and he reveals the true story of how it been a premeditated murder the account that we discussed earlier The prosecution focused on the facts that louis had asked a third person to stay in his apartment on the night of the murder rent films and use his credit card to make it seem as if he had remained at home, this along with Blackthorn's testimony and the testimony of some others and due to a fingerprint found in blood at the Apartment that was identified to belong to Louis was enough for the jury in the trial to reach a verdict on the 16th of May 1994 Louis was found guilty for the murder of Euronymous, for arson of three churches, for attempted arson of a fourth church, and for the theft and storage of 150 kilograms of explosives. He was sentenced to the maximum sentence in Norway Which is just 21 years. Blackthorn was found guilty of being an accomplice to a homicide and was sentenced to 8 years imprisonment and This case doesn't just end with those convictions The band Mayhem had been set to release their first debut album rights before Euronymous' is murder and had to postpone it as a result They actually released the album the same month of Louis' Sentencing which featured Euronymous playing the electric guitar and Louis playing the bass guitar. on the 17th of February 1995 a bootleg album that had recordings of Mayhem's live Performances from a show in 1990 was released by War Master Records in south America Euronymous had actually been in contact with War Master Records prior to his death and remember those photographs He took of Dead's body He sent one of them to War Master Records who then used the image as the album arts for a bootleg album I'm going to show a censored version of this album art on screen now Please skip ahead about ten seconds If you don't wish to see it or over your eyes There's also a link in the description to the Wikipedia article that has the uncensored version Putting on screen now As you can see the image is graphic and horrific in nature And it was extremely controversial when it was released for obvious reasons Okay, the image is now off the screen. This case is one that deeply disturbs me on every level Perhaps this is part in due to a lack of education and experience of the black metal scene But it's definitely something that I would deem as very extremist and radical in nature it's important to notice that Nazism was also associated with the band and its members and This case is just a really sad and evil one. after Louis' and Blackthorn's arrest and Euronymous' murder There were only two band members Left in mayhem and the band kind of faded into the history books for about a year. the reforms in 1994 with the old members Hellhammer, Maniac, and Necrobutcher along with a new member to take Euronymous' place. they began to release new music and tour through Europe and was and still are very successful Their top five records on Spotify all have over a million streams and they are still active to this day. Louis himself Also has a further backstory connection with neonazism But I honestly feel like you get the picture of what his character is like. On the 22nd of May 2009 Louis was released from prison on probation He then made a YouTube channel titled “Thulean Perspective” where he posts about European pagan mythology and his political views he got married to a French woman in the early 2010's and he was actually one of the people who was sent the Manifesto of the man who killed 77 people mostly teenagers and children in the 2011 Norway attacks This manifesto had been sent out prior to the attacks and he just ignored it. On the 16th of July 2013 Both Louis and his wife were arrested after his wife had purchased four firearms. The authorities believes they were planning acts of terrorism But his wife actually had a firearms permit and due to that the charges against her were eventually dropped Louis was however charged with inciting racial hatred against Jews and Muslims due to his online posts He was convicted in July of 2014 and sentenced to 16 months probation and an eight thousand euro fine. Louis' YouTube channel was deleted in June of 2019 due to his neo-nazi views But he remains active on Twitter he actually released an album in March of this year 2020 under his one-man band's name Burzum That's really everything that I have for you in today's case This one is really one that takes you to a land of horror and nightmares and a lifestyle that the majority of us are so far removed from Let me know what you think down in the comments section below Make sure you're subscribed to this channel and you've hit that Bell icon so you can be notified every single time I post a brand new curious case episode just like this one My social media handles are both @itsjoshuamiles if you're interested in seeing what goes on behind the scenes I also have a second channel, which isn't true crime related and is more just stuff about me and videos I feel don't really fit in with this channel But I still want to make so you can go find a link to that in the description and pinned comment below and with all that being said I'll see you in the next case
