Karoline Aagesen's discovery on Enghavevej exposes Overbye (1920)

It was a cold autumn day in 1920 when a young, tearful woman knocked on the door of an apartment on Enghavevej in Copenhagen. Only weeks before, Karoline Aagesen had entrusted her newborn daughter to the seemingly charming Dagmar Overbye, who promised to find a loving home for the little baby. Now, Karoline demanded her daughter back, but instead was met with the sight of a stove filled with ash and burn marks on the floor. This fateful discovery would unravel one of Denmark's most shocking crime stories: the tale of a woman who turned out to be a cynical serial killer, systematically murdering the infants that poor mothers paid her to secure a future for.

Overbye's past: From Jutland's poverty to murders in Copenhagen

Dagmar Overbye was born Dagmar Johanne Amalie on April 23, 1887, into a life marked by poverty and social insecurity. The family led a nomadic existence in Jutland, and Dagmar's early childhood was unstable. At just 16, she had her first child, who tragically died under unclear circumstances. This tragedy repeated itself in 1913 when, at 26, she gave birth to a son who also vanished without a trace. These early, painful losses may have influenced Dagmar's view of motherhood. However, it was only after her arrival in Copenhagen in 1915 that her monstrous path truly began to take shape, later cementing her place in Danish criminal history.

Angel Maker's business: Ads and brutal infant murders

In a Copenhagen marked by the aftermath of World War I, Dagmar Overbye found her gruesome niche. She advertised in newspapers like Aftenposten with texts such as "Boy wanted immediately" and "Care home for children," targeting unmarried mothers. At a time when these women were often socially ostracized and risked losing their jobs due to pregnancy, Dagmar offered a supposed rescue: for a payment of between 12 and 200 kroner – a significant sum, for some equivalent to an entire year's wages – she promised to arrange the adoption of their infants to well-off families.

Behind this facade of compassion, however, a true nightmare unfolded. The small children were often murdered within hours or days of arrival. Some by suffocation, others drowned in washbasins, and some were even burned alive in the stove that stood centrally in Dagmar's kitchen. The bodies of these defenseless babies were disposed of in attics, hidden under hedges, or, as in the case of Karoline Aagesen's daughter, brutally reduced to ash.

Trial: Overbye convicted of nine murders – Death to life sentence

Karoline Aagesen's desperate search for the truth triggered an extensive investigation that sent shockwaves through Denmark. Dagmar Overbye was arrested, and the extent of her horrific child murders was gradually revealed. On April 20, 1921, this serial killer was found guilty of nine infant murders, although police suspected the actual number of victims could be as high as 25. Initially, Dagmar Overbye was sentenced to death for her crimes, but this sentence was later commuted by the Ministry of Justice to life imprisonment, which in practice was a sentence for life. The case against Dagmar Overbye remains one of the darkest and most notorious chapters in Danish criminal history, casting a grim light on the desperation experienced by many unmarried mothers living in poverty in the early 20th century.

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