In 1921 a jury in Copenhagen found Dagmar Overbye guilty of killing infants who had been handed to her by their mothers. She was a working woman of about thirty with a record of thefts, who answered and placed newspaper advertisements offering to "adopt" babies. The mothers, most of them unmarried and poor, paid her a single sum and left believing their children would go to a good home. In the case the court heard, the children died the same day or soon after.
The Eastern High Court, Østre Landsret, sentenced her to death. She did not appeal. About a month later she was pardoned on condition that she was never released, and she died in Vestre Fængsel in Copenhagen on May 6, 1929. Danish reference works call the trial one of the most discussed in Danish history. The public argument it set off, about what Denmark owed women who had children outside marriage and the children themselves, led directly to the Act on the Supervision of Foster Children of 1923.
Danish reference works and the Danish press spell her surname Overby. Overbye is the spelling found in much English-language writing. Both refer to the same woman.
Her case was the basis for the 2024 Danish film The Girl with the Needle (Pigen med nålen), directed by Magnus von Horn. The film is fiction.
Dagmar Johanne Amalie Overby was born on April 23, 1887, at Assendrup in Vedslet parish in Jutland, according to Dansk Kvindebiografisk Leksikon, the Danish dictionary of women's biography. Its entry is by the historian Hanne Rimmen Nielsen. Her father was a smallholder of the poorest class (an indsidder).
At twelve she was sent away from home. Three years later she went back to her parents, who by then lived in Aarhus. She took work as a domestic servant, but, as the dictionary puts it, things went wrong again. She was convicted of theft and served her first prison sentence on Funen in 1909. Den Store Danske, the Danish national encyclopedia, describes her as someone who had been in conflict with the law since childhood, with several convictions for theft.
While she worked in the household of a restaurant keeper in Aarhus, she had a son by a waiter. The boy died in Randers while she was living with her grandmother. Both Danish reference works say this happened possibly under suspicious circumstances; neither says that the death was ever investigated or explained.
On January 4, 1912, she married an agent. The marriage was short, and Dansk Kvindebiografisk Leksikon lists two children from it, born in 1912 and 1914.
In 1913 she worked as housekeeper for a smallholder at Lemmer, southeast of Randers, and had a child there. Den Store Danske records that this was the last child she later admitted to having abandoned. Neither encyclopedia entry says what became of that child.
Around 1915 she moved to Copenhagen and opened a small sweet shop on Holmbladsgade, on the island of Amager. There she met a stoker and moved in with him. They had a child together who died; the cause of death is recorded as unknown.
In 1920, when the police came to her door, she was living on Enghavevej in Vesterbro with her daughter, then eight, and her boyfriend, according to Information.
The children who died in Overbye's care were not taken from anyone. Their mothers brought them to her. To understand why, Danish historians and the police museum that holds her case files point to the position of a woman who had a child outside marriage in Denmark around the First World War.
"To have a child outside marriage at this time was connected with great shame and dishonor," Frederik Strand, head of the Police Museum in Copenhagen, told TV 2 Kosmopol, after going through the case files. It also brought money problems, he said, and there was no childcare for the children when single mothers had to go to work.
The historian Agnete Birger Madsen, author of a book on infanticide in Denmark from 1900 to 1950, told Information that between 16 and 17 women a year were convicted at that time of killing infants or of gross neglect of them, usually of newborns. Those convicted always came from the bottom of the social order, she said, often maids or factory workers with almost no help with money or childcare. Many hid their pregnancies, some even from themselves, and an illegal abortion was rarely possible once several months had passed. Among them, Overbye's case stands apart. "The Dagmar Overby case is a completely different story; she is very atypical," Madsen said. She had not found any other woman who placed newspaper advertisements intending to kill the children she received.
The method was the same in every case, according to Dansk Kvindebiografisk Leksikon. Overbye made contact with desperate mothers through advertisements in the newspapers. She agreed to "adopt" each child for a single payment in cash, and killed the child on the day it was handed over. The Copenhagen Post, drawing on the retired police officer and lecturer Poul Fjeldgård, said the mothers typically paid around 200 kroner, which for the many who worked as live-in servants was roughly a year's wages. Avisen.dk, drawing on the writer Karen Søndergaard Jensen, who wrote a novel about the case, reported that Overbye told the mothers it was best to avoid further contact, and later wrote them letters about how their children were doing when the children were already dead.
None of these arrangements had any official standing. Denmark had passed a law on the supervision of paid foster children as early as April 20, 1888. It required anyone who took in a child under fourteen for payment to have the permission of the municipal council, and it put such children under the eye of a local supervisor. That law, by its own terms, ran until April 1, 1895. The reference works on Overbye's case describe the 1923 act, not the 1888 law, as the measure that brought all children born outside marriage under public supervision.
Very little is recorded about the children themselves. They were infants, most of them only days or weeks in her care, if that.
The first killing that Danish reference works and TV 2 Kosmopol describe took place in 1916, when Overbye and the stoker lived on Jægersborggade in the Nørrebro district. She had answered an advertisement from Rasmine Jensen, an unmarried mother who had just had her second child, and agreed to "adopt" the baby for 12 kroner. She killed the baby the same day and left the body in a privy at Assistens Kirkegård, the cemetery in Nørrebro. Asked at her trial why she had done it, she said she did not know.
In the four years that followed she killed at least seven more children, and probably more, according to Dansk Kvindebiografisk Leksikon. The methods varied between suffocation and drowning. The bodies were buried, burned, or hidden in an attic. Avisen.dk, in a 2007 account based on the novelist Karen Søndergaard Jensen's research, reported that one child's body was later found hidden between the beams of an attic, that one was left in the privy at Assistens Kirkegård, and that one was taken in a suitcase to Jutland and buried there. Videnskab.dk, the Danish science news site, wrote in 2012 that the child found in the attic of the Enghavevej building was found with the remains of several other babies in her stove in 1920.
One child lived. While Overbye served another prison sentence for theft in 1918 and 1919, a small child in her keeping was taken under the guardianship council (værgerådet), the local child welfare authority, and so survived. Den Store Danske gives the theft sentence of 1918 as a year and a quarter in prison, for stealing four hens worth 25 kroner, as well as a lamb and some milk.
The last child was Karoline Aagesen's daughter.
Overbye was living at Enghavevej 21 in Vesterbro by 1919, after what TV 2 Kosmopol called turbulent years in Jutland. Its 2025 account of the last killing is taken from the Copenhagen police's main report of 1920, and from the files reviewed by the Police Museum.
Karoline Aagesen was 21. She had become pregnant outside marriage, and she had agreed that Overbye would adopt the child. On August 30, 1920, she came to Enghavevej with her two-month-old daughter in a blue baby carriage. Overbye helped carry the child and the carriage up to the apartment and talked about lighting the stove so that the little girl would not be cold. After about three quarters of an hour the young mother left. Overbye waved goodbye from the window, holding the baby's hand.
According to Overbye's own confession, she killed the little girl shortly after the mother left, at about four o'clock in the afternoon, and the next morning burned the body in the stove.
TV 2 Kosmopol reported that Aagesen had not paid for the adoption. The Copenhagen Post, in 2016, said Aagesen testified to paying about 200 kroner. The two accounts differ.
Three days later Karoline Aagesen came back. She regretted the arrangement and asked for her daughter. Overbye told her it was not possible and said the child had been sent out of town to be cared for elsewhere, according to TV 2 Kosmopol. The Copenhagen Post's account is that Overbye said she could not remember the address of the family she had given the child to. Den Store Danske says only that the young mother grew suspicious at Overbye's evasive answers. "And that of course makes Karoline Aagesen very, very nervous," Strand told TV 2 Kosmopol.
Aagesen went to the police, and the police acted. They arrested Overbye and searched the apartment. They took the ash from the stove and found fragments of bone, which later analysis showed could come from an infant. TV 2 Kosmopol calls these remains the decisive evidence at the trial. The Copenhagen Post reported that the police first found the baby's clothes.
Overbye at first denied killing the child. Later she confessed to it, and said it was the last in a long series of killings of infants.
Once she began to confess, the case grew. In the city court (byret), where the case was first examined, she admitted to as many as 16 killings of children, according to both Den Store Danske entries and the Copenhagen Post. The entry on angel-making (englemageri) in Den Store Danske, written by the lawyer Beth Grothe Nielsen, records the same figure: 16 confessed in the city court, nine proven in the High Court.
Her explanations and her attitude changed during the investigation and at the trial, Information reported, and her motive never became clear. Videnskab.dk wrote in 2012 that she killed up to 16 infants, burning most of them in her stove.
The case was tried in 1921 at Østre Landsret, the Eastern High Court in Copenhagen, before a jury (nævningeting). The hearings lasted three days. Dansk Kvindebiografisk Leksikon cites the reports of the Social-Demokraten newspaper for March 2, 3 and 4, 1921, and the official law report, Ugeskrift for Retsvæsen, for 1921 (section A, pages 834 to 836). Den Store Danske reproduces a clipping from Folkets Avis dated February 28, 1921.
The prosecutor, Poul Gammeltoft, asked for a verdict of premeditated killing. Her defense lawyer, Gottlieb Jacobsen, argued that she had been a tool of a deficient society and of indifferent mothers, and he denied that she had acted with premeditation.
Experts told the court that she had probably been under the influence of naphtha and ether when she killed the children, but that she was not insane. They described her as untruthful and highly strung. No clear motive was ever established.
The part played by the stoker she lived with was never made clear. The court heard that he had taken money from her and that he disliked children strongly. No charge against him was reported.
Through the three days, her manner in court ranged from cold indifference to despair to a forced cheerfulness, according to Dansk Kvindebiografisk Leksikon.
The jury found her guilty, and she was sentenced to death. Both Den Store Danske entries say she was found guilty on all nine counts of killing. The verdict was not appealed.
Other Danish sources give the number as eight. TV 2 Kosmopol, drawing on the Police Museum, wrote in 2025 that she was found guilty in the High Court of eight killings of infants between 1916 and 1920. Videnskab.dk wrote in 2012 that Østre Landsret sentenced her to death for killing eight unwanted infants whose mothers had paid her to care for them. Den Store Danske's entry on serial killing, by the criminologist Flemming Balvig, says she killed at least eight infants in her care between 1916 and 1920. Den Store Danske's own entry on her says the nine children in the case included one of her own children; the other eight were foster children. The difference between the sources seems to turn on that ninth child.
Videnskab.dk summed up the trial this way: the defense argued that she was the victim of an uncaring society, and the prosecutor still got the death sentence he asked for.
No woman had been executed in Denmark since 1861. About a month after the verdict, on the recommendation of a meeting of the Council of State (statsrådsmøde), Overbye was pardoned. The pardon came with two conditions: she was never to be released, and she was never to be granted any easing of the prison rules.
The Copenhagen Post reported that King Christian X commuted her sentence to life imprisonment, reasoning that a modern and enlightened Denmark should not execute women. Den Store Danske's entry on angel-making describes the outcome as a death sentence commuted to life imprisonment in a tugthus, the most severe class of Danish prison.
The Copenhagen Post called her the first woman in Denmark to be sentenced to death since 1861. The Danish encyclopedias say something different: that 1861 was the year the last woman was executed. The last execution of any kind in Denmark took place in 1892, according to Den Store Danske.
Overbye served her sentence first at the women's prison (Kvindefængslet) at Christianshavn and was later moved to Vestre Fængsel, the large prison in the south of Copenhagen. She died there on May 6, 1929. TV 2 Kosmopol, Information and Avisen.dk all give her age at death as 42; the Copenhagen Post gave 43.
The following year, Denmark's new penal code of 1930 abolished the death penalty. Information noted that by then the country had gone almost 70 years without executing anyone, and that Overbye's death sentence had been commuted about ten years earlier. The penalty came back for a time after the German occupation; Den Store Danske notes that two women were sentenced to death in that period and that both were pardoned.
The trial forced a public question that nobody had wanted to ask: how so many small children could disappear without anyone noticing. Dansk Kvindebiografisk Leksikon describes the debate that followed. It turned on the unmarried mothers, and on the responsibility of both mothers and fathers. There were calls for mothers' homes and for more public supervision.
The Act on the Supervision of Foster Children (Loven om tilsyn med plejebørn) of 1923 was a direct result of the case, according to both encyclopedia entries. It brought all children born outside marriage under public supervision, and it stayed in force until 1965. Information reported that the case also led to new rules on population registration (folkeregistrering).
Information also noted that Mødrehjælpen, the organization that helped women with unwanted pregnancies and single mothers, was founded in 1924. Madsen, the historian, traced a shift in the way Danish newspapers wrote about infanticide between the wars: from condemning individual mothers toward treating it as a problem for society. "I can even find sympathy in some of the articles," she said.
The Police Museum (Politimuseet) in Copenhagen holds the case files, Overbye's arrest photograph, police photographs of the stove, and bone fragments recovered from the stove on Enghavevej. Information reported that the fragments are on display, with a sign saying they are real. TV 2 Kosmopol said the arrest photograph is one of very few surviving pictures of her. Copenhagen's municipal museums list the case among the Police Museum's notable cases.
Videnskab.dk, in a 2012 article on the roots of evil, quoted Strand on what he saw as a trait shared by several of the cases in the museum: people who commit such acts put themselves at the center. The same article called Overbye the largest serial killer in Danish history.
The novelist Karen Søndergaard Jensen wrote a book about the case, Englemagersken (The Angel Maker). In a 2007 Avisen.dk report she was quoted on how Overbye manipulated the mothers. The same report said Overbye killed more than 20 children; that figure comes from the novelist's account and was never tested in court.
The dramatist Lotte Arnsbjerg wrote a play about the case after reading a newspaper article about it. It was staged at Teatret ved Sorte Hest in Copenhagen. Arnsbjerg told Avisen.dk that she saw in the story lessons about how trauma is passed on to children, and about handling anger.
The Girl with the Needle (Pigen med nålen), directed by Magnus von Horn and shot in black and white, is a film based on the case. It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2024 and opened in Danish cinemas in January 2025, according to Den Store Danske. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film, TV 2 Kosmopol reported. It opened in British cinemas on January 10, 2025, according to the BFI's Sight and Sound.
Trine Dyrholm plays Dagmar, and Vic Carmen Sonne plays Karoline, a young factory worker in Copenhagen after the First World War. Nordisk Film & TV Fond reported in May 2024 that the idea of telling Overbye's story came from von Horn's co-writer, Line Langebek, and that von Horn did not want to make a conventional biopic. He chose to tell the story through someone who is "not the perpetrator, but a person that meets this evil person," he said. He told the same outlet that the team had not tried to be strictly accurate to the period and had wanted to exaggerate things.
In a December 2024 interview with The Moveable Fest, von Horn said that the real woman was a serial killer "but not in the sense that she kidnapped babies to kill them"; women gave her their children in the naive hope that she would find them foster families. He said he found a biopic of a serial killer less interesting than the society around her, and that the film's Karoline was invented to give the audience a main character they could engage with.
The film's heroine shares a first name with Karoline Aagesen, the real mother whose return to Enghavevej led to the arrest. The film's events, characters and dialogue belong to the screenplay. TV 2 Kosmopol reported that the apartment at Enghavevej 21 was not used in the filming.
In February 2025, while the film was in Danish cinemas, TV 2 Kosmopol visited the people who now live in the Enghavevej 21 apartment. One of them said she had not known its history when she signed the purchase contract and learned it only when a journalist called to ask. Her partner said he had known before they moved in. "Fortunately we are not very superstitious," he said.
Proven by the 1921 verdict: that Overbye killed infants placed in her care, among them Karoline Aagesen's daughter on August 30, 1920, and Rasmine Jensen's child in 1916. The verdict was final; it was not appealed.
The number in the verdict: Den Store Danske and Dansk Kvindebiografisk Leksikon say guilty on all nine counts, and Den Store Danske's entry says the nine included one of her own children and eight foster children. TV 2 Kosmopol (citing the Police Museum), Videnskab.dk and Den Store Danske's entry on serial killing give eight killings of infants, between 1916 and 1920. The Copenhagen Post and TV 2 Kosmopol's report on the Oscar nomination say nine. The ninth count may be the child she had at Lemmer in 1913, whom Den Store Danske says she later admitted abandoning, but the reports do not say so in those words, and none says what became of that child.
Confessed: up to 16 killings, in the city court.
Suspected, never tested in court: the death of her first son in Randers, recorded as possibly suspicious; the death of the child she had with the stoker, cause unknown; and the higher totals given by later writers. The Copenhagen Post said she is believed to have killed 25 infants. Avisen.dk, drawing on the novelist Karen Søndergaard Jensen, said more than 20. The BFI's Sight and Sound review of the film repeated "as many as 25". None of these figures was proven in court.
Unclear: what the stoker knew. The court heard that he took money from her and disliked children; his role was never settled, and no charge against him was reported.
Details that differ between accounts: whether Aagesen paid anything (TV 2 Kosmopol says no; the Copenhagen Post says about 200 kroner); what Overbye told her (that the child had been sent out of town, or that she could not remember the new family's address); whether 1861 was the year of the last execution of a woman (the encyclopedias) or of the last death sentence on a woman (the Copenhagen Post); and her age at death (42 in most sources; 43 in the Copenhagen Post). The Copenhagen Post also placed Aagesen's advertisement in July 1920; TV 2 Kosmopol, citing the police report, dates the handover to August 30, 1920.
April 23, 1887: Dagmar Johanne Amalie Overby is born at Assendrup, Vedslet parish, Jutland.
About age 12: sent away from home; about three years later returns to her parents in Aarhus.
1909: serves her first prison sentence, on Funen, for theft.
Before 1912: has a son in Aarhus; the boy dies in Randers, possibly in suspicious circumstances.
January 4, 1912: marries; a daughter is born in 1912.
1913: housekeeper at Lemmer, southeast of Randers; the child born there is the last she later admits abandoning.
1914: a son is born (as listed by Dansk Kvindebiografisk Leksikon).
About 1915: moves to Copenhagen and opens a sweet shop on Holmbladsgade; lives with a stoker.
1916: on Jægersborggade, takes Rasmine Jensen's baby for 12 kroner and kills the child the same day.
1918 to 1919: serves a prison sentence for theft; a child in her keeping is taken under the guardianship council and survives.
1919: living at Enghavevej 21, Vesterbro.
August 30, 1920: Karoline Aagesen brings her two-month-old daughter to Enghavevej; the child is killed that afternoon.
Three days later: Aagesen returns, is turned away, and goes to the police; Overbye is arrested and bone fragments are found in the stove.
1920 to 1921: in the city court, she confesses to up to 16 killings.
Early March 1921: three-day jury trial at Østre Landsret; guilty verdict and death sentence; no appeal.
About a month later: pardoned after a Council of State recommendation, on condition she is never released.
1923: the Act on the Supervision of Foster Children is passed.
May 6, 1929: dies in Vestre Fængsel, Copenhagen.
1930: Denmark's new penal code abolishes the death penalty.
1965: the 1923 act ceases to apply.
May 2024: The Girl with the Needle premieres at Cannes.
January 2025: the film opens in Denmark; it is nominated for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film.