TRUE CRIME: MURDER ON ISLE OF SHOALS | 16 ISLANDS

Thu, 25 Sep 2025 16:13:09 +0000

Sailing from Maine to New Hampshire we stopped at Isle of Shoals, approximately 6 miles off the coast. Miles of Maine Island Hiking, Rock scrambling and Shoreline exploring.

Isle of Shoals, consists of 16 islands, the largest being Appledore, Star, Smuttynose, Malaga, White, Seavey, Lunging and Duck.

The most intriguing part ? There was a true Crime Murder on Isle of Shoals Smuttynose Island back on March 6,1873. Two Norwegian immigrants were brutally murdered in cold blood. Maren Hontvet, her sister Karen, and their sister-in-law Anethe—settled into the only occupied home on the island, unaware that by dawn, two of them would be dead.

Shortly after 1 a.m., an intruder slipped inside. Karen was strangled in her bed, Anethe was butchered with an axe, and only Maren managed to escape, barefoot and terrified, into the icy darkness. She hid among the rocks until daylight, clinging to life as her family’s world collapsed. Anita Shreve wrote a 1997 book about the event and in 2000, the film “Weight of Water with Sean Penn, Catherine McCormack, Elizabeth Hurley, and Sarah Polley was released.

Special thanks to the Portsmouth Athenaeum for preserving the crime's weapons and circumstantial evidence.

TIMELINE:
0:00 Introduction
0:30 Sailing to Isle of Shoals
3:55 Isle of Shoals 16 Islands
6:10 SmuttyNose Murders of Anethe and Karen Christensen
9:06 Portsmouth, NH

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