The Chestnut Man: Ending Explained What Happened in 1987? The Kristina Hartung Case?

Who really is the chestnut man and why did he commit those murders? Let’s find out together. The Chestnut Man is a TV series directed by Kasper Barfoed and Mikkel Serup which is based on the 2018 Danish novel of the same name written by Soren Sveistrup.

The Chestnut Man: Ending Explained

The show available on Netflix is a thriller that tells of the murders committed by a killer, who leaves at the crime scene some men made by hand with carved chestnuts. Investigating the case are detectives Naia Thulin and Mark Hess who had never met before. However, both are destined to leave the Copenhagen police force for different reasons after solving the case of the chestnut man. This article will explain the main aspects of the plot and the plan of the killer. So beware of spoilers!

The Plot Of The Chestnut Man

The first episode of The Chestnut Man shows a flashback from 1987 where a policeman is seen inspecting a farm and finds all the members of the family who lived there dead except two children. Unfortunately for the policeman, however, the killer did not leave the farm and so he too was killed.

At this point the plot of the Danish series moves to the present where we witness a series of murders linked together by the presence of a chestnut man left at the crime scene. The same chestnut men were seen in the 1987 flashback, but until shortly before the end of the series, no explanation is given regarding the connection between the murders and the chestnut men. In addition to this in all the murders there seems to be a pattern linked to the amputation of one or more limbs of the victim.

The plot of The Man of Chestnuts thickens even more when the story of the kidnapping of the child Kristine Hartung enters the scene, which took place a year before the murders that are taking place in the present. Keep in mind that the little girl was given up for dead but her body was never found. The Hartung case comes back to the surface when the little chestnut men found at the crime scene contain the girl’s footprints!

What Happened in 1987?

The flashback takes place on the Isle of Møn in 1987 where a certain Ørum lives with his wife, a biological son and two adopted children. When the policeman Marius enters the house he finds several dead bodies and two children still alive. One of them is the adopted child Toke, who stands next to a bloody hatchet and a dead woman’s body in the bathtub. The adopted child, on the other hand, is in a separate room from the rest of the house, which gives the idea of ​​being a basement. Here are several chestnut men that the two adopted children loved to make.

When Marius finds the girl he is attacked and killed by an indistinct figure that comes behind him. Knowing the outcome of the story, we learn that the murderer of the family and the policeman on the farm is Toke. Well, the child after being the victim of abuse and violence by his adoptive family has decided to protect himself and his sister Astrid by killing everyone. It is unclear why Toke also killed the policeman. A plausible explanation could be that the child was afraid of the consequences of his actions. Alternatively, it can be assumed that Toke did not want to be taken to the police station and then entrusted to another family.

The confirmation of the abuses suffered by the twins Toke and Astrid comes when the detective John Brink reveals to Hess that he has found VHS that show the violence inflicted on the twins by their mother and father.

The Kristina Hartung Case

The character of Rosa Hartung is presented alongside the main story of the series. This is the mother of a little girl, Kristine, who has been kidnapped and has been lost track of. The kidnapping case ended with the incarceration of the self-confessed offender Linus Bekker, who said he tore the girl’s body to pieces but can’t remember where he buried it.

In retrospect it turns out that Bekker is just a man with mental problems who wants to draw media attention to himself. The chestnut man got him involved in order to stop the investigation into Kristine’s disappearance, as his criminal plan was to psychologically torture his mother Rosa. In fact, not finding Kristine’s body, her parents would have wondered if she was really dead or not, never giving up.

Toke, who hides under the identity of the forensic expert Simon Genz, has evidently placed the machete or the murder weapon with Kristine’s blood at Bekker’s house with the condescension of the latter. What is not explained is how Toke and Bekker met. As for Kristine’s footprints on the chestnut men, in the end it turns out that Toke himself made the little girl touch the chestnuts with which he built the men.

In fact, the chestnut men that Kristine herself built and sold as a child have nothing to do with the case of the murders. The decisive clue on this aspect is given by the fact that Toke always wanted to have the same type of chestnuts, which grew in the area of ​​the farm where he committed his first murders. This represents Toke’s strong bond with the farm and therefore with the trauma he suffered. Kristine is being held segregated by Toke and her sister Astrid in an apartment in Germany.

Who is Rosa Hartung And What Connection Does She Have With The Killer?

Rosa Hartung is the connecting link between the Toke murders and the kidnapping of her daughter Kristine. Rosa, like Toke, was a child who had been placed in foster care and who as an adult – as a minister – continued to deal with social problems related to children.

In 1985 Toke and Astrid are adopted by the family Rosa lived with. The three children played together singing the song of the chestnut man and making the men who represented him. Rosa, however, was not happy to share the attentions of her parents with two other children, so she invented a lie with which she managed to hunt the twins Toke and Astrid. The series never revealed what the lie was but it is assumed that Rosa accused her stepbrother Toke of physical and / or sexual violence.

Due to Rosa’s lie, Toke and Astrid found themselves (in 1987) in a family that did not love them and that abused them also for economic purposes. Toke’s kidnapping of Rosa’s daughter is clearly an act of revenge .

What is The Pattern Of The Murders?

The murders carried out by Toke / Genz are:

1. Laura Kjaer who lived with a 10-year-old son and a partner who abused the baby. Laura’s hand was amputated
2. Anne Sejer Lassen whose husband abused their daughters. Anne had both hands amputated
3. Jessie Kvium neglecting her 6-year-old daughter. Jessie’s hands and foot were amputated

The fourth murder involved the death of Rosa Hartung and the amputation of the hands and feet, then of 4 limbs after having cut off 1 to the first victim, two to the second and three to the third. In this way Toke would have had human limbs to complete one or more hypothetical chestnut men. This macabre aspect of the story is not deepened by the series but is left to the viewer’s imagination.

The idea of ​​leaving the footprints of Rosa’s daughter , Kristine, on each murder represents a direct message to the minister, who aims to psychologically disturb the latter as the detectives intuit from the beginning.

Finally, it is worth underlining an important psychological aspect of Toke. Before killing the intended victims, he tried to get the law to intervene to save children subjected to violence, abuse and mistreatment. His way of doing it would therefore have demonstrated the ineffectiveness of the system and its necessary intervention. All this is very reminiscent of the TV series Dexter in which the protagonist, like Toke, works in forensics and helps find the killers. But when justice fails, he enters the scene and kills those who have escaped the law.

As for the revenge carried out by Rosa Hartung’s driver, Jacob Rasouli, and by his nurse companion, Benedikte Skans, it can be said that it was an addition to the script useful to mislead the investigations and make minutes. Even if the person responsible for the death of the two is not shown in the face, with a little attention it is clear that it was Toke.

In fact, when Jacob and Benedikte are arguing in the woods, a car approaches them with the killer inside. Well, the car is Toke’s, you can tell from the plate of his gray BMW CV 12 184. In fact, the same car can be seen driven by Toke / Genz in the last episode. The Chestnut Man is available on Netflix.