1111. A Beacon of Hope, Inspiration and Trust

Unni Turrettini

“Norway is a country that is very conforming. I think it’s part of our culture from way back because of living in a place where it was important to stay in a group to survive, because it is cold and dark in the winter and not much grows. It’s really a harsh environment. So, people needed to stay within the group and to be accepted by the group. You have to play by the rules.”

Norwegian-born Unni Turrettini is the author of The Mystery of the Lone Wolf Killer. She is also the author of Betraying the Nobel which focuses on the lack of leadership in the world and on the Nobel Peace Prize’s importance as a beacon of hope and inspiration. Through writing and speaking, Unni is on a mission to restore trust in leadership by encouraging women to fully step up and into their true feminine power. She also works as a coach for high-achieving women. She has law degrees from Norway, France, and the United States, and is a member of the New York Bar. She worked numerous years in law and finance before she began writing.

The Most Impactful Turning Point?

“I didn’t want to go back to law or the banking world. I just wasn’t sure what I wanted to do next. Then in 2011 we had this awful, awful, awful incident in Norway where a young man, who seemed to be a normal, regular, intelligent person, killed seventy-seven people in one day. I started to study him, and I realized that the reason why I was so fascinated by this case was because I understood the loneliness and the lack of belonging and the isolation that he felt growing up. I really felt an urge to do more research, to understand him and similar mass killers, to figure out if I could somehow find if there were warning signs and if there was something about our societies and our culture that facilitated their evolution into becoming these monsters. I started working with a former FBI agent who has a PhD in lone wolf mass killers–that’s the name of these types of killers–and she helped me a lot. I wrote the book, The Mystery of the Lone Wolf Killer, about the phenomenon to provide insight into what happens in the evolution of one person and how we as a society are contributing to their evolution, and what we can do to prevent this from happening again.”