At the funeral of her 61-year-old Norwegian husband, Helge Ivarsen, Rubyrosa “Ruby” Ivarsen was the picture of a devastated widow. She wept, collapsed over his coffin, and professed her undying love. Everyone in the quiet Norwegian community, including his two adult daughters, believed the driving instructor had simply succumbed to a sudden heart attack.

But behind the veil of her grief was a cold and calculating secret, one that would be unraveled by a suspicious autopsy, a discarded barbecue grill, and a damning digital trail of her own Google searches.

The story began as a modern May-December romance. Helge, a lonely divorcé in his late 50s, met Ruby, a young woman from an impoverished background in the Philippines, on a dating website. Despite the 30-year age gap, a relationship blossomed. In 2007, he brought her to Norway, and they married.

Helge’s daughters, Emily and Regina, were initially wary, suspecting she might be a “gold digger,” but Ruby’s kind and caring nature quickly won them over. She became a beloved stepmother, and for years, they were, by all accounts, a happy, blended family.

However, the fairytale began to sour. According to Ruby, Helge became verbally abusive, especially during arguments about the large sums of money she sent to her family in the Philippines to build a house. She claimed he treated her more like a maid than a wife.

Unhappy, she began an affair with a Filipino man during a vacation back home and allegedly started plotting a way out—one that would leave her with her husband’s assets.

On the night of June 25, 2014, after a heated argument where Helge reportedly discovered her affair, he went to sleep. It was the last time he would be seen alive. Ruby called for an ambulance two hours later, claiming she had found him unresponsive. He was declared dead, and the initial assumption was a heart attack.

The truth was far more sinister. The official autopsy report delivered a bombshell: Helge had died from carbon monoxide poisoning, and his system contained a high dosage of sleeping pills. The case was now a homicide, and Ruby was the prime suspect.

The investigation was methodical. While Ruby continued to play the part of the grieving widow, even befriending her stepdaughters as she began renovating the house to sell, police were quietly building their case. The breakthrough came from her personal computer. A forensic analysis of her search history revealed a chilling chronicle of premeditation.

For months, she had been Googling phrases like, “Will rat poison kill a person?”, “How to poison someone and not get caught,” “deadly smoke,” and “What is a poison that disappears from the system?” Most damningly, she had searched, “What happens to your inheritance if your spouse dies without a will?”

The physical evidence soon followed. Helge’s ex-wife, Linda, whose name was still on the house’s title, was helping to clear the property when she found several disposable barbecue grills in the garage.

One had been clearly burned, but the grill itself was clean, suggesting it had been used only to produce smoke, not to cook food. She reported her finding to the police. This was the murder weapon.

Armed with the digital trail and the physical evidence, police waited. Ruby, unaware she was a suspect, took a long vacation to the Philippines.

On February 15, 2015, confident she had gotten away with the perfect crime, she flew back to Norway to finalize the sale of the house. Police were waiting for her at the Oslo airport and arrested her on the spot.

During the trial, Ruby confessed but maintained it was an act of desperation by an abused wife. The prosecution painted a different picture: a cold, calculated murder for financial gain.

Then came the final, tragic irony. It was revealed in court that Ruby had never been added to Helge’s last will and testament. The house she was planning to sell, and all of his assets, were set to go to his ex-wife and his daughters. She had killed him for an inheritance she was never going to receive.

In May 2016, Rubyrosa Ivarsen was found guilty of premeditated murder and sentenced to 21 years in prison, a story of a modern “black widow” whose meticulous planning was ultimately exposed by the digital ghosts she left behind.