CRIME HUNTER: Typical teen Penny ‘Bad Penny’ Bjorkland wanted to kill

With blond hair, blue eyes, freckles, and a ponytail, she looked like an extra on 'Happy Days'

Published Jun 20, 2026  •  4 minute read

Bad Penny told everyone she was a "normal" teen girl of the 1950s, like these ones.

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Upon first glance, there was nothing that set Penny Bjorkland apart from her teenage peers.

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Oh, the 17-year-old was a bit on the nervous side, bit her nails to the quick and didn’t appear to have a lot of friends. But Penny herself would tell anyone who’d listen that she was just a “normal, average girl.”

And with blond hair, blue eyes, freckles, and a ponytail, she looked like an extra on Happy Days, a typical 1950s teenager. That Ozzie and Harriet facade was hiding a monster with homicidal desires.

And she acted upon her sick inclinations.

Bad Penny was in hot water. GETTY IMAGES

“For about a year or a year and a half I’ve had the urge to kill someone,” Penny later said. “I’ll admit that the motive sounds crazy, but I wanted to know if a person could commit a crime like this and not worry about the police looking for her or have it on her conscience.”

She added: “I’ve felt better since I killed him. “I felt better mentally. Like it was a great burden lifted off of me. I have no bad memories about it. I always wanted to see if I could do something like this and not have it bother me.”

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Now, Korean War vet August Norry was dead

Penny also felt better by keeping a container of vodka and orange juice hidden in her locker.

She lived with her family in Daly City, about 16 kilometres south of San Francisco in San Mateo County in the Bay Area. It was an average existence and the horrors of the world lay elsewhere.

However, just because Dwight D. Eisenhower was the president, wallets were full and factories were booming, crime did not stay on the sidelines in the ’50s.

Penny gets ready for her big scene in court.

Cops found the body of 28-year-old August Norry in the Daly City Hills on Feb. 1, 1959. Norry was married and with much to look forward to: he was about to become a first-time father. While he was married, whispers suggested Norry was a bit of a player.

A Korean War veteran who was wounded in action, Norry had used his G.I. Bill money and gone to school for landscape architecture. He worked full time as a landscaper at the Lake Merced Country Club and took care of the grounds at a chemical plant in San Leandro on Sundays.

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Why would someone shoot Norry 18 times?

What reason could someone have to park 18 bullets into him?

Cops were stunned by the overkill. Was the murder a crime of passion?

All homicide detectives had was a witness, a boy, who had observed what he described as a freckle-faced blond girl driving Norry’s car at high rates of speed and the .38 calibre bullets that littered the crime scene. Who was the blond? Was she the killer or was it just a coincidence?

NORRY: Wrong place, wrong time.

So they traced the bullets that came from a distinctive mould. The gunsmith told investigators that he remembered selling them to a girl named Penny Bjorkland.

They arrested Bad Penny at her parents’ Daly City home on April 15, 1959, two-and-a-half months after Norry was taken off the board. It didn’t take long for the teenager to crack.

Penny stole the .38

By the following morning, she had confessed.

Penny stole the .38-calibre handgun from a girlfriend’s parents’ bedroom in January. Then she began formulating her plan for murder.

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On the big day, a Sunday, she stuffed the gun into the waistband of her pedal pushers. Penny wasn’t quite sure how the day was going to play or and even if she would go through with murder. Then, an opportunity presented itself and sealed the deal.

SCENE OF THE CRIME: Penny shows a detective the murder scene. GETTY

August Norry kindly offered Penny a lift.

“Suddenly,” Bjorkland later cops cops, “I had the overpowering urge to shoot him. I kept shooting, emptying my gun and reloading. That was the only reason. There was no other.”

When he dropped her off, the terrible teen turned around and faced the Good Samaritan and pumped five bullets into his body. She then reloaded and parked five more bullets into her victim. And then, she shot him more times.

Penny ditched the father-to-be’s body and raced off in Norry’s car.

Ditched Norry’s body

Prior to her trial, the teen terror refused to talk to mental health specialists or even a priest. Throughout the court proceedings, she showed little emotion and sat stone-faced. She did tell police jailer Maxine Stooksbury that she hated her parents because they made her go to church.

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The lawyer her parents hired, Joseph Murray, was perplexed by Penny’s cold demeanour and refusal to change her story to save herself. In fact, she refused to cooperate with her counsel.

Headshrinkers called to testify reported there was nothing psychologically wrong with the girl.

Penny pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in July 1959, and threw herself upon the mercy of the court. She was sentenced to life in prison but would be eligible for parole after serving seven years.

At trial, the teen did herself no favours as reporters covering the big case noted that she had a “giggling disinterest.” It really was a bit of a giggle until the judge read the verdict: Life in prison. This was not what Penny had expected, she was shaken by the words she had just heard.

She stated: “I am unhappy.”

Newspaper reports say cold-blooded Penny was released from prison some time in the mid-1960s.

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