Murder On The Lake: Finland's Greatest Unsolved Mystery
What happened the night of June 4th, 1960, when three teens were murdered at Lake Bodom in Finland? And why has no one ever been charged with the crime?
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PHOTOS
SOURCES
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/584241/lake-bodom-murders
https://svenska.yle.fi/a/7-1127355
https://www.hs.fi/kotimaa/art-2000009431534.html
https://svenska.yle.fi/a/7-819316
https://nakoislehti.hs.fi/e2373aa1-03dc-4539-b53e-edc22b97c057/4?q=Nils%2BGustafsson
https://nakoislehti.hs.fi/f1e8326d-8414-4a04-a288-eed88d2baed1/3?q=Nils%2BGustafsson https://web.archive.org/web/20060501025544/http://www.yle.fi/uutiset/kotimaa/taustat/id15657.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20060914021130/http://www.yle.fi/uutiset/taustat/linkitys/id16276.html https://www.is.fi/kotimaa/art-2000006109001.html
https://www.is.fi/kotimaa/art-2000006500884.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20060915033839/http://www.yle.fi/uutiset/taustat/linkitys/id16174.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20060915043324/http://www.yle.fi/uutiset/uutisvuosi2004/paauutiset/id4178.html
https://areena.yle.fi/1-50649009
TRANSCRIPT
Listener discretion is advised
Though it was early summer, there was still a chill in the water when Esko Johnasson arrived at Lake Bodom on June 5th, 1960. It was the sunday of a holiday weekend and Esko lived nearby the lake in the town of Espoo, Finland. He was headed for a swim around 11am. It was typical for locals to spend their weekends on the lake once the weather warmed up and the sun came back out after months of perpetual night.
Esko turned off the road and trekked through a short patch of woods towards the lake and in the distance, about halfway between the road and the water, he saw a tent. That’s strange, he thought. It wasn’t common, nor particularly safe for people to camp in these woods. At first, it looked like whoever was camping there had given up on taking down their tent, the site was a mess, belongings strewn everywhere and the tent was mostly collapsed.
He thought he’d check it out, but as he got closer, something didn’t feel right. Laying on top of the tent, was a boy, about 18 years old, with blood on his face, looking as if he got in a horrible fight. And underneath him, were a tangle of three other bloodied bodies. Esko couldn’t make sense of what he was seeing, his mind was in panic mode. When all of a sudden the boy on top of the tent took a sharp breath.
“Help Me” he gasps, and then falls back unconscious.
INTRO
Welcome to heart starts pounding, a podcast of horrors, hauntings and mysteries. I’m your host, Kaelyn Moore.
This is a community for people who like to follow their dark curiosity wherever it leads them. Those of us that sometimes spend hours in reddit black holes, creeping ourselves out way past our bedtimes. If you’d like to dive further into the community, check out our instagram and tik tok @ heartstarts pounding, or join me on Patreon for some bonus content, in what we’re calling our Rogue Detecting Society.
I want to tell you a story today about one of Finland’s greatest unsolved mysteries. It’s the tale of a summery, idyllic weekend that turned deadly. Four teens that were attacked on a camping trip and the mystery that ensued. I thought it was fitting as we plunge straight into summer. And if you’re listening to this in the future when it’s not summer, I encourage you to build a pillow tent and pillow campfire in your living room and pretend.
June 4th, 1960. It was a beautiful holiday weekend in Espoo, a lake side town in Finland. Four teens sped down the winding roads by the lake on motorcycles, heading towards an off road spot in a small patch of woods by Lake Bodom where they were going to set up a tent for the weekend.
The drivers were Nils Gustafsson and Seppo Boisman, two 18 year old boys that had been best friends for years, and each of them had their girlfriend behind them on their bike as well. Behind Seppo, with her arms wrapped around him as her brown hair whipped in the wind was 15 year old Tuulekki Maki. She and Seppo had only been dating a few weeks when she introduced her own best friend, 15 year old Irmeli Bjorklund to Nils. And now, just a week after planning the trip and a few weeks since they all became official, the two sets of best friends were kicking off summer with a camping trip. It was, by all accounts, a teenage dream
But as they made their way through the winding streets, stopping in town to pick up some booze and food, the locals couldn’t help but look at them with suspicious glances. Sure, Lake Bodom was a beautiful pine tree lined lake that the community used for fishing and swimming. It wasn’t common to see outsiders, though. Espoo was a small town, everyone knew everyone, and maybe that’s why they tensed up when they saw the lovedrunk, giggly teens. Espoo was not the place you’d want to be out past midnight in, what were they doing camping out here.
It was Nils who chose the spot. He had remembered coming here once before on a boys fishing weekend, and insisted the couples all come together. If it wasn’t safe You’d never guess that from the scene the teens saw as they parked the motorcycles by some trees. They picked a small clearing in a section of woods that jetted out into the water, making a little peninsula of land, and set up their cozy four person tent. The girls jumped in the water, but it was still the early days of summer, the lake had juuust barely warmed up. So the boys decided to sit it out, opting instead to drink some of the pilsners they picked up and eat some food.
They watched as other people in the area swam in the lake and rowed around on boats. nils could feel a shift in the air sometime in the afternoon. He looked up from his camping bag to see that everyone in the area had cleared out, it was now completely empty except for him and his friends. Where had all the people gone.
That night, the group continued n swimming, eating, and nils and seppo drank a bit more. The girls went to bed first, and later, when Nils crawled in the tent, he could hear Seppo outside, rummaging around in his bag. Nils peaked his head out to see what was happening, and Seppo admitted he couldn’t sleep. His mind was restless and he wanted to go fishing to relax. Nils opted to join him, and the two boys sat on the shore, drinking and sharing stories.
What Seppo was so anxious about, we’ll never know, but I can imagine it was some of the anxiety that comes with being a recent high school graduate. The boys had just finished school and were now hit with some of the responsibilities of being adults. They had both gotten jobs that summer to carry some of the financial burden of their families. Plus, there was the issue of what would happen with their girlfriends. Seppo already knew that Tuulekki’s dad didn’t like him much. On the way to the lake, she had confessed to Seppo that her dad didn’t want her to go, something about the trip didn’t feel right to him. Seppo couldn’t help but figure it had to do with their relationship.
The boys chatted and fished until about 2am, when they’d came back to the tent, crawled in, and then fell asleep. I can’t imagine Nils knew that that would be the last time he ever spoke to Seppo.
The next memory Nils has is of waking up in the hospital. He fluttered his eyes open as he came to, feeling mostly numb except for an intense deep pain in his jaw. When he went to open it, he found it too painful to do so. Why was he here? What about the camping trip? Where were his friends and why did his face feel like it went through a windshield?
Nils mother and the nurses who were there in his room were happy he was awake, but it quickly became apparent that he had no idea why he was there. The trauma from his head injury wiped his memory clear of everything that had just happened to him and his friends. they all looked at each other, dreading what they were about to tell him.
Nils was informed that Esko Johnansson had found the four teens beaten and bloody around 11am. The scene Esko came upon was particularly dreadful. Tufts of hair, blood, and teeth were scattered around the four teens who were wrapped up in the shredded tent. It looked like someone from outside of the tent had taken a knife and sliced through to get to the kids. Esko was sure they were all dead, the flies circling the scene were a giveaway. that’s when Nils started moving, he was alive. Esko ran to the nearest phone to ring the police.
Which rooms were his friends in, Nils cried out, his jaw ringing in pain as he did so. They weren’t in the hospital the nurse informed him. All of a sudden, Nils jaw went numb. His whole body went numb. He knew what that meant.
This was too much for him to process. He was trying to make sense of what happened to him, and now he had to mourn the death of his girlfriend. Her best friend. His best friend.
But before he can even think about all of that, the police are on him. Through a haze of pain killers, Nils was interrogated as to what the hell happened that night. But How could he know what caused any of this, he didn’t even know how his friends died.
It was his parents and doctors that later explained to him that he had a broken jaw and concussion, which was probably why he couldn’t remember anything. Something had hit him in the head after he had fallen asleep. But, this wasn’t some freak accident, because he was found with defense wounds, his knuckles were bruised and bloody, meaning that whatever happened the early morning hours of June 5th, Nils fought like hell.
The police helped fill in the rest of the gaps for him. He was found at 11am laying on top of the shredded tent, while his friends were all found still under the tent. It seemed like whoever did this had a knife, as well as a flat stone, and both stabbed and beat his friends to death, somehow sparing Nils the worst of it. though Nils was still hit with something HARD, he had no knife wounds on him, unlike his friends. from their calculations, the attack most likely happened between the hours of 4am and 6am.
Nils, however, was not told about the condition his friends were found in. that remained a mystery to him until 2004. He knew his friends died but he never knew the graphic details until his 60’s.
The police were still putting together what happened at the scene, and the three other teens were sent in for autopsies. Each teens belongings were collected and sent back to their families, and when Tuulikki’s brother gets her blanket, he can tell immediately that she was also not asleep when this happened. The blanket was covered in kinetic streaks of blood and tufts of hair that had been pulled out. Whatever happened, he could tell that Tuulikki was awake, and she was also fighting back
what we know now, after the autopsies have happened, is that his friends were found mostly with stab wounds and blunt hits to the neck and head. All of them had defensive wounds meaning they were all awake at the time of the attack. Irmeli seemed to get the worst of the beating, and when she was found, she was undressed from the waist down. It was clear from the tears in the tent that whoever did this was not inside of the tent, they entered from the outside.
No weapons were found at the scene, but there were two pieces of evidence that were quite strange. First, Nils shoes were found a few hundred yards from the crime scene, and they were covered in blood. It was unclear why that was the only piece of clothing far away from the tent, and why they were discarded so far away.
And second, there was a strange pillowcase found outside of the tent. It had blood on it, but it was wrapped up and tied on the ends with string, except the ties had been cut with a knife. It didn’t look like anyone had been using it as a pillowcase that night.
Seppo was found lying with his leg under Tulukki, he had abrasion on the left knuckle, contusion on the left temple, his jaw was broken, and he had deep puncture wounds on his neck. Her head was covered with a blanket when police arrived
Tuulikki also had injuries to mostly her head and neck, as well as puncture wounds on her exposed back
So if the attack happened from someone outside of the tent, it probably was an intruder, right? Police immediately were suspicious as to why Nils was the only one without knife wounds. It turns out, there were a few closed door conversations being had about the condition nils was found in. It was weird that his shoes were found so far away from the tent, was he…leaving the scene?
The nurses had some concerns as well. They had seen people come in with wounds similar to Nils’s. As they described it, his injuries were consistent with getting into a fight or falling from 3-6 feet. Neither of those two scenarios had ever resulted in amnesia as bad as he was describing. Temporary amnesia, sure. But not remembering a single thing from the event? That wasnt typical.
So Suspicions were mounting against Nils, but it was impossible to get any information out of him, he insisted he didn’t remember anything. So they started asking around the community for more information, and they found that there were a few people out that night who had seen the campers. So let’s run through what some of the witnesses who were out that morning had to say.
Around 7am, Martin and Ruth Koli were out on the water with their 5 year old daughter. They saw the tent on the shore from their boat. They could faintly see feet sticking out of the tangled mess, but thought there had been a bad fight and didn’t want to get involved
Then at 10am, three teens came to the beach when they saw the campsite. They went up close to the site to see what had happened when they noticed that Nils was lying there in rough shape. According to them, nils waved and spoke gibberish to them. The teens also assumed it had been a bad fight, and continued on.
So multiple people that morning had seen the group and thought that they had gotten into a horrible fight, and no one called the police until 11am. It’s really frustrating to hear, but the worst of the injuries were hidden under the tent. They were just seeing Nils with his bloodied face, It may not have been clear from the get go that three people had been brutally murdered.
So those witnesses can tell us what happened hours after the murder.But the police were able to track down a few witnesses who saw the teens earlier in the morning, around the time that the murder happened, and they noticed something really interesting
Heikki Salonen and Kalevi Haalalainen were 16 year old bird watchers who were walking around the area at 5:30am the morning of the murders. At one point, when the two were near the sight, Heikki heard a voice that sounded human. When he looked in the direction of the voice, he saw two motorcycles up against a tree as well as a piled up tent with a young man lying on top of it. He described a scene similar to what the other witnesses described, but with one important difference. Headed towards the eastern shore of the cape, away from the tent, was a man. Heikki remembered him as being an adult person dressed in a light shirt or jacket, but had no other details. The man was 30 meters away from the tent and from where they stood, it looked like the man on top of the tent was a hiker just waking up, so they felt no need to contact authorities.
Olavi Kivilahti was a 14 year old boy who was out at 6am that morning to go fishing, and he too remembered seeing a man. He said he was about 50 meters away from a 20-30 year old man who was traveling rather quickly. He described him as having a straight build, straight light brown hair combed back, dark pants and a light jacket. Olavi didn’t mention seeing the tent
Who was the strange man seen leaving the area of tent? And how would they ever find out who it was?
Well, just a day and a half after the attack, someone was admitted to the hospital that made the nurses suspicious.
After the break
On June 7th, 1960, a man by the name of Hans Assman was admitted to a hospital in Helsinki for stomach pain. He was unconscious when he arrived at the hospital, but it kind of looked like he was faking it. His eyes were squeezed shut as if it were intentional, not like what an unconscious person would be doing. To figure out if he was really unconscious, one doctor used a highly effective medical technique called tickling, which got him to wake up immediately.
While a nurse was doing intake, she made not of some things regarding Hans appearance. For one, his fingernails were disgusting, it looked like they were caked in dirt, and he had mysterious red stains all over his clothing. His shoes were also muddied and gross, one nurse said it looked as if he had been running through a forrest.
Hans was also someone that everyone in the community knew. He was a german workman who had lived in Finland for 10 years, and in that time, he had made quite a name for himself. Mostly, because he had ties to the murder of Kyllikki Saari, a 17 year old Finnish girl whose body was found in a bog after she went missing while riding her bike. Hans car was identical to the car seen at the murder scene, though he was never convicted for her murder.
Hans also mostly fit the description, he had blonde hair, which could have been mistaken for light brown in the dark and from a distance, he was 36 at the time of the murders and had a build that matched what the boys saw.
Hans also lived with his wife in a small house that was on the property of where the teens were killed. It was still several kilometers away, but he would have almost definitely been in the immediate vicinity.
At the same time that police are starting to question if Hans was involved, Nils was being taken away for hypnotherapy. The police figured if he couldn’t remember anything, maybe a hypnotherapist could help him dig into his memory bank and remember what happened that night.
Hypnotherapy is incredibly controversial in modern forensics, but this was 1960 baby, the heyday of junk psychology. In 1960, you could be hypnotized to bring up a false memory, a psychologist could tell you with a straight face that that memory indicated you wanted to murder your father to marry your mother, and then you could be lobotomized. All in one weekend!
But in all seriousness, researchers have found that hypnotherapy does bring up as many false memories as it brings up real ones, only it increases the patients confidence in the false memories. There have been incredible memories recovered, like the bus driver whose bus was hijacked and buried with 26 kids inside. Under hypnotherapy, he was able to recall most of the perpetrators license plate, which led to their arrest. However, many people in the field today are turning their backs on the practice, after multiple people have been put on death row over shoddy memories retrieved during the practice.
I mention all that to say, take this next part with a grain of salt
During Nils hypnotherapy, the police and hypnotherapist were really keen on getting a description of the man that others had seen. So in the session, the therapist had nils relax into a meditative state, and then worked with him to pull details of a face, the jacket, anything he could, out of his memory bank. And nils started remembering something
At first, it was screams. Nils could hear the sounds of the girls screaming. He could see the outside of the tent being ripped with a knife. And then, he remembered seeing a man enter the tent with the knife and what looked like a lead pipe. He said the man had flowy, blonde hair, and big eyes. Nils was able to describe more of the facial features for a sketch artist who was in the room, and soon, they had a composite sketch of who the man was.
There’s no doubt that it looks like Hans, and apparently Hans thought it looked like him too, because within days of the sketch going wide, he cut his hair short so it didn't match the flier.
That’s not enough though, because police still question him. At this point, they had questioned thousands of suspects. If you lived in the area it was pretty much guaranteed that the police were going to be at your door, and they knew that Hans lived near where the murders happened.
But Hans, had an iron clad alibi. See, hans was having an affair at the time, and the night of the murders, he wasn’t in his home. He was with his mistress, who confirmed that he was with her the entire night. Her brother was at the house too and substantiated her story.
Police agreed that his alibi was solid, it couldn’t have been Hans. They instead turned their focus to two other local men who had criminal records and were known for having short fuses, Arne Loco, and Eske Longa, but neither men seemed to be the guy either.
They took to the streets, interviewing all of the locals and taking photos of the town.
One of the photos they took is of a man named Vallu Gyllstrom, also known as kiosk man because He ran a food and drink kiosk in town. The photo is in black and white, and Shows the kiosk man leaning forward, shirtless. Incredulously looking into the camera. It’s hard to tell what he’s thinking in the photo. Is he suspicious of the police, or hiding something? Police wondered the same thing, but cleared him after a brief search of his home.
Witnesses had only seen this mystery man walking away from near the scene. No one saw the murders happen and it wasn’t like they had DNA testing back then. So with Hans’ alibi and no other leads to follow the case turned cold. Fading in to a bitter winter hibernation.
But Just because there was no DNA testing when the crime happened, doesn’t mean that DNA testing couldn’t be used in the case.
Years later, 43 years later to be exact, Nils Gustafssen gets a knock at the door. It’s the police and a new, younger detective that’s taken on his case. And they’ve come with an important update for Nils
Nils is being arrested for the murder of his three friends. And they believe they have the evidence now to prove it was him.
After the break
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In 2003, the Bodom file came off of the back shelf and opened up once again. It was a case that had been on every police officers mind over the last 43 years, but for most of those years, there was nothing they could do. Most of the suspects had died over the years, including Hans Assman. But now, four decades later, they had the tools to reopen the case.
Two really important clues were discovered once the tent was sent to the lab and the bodies of the three deceased teens were exhumed. DNA profiles and blood types were able to be collected from the teens, giving a much more comprehensive view of the tent that night. Police were now able to see whos blood was where in the tent, and confirm exactly whose DNA was there.
And that’s how they discovered the first clue that made them stop in their tracks. When retesting Nils’s shoes, the ones that were found confusingly hundreds of yards from the tent, they realized his blood wasn’t on them, just the blood of his three friends. And on top of that, they already knew there was no blood inside of the shoes. Which made it seem like he had been wearing them at the time of the attack. Could Nils have been the one attacking his friends? That would explain his blood not being on the shoes. Maybe He went outside of the tent, took off his shoes, and came back and injured himself to make it not look so suspicious.
But, perhaps the most shocking of all. Remember the towel found outside of the tent? The small wrapped towel that had been sliced with a knife. On that towel they found blood from Irmeli. But they also found DNA from a 5th person. A man who was not part of their friend group.
Could this prove that there was another person there that night?! The blood on the towel seemed menstrual, leading them to believe Irmeli was using it as a pad, so Police collected DNA from Irmeli’s ex boyfriends and ruled them out as suspects. It was looking like this was not someone who Irmeli had known intimately.
In a frustrating turn of events, this evidence was used to put Nils on trial for the murder of his friends. The shoes seemed damning, and Nils had kind of been acting suspicious over the years.
His story of what happened that night kept changing over the years. He talked about having stab wounds in his head (not true), he swore he got dragged out of the tent towards the lake, dropped in the water, and dragged back (there was no evidence anyone was dragged from the tent that night). The theory that was developed was that Nils must have been horribly drunk that night, gotten ragefully jealous, and killed his friends. The fact that Irmeli got the worst of the teens made it seem like a personal attack, perhaps she had been flirting with Seppo and Nils couldn’t handle it.
But what about the 5th persons DNA
Well, after all these years police kept questioning Hans Assman’s alibi. Even though he had passed away years prior, Police always had in the back of their minds that the people corroborating his alibi were coerced into doing so. And now, they were going to have concrete evidence.
In a lab in Finland, a technician opens up a box with an old pair of glasses. They’re Hans’, sent in by his son who wants answers about his fathers involvement in the case. He believes that two dark specs on the glasses are blood, and the tech agrees. So now, the lab tech is going to figure out if he can get a DNA match.
Upon initial testing, he can tell that the speck on the glasses has human DNA, it probably is blood. And not only that, there’s two separate male DNA profiles in the spec. Could one of them be Seppo or Nils? This could be the breakthrough in the case that they’ve needed after all this time.
The tech compares the DNA to the boys. And it’s not a hit. Not only that, but Han’s DNA is not the DNA on the pillowcase. It wasn’t him.
Nils was also found not guilty of the murder. The theory of Nils doing this in a jealous drunken rage was too unbelievable. And then there was The eye witness testimony of another man leaving the area. Nils also explained that the reason his story changed so much over the years is that he still doesn’t remember the event. Everything he knows about that night is from what people told him and what he read in newspapers, and not everyone got it right.
DNA evidence also also ruled out Arne and Eske. Both men had sons who submitted their DNA to rule out their fathers.
So, now, 60 years later, we’re back to square one. Still no one has been charged with the murder, and most suspects have been ruled out.
But there is one suspect left that hasn’t been completely ruled out. The man in the black and white photo, the Kiosk man from earlier. Though police ruled him out early on, apparently people in the community continued to talk
The kiosk man was known for his violent nature around town. One time he hid razor blades in an apple he served to children. His kiosk was also only 800 meters away from where the kids were camping. The people around town knew to not camp in the area because the Kiosk man would cut tent cords with a long knife, laughing as he watched your tent fall. And rumor has it he confessed to the killings.
The Kiosk man drowned in lake bodom in 1969, and the rumor around Espoo was that he was having a conversation with a friend when he confessed to the murders. His friend apparently told him that if it were true, if he were really responsible for those kids' deaths, he might as well drown himself in Lake Bodom because that would be better than the life in prison he’d live. And within 20 minutes, he was dead. Drowned in the lake.
But today, it’d be easy to see if his DNA matched The DNA found in the tent. The only thing, is his son wont submit his DNA to police. They have not been able to get a full DNA profile on The kiosk man
Everything about this case has been a mystery that’s plagued Finland for the last 60 years. No motive, no murder weapon, hardly any physical evidence. And now, almost everyone involved in the original event has passed away.
And you may be thinking, well one thing doesn’t sound mysterious. Everyone in town felt like it was one guy, the one guy we don’t have a DNA profile for. Surely it must be him.
Well, let’s look back to the photo. The photo police took of The Kiosk man was from the day after the murders. In it, he’s shirtless, and there’s not so much as a scratch on his bare skin. After how badly it appeared the kids fought that night, it would be almost impossible that the killer didn’t have some sort of scratches or bruises on their skin. So maybe it wasn’t the kiosk man after all. Maybe it was some other stranger, who committed the crime and was able to slip away into the night without a trace. All we can do is hope that one day we’ll get a DNA profile and know for sure.
This has been heart starts pounding. Written and produced by me, Kaelyn moore. Music by Artlist. Special thanks to my new patron: another special thanks to Travis Dunlap and Grayson Jernigan, the team at WME, and ben Jaffe. Have a heart pounding story or a case request, check out heart starts pounding.com. Until next time. Stay curious. ooooooooooooo