Criminology - The Lake Bodom Murders

Episode Date: August 1, 2021

In 1960, three young people, Maila Bjorklund, Anja Tuulikki Maki, and Seppo Boisman were murdered in Finland while they were camping. A fourth person, Nils Gustafsson, who was with the group was injured but survived, and later became a suspect. This is one of Finland's most infamous unsolved murder cases. It rocked the country at the time it occurred and some people are still wary, to this day, about camping because of the stories that have been told over the years. Join Mike and Morf as they cover this infamous unsolved murder case out of Finland. A blond man was seen by a number of eyewitnesses walking away from the campsite. Some eyewitnesses were put under hypnosis. The police centered their suspicion on the lone survivor Nils Gustaffson. They took him to trial but he was ultimately acquitted. But Nils was not the only person around Lake Bodom to garner suspicion over the years. There were a number of people who have been linked as possible suspects to these horrific murders. You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. Everyone and welcome to episode 168 of the criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. Mr. Mike Morford, what's going on with you, brother? Not too much. I'm dodging some hardcore rains, some thunderstorms, and luckily they just passed and we're going to get to recording this episode.

Yeah, I was looking at the weather last night. and there was something called a Derrico, which to be honest with you, I've never heard of. It's similar to a tornado, like 240 miles long, straight, gusty winds, and it can really wreak some serious havoc. So hopefully everyone is safe and there wasn't too much damage as a result of these storms, but they sounded like they could be very, very bad. Yeah, it seems like there's been a lot of crazy weather. and down in southwest florida here we get a lot of thunderstorms almost every day but they're usually in the afternoon but i've been giving some hardcore ones in the morning as well so well when you

live in uh in the the tropics man you got to put up with some weather that's just how it goes all right morph before we jump into our episode let's do our patreon shoutouts we had becky tate kim lowry Lissette Amelia Gordon. Annette Quisenberry jumped out above our highest level. Stephanie Ferruly, Cassie Sampson, Carol, Sarah McKinney, and Regina McKinney. So I'm not sure if there's a relationship there. Hopefully there is because that makes it exciting. It's really cool.

We have some great supporters and we can't thank you enough. And if anyone out there would like to help support criminology, you can do so by going to patreon.com slash criminology. All right, more, if it's time to jump into this episode. And today we're going international. Traveling to Finland for a really bizarre and creepy case. The Lake Bodom murders. Now, please bear with us in this episode. We're going to try and get as close as we can with some of the pronunciations of people's names and places.

Some of them will probably be tough. Bodom Lake is near the town of Espoo, Finland, just 30 minutes west of. of Helsinki. The lake is almost two miles long and just over half a mile wide. In 1960, Espoo, which is the second most populated city in Finland, had a population of around 53,000 compared to Helsinki, Finland's most populated city, which had about 450,000 residents that same year. So, you know, I think you can really see the contrast in sizes and populations. in cities in Finland in 1960. During the winter months, Lake Bodom can be very icy,

and the temps there are pretty cold. But in the summer, it's a sleepy place where you can go to relax, camp, fish, or birdwatch. Unfortunately, the peace and beauty of Lake Bodom and its natural scenery are usually not the focal point when the area is talked about. That all gets overshadowed. Because in 1960, a triple homicide earned it headlines

that are forever associated with the area. These are now known as the Lake Boat of Murders. And to this day, many people continue to be wary when they head out to the lake area. On Sunday, June 5, 1960, right around 6 a.m., a group of young boys out birdwatching saw a blonde man walk away from a campsite toward the lake. They were drawn to the campsite because they saw motorcycles, parked near some trees, and they ended up seeing much more than, they bargained for. The tent that they saw him walking away from wasn't strung up between the trees. It had collapsed. Unfortunately, due to translation errors and the lack of media attention in the United States, there are some conflicting reports. And we can't read the original sources without relying

on some of the same tools that possibly created the conflicts. Some reports say that the children saw a man laying on top of the collapsed tent, while others state that the boys saw a leg sticking out from under the collapsed tent. Whatever the case, one thing is clear. These boys felt that something wasn't right with the scene. And later on, the account from these boys would play a huge factor in the case. At around 11 a.m., a man named Esco Johansson happened upon the same campsite and took a closer look. It was then that he discovered multiple murder victims lying on top of each other, on top of and inside the collapsed tent. Esko quickly alerted police, who made it to the scene about an hour later at noon.

Just after Esco Johansson left the scene to summon police, another man, Risto-Syern also came upon the crime scene, and he went to alert authorities as well. In photographs of the crime scene, it's important to note that there's someone laying on top of the tent, and a leg sticking out from underneath the tent. Police were shocked when they arrived at what appeared to be the bodies of four lifeless people, two young men and two young women. As they looked closer, they were surprised to find signs of life. And one of the men who they had assumed was dead from the way that the scene looked. It was a very bloody crime scene.

And it appeared that the victims had all been stabbed and bludgeoned. 18-year-old Nils Gustafson was injured, but a lot. Unfortunately, his girlfriend, 15-year-old Mela Urmeli Borkland, known as Mali to friends and family, as well as Mali's friend, Anya Tulli Maki, who also was 15 years old, and her 18-year-old boyfriend, Sapo and Tera, boysmen, were dead. Tulliki, who was known by her middle name, since Anya is such a commoner, common name in Finland, and Sepo were still completely inside the tent. Maly was on top of the tent like Nils, but Maly was naked from the waist down.

It's unknown whether Maly was pulled out of the tent or if she had managed to partially escape from the tent. The attack was unique and brutal. There were two large holes cut into the tent, one of which Nils was laying on top of. One of these holes is how the boys that first saw the campsite that morning. were able to see the leg of someone inside the collapsed tent. Whoever had attacked the teens had actually killed Taliki and Sepo while they were still inside the tent, bludgeoning them with something from outside of the tent, possibly a pipe or a rock. Sepo had also been stabbed from the outside of the tent.

The tent had become a trap when the attacker cut the support for it, collapsing the heavy material on them in the dark or very early morning light. The young campers likely were attacked while they were still asleep. Both Nils and Sepo's shoes were missing from the campsite. Sepo's leather jacket was also gone, but Tuliki and Maly's clothes were still hanging where the girls had left them the previous evening. The keys to both of the motorcycles were missing. Both pairs had been left in the ignition of the bike that they belonged to.

All four of the victim's wallets were missing from the campsite, as were their watches. Sepo had brought along a knife, which was also missing. Because Nils had a concussion. He couldn't remember much of the night at all. He just remembered going to sleep that evening. He also had a broken jaw and a large cut on his face. Under hypnosis, he recalled a blonde man outside the tent, attacking them with a metal pipe and cutting holes in the tent.

He recalled red eyes and dark clothes. Investigators learned from him that the 14th had left for Lake Bodom on June 4th in the evening with each couple, Sepo and Taliki and Nils and Mali on motorbikes. They arrived at the lake and spent some time enjoying the scenery. Everything seemed normal and there was really nothing out of the ordinary. They set up a large single tent that they all planned to share sometime around six or seven p.m. in a spot popular with campers and settled in for the night before they were attacked early on June 5th. Police later interviewed the young boys who had seen a blonde man walking away from the campsite

and had one of them put on her hypnosis, but he was near-sighted and couldn't give any further details about what the man had looked like. Investigators found Maley's diary, and it appeared she was quite thorough in keeping it. According to the diary, the group went to bed around midnight, but around 2 a.m. the morning of the murders, Maly wrote that Sepo and Nils were still up and that they were drunk. Don would have arrived at around 2.30 a.m. that morning. Now, that may sound odd to American listeners especially, but Finland's summer nights are different from most of ours here in the United States,

unless you live in Alaska. Los Angeles has roughly nine hours of darkness between dusk and dawn. Espoo Finland in the summer has less than four. Which, to me, more, I think it would be great. for getting things done, things that you need light to do, I do think it would make it tougher to get a good night's sleep. I've always thought that. I thought the same thing about Alaska. You know, and sometimes you see in movies where, you know, people are having to put really heavy curtains, like light blocking curtains because if not, it just seems like it's daytime all the time.

Yeah, I remember there was the Nail Pacino movie. I can't think of the name of it, but he went to Alaska to work on a case. He was a cop and he asked the local sheriff, where the kids at? It's 12 o'clock. And the guy's like, yeah, it's 12 o'clock midnight. So there was no school going on. But Al Pacino thought it was the middle of the day. Yeah, it's funny you bring that up because I just watched that movie the other day.

And I remember thinking, okay, Robin Williams as the bad guy, an interesting choice. But Robin Williams was so talented. that he could play slapstick comedy, but he actually was a really good dramatic actor. I missed that guy. Yeah, he was really good actor. And the movie's good if anyone hasn't seen it. Yeah, the movie's called Insomnia. According to the diary, Sepo and Nils went fishing for a while before they returned to the tent.

And the group went back to sleep. Presumably at this point in an intact tent, the sun rose around 4.30 a.m. and the attack is estimated to have happened between 4 and 6 a.m. When the boy saw a blonde man walking away from the campsite, tent already collapsed, and victims already laying there. A man named Alavi Kivalati, who had been fishing west of the teens campsite, later came forward and reported that he also saw a blonde man walking and gave a description of a man who,

was about 5 foot 8, between 20 and 30 years old, wearing dark pants and a light shirt or jacket. Complicating things, investigators also found a pillowcase with blood and semen on it. It was near the tent, and it wasn't just a pillowcase lying on the ground. It was rolled up and tied on both ends with rubber bands. It resembled a newspaper, like a paper boy would throw. Investigators would later decide it wasn't related to the crime itself, and since there was no DNA at the time in 1960. All that could be learned was the blood type of the donor, but nothing that could lead to the identity of the donor. When police were finished surveying the clues,

they didn't lock down or secure the crime scene, an unfortunate mistake. Authorities also let people join in the search for the weapons and the teens missing personal items. But because the area was trampled on by all sorts of people trying to help, this made the chance of discovering any useful footprints, almost zero. And more, if I think we've seen this same type of mistake play out in a lot of high-profile cases over the years. This was a problem in one of the most infamous murder cases in the U.S. as well. When John Bonae Ramsey was reported kidnapped, her parents called over two adult couples,

friends and neighbors of theirs for comfort and health. The two adult Ramsey's and their four friends along with new. numerous police officers and multiple victims advocates contaminated what turned out to be the crime scene. By the time police realized that John Bonae had been murdered in her home, dozens of people had already passed through and touched things. The victim's advocates had even straightened up a little bit, just trying to help. Many believe that John Bonae Ramsey's murder would be solved today if the crime scene had been initially secured. and we could rattle off a number of other crime scenes that weren't properly secured or analyzed.

More if you and I could talk about cases involving that scenario all day long. Early on in some of these investigations, it seems as though investigators were desperate to have any help that they could get. But in the long run, this help turned out to hurt the cases they were invest. The residents of the espue area were shocked by the news of the attack on the campers, and they hoped that the killer would soon be brought to justice. But that didn't happen, and the case went cold. In 2004, police were able to reanalyze evidence from the scene with all of the new technological advances that have come along since 1960.

In March, 2004, Nils Gustafson, who was now 63 years old, and never before been a suspect, was arrested and charged with the murders. of Mali Borkland, Sepo Boysman, Tulicki Maki. He was put on trial, which started in August 2005. At this point, Nils was married with two adult children. He had a long career as a bus driver and had since retired. It had been almost 44 years since the murders. Prosecutors put forth the theory that Sepo and Nils were both up late and drunk,

as Maly had written in her diary, and they ended up fighting each other. other. This accounted for the injuries that Nils suffered, which he, according to the prosecution, had only pretended were from an unknown third party. It was also argued that Nils had tried to initiate sexual contact with Maley, who turned him down. He and Maley had been dating for about a month before the murders. So, you know, this helped explain the theory why she was nude from the waist down and also why the attacker seemed to concentrate their assault on her. Maly had been stabbed multiple times after she was already dead, which seemed to indicate a crime of passion.

Put together, these theories painted the prosecution's vision of the attack. Nils had grown angry after Maly rejected his advances, and after being kicked out of the tent, he started cutting holes in the tent, then actually cut the tent down, trapping with three teams inside. Nils then started attacking Sepo from outside of the tent, and Sepo kicked, making contact with his face, breaking Nils' jaw. Nils then stabbed Sepo in the throat and continued to bludgeon him as Tulliki tried to escape out of the end of the tent. Nils then bludgeoned Tullik's head with a rock to stop her from escaping, and did the same to Maley's face before stabbing her in the throat and neck area. According to prosecutors, Nils focused his race,

on Sepo and Maley, who according to them, were the ones who truly made him angry. He then staged the scene, removing Maly's clothing, covering Tully's head with a blanket or a scarf, and then moving Maly's body on top of Tulli's body, and then on top of the tent. There were traces of Nils' blood inside the tent, but prosecutors argued that it was from him touching the inside of the tent after a violent struggle, not from being attacked while inside of it. Since Nils was the sole survivor and he was blonde, like the young boys saw walking from the campsite, prosecution laid out the question. Had the young boy seen Nils on his way to hide the murder weapon and his shoes? No murder weapon was ever recovered. But Nils and Sepo's shoes were found

almost a half a mile away from the crime scene, sort of concealed in a wooded area. but not well hidden. Decades later, DNA testing of his shoes found the blood of Mali, Sepo, and Tiliqi on Nils's shoes, but none of the blood matched Nils. Authorities suspected that Nils attacked Mali, Sapo and Tulli, and then walked 0.6 miles to hide the shoes, and then inflicted the injuries on himself,

which is why only their blood was found on his shoes. At the trial, a woman testified that she was camping nearby, at Bodom Lake on the night of the murders, and that Nils and SEPO had come to her campsite during the night, drunk and aggressive, especially toward each other. Before this, she had never said anything until she spoke to a documentary crew in 2004.

Maly's diary does mention Nils and Sepo leaving the tent, but it says that they went fishing and returned. She didn't write about them going to anyone, else's tent. So, you know, either she was unaware or it wasn't Nils and SEPO that visited this woman's campsite that night. If they did just fish and return to the tent without incident, this leads to the possibility that there was another pair of drunk blonde men wandering around Bodom Lake that night, possibly causing trouble. While the trial made headlines and was a an ordeal for Nils to go through. At the end of it, Nils Gustafsson was acquitted of all three murders

on October 7th, 2005. So, you know, more of obviously an ordeal. I mean, I think that's probably an understatement. When you're on trial for the murders of three of your friends, that is not going to be an easy situation. Nobody wants to have to go through that. But, after he was acquitted, then you still have the question, okay, if Nils didn't do it, who did? That question has been asked countless times over the years. And it's led to a lot of theories, speculation, and potential suspects. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder what's emergency.

We just walked in the door and there's blood. in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved, until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, blood and water. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. Locals like Ulf Johansson, who wrote the book Legend of Bodum about the murders, claimed the deaths were never a mystery at all.

Around the campsite, there was actually a local man, said to hate campers for some unknown reason. Carl Valdemore Gilstrom operated a kiosk near the campsite, like a small snack bar stand where campers could get food or various supplies they needed. He was known for being aggressive toward the campers he encountered. People often call him kiosk man in online discussions about the case. Carl had a well on his property that actually filled in just weeks after the murders. Many people believe that the murder weapon, or some of the belongings from the victims,

are buried down in that well. In 1969, Carl drowned in Lake Bodum. The rumor is that shortly before he died, he asked someone what they would do if they had committed the Lake Bodom murders. And their reply was something like, I drowned myself, so I didn't die in prison. So, you know, this has led many to speculate

that Carl drowned himself out of guilt over the murders. friends who had gotten drunk with Carl had reportedly overheard him confessed to the Lake Bodom murders. However, for years, Carl had an alibi. His wife vouched for him, swearing they were both at home in bed all night and that she knew he didn't leave because she had been awake all night. Soon before her death, though,

Carl's wife said that the alibi was false. Carl had forced her to lie and say that he was home all night. People point out that during World War II, Carl had suffered some kind of head injury, which may explain his erratic and aggressive behavior. We've mentioned before in cases that head injuries can sometimes lead to violent behavior. Carl was apparently known to act weird and say things that didn't make sense, or that weren't true. He's still a strong suspect because he was apparently known to throw rocks at people around the lake and had even cut down people's tents before. Ulf Johansson claimed that Carl would cut the tense down and laugh as they collapsed. So, you know, let's take a minute more, just talk about Carl a little bit.

You know, obviously in these types of cases, you're going to have a number of suspects. You're going to have a lot of online discussions about all of these different suspects. You know, Carl is very interesting. You know, this was a man who spent a lot of time. around the lake. Obviously he had this little kiosk and it was well known that he was cantankerous at best. I'll use that word. You know, throwing rocks at people, taking pleasure out of cutting campers tents down and, you know, kind of laughing as they collapsed down on people. Okay. That's not what we would consider normal, especially if you operate kind of a service.

little place. You know, you want people to visit. You don't want people to be deathly afraid of you because you're terrorizing the area around the lake. And then, you know, you, you jump into this talk about head injuries. As you mentioned, we've talked about it in quite a number of cases, you know, especially if his injury, and I don't know if it was involved the frontal loat. You know, there's no doubt.

it's well documented. The frontal lobe governs impulse control, you know, kind of personality, all kinds of different ways around how we act. So damage to that frontal lobe can definitely cause some strange behavior in certain individuals. When I was reading about Carl, I was thinking what came to my mind was like in the movie Friday the 13th, the crazy guy that lived around the lake that everyone was creeped up. He was like a local person that people thought of as the local creep. And that's what Carl seems like.

But it's kind of odd. And I think you touched on it. If he's someone that's making a living from selling products to these people in the area, it almost doesn't make sense that he would also terrorize them because that wouldn't be good for business. So I wonder how much of that is accurate. And if it is accurate, then his business probably suffered as a result of terrorizing local. people that were going to the lake. Right. But isn't that what is so interesting about some of these older cases that have been talked about at length, especially now, you know, since we've had the

kind of the online age, you get so much information. And the tough part is really trying to weed through all this information to discover, okay, what is fact, what is lore, what is fiction. You know, we want to talk about it all because, you know, it's, it could. potentially all be important, but, you know, determining the validity of some of this information, it can be very tough. Carl Valdemar Gilstrom, though, is not the only potential suspect in this case. A German man named Hans Asman lived in the town of Bodom, and people over the years have found him very suspicious because on June 6, 1960, Hans visited the hospital in Helsinki. Finland. Now, it's still unknown why he visited the hospital, but doctors recall his behavior

as being extremely odd. His clothes were covered in stains from something red and wet, like blood. His hands and fingernails were dirty, almost as if he had been digging in the ground with his bare hands. After Nils and the young boy had been hypnotized, and their description of a blonde man was released to the media. Hans shaved his blonde hair off. At the same time, while his movement seemed suspicious, he also had an alibi for the time of the murders. He had apparently been with his mistress all night in a house with other people around. So, you know, sneaking off to commit this attack may have been pretty hard to do. Some accounts report that Hans acted unconscious at the hospital, while others

state that he was acting agitated or nervous. These each person, paint a different picture of possible guilty behavior. It's also often reported that Hans visited the hospital during the morning, that he used a fake name, and that he disappeared before being treated. Professor Jormo Pelo, who had been a doctor during Hans' visit, remembered him and even wrote books in which he discussed Hans' guilt and odd behavior. Some of the reports of Hans' behavior and trip to the hospital vary, possibly due to English translation issues. It appears that, you know, one of the most likely scenarios of what actually happened is that Hans had been drinking heavily with an already unspecified stomach illness and he was subsequently found unconscious by his wife

who didn't know how drunk he had gotten and thought he was gravely ill. So she had him rushed to the hospital by ambulance. The ambulance ticket issued by the Helsinki Fire Department shows that Hans was admitted to the hospital at 1045 p.m. Hardly someone who just wandered into the hospital after a night in the woods. This ticket also clearly has the name Hans Asman on it. He did not use a fake name. He may have very well disappeared before being treated if he and his wife had a discussion and went home deciding that he could just sleep it off. The people who swore that Hans was at their house, the night of the murders, with his mistress, recall that Hans was covered in something red and wet,

but it appeared to have been paint. Reportedly, he had painted at a nearby house, but was done and at the place of his alibi by 6 p.m., possibly covered in pain. It's possible that people took an already suspicious man and embellished events around him. But as it turns out, the Lake Bodom murders are not the only homicides that Hans is suspected of, were possibly involved with. Hans is also linked to the

1953 death of Ollie Kaliki Seri, a 17-year-old girl who had been missing and was found murdered in Finland. Her murder is still unsolved. When her body was found in a bog to 700 feet from a road, she was nude from the waist down, just like Mali. Her jacket was wrapped around her head, just like Tuleiki's head was covered by a scarf or a blanket. Han supposedly confessed that he and a friend had struck a girl with their car. While she was riding her bicycle home, many believe that he was talking about Ali, Sari, although Hans himself never specified the girl's name. This does not match the actual circumstances of how Ali's body was found or the injury she

suffered. She was missing for five months before her body was finally found. So unfortunately, advanced decomposition had already started, and it made it difficult for authorities to figure out exactly what had happened to her. However, she did have blunt force trauma to her head and face and had a broken nose and cheekbones. Her bike was found three months before she was in a marsh, less than two miles north of the town where she was found murdered. It seemed to be in pretty good shape to have been in. in a marsh for two months, leading her parents to believe it was deliberately placed in the marsh at some point after she disappeared. Following the discovery of the bike, one of Ali's shoes

wrapped up in a black scarf and a men's sock tied together with what has been called a black warm thread was found. Teeth marks on the bundle led investigators to believe this was a makeshift gag. The next day, in an area not too far away, someone pulled a sharpened pine branch out of the ground and immediately smelled something very rotten. Ollie's body had been buried beneath the stick, which had pierced her decomposing body, one in lodging in their stomach, and the other sticking out of the ground.

Police were able to tell that the stick had been sharpened by someone who was left-handed. Investigators believe that Ali's murderer had some kind of military knowledge, perhaps in engineering. Her grave was said to have been very skillfully constructed, and her bike was placed somewhere purposefully to mislead authorities.

Ollie was buried just a little over half a mile from where her bike had been found between June 1st and June 6th of 1953. While Ali had been missing for just two weeks, this area had been informally searched and gone over due to people planting trees. And there was nothing unusual, including the stick sticking out of the ground that had been found by searchers. Reportedly, Ali seemed to be nervous or afraid of something leading up to her death. If someone was targeting her, this would seemingly not fit with the story that Hans told

about a car accidentally hitting her. Like in the Lake Bodom camping murders, there were multiple suspects in Ollie's case. She had allegedly written to her priest, who used to be the vicar of her local parish, about religious problems. and he was later charged with having inappropriate sexual contact with the minor. A former police officer had been fired from the force and was now a bar owner was a suspect. There was also a 38-year-old local ditch digger who had committed a sex crime in the 1940s and worked less than 200 feet from where Ollie's body was found buried.

Local girls had called this man with peeping Tom. A 51-year-old local, considered odd by residence and known to have mental health issues, was also suspected. died in the psychiatric facility in 1971. He lived only about a mile from where Ali's body was found, and supposedly a shovel used a burrier was found at his work site. Police suspected of him and his brother-in-law on Ollie's murder, but both men were dead by 1972. Brunar Holmstrom, a suspect in the Lake Bodom Murders, was also a suspect in a 1951 murder case that is eerily similar to the Lake Bodom murders and also has elements of Ali's murder as well. Brunar claimed his innocence and took his own life by hanging himself in 1961, which was his

third suicide attempt while in custody. On August 21, 1951, 23-year-old Rita Aliki Pachanin and 21-year-old Ein Maria Nisonen were found dead in a swamp near a camp site. site. Ein was nude, but neither of the women had been assaulted sexually as far as authorities could tell. Rita had been hit in the head with something heavy. Her cause of death was determined to be blunt force trauma. Ein had been stabbed. These two girls were buried less than 700 feet away from their campsite, with logs and branches placed over the grave so that the ground didn't appear freshly disturbed where they had been buried. Authorities also believe that the

person who cut the branches that were used to cover it up was left-handed, just like whoever sharpened the pine branch at Ollie's burial site. Some of the women's personal items were missing and have never been found, just like some of the items, including the murder weapon, from the Lake Bodom murder's crime scene. The final suspect in Ollie's murder is Hans Asman. Hans Asman, in addition to being a suspect in Ollie's murder and in the Lake Bodom murders, is also suspect in these double murders. Witnesses were called two men speaking German who bought a map for the area, just two days before the women were murdered. In 1997, Hans told an inspector while on his deathbed that he was in the car. One night, when the driver hit a young woman on a bicycle, and they made her

accidental death look like a murder. Hans had a cream-colored car and witnesses on the night of Ali's disappearance claimed to have seen two men, including a blonde man in a cream-colored car with a bicycle in the trunk. Other witnesses saw a cream or beige-colored car driving away from the area Ali was last seen in. Quickly, some reported that the car had no headlights on. Han's wife stated that he would have been driving in the area where Ali went missing from due to to his job and that when he came home following her disappearance, the car was damaged. His shoes were wet and he was missing one side. After a few days, Hans and the man who was driving that night left the house with a

shovel. Fitting with the suspected military knowledge involved in digging Ollie's grave, we mentioned, Hans did serve in the military. In World War II, he supposedly served in the SS and was also a guard at the concentration camp. Auschwitz. Hans has been accused of being a KGB spy, which sounds ridiculous today, like something out of a movie, but due to Cold War relations in the late 1950s, Finland did have spies. There's a rich history about the political struggle for Finland during and after the Cold War. It's unknown if Hans Aspen is even his real name, as he supposedly stole the identity of someone

after the war because he didn't want the backlash of having been associated with the Nazi party in Germany. Some believe that being a foreigner was the only crime that Hans committed, but that he enjoyed the infamy that the suspicion brought. For as many people who think he is shady and suspicious, there are just as many who believe that Hans was only an attention seeker. So more of that right there to me is very interesting because there are people like that who crave attention, even when that attention is very negative, right? casting them potentially as having committed some very serious crimes. I don't get it. I don't think most people understand it, but it does happen. Yeah, I can think of several high profile cases where that's happened, like in the

John Bonnet Ramsey case, the guy who was in the Philippines, wherever he was, that supposedly claimed that he had a connection to her. And then in the Zodiac case, you have Arthur Lee Allen that sort of relish the attention of being a suspect. Yeah, I just don't understand why anyone would want to kind of relish in the infamy that comes with being connected with really nasty, heinous crimes. I just don't get it. You know, that old saying, everybody wants their 15 minutes of fame.

I get that. You know, if you get on a game show or you're on a reality show or whatever that is, but to be connected to murders. Okay. I think there's much better ways to figure out how to get your 15 minutes of fame. Penty Sownanin was also briefly a suspect in the Lake Bodum murders after he confessed to the murders as a teenager while he was already behind bars. Due to mental illness and substance abuse issues, his confessions were ruled false. and police doubted his involvement with the Lake Bodom murders,

though he was in jail for other unrelated violent crimes towards the end of the 1960s. In 1969, he took his own life, hanging himself while he was in custody. There is a photo online from the funeral for the Lake Bodom victims, and many describe it as chilling. It's a black and white photograph of the crowd and one face is very clear. The man has very bulging, but at the same time, very sunken eyes, and what appears to be a swollen jaw. You can't see any hair or ears.

He's looking up and forward, while most of the crowd is looking down solemnly. Many people view this man as an eerily close match to the police sketches that were released in the media after the interview is done under hypnosis. Notably, the sketches have one side of the jaw larger than the other, just like the man in the crowd. This man was never identified, and no one has ever come forward and claimed to know who he was. Many speculate that this is Hans Asman.

But while some see similarities between Hans and this mystery man, others see mainly differences. Today, decades later, questions and theories about the Lake Bodum murders remain. officials at one point thought that an angry and drunk teenage boy who was angered or rejected by his camping mates went into a rage, killing them and then pretending to be a victim himself. Others point to the kiosk man as being the more likely culprit. He hated campers. He was said to delight in cutting down their tents while they were still inside and many believe he seems to fit the bill. We also have instances where two men, not just one or seen.

There are two men seen buying a map of a campsite where a double murder took place and two men seen in a car around the time of Ollie's murder. Could there have been an evil murderous team roving around that area, committing unspeakable crimes? To this day, some people are still wary. When they visit the Lake Bodom area, others take metal detectors up to the campsite area where the murders occurred, trying to find the knife, used to commit the murders, or the keys taken from the motorcycles, perhaps discarded by the killer over 60 years ago. Maybe if any of that stuff is found, it will somehow lead to the identity of the killer.

Until that day arrives, the Lake Bodum murders remain one of Finland's most fascinating, unsolved mysteries. And more if there's no doubt. This is a fascinating, unsolved mystery. You know, as we wrap up this episode, we have a number of people that we talked about in this episode as being potential suspects. And, you know, like I said, you, you have what officials have said over the years. You have a lot of chatter on the internet about this case and people talking about various potential suspects. And, you know, one thing I want to go back to is, you know, you know, a number of these suspects had alibis very early on in the investigation. And it seems as though, and we see this quite frequently, many years later, it turns out that their alibi wasn't, you know,

quite as solid as it was early on. Or, you know, in the case of Hans Asman, it turns out that the alibi wasn't even real. false. His wife made it up. So I just, I always find that very fascinating. And I think it's true in a lot of cases, you know, relationships change over the years. People kind of fall out of love or they fall out of favor with friends. And so their willingness to help someone and maybe to give them an alibi, it changes as time goes on. And I always kind of believe that, you know, some cases could be solved that way. The problem, I think, becomes that once some of these things come out about the fact that maybe the alibis weren't as solid as previously thought or that they weren't real at all, so much time has gone by that it's very difficult to go back and reconstruct the investigation as if you knew that early on in the investigation.

Does that make sense? Yeah, that makes sense to me. And I think it shows that there's probably real challenges for police today trying to investigate a 60-year-old cold case. You don't have any of these people to talk to you. You can't go back and re-question them or try. and get to the bottom of these alibis or lack of alibis and call them out for them not being correct because now they're they're dead. So these investigators today or I don't know where they go from here with this kind of case. Yeah, I think it's hard in any case where you're talking about 60 plus years

later, you know, because even if you could get to the point where you could put enough evidence together, you know, a lot of these people are dead now. So, yeah, could you come out and make a statement that you believe you have enough evidence to say that this certain person committed the lake boat of murders? Yeah, possibly. But could you prove it in a court of law? I don't know how you could. I mean, at the very least, you couldn't convict the person because they've been deceased

for many years. I think of something like forensic genealogy in this case could that solve it? But we don't know again how that evidence was collected, how it was handled, how it was preserved, and even if they somehow got a DNA profile,

who knows if that belonged to a random investigator or random Good Samaritan that was there helping with the search? We talked about how they search the area looking for clues and there were footprints all over the place. So there's no telling who DNA would belong to even if they found it all these years later. Yeah, I often think about, you know, these types of cases where you're out in the woods or, you know, you're in a touristy type setting, a national park, a someplace like that.

how different are these cases from, let's say, a case where, you know, someone is murdered inside a three-bedroom home? Okay. Well, there's only a certain number of people that should have been in that three-bedroom home. Let's say over a given period of time. It could be quite a number of people, but it's possible to try to narrow it down. How do you narrow down who's been? been camping in an area like this over a certain period of time, it becomes very difficult. I also wonder what the motive actually was in this case.

There were some things that were taken from the campers, but there were things that weren't taken. And both the motorcycles were there. This person could have driven off on a motorcycle and perhaps sold one of them to make money, but he didn't do that. So I wonder if the taking of possessions was an afterthought or maybe there were some kind of trophies and the true motive for the attack was simply to kill people, which is really frightening. Yeah, it is. And I kind of lean towards that as well.

In my mind, this seems to be the case of more of a thrill kill, I'll call it, right? The person set out to kill as opposed to, you know, a crime. of passion, revenge, something like that. I'm kind of looking at this as a potential thrill kill. But I could be completely wrong. I mean, that's the thing about these types of cases. Everyone has their take on it. And we kind of all get to play amateur detective with the clues that are known.

I think a case like this after 60 years, the fact that people are still worried to go out in that area and still talk about it and think about it, it just shows you how frightening something like this is, because the killer obviously isn't alive out there, but it's stuck with the residents there, and they're aware of it. And I think it sort of translates to any place. When you go out in the woods camping, you never know who's out there. So I think anyone that camps maybe has had that a little bit of a feeling of who might be out here with me.

Yeah, I had that feeling before, kind of an, I'll call it an unease. type feeling. Now, this case being as infamous as it is in Finland, I get it. Why people are still a little leery. They've heard about it. There have probably been stories told around campfires for, you know, 60 plus years about this story. It's a very big case there. I kind of liken it to, you know, Camp Crystal Lake. You know, if you ask me more to go camping with you at Camp Crystal Lake, I'm going to say no. You know, I've seen the movies. I've seen Jason.

It scared me. I'm not going with you. I think it shows how some of these places get a reputation. That's a lasting one for all the wrong reasons. Yeah, definitely, no doubt. Thanks goes out to Sunny Landon for writing and research assistants in this episode. As always, if you love the show, but haven't done so yet, take a minute, go out, give the five-star rating. Keep telling your friends about the criminology podcast. That word of mouth

goes a long way. If you want to find us on social media, you can find us on Twitter with the handle at Criminology Pod. You can also find us on Facebook by searching for Criminology podcast or by joining our Facebook discussion group, Criminology Podcast, Discussion and Fans. So more if that is it for our episode on the Lake Bodom Murders. But we'll be back with everyone next Saturday night with an all new episode of criminology. So until then for Mike and Morph. We'll talk to you next week. Take care of everyone.