RedHanded - Episode 327 - Murder in Ulvila

Episode Date: December 7, 2023

At 3 am on the 1st of December 2006, Anneli Auer phoned Finnish emergency services – to tell them an intruder was stabbing her husband to death as she spoke.Police arrived on the scene in less than 10 minutes, but it was too late, and the mysterious killer had seemingly vanished into thin air. Judicial madness, police fuck-ups, greed, undercover lovers, Satanic child abuse rituals, DNA mix-ups, a family torn apart, and a murder mystery that divided a nation: this is the murder of Jukka Lahti, one of the most notorious cases in Finnish criminal history.Follow us on social media:InstagramTwitterVisit our website:WebsiteSources available on redhandedpodcast.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. So, get this. The Ontario Liberals elected Bonnie Crombie as their new leader. Bonnie who? I just sent you her profile. Check out her place in the Hamptons. Huh, fancy. She's a big carbon tax supporter, yeah? Oh yeah. Check out her record as mayor. Oh, get out of here.

She even increased taxes in this economy. Yeah, higher taxes, carbon taxes. She sounds expensive. Bonnie Crombie and the Ontario Liberals. They just don't get it. That'll cost you. A message from the Ontario PC Party. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made.

A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Saruti. I'm Hannah. And welcome to Red Handed, where today we're going somewhere we haven't been in a while, if ever? Yeah, we have. We probably have. And physically with our bodies.

Physically. So actually, I have a very interesting story. When Hannah and I went to Finland, yes, that's where we're going today, for our European tour, this time last year, actually. God, is that it? Yeah, this time last year. We were obviously, you know, we went to Ireland, we went to Norway, we went to Sweden, we went to Finland, and then we did like a full UK tour it was fantastic when we were in Finland we were going through like immigration do you remember that the immigration guy who I got like was like what do you do oh yeah what is this he was like quite like

curt about it and then I was like hey for true crime podcast please let me into your country and he was like and then he started writing something down on a piece of paper and i was like oh my god what is happening and then he handed me the piece of paper and my passport and he was like okay thanks and he was like those are some cases i would like you to cover and i was like that is so fucking cool and the top of the list was this particular case well there you go so if you are finnish you already know what case is well if you're not you've already fucking read it but let me tell you it is of course the olvila case i've been practicing saying that but that's as good as it's gonna get because we are gonna butcher some finnish names today sounded pretty finnish to me thank you very much and i know

because everyone apparently i look quite finished so when we were in helsinki pretty Finnish to me. Thank you very much. And I know because everyone, apparently I look quite Finnish. So when we were in Helsinki, everyone spoke to me in Finnish. And I was like, I am so sorry, I am bottom moron. I don't know. Well, I just, I don't speak Finnish. I don't think that's a slight on your intelligence, my friend. Best breakfast we had

though, I thought, in Helsinki. It was delicious. It was great. Do you know what? I'm still on the top of my list to get myself some freeze-dried sea buckthorn berries because they were delicious if i ever eventually decide that i'm gonna learn to ski i'll do it in finland there you go so let's get on with it we've got a we've got a big case ahead of us and uh you know we've got some some name butchery to get on with. It was 3am on the 1st of December 2006 when Finnish emergency services received a call. There's a killer. Come quickly.

Someone came in through the window and stabbed my husband. I'm bleeding too. Come quickly. The caller was 41-year-old Anneli Owa who lived in the small town of Ulvila in southern Finland. The phone call lasted approximately four minutes, and Anneli's 55-year-old husband, Jukka Lati, could be heard screaming for help in the background. Anneli said that the attacker had broken in through the terrace door of their bedroom and and was stabbing Yuka to death as she spoke. At one point, Anneli gave the phone to her eldest daughter,

nine-year-old Amanda, as she ran to see what was happening to Yuka, who, according to her, was still being savaged. When Amanda has the phone, she also tells the operator, Come quickly, my dad is hurt. Daddy, don't die. Anneli then returned to the phone 60 seconds later and explains that the intruder had stabbed her when she went back into the bedroom

before going back to attacking her husband, Yuka. Little Amanda, now off the phone, rushed back to see her father and at this point witnessed the intruder climbing out of the bedroom window and her father laying on the floor covered in blood. From this harrowing call, a bunch of messy, tainted evidence, and the wild testimony of traumatised

children, this case swelled to become one of the most notorious murders ever in Finnish history. Judicial madness, police fuck-ups, greed, undercover lovers, satanic child abuse rituals, DNA mix-ups, a family destroyed and a murder mystery that divided a nation. Bingo! That's what we've got for you today. This case is bonkers, or as the Finns would say, hulu. So let's get into it. Police and paramedics arrived at the house nine minutes after the call was made,

and Yuka Lati was pronounced dead at the scene. He'd been stabbed an estimated 88 times, but his cause of death was determined to be blunt force trauma to the head. He'd received two blows from a heavy object. There were shards of glass and blood everywhere in the bedroom, leading from the terrace door to Yuka's body and back. On the floor next to Yuka was a blood-stained S-shaped knife and a pile of blood-stained logs of firewood. From those logs, police recovered the DNA of an unknown male. They discovered a black glove on the bed and bloody footprints were found on the

terrace outside the window, along with bloody handprints on the window frame. Brown synthetic fibres were also recovered from the window, the terrace, and from Yuka's body. At around 4.30am, about an hour and a half after the murder had occurred, police sniffer dogs arrived on the scene to help track the killer. But the dogs couldn't find, or follow, a single scent single scent possibly because so many officers had already walked in and out of the house so maybe the dogs were just confused and i don't know why i think this but i do think that a finnish canine unit are probably top of their game no one is fucking top of their game in this fucking story mate the police are not they are bottom of every game there is to play their bottom're bottom of fucking tiddlywinks.

This is terrible. But the police dog thing does come back into the story later, so it's important to mention the fact that they don't pick up a scent that leads them outside. But there could be an explanation as to why. So the following day, lying in her hospital bed with a punctured lung, Anna Lee told police her side of the story. She said that her husband had come home from work at about 11pm, and after putting their four kids, aged two, four, seven and nine, to bed, Anneli and Jukka also went to sleep. It was around 2.40am

when the sound of shattering glass suddenly woke them. A man dressed in black, wearing a balaclava, smashed the window of their terrace door next to their bed and climbed in. At this point, according to Annelie, the bedroom was still dark and she, and Yuka, terrified, could just about make out the man's silhouette. Yuka jumped up and grabbed two pieces of firewood to defend himself as the attacker lunged for him. Annelie tried to help her husband but when the attacker waved his knife at her she turned around. She screamed for the children to get out of the house but they didn't hear. After this Anneli said that she ran from the bedroom where her husband was being attacked and went to the kitchen to find the landline. While she was on the phone to emergency services was when their eldest daughter Amanda had been woken

up by the noise and come downstairs. This is when Anneli thrust the phone into the child's hands and staggered back to her bedroom fearing the worst and Anneli said that this is when the intruder had attacked her, stabbing her in the chest, puncturing her lung. In the chaos nine-year-old Amanda ran into her parents room just in time to see a man climbing out of the window and to see her father's lifeless body on the floor. It was quickly determined that the killer was likely to be a young man who knew Yuka Lati personally. Investigators were sure that this wasn't a random act of violence because it was so violent. The attacker seemed solely interested in Yuka, and that screamed premeditation. After all, the attacker knew exactly which window to

enter to find Yuka. As for motive, well, Yuka was a social psychologist and worked in HR management. His job was essentially to fire people. And investigators, now looking into his murder, found that they actually had an ever-expanding list of suspects. It seemed quite a lot of people who knew Jukka didn't like him or the way that he handled things at work. And there were quite a few people who outright hated him. In fact, not long before he was killed, Yuka had let go of 400 employees from a local copper factory. And as a result, he had actually received a number of death threats in the lead-up to his murder, all of which he said he reported to the police at the time.

Though according to Annalise, she hadn't taken the threats that seriously. She felt that her husband had a tendency to be overdramatic about things. But report the death threats, Yuka did. Oddly though, his phone records showed that these threats were logged to a police precinct a few towns away from his own home. But what's even more odd is that everyone at that particular precinct claimed never to have received any such reports of death threats, despite the fact that there was evidence that somebody had searched Jukka's name in the police database from that station.

Now, this case, like we said, is a big one. It's one that is a national obsession in Finland. And because cases like that tend to take on a life of their own there's lots of conspiracy theories about it and this is one of those particular ones like we said they're like we don't know we we never had a record of this which is odd but there is kind of a possible explanation for this odd situation but I have to be fair that it is an explanation that only makes the whole thing weirder. Because we found some sources claiming that the policeman who had taken Yuka's

reports about the death threats had himself been found murdered in his own home. So that could be why nobody else at the police station has any memory of these reports. And obviously this guy being killed raises a big red flag but the police insist that the two killings were completely unrelated. However this wasn't the only strange connection. An old university friend of Jukers who visited him shortly before the murder was found drowned at sea the day after Jukers murder. But the police again concluded that this was unrelated and a suicide. Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America.

But when a social media-fueled fight over Harvard and its new president broke out last fall, that was no protection. Claudine Gay is now gone. We've exposed the DEI regime, and there's much more to come. This is The Harvard Plan, a special series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's On the Media. To listen, subscribe to On the Media wherever you get your podcasts. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored,

and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near LA in 1983, there were many questions surrounding his death. The last person seen with him was Laney Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite. Together, they were trying to break into the movie industry. But things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing. From Wondery comes a new season of the hit show Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad-free

right now by joining Wondery Plus. After interviewing neighbors, police learned that a red Volvo had been seen circling the streets on the night of the murder, and the week before. It was possible that the driver had been scoping out the house. Chief investigator, oh give me strength, Chief Investigator Juha Yautsen-Lati put out an alert to the public to help identify the car and the driver, but they had no luck. What the police did have, however, was DNA. The foreign DNA that they'd found on the firewood that Yuka had used to defend himself. And so what followed was the largest gathering of DNA samples in Finnish criminal history. The National Crime Lab tested the DNA of over 700 people, but they still couldn't find a match. But put a pin in this, a DNA helix spiral pin,

because we're going to come back to it. Six months passed and the police were under an immense amount of pressure to solve the case. So in the summer of 2007, they arrested a man named Kai Tanner, who just so happened to be a semi-famous Finnish actor and theatre director, and they held him in custody for seven days. Now, Tanner had already been interviewed back in February after one of Jukka's neighbours mentioned that he had a red car, but that seems a bit weak, but apparently that was enough for them to go and arrest this guy. And then Juha Yosenlati, the chief investigator, showed Anneli a picture of Kai Tana, and she mentioned that he did have similar features to the man who had killed her husband. And then Yosenlati had Anneli pick Tana out of a lineup,

which we've seen this so many times before. She obviously fucking did because she'd already been shown his photo, which makes him look really bloody guilty. And Anneli picked Tana out of that lineup, despite the fact that she'd already told police that Tana was considerably shorter than the man who had attacked her and her husband. Still, Tana was arrested and held for a week and only released when his DNA wasn't a match for the sample taken from the murder scene. But again, we'll come back to this. In the meantime, Tana managed to get himself 11,000 euro in compensation for wrongful arrest and a loss of earnings. This case is going to get very expensive for the Finnish police, who are losing at tiddlywinks. And now the police were back to square one, and the pressure from the public to

solve the murder was mounting, because that's what happens when you put it in the press. The story had by this point become a media sensation, especially after the police dragged an innocent semi-famous actor into the mix. And as public pressure increased, the tensions within the police were rising too. Many officers weren't happy with the way in which the chief investigator was approaching things. Mostly, they didn't like that he refused to consider Anneli herself, Yuka's wife, as the prime suspect. But the chief insisted that there was no evidence at all that she had killed her husband.

He had the recording of the emergency call, the bloody footprints that were too big for her, and proof that the window had been smashed from the outside. And nine-year-old Amanda said that she had seen a man climbing out of the window. Yeah, there's just so much evidence, and especially the emergency court. Because remember, Annalie is talking on the phone to the operator, and they can hear Yuka screaming in the background like he's being attacked.

So how is she killing him and also talking to the police? There's an interesting twist in that later, which we'll come to. But at this point, you can't blame the chief investigator for being like, she can't be a suspect. So while yes, when somebody is murdered, it does make sense to suspect the spouse, but in this case, it did seem highly unlikely. Firstly, it would have been very difficult for Anneli to overpower her husband, and it is typically unusual for women to engage in such overkill. It takes a

lot of power to stab somebody 88 times. Her hands were also not cut up. If you stab somebody that many times, your hands slipping in the blood and the sheer force needed, your hands would certainly show some damage. In fact, apart from the severe stab wound that had punctured Anneli's lung, she didn't have any other wounds. And you would certainly expect to see some wounds if she had been struggling with a man who was fighting for his life. And Anneli was also not covered in Yuka's blood when officers arrived, which if she had stabbed him 88 times, she definitely would have been. Police also didn't find any traces of blood in the laundry room or anywhere else in the house. After searching the property and the surrounding areas thoroughly

for bloody t-shirts or anything like that that Anneli may have hidden, they still found nothing. And the police had arrived within minutes of Anneli's phone call, so how could she even have had time to hide or dispose of any bloody clothes anyway. Plus, no one could think of any motive. Sounds like everyone else in the town has a motive apart from his wife. After two years passed with no promising leads, Jusinlaati decided to pass the case up to Finland's National Bureau of Investigation. But the National Police Commissioner blocked the transfer because he didn't want the public to think that the police were incapable of solving a single premeditated home evasion murder, especially one that it had been concluded early on had been carried out by someone known to the victim.

Yeah, it's pretty much like as slam dunk as it should be. Yeah. They also, like, I think people forget they also had so much stuff. They have the fibers, they have the footprints, they have the handprints. It's not like there was a dearth of evidence, like forensic evidence at the scene of the crime either. So here's what he did instead. The commissioner removed Yusin Lati from the case

and appointed someone called Pauli Kurisaranta. Which does make things easier for us because from now on we can just call him Pauli. So Pauli becomes chief investigator on the case in 2009 and poorly like the rest of the department was certain that the wife annalee was guilty so basically the police commissioner is just like i don't think you're doing the right thing and you keep trying to involve the national bureau of investigation you're gone here's a guy who already agrees with what we all think. He's going to look into it now. And that's management. So, Annalie immediately became the focus of the investigation.

For Paulie, there were a few unanswered questions that made Annalie more than likely to have been her husband's killer. Firstly, how the murderer managed to escape even though the police arrived at the scene within 10 minutes of being called. And secondly, why hadn't the dogs been able to pick up a scent that led them out of the house if there had been an intruder? So the police, hell-bent on finding something that pointed at Anneli, called on psychologist Pirko Lati, no relation to Yuka, to analyse the video

of Annelie's hospital interview from the morning after the murder. According to Pirko, Annelie's behaviour amid the crisis was incredibly unusual. He said she was far too calm. It would appear that nobody had informed him that Annelie had been heavily sedated with diazepam at the time, nor had anybody told him, apparently, that she'd actually been crying hysterically when she arrived at the hospital, no doubt why she was pumped full of diazepam. Regardless though, Pirko's statement was exactly what the police wanted to hear. The pressure was now on for Paulie and he was prepared to take things a lot further than his predecessor. So the first thing he did was have Anneli Auer monitored 24-7. He had her phones tapped, and even her whole house bugged.

And he didn't stop there. One day in March 2009, Anneli was walking her younger daughter to preschool when she noticed a mobile phone on the ground that was ringing. So in quite an odd move, I think, Anneli picked up the phone and answered it. And the man on the other end of the line told her that the phone belonged to his friend and asked if his friend could meet her later on to pick it up. That evening, when the man came to Anneli's house to collect the phone, he brought a gift card for a spa and a box of chocolates to say thank you.

Anneli later noticed that the man, whose name was Seppo Makela, had left his number, an email address, inside the envelope for the gift card. Although she did think that was quite sweet, Anneli didn't reach out. Three years on, she was still reeling from her husband's murder, as you would be. A few weeks later on the school run, Seppo happened to be jogging past and he and Anneli stopped for a chat. No, I'm out. I'm running. I'm jogging away from Seppo.

Come on. And like, honestly, when you guys understand exactly what's going on here, the mobile phone on the floor ringing and all of this, it's not funny at all what happens, but the setup for it feels quite comical in my head for how this is made to happen. Seppo mentioned that he had been hoping Anneli would have called or texted him and after a few days Anneli decided what the hell. So she texted him and the two began

speaking regularly. When Anneli mentioned that she needed to take her car to the mechanic to get a tyre changed, Seppo insisted that he do it for her. While he was working on the car, he asked Annelie whether she'd like to go to the spa, for which he'd already got her tickets, with him. And she agreed. And it was on this incredibly weird, inappropriate first date to a spa, which is my fucking nightmare idea of a first date, that Seppo made the first move and told Anneli that he had feelings for her. Following this, the two started dating, occasionally going to the movies together. Seppo said that Anneli was

the first woman he'd dated since his divorce five years ago, and he really wanted a serious relationship again. And after this, things began to move pretty fast. Seppo invited Anneli and the kids to move in with him, and she was considering it. Anneli had finally started falling in love again, and the kids all really liked Seppo too. But then, Seppo told Anneli that he had read about the case on Wikipedia and had lost sleep over it. He began asking her prying questions about the case and even whether she was guilty or not. Eventually, Seppo relented and told Anneli,

whatever happens, I'll be by your side until the end. But that didn't last long because on the 2nd of September 2009, Seppo broke up with Anneli by mail. So like write posting her a fucking letter telling her that he'd fallen into a depression and he had to call it a day. Three weeks later on the 28th of September 2009 Anneli was arrested and her children were placed in the care of her brother and his wife. In police custody, Anneli, as I'm sure you can imagine, was questioned relentlessly. All the investigators had was extremely flimsy circumstantial evidence

and an even flimsier theory. And eventually they did reach their time limit for holding Anneli without anything solid, so they had to release her. Still, the police made it clear to Anneli that this was in no way over. They were certain that she was their killer and they would be going after her with everything they had. She was also not allowed to have any contact with her children even after she was released. And to make matters worse, her face was on the front page of every Finnish newspaper

dubbing her a murderer. And we can't stress just how big of a case this was in Finland. Every country seems to have one case that the nation is obsessed with, and possibly for us it's Maddie. Well, for Finland, it's all Vila. So imagine when years after the murders, the police point the finger, loudly and publicly, at the victim's own wife. Anneli didn't sleep for days. When she asked to see her children, the chief inspector proposed a deal. He told Anneli that

she could have a meeting with the kids if she could give them any new information about the murder. Anneli would later say that she was put under so much stress and pressure to think of something, anything to tell them, that she began to question what was real and what wasn't. Because the police made it clear, if she didn't come up with something, she might not ever see her children again. After a week of sleepless nights, Anneli was brought in for questioning once more. The interviewer told her that she had to be the murderer. There was no other plausible explanation. He claimed that the police couldn't find a single piece of evidence of an outside killer.

And that is what we call in the industry a big fat whopping lie. And officers went ahead and told this lie, even though the Finnish Criminal Investigations Act forbids lying to suspects. And this whole move is so bizarre because the police had been investigating the murder for years by this stage, and for most of the investigation, they'd been pretty open about the possibility of an outside killer. But now they were suddenly claiming that they were 100% certain that there wasn't one. There never had been one. So interviewers began feeding Anneli a hypothetical scenario.

That maybe she and her husband Jukka had had an argument that night. And maybe Anneli had lost her temper and stabbed her husband to death. And maybe the reason why she couldn't remember anything was because she was suffering from amnesia. Then they asked Anneli whether she thought that that maybe story was possible. Anneli, stressed and sleep-deprived and probably full of drugs, said that it was possible. She said that it wasn't out of the realm of possibility and that she could be suffering from memory loss. Great, the interviewer thought, and then he had Anneli sign a statement.

And although Anneli double-checked with officers that this was simply a hypothetical scenario, they took it as an actual factual confession. So before she knew it, Anneli was thrown in a cell for pre-trial detention. The police commissioner made a public statement that the crime had been solved. Hooray! Finnish newspapers began running the story that Anneli had confessed to murdering her husband and staging the entire crime scene.

The investigative team even celebrated by going on a cruise together. Which seems fucking mental. They haven't even got a conviction yet. So Anneli made it clear to her lawyer that she had not confessed. But it was too late. Her murder trial was set for April 2010. And the prosecution's version of events went as follows. On the night in question, Annalie and Yuka had had an argument,

which led to a physical altercation, and Yuka had actually stabbed Annalie first, because they've got to explain how she's got that punctured lung. Then they say that Anneli had managed to get the knife off him and stabbed Yuka in the armpit, causing him to bleed out and fall unconscious. She then assumed he was dead, staged the scene as a break-in,

smashed the terrace door window in their bedroom from the outside, and even made the bloody footprints. Obviously, they're ignoring here the fact that yuka didn't die of a stab wound or from bleeding to death he died of blunt force trauma so she stabs him in the armpit and then smashes him in the head for good measure that kills him and then she also stabs him 88 times they kind of like just brush over all of that and also in the prosecution's version of events annalee then phoned emergency services but yuka woke up halfway through at which point she

handed nine-year-old amanda the phone and that's why you can hear him screaming in the background and then she hit yuka over the head to finish the job and then stabbed him 88 times just to be really sure in front of her nine-year-old daughter, who also saw a man climbing out the window. The defence pointed out that this would have meant that Annalie had somehow eradicated every speck of blood from the living room before the police arrived 10 minutes after she picked up the phone, because the only traces of blood that were discovered led to and away from the broken terrace door and footprints outside. This story also would have meant that Anneli changed clothes and hid her bloody clothes so well that they would

never be found by investigators or the dogs that they brought. And the same goes for the blunt object that was used to kill Jukka as well, which was never found. And saru said she managed to stab him another 87 times and her hands are fine again and she herself gets stabbed and her lung gets punctured and that all happens in 10 minutes yeah so under the prosecution's version of events like she gets stabbed first so she's done all of this staging the crime scene stabbing her husband that many times, knocking him over the head, calling emergency services, all with a punctured lung. Sure. It made no sense.

But somehow the police and prosecution seemed to have been able to twist the situation into saying that they didn't know exactly how Annalie may have pulled it off, but that there was no evidence of an outsider in the house, which meant that she was the only viable suspect, because it couldn't have been one of the children. This is obviously insane that they would argue this. We've said it before and we will say it again, the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. So just because they couldn't find hard evidence of an intruder doesn't mean that we can say there was absolutely no third party in that house on that night. It's shocking

to me that they're able to just say that. Yeah. Like who would allow that to be said? It's mad. It is. So also, Amanda, like we said, has insisted since the day of the murder, which by this point was four years ago, that she had seen a man climbing out of the window. But the police very simply and very conveniently just brushed off her story, saying that it had been the figment of a nine-year-old girl's imagination. Either that or she dreamt it or she was just lying for her mother. Pick your own, pick your own story. They also claim that during their crime reconstructions, they found it near impossible for a grown man to climb through a similar door window. What in the JonBenet?

I know. I know. Like, come on. Shut up. And as for the recording of the emergency call, the prosecution's sound analyst, a woman named Tuya Nemi, had concluded that there was no outsider's voice heard on the emergency call. Nor was there the sound of anybody stepping on broken glass, fighting or climbing out of a broken window. I'm sorry, is this just a phone that's in the kitchen or is this a fucking high power microphone? Shut the fuck up. It's honestly, the lies

and the manipulation that the police and the prosecution do in this case is unbelievable. But in the end, the district court agreed that the prosecution had shown with sufficient probability that there hadn't been an outsider in the house during the call. Which is bonkers,

but that's what happened. Hi, I'm Lindsay Graham, the host of the house during the call. Which is reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle. And in 1985, they announced they're sending teacher Krista McAuliffe into space aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, along with six other astronauts. But less than two minutes after liftoff, the Challenger explodes. And in the tragedy's aftermath, investigators uncover a series of preventable failures by NASA and its contractors that led to the disaster. Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery Plus. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial today.

I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mum's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now exclusively on Wondery Plus. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly

moved me and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding, and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It was also during this trial that Annali learned what you have all probably worked out. Seppo wasn't the nice man that she thought he was. He was a honeypot undercover police officer sent to infiltrate Anneli's inner life and find out whether or not she was guilty. But Seppo had actually reported back that he didn't find anything incriminating about Anneli at all.

As far as he could tell, she was a good mother and her kids loved her. And as for the phone tapping and the bugs in the house, they didn't give the police anything valuable either. But, despite this humongous lack of evidence, three judges voted two to one that Anneli was guilty. Finnish trials have three judges, They don't have juries. And the majority of the judges win. Yeah, which like I would say before I read this, it's a good system in some ways, right? If I was going to be tried, I'd rather have a jury trial

rather than a bench trial because I feel like you've got more people to convince, but they're lay people. You can confuse them with experts. We've talked about this endlessly you can just get an expert and to be like this this this and this and people get confused judges they know the law they understand these things it's going to be harder to pull the wool over their eyes not apparently in this fucking case so on the 12th of november annalee was sentenced to life in prison as you can imagine imagine, Anneli immediately filed for her sentence

to be overturned in the Court of Appeals, which is the second stage of the Finnish court system. Her hearing took place in February 2011, five years after the murder. This time, Anneli's defence team commissioned their own analysis of the emergency call recording. Their sound expert concluded that it was impossible to say with certainty that there was not an outsider present solely based on the recording.

They also had Amanda, so Anneli's daughters, insistence that she had seen a man climbing out of the window as well as a total lack of any murder weapon. And the bloody footprints and fibres found at the scene which investigators had no explanation for. I mean, that alone, if you can't match those fibres to something else in the house, and they're all over him.

So based on all of this, thankfully, Annalie was acquitted of murder by unanimous decision in July 2011. But if you think that's the end of the story, you haven't looked at your little time bar. So now Annalie was desperate to put the whole thing behind her and finally reunite with her children after having not seen them once since her arrest over a year before. Amanda, the eldest child, had been placed in foster care, but the other three were with Annelie's brother and his wife.

But after Anneli's release, weeks passed without her being able to get in touch with social services or with her brother. And when Anneli did manage finally to speak with her brother, he said he'd taken the kids on a yacht trip for the holidays, so she'd have to wait until the end of summer to see them. He had bought the yacht using the €8,000 a month he was being paid to foster the children. And at some point during this trip on the fucking yacht he's

purchased with the foster money, the three kids, mainly the older boy whose name we actually don't know because he's never been named in the media, began recounting some rather troubling stories to their uncle slash foster father. Ari, Anneli's brother, actually filmed the kids telling him stories of what had happened on the night of the murder. And their stories were filled with animal torture, sexual abuse and ritual sacrifice. And the tapes were sent straight to the police, where investigators decided that the stories were serious enough to reopen the investigation into Yuka's murder, and more specifically, into Anneli. The eldest boy had claimed that he had been awake on the night of his father's murder, and he had heard everything. This was despite having originally told police they had slept

through it all, and also despite the fact that they ignore the eldest daughter, who was nine at the time, and what she saw, but now they're willing to believe a child that was younger than her saying all of the crazy stuff he's saying. They really are just like, we're going to pick and choose what we listen to. So the boy now claimed that Anneli and nine-year-old Amanda had actually planned the murder of Jukuka together and had even practiced it.

The boy said that his mother and sister had murdered Yuka before making the emergency call and that they'd even recorded the murder with a tape recorder. He said that they had then played this recording back over the phone to make it sound as though Yuka was still alive at the time Anneli was talking to the operator and he said that he'd heard all of this through his bedroom door. In the video filmed by Ari, he and his wife then prompt the kids to tell them more and this is where things get really wild. The kids said that their mother Anneli had regularly, physically and sexually abused them. The boys said that she would hogtie him and throw him down the stairs and even make him sit naked outside in the snow for hours as a

punishment. The kids also said that Anneli would celebrate the anniversary of Jukka's murder by playing with his ashes. Anneli would then make the kids cut themselves and paint satanic pictures with their blood. According to the children, Anneli would even have them sacrifice animals as a part of these satanic rituals. And if you think that's all pretty horrible, well, the stories just got worse and worse. Especially when the kids mentioned one of their mother's ex-boyfriends, a man named Jens Kukka.

They alleged that Anneli and Jens would have sex together in front of them, and that when Kukka was done with their mum, he would occasionally anally rape them. The children also claimed that their eldest sibling Amanda, who would have been 11 at the time, had been enlisted to help in the abuse. Cooker would bring sex toys to the house and the children claimed that Amanda would forcefully use them on her younger siblings. The final tape ended with the kids saying that they'd seen their mother and Amanda dancing naked in the garden wearing devil devil horns can we just talk about the fact that obviously this is some crazy satanic panic bullshit like spoilers that's what's going on here isn't it weird that like the kids always

say really fucked up things a where do they get it obviously they're being coached in some cases but like they always say kind of similar things like why is that like why where is this kind of sex and satanic abuse and animal torture and rape and all of that coming together in the minds of children that are still incredibly young it's not like they must have been exposed to it somewhere but it is curious that whatever country it's happening in it's always very consistent i'm not saying is because it's true just before anyone thinks that i'm just saying it's very curious well the'm not saying is because it's true just before anyone thinks that i'm just saying it's very curious well the greatest trick ever pulled was the devil convincing us all he doesn't exist there you go must be that very very strange behavior and yeah it's classic and

i think the thing you have to remember here we're not talking here 70s 80s even 90s kind of satanic panic, like we've talked about many, many a time. This is in 2011. So the following Friday evening, officers rushed into Annalie's house to search the premises. Annalie was expecting to have Amanda over that weekend, but police told her that Amanda had been taken to hospital, but refused to tell her why. At the hospital, Amanda was kept equally in the dark. Nurses scanned her entire body with UV lights looking for scars and apparently they found a sort of cross-shaped one that matched a cut found on Yuka's body. I'm sorry. The man was stabbed 88 times. I mean fucking hell. I know and also like

scanning the body of a child looking for marks that she's involved in some sort of satanic ritual abuse is this the middle ages what is going on what the fuck is going on and also a number of other tests were carried out including one to check whether 15 year old amanda still had a hymen can we get over this please oh my god you can break your hymen riding a horse also it's so it's a it's exactly it's so irrelevant to like what what's going on but also how willing they were to put this 15 year old child who is now in foster care because her dad was murdered in front of her and her mother has been arrested for his murder and she's been separated from him. Like, the extent to which these police officers are willing to go in handling a traumatised family

in order to get the verdict they want is sick. But they concluded, after what I'm sure was quite an extensive examination, that Amanda did still have her hymen. But because it doesn't mean anything, it did absolutely nothing to stop the crazy train from leaving the platform. Three months after being cleared of all murder charges, Annalie was once again arrested for the murder of her husband. Only now it was compounded with additional accusations of the sexual abuse of children. This time the district court hearings took place behind closed doors, away from the media, And the evidence that the police investigation presented was declared confidential for 60 years. So some of it won't be available for anyone to see until some point in the 2070s where I plan to be long fucking dead.

And I'm also just like, yeah, what a sign of confidence in your case. That you're like, no one can see this for 60 years. Why? Some sort of weird little crimey time capsule you're building? Or is it because you've got a shit case against this woman? But anyway, we don't know the full story, but this is what we do know. The court rejected the prosecution's allegation that the scars found on Amanda were proof of anything, as their origin couldn't be determined. But the court also rejected the defense's argument that the stories told by the children weren't credible.

So the court's basically saying the stories told by the kids may well be legit. The court was seemingly swayed by the testimony of a doctor. This doctor said that it was possible that the girls' hymens had repaired themselves. So there was absolutely no evidence that they hadn't been horribly raped and satanically tortured. Even though there is not one iota of evidence and there are no scars, there's nothing apart from one little cross-shaped scar on a 15 year old girl. What 15 year old child doesn't have have a scar it is absolutely mind-boggling the journey that this story takes so yeah the doctor said that the intact hymens weren't proof that the girls hadn't been raped and he stated

that he had no reason to doubt the children's stories apart from the massive lack of any sort of evidence now obviously you guys at home are most likely, hopefully, thinking exactly what we're thinking, that this is all, of course, some crazy satanic panic mania, and you would be right. But the police were going with it, full force. Even though the timeline of these accusations of sexual abuse place full-time undercover cop, part-time Lothario Seppo

in Annalise and the kids' lives, he said absolutely nothing of the sort. Yeah, so apparently all of this satanic ritual abuse is going on behind Seppo's back. Even though he's a police officer. And basically, he's spending enough time with the family that he's asked them to move in with him.

And as we said, Seppo reported absolutely nothing weird at all. He only ever said that the kids loved Annelies and that she was a good mother and that he hadn't witnessed any antisocial behaviour whatsoever. And this is when another bombshell dropped. Let's talk about the foreign DNA that the police had found on the logs in the house. The DNA that, at the time, the police had compared to hundreds and hundreds of people and found no match for. Well, it just so happened that seven years into this joke of an investigation, it was finally revealed that the DNA of this unknown male

actually belonged to a police lab technician. I have no words. I have no words. But the prosecution just used this massive fuck up to argue that there was now even less proof of an outside attacker being present at the house and therefore Annalie was even more guilty. It doesn't point to the fact that you completely fucked up the forensics and therefore you have no, you can't in any way say that there wasn't an external intruder.

And even if there wasn't any DNA, it is in no way proof that there wasn't a third party in the house. Honestly, again, can I just remind everybody, this is in the 2000s, and they're fucking this up this hard. But despite all of this, the court found Anna Lee and her ex-boyfriend, Jens, guilty of the sexual abuse of her children in a two-to-one decision without any evidence whatsoever. So yeah, all they've got are the statements made by some confused, traumatized children who have already suffered a huge loss when their father died and a massive upheaval when their mother was taken from them. And they're just like, yeah, sure, kids, whatever you say, I don't know. And also the other thing I want to point out about the statements is they're just

made to ari their uncle on a fucking yacht while he films them they're not made to an expert and they're not made in a clinical setting and also ari has a pretty large incentive to keep these children yes in the shape of 8 000 euros a month oh yes but the crazy train has not only left the station it is now tearing down the tracks at full speed. In June 2012, Anneli was sentenced to seven years and her ex-boyfriend was sentenced to 10. And when she appealed these charges, it completely backfired and the Court of Appeals actually extended her sentence by a further six months. And then Anneli was made to endure yet another trial for the murder of her husband. So she's in prison for the sexual abuse claims. Now they're putting her on

trial again for the murder of Jukka. And that's because Finland, like the UK, doesn't have a double jeopardy law. But the main reason that Anneli was going back to court for Jukka's murder was because of the children's disturbing testimony, not because of any like new or material evidence coming to light. And so the prosecution's version of events from the night more or less remained exactly the same as it had done at the first trial, except with regards to the actual time that Yuka had been murdered and the reason. Because remember, now they've got the whole recording story from the kid. So let's start with the timeline for the killing. Remember, the kids said that Annalie and Amanda had killed Yuka hours before and recorded it and then played

it back when they called the emergency services to make it sound like the attack was still going on. The state sound analyst now claimed that it was indeed a tape recorder that was playing the sounds of Yuka being murdered, not that she should have known that first time around as an expert. And this sound analyst also testified that she found it suspicious that a nine-year-old Amanda had shouted, come quickly, my dad is hurt, on the call. She claimed that if there had been an intruder in the house, Amanda would have used a different statement. Is she running some sort of body language and linguistic YouTube channel? I guess

so, man. I feel like this woman has watched too many true crime documentaries. Because just to be like, she would never have said that. Shut the fuck up. The defensive psychologist obviously questioned how a sound analyst could have the competence to make such a judgment. Human behavior was not her area of expertise after all. In fact, when questioned, it turned out that sound analysis wasn't even her area of expertise. This sound expert for the prosecution had a degree in phonetics and logopedics and no formal training whatsoever in sound technology so she just gag and talk about phonetics basically again just comes back to what we alluded to before i know this isn't a jury trial but you know what i mean like

just getting in experts to say whatever the fuck you want but despite all of this and the fact that there was absolutely no solid evidence pinning Anneli as her husband's killer. She was found guilty of murder. Again. Again. And in December 2012, Anneli was sentenced to life in prison for the second time. Now labelled a killer and a child sex abuser. But once again, Anneli managed to have the murder conviction overturned in the Court of Appeals in February 2015, by a vote of 2 to 1.

Not only did the judges find that there was no hard evidence to underpin the children's statements, but they also decided that a lack of solid evidence for an intruder didn't rule out the possibility of an outsider being responsible for Yuka's murder because they seemed to be reasonable people. Also, these judges found that there was not sufficient proof that Anneli had staged the crime scene. The prosecution escalated the case to the Supreme Court, claiming to have new evidence. But this was dismissed in December of 2015, and the courts upheld the not guilty verdict.

Still, though, Anneli had to serve out her sentence for the bizarre sexual abuse conviction. Yes, they've only overturned the murder. She's still in prison for the sexual abuse stuff. And she was finally released on the 3rd of June 2016 and put on probation

after having served half her sentence for the sex abuse. That same year, the courts granted Anneli half a million euros in compensation for the 600 days she'd spent in prison for her husband's murder. It was the highest compensation ever paid to somebody for false imprisonment in Finland. Over 50 officers were also charged that year for trying to access Anneli's private information on the police database, but most just received a fine. Since her arrest, Anneli hasn't had any contact

with her children except for her eldest, Amanda. From beginning to end, Amanda stood by her mother and told her story that she saw a man climbing out of the window that night. She also vehemently denies that she or Anneli ever abused the other children. And finally, after a mind-bending 17 years, in February this year, 2023, the truth finally came out. Anneli's three youngest children officially retracted their testimonies. In a new statement, they denied that their mother, her former boyfriend, or Amanda had ever sexually or physically abused them. Now, they claim that they had fabricated the stories entirely.

They said that they had been coerced to do so by Anneli's brother, Ari, and his wife, because the couple were making 8,000 euros a month, serious yacht money, from fostering them. So they didn't want them to go back to Anneli. And to keep that income stream flowing in, Anneli's own brother stooped low enough to destroy his sister's entire life. Today, despite the new statement, Anneli's guilty verdict for sexual abuse has yet to be overturned. Matti Tolvanen, a professor of criminal law at the University of Eastern Finland, has said this. If the Supreme Court does overturn Anneli and her ex-boyfriend's sexual abuse

sentence, then it signals a serious moment of self-reflection for the Finnish legal system. And the fucking rest, Jesus. I know, I feel like that's putting it very mildly. To this day, the murder of Jukka Lati is still unsolved. And police are not actively investigating it because they're probably too embarrassed.

And it remains one of Finland's most notorious and bewildering unsolved crimes. And they've got Lake Bodum, so that's quite high praise. Honestly, this is bonkers. This story, like we said at the start, it really does have everything. And I think just the fact that it happened so not that long ago is unbelievable. I mean, it's happening now. Yeah, it's happening now. And poor, poor, poor Annalie.

Like, it's rare that we come across somebody who has been a victim and then victimized and victimized and victimized again and again and again and again. So, yeah, just really, really messy, messy, messy work. But that's that's that's the Ulvila case. Pronounced beautifully by our resident linguistic expert. Thank you very much. And if you're out there, Mr. Finnish immigration officer, done. Cheers. And we hope you guys enjoyed it. Go check out our shorthands if you have been sleeping on those.

We're putting out some really, really great episodes. Go check those out on Amazon Music every single Tuesday without fail. And we'll be back next week with something else. Until then, goodbye. Make me. Bye-bye. Maybe. He was hip-hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Combs.

Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about. Everybody know ain't no party like a Diddy party, so. Yeah, that's what's up. But just as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down. Today I'm announcing the unsealing of a three-count indictment, charging Sean Combs with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution. I was f***ed up. I hit rock bottom. But I made no excuses. I'm disgusted. I'm so sorry.

Until you're wearing an orange jumpsuit, it's not real. Now it's real. From his meteoric rise to his shocking fall from grace, from law and crime, this is The Rise and Fall of Diddy. Listen to The Rise and Fall of Diddy exclusively with Wondery Plus. You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't.

I didn't either until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness, and inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more. Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.