RedHanded - Episode 7 - The Lake Bodom Murders

Episode Date: August 8, 2017

Four teenagers go camping on the shores of Lake Bodom in Finland. Three are brutally murdered and one survives. Then three confessions, two suicides and a high-profile trial 44 years later - ...the case still remains unsolved. So today we explore who murdered the Bodom Three? And why? If you think you know this one, think again.   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Starting point is 00:01:05 BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. 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. Hi, everyone. Hi everyone, thank you for joining us for episode 7 of Red Handed, the podcast. You might notice we've had some slight technical issues with the following episode,
Starting point is 00:01:58 but we were in an unfamiliar room with a bit of a dodgy mic, so please stick with us, it's absolutely worth it. I'm Hannah. I'm Saruti. And this is Red Handed. Today we're going to be talking about the Lake Bodum case which took place in Finland in 1960. The lake was a popular camping spot for young people and in the early hours of June 5th 1960 it became the scene of a horrific triple homicide that to this day remains unsolved. Despite the fact that two separate individuals confessed and a totally different person stood trial only to be acquitted. Now since this crime took place such a long time
Starting point is 00:02:30 ago in Finland there are actually very few sources of information in English. But being the biggest unsolved murder in Finland people there grow up hearing about this case and because we couldn't decipher any of the actual texts of the books that are out there. We are thrilled to have our friend Timu here with us today, who is a real-life Finnish person. That's right. That's my superpower. So Timu, do you want to tell us a little bit about yourself and what you know about the case? Sure. I'm 33 years old. I've been interested in true crime, mysteries, unsolved disappearances, whatnot,
Starting point is 00:03:04 since I was maybe 12 or 13. I started reading about the paranormal, but then kind of landed back on Earth and started reading earthly mysteries, true crime, and stuff like that. I'm not an official. I'm not a police detective. I've never investigated in any official capacity, but I have investigated it. I've been there. I've read basically everything there is to read about it, and I do claim to know one or two things about the Lake Pudum mystery. And it's wonderful to be here with you guys today.
Starting point is 00:03:32 We're so happy you came. Absolutely. And also Timmy gave us some Finnish books on the case, which is excellent. But we still can't read it. But we're very excited. Maybe it'll inspire us to learn Finnish. Maybe. Next step. 2018, we're very excited. Maybe it'll inspire us to learn Finnish. Maybe. Next step.
Starting point is 00:03:45 We're at 2018, we're learning Finnish. So, Saturday, June the 4th, four Finnish teenagers went camping on the shores of Lake Bodum. Oh, Timu, you're going to have to help me out. There's a good trick for it. Say the first name. Okay. It's usually the easiest one.
Starting point is 00:03:58 Mila and Anja were both 15-year-old teenage girls, and they went camping with their two 18-year-old boyfriends, Seppo and Nils. Could you give us their surnames? Maila Jeremeli Björklund, Anja Tulikki-Mäki, Seppo Antaro Boisman and Nils Wilhelm Gustafsson. At some point between 4am and 6am, Maila, Anja and Seppo were all stabbed and bludgeoned to death. Nils was the only survivor of the brutal massacre, but he had fractured his jaw and face and he had a sustained concussion, but he lived.
Starting point is 00:04:29 After the attack, Nils, who was in a state of shock, said that he couldn't remember anything about the attack except for blackness and a pair of bright red eyes coming for them. At 6am, so around about the time the attack occurred, some boys who were birdwatching near the lake reportedly saw the collapsed tent and a blonde man walking away from the scene. The bodies of the victims were found around 11am by a carpenter who had been jogging past the lake. He discovered the bodies and called the police who were there at noon.
Starting point is 00:04:57 So what actually happened during the attack? During the initial police investigation, they found that the killer had never actually entered the tent he had attacked the sleeping teenagers through the tent so standing outside and stabbing and bludgeoning them with an unidentified blunt object we say unidentified because the murder weapons were never found the killer stole several of the victim's belongings like their wallets and their clothes weirder still some of these clothes as well as nils's shoes were found later partially buried about 500 meters from the murder site why would you partially bury something that feels like that's like a rush surely yeah it seems like the killer has been in a
Starting point is 00:05:33 panic perhaps this was whoever the killer was this obviously was not something that had been planned for weeks the actual trip to Lake Bodum had not been planned until a couple of weeks earlier and not a lot of people would have known about it to begin with. So this was clearly carried out in the spur of the moment and afterwards when the adrenaline was wearing off, the person was just in a huge hurry to do something, try to hide something and get away with it. Absolutely, but why? If you'd have committed a murder and murdered in your mind what you think is for teenagers why are you hiding one of their shoes you're thinking about this logically personally that state of mind does not logically just oh my god what did i do if i hide
Starting point is 00:06:14 these shoes that will help yeah maybe if i get rid of this maybe if i throw a canvas over the bodies they'll never be found i won't be caught i think that, you're so right. And I do think because it was so violent, like it's beating, it does feel like a bit of a crime of passion. It doesn't feel that calculated. That's right. And also, some of their clothing was never found at all. Like Seppo's leather jacket, it just totally went missing. Was he seen wearing it?
Starting point is 00:06:37 Yes, he was. And it clearly was his. And this is one of the aspects that plays to the... This is a point for the outside killer team, so to speak. The clothes were simply not found. The area was searched extremely thoroughly. The Finnish army was there. There was an army barracks nearby.
Starting point is 00:06:55 All the soldiers came and they went through, basically with a comb, they went through the forest, they went through the lake, and so on. So this is indeed something that speaks to a potential outside killer, the fact that the clothes were not found, despite a very thorough search. It's other than to bury some of them in a rush but then take a trophy. That seems like a bit of a disconnect. Unless it was two different people, because when you said potential outside team, this idea that if it was one person? What, you've got a stick in one hand that you're bludgeoning them and a knife?
Starting point is 00:07:29 The weirdest thing... This bit that's really creepy. ...is that there are blood and footprints indicating that the killer was wearing Nils' shoes and walking around. That's correct. When the police did a DNA analysis of the shoes, they found out that there were sprays of blood inside the shoes of the three
Starting point is 00:07:45 victims who died in other words their shoes were not all okay when neil's shoes were investigated they found out that there were only blood marks that had clearly been left by human fingers that were bloody in other words no blood had sprayed into the shoes so he was laughing someone was someone was wearing them and when they put them on or took them off there were the bloody fingerprints there. So the shoes were on somebody's feet. That seems like a bizarre thing to put someone else's shoes on.
Starting point is 00:08:13 But then they were stealing, they stole the Seppo's leather jacket, they took other things like wallets and stuff so maybe he just was like, that's my shoe size, put it on. So they're stealing before they're killing? Maybe the shoes were outside. If you go camping, everything else would be inside but put it on, did the killing. So they're stealing before they're killing? Maybe the shoes were outside. If you go camping, everything else would be inside, but your shoes would be outside the tent.
Starting point is 00:08:29 Myla, who was actually Nils' girlfriend, was found naked from the waist down and lying on top of the tent with Nils, who was also unconscious at the time. She had the most injuries of any of the victims. She had been stabbed multiple times and killed in a much more brutal sense than Anya and Seppo. Why the overkill on
Starting point is 00:08:47 Jess Myler? Is it personal motivation? Maybe she was just the first one. But then if she was the first one, what were the others doing while she was being murdered so brutally? Well, what were they all doing when they were all getting murdered so brutally? But it was because they were attacked from the outside and then the tent, like, collapses
Starting point is 00:09:04 on them. They can't get out. It's also possible that the group that went to Lake Budum, they had alcohol with them. And there's indication that the girls did not drink at all. The boys did, but the girls did not. So it's possible maybe that Mäylä was putting up the biggest fight because she was the most sober of them. She was most determined to live
Starting point is 00:09:26 and so she was murdered in a more brutal way. That's one idea to consider, I think. That is an interesting idea. I guess the only other thing is that if she was putting up the most fight, why the sexual element? Because being naked from the waist down was only present with her.
Starting point is 00:09:41 When I was reading about this, it just seemed like, you know, she was the only one that was stripped from the waist down. And also she was stabbed many, many more times than the others, even after the fatal blow from the bludgeoning that had already killed her. So she was stabbed after death. If you're in a massive rush
Starting point is 00:09:56 and you're there to just steal things, why would you keep stabbing this dead girl and take the time to take her clothes down? It feels like, I mean, there's a whole thing about stabbing being a replacement for sexual penetration and take the time to take her clothes down. It feels like, I mean, there's a whole thing about stabbing being a replacement for sexual penetration and people who are impotent or can't have sex with the person that they maybe want to might resort to stabbing.
Starting point is 00:10:14 I just think, because if they're all in the tent, how could you possibly know which one is which? The initial attacks happened from outside, were their bodies found outside the tent? Milas was on top of the tent. That's right. So she was taken out afterwards so this happens afterwards I think.
Starting point is 00:10:28 Walking by saw these kids there and thought crap I'm going to release this aggression in me by killing these particular youngsters I just came across on my way from A to B. First of all the topography of the area
Starting point is 00:10:44 speaks against that. The tent was at a cape pointing towards the open lake. If you look at the cape from the usual ground that people walk on when they visit the area, the topography, actually the ground takes a steep turn downwards. Basically, my point is that because there's a steep drop in the ground towards the end of the cave where the tent was, it's essentially impossible to see that there's a tent over. Okay, so if you're just on the road and you look over, you're not going to see the tent.
Starting point is 00:11:16 So you have to know it was there. That's right, and there's also a lot of foley. So whoever killed these kids knew that they were there. Maybe it was somebody from the outside who was on the opposite side of the lake or on some other cape. There are actually at least three there. Decided that, or perhaps was somehow turned on by the young sort of sexuality of the two couples there and wanted to kill them because of that.
Starting point is 00:11:40 The point is that the person knew kids would be there and maybe Maila was somebody that he took a particular fancy towards. At this time of year, so summer, would the lake be very busy with many other people being there? 1960, Espoo, first of all, where the lake is located, is a reasonably busy area, basically like a suburb of Helsinki, which is Finland's biggest area. A lot of people who live in Espoo, they work in Helsinki and so on. So it's a very populated area. It was in the 1960s, so you could say that there probably were people there.
Starting point is 00:12:13 It was not empty. When you think lake, forest, you think it's somewhere in the middle of Lapland. Nobody goes there. But actually, this is in southern Finland. There are people coming and going there. And during the summer, hours of sunlight? Sunlight, yes. And also there's a particular feature
Starting point is 00:12:28 about Finnish summer that you may have read about somewhere. We have what's known as the nightless night. That means that the sun doesn't properly go down, so visibility is actually fairly good. If you go out at like four o'clock in the morning during summer in Finland, you can actually see fairly well.
Starting point is 00:12:43 You don't need a flashlight. And so this would have been that time? This would have been that time, yes. That time of summer when visibility, even at night, is fairly good. So also someone, if they were going to attack, wasn't even concerned that it's pretty light out. That's right.
Starting point is 00:12:57 So very much points towards, as you were saying, like a disorganized, erratic mind. This was not carried out for any rational reason. None of the kids had any enemies a bunch of kids camping out somewhere would not have expensive goods to be robbed. Yeah exactly. This was not a robbery that's the first thing that the police made clear in their investigation. We've got four suspects for this case and I think what was really interesting when we were putting together the research for this is that in any other case,
Starting point is 00:13:25 any of these four suspects would be an absolutely, he did it, absolutely credible suspect. So if we go through each of them individually. Sure. You're going to have to help me with his name. And the sign in it. It's just Pansy. It's Pansy.
Starting point is 00:13:39 Perfect. He was a maintenance man who also was convicted of several violent crimes in the 60s. So around the same time he is being violent, doing crimes. Age 24, whilst in jail, he confessed to the Lake Bowdoin murders, saying that when he was 15 he had lived near the area. The police interrogated him, but his confession was not taken seriously at all. He was a psychopath. Is that confirmed?
Starting point is 00:14:04 So they, this police, decided he was a psychopath is that that confirmed so they this police decided he was a psychopath is that right i think so yes i don't i seriously doubt if there's a clinical diagnosis i think they were just like he's a psycho he's just here for attention yeah and he would be really cryptic and weird especially when he was drunk or high. Aren't we all? Aren't we all, though? Especially if you're high. Poor Penti. Dude, the mysteries of the universe. So despite his incredibly long list of convictions,
Starting point is 00:14:34 his violent history and a confession, the police took it no further. Is that weird? I mean, I know that he's not a very credible witness. So if he's already in jail by the time he's 24 and he's got this long list of violent convictions, I feel like the police probably know who he is and know maybe not to take him seriously.
Starting point is 00:14:52 Yeah, no, that's fair, that's fair. But I think the real puncher with this... This is the puncher. In 1969, on the anniversary of the murders, he hanged himself. Come on. That's right. There's another way of looking at this.
Starting point is 00:15:04 I was just at Whitechapel area yesterday looking through the Jack the Ripper. That is very interesting. That's great. It's great. I can walk to the Metropolitan Police and say it was me. I committed the Jack the Ripper murders. But if the physical facts, if the DNA, if the fingerprints don't match, then they'll tell me to just get out, go have a beer, something, relax. So I think Bente is somebody who clearly was not stable psychologically. He had a police call, a confessing Tom. You're right, it's like confessing Tom or something, where they can't stop confessing to crimes that they haven't actually committed. But the police knew better.
Starting point is 00:15:46 And one thing that the cops oftentimes do, and this is something that I actually heard from a detective, is that they'll intentionally release wrong information. They'll say the killer was wearing a blue shirt. And then when somebody comes in and says, I was wearing a blue shirt and I killed them, actually the police know that the shirt was red. Yeah. And they close it out. I think maybe it's something like that with Ben Thier.
Starting point is 00:16:08 They're very careful about what information they release to the public. That's right. With everything. Absolutely. And they hold things back as well. But I think the idea of putting out misinformation as well, just to see if anybody comes forward claiming that that is what they were doing, is really interesting.
Starting point is 00:16:23 That's a smart move. That is. But then you have a homicide detective friend. Yes, he actually currently works with immigrants, as do I. And he's a former homicide detective for the Helsinki police. I wish I had a former homicide detective friend. He investigated this really awful... We'll have to talk about this another time because it's a whole other case.
Starting point is 00:16:44 But there was a satanic, cannibalistic ritual murder in Finland in the late 1990s. Can we do that? This is top-leg photo. Oh my god, that's crazy. My friend was one of the people who were at the garbage disposal place looking for body parts.
Starting point is 00:17:00 Oh my god. So he had a really history of going through the most sordid sort of murders. Wow, okay. That's nuts. We he has a really, he's sort of going through the most sordid sort of. Wow, okay. That's nuts. We'll put a pin in that and then we'll come back and do a future. Even if we have to Skype you in, we'll do a future episode on that because that's crazy.
Starting point is 00:17:16 To bring us back to Lake Bowdoin, suspect number one, we're thinking probably just an attention seeking, confessing Tom. Penty, you just hung yourself on the anniversary. He just sounds like a bit of a dramatic man. That's right. And it's not somebody that generally comes up when this is discussed in a serious matter by lawyers. Okay. So he's not even a real contender.
Starting point is 00:17:40 No, Penty's forgotten. Okay. So I feel like we're working through these suspects in order of most likely, I think. So, well, depending on our thoughts. So Penty knows. So the next suspect, Waldemar Gahlstrom? Close enough. Waldemar Gahlstrom. There we go. Waldemar, we'll go with that. He was one of the absolute prime suspects in this case. He was a kiosk keeper, which I'm guessing, was he like a shopkeeper?
Starting point is 00:18:08 More or less. Kiosks are like this small, you have them here. It's like a newsstand. That's right. Okay, okay, okay, cool. Ice cream, coffee, that kind of thing. Sort of like a pop-up. It's like a little hipster suspect.
Starting point is 00:18:21 We'll go with that. I love Valdemar because he comes across to me as a bit of like a horror movie villain. The one that everyone suspects at the start, but he always had good intentions. He was just telling the campers not to go camping there because he apparently absolutely hated campers and he behaved incredibly aggressively towards them. This really sounds like a Scooby-Doo character.
Starting point is 00:18:42 It does, it does. He apparently threw stones and rocks at campers and things. He was a very aggressive person. Why didn't he just move his kiosk? Good question. Why did he have a kiosk in the first place? He hated campers because they were probably
Starting point is 00:18:57 his number one clients. Back in 2005 when this case resurfaced in Finland they interviewed a lot of people on television. And one of the people they interviewed was a woman who was a young kid in Espoo back when this Waldemar had a kiosk there. The whole community was afraid of Waldemar. He had a particular aversion towards kids. He didn't like children.
Starting point is 00:19:20 He didn't like youngsters in general. He particularly didn't like them hanging out or camping out at lake bodum so he had a i think he had a if i remember correctly i might be wrong here but he had like a some sort of psychological problem he was just an uber aggressive person i actually have a i don't know if you've ever seen a picture of him. Oh, that would be amazing. Sitting in front of his kiosk, actually. Oh, my God, that sounds like the best. Valdemar, not a chill guy. He didn't like campers.
Starting point is 00:19:52 And he was the second man to confess to this crime. So in 1969, I love how finished this is as well, he gets really drunk in a sauna with his neighbour and then confesses to the crime, saying, I did it, I killed them. in a sauna with his neighbour and then confesses to the crime, saying, I did it, I killed them. The next morning, I mean, this is the next big puncher, he drowns himself in Lake Bodum.
Starting point is 00:20:15 That's right. And before he killed himself, he said, which means, look at me as I take a dive for the last time. I read that. So it wasn't an accident, though, was it? No, he killed himself. Okay. He clearly wanted the attention of, I don't remember, who was standing at the shore when he killed himself.
Starting point is 00:20:33 But he yelled, hey, look at me, look at me when I go down. And that's when he killed himself. How stoic. Go down with some dignity. It's like what gladiators say. Another very dramatic man involved in this. But when I read that the next morning he drowned himself in Lake Bowdoin, my mouth was on the floor.
Starting point is 00:20:54 So this is suicide number two, then? This is suicide number two. And the first guy killed himself on the anniversary of the murders. The second guy killed himself in the lake. Am I the only one who's very freaked out? No, how big is the lake? The lake is, I don't know, like feet, but bigger than average lake. We can do metres.
Starting point is 00:21:12 Yeah, yeah. Like this? Yeah. Extremely. If I say 100 metres, it will be 300. It's actually surprisingly big when you go there. Nowadays, there's a separate beach there, and there are the caves still there, all kinds of services, restaurants. Does anyone go camping there's nowadays there's a like a separate beach there and there are the caves still there all kinds of services restaurants does anyone go camping there oh absolutely especially on the
Starting point is 00:21:31 anniversary that's sort of a fast time for a lot of youngsters hey you dare go camping out at budom lake on the anniversary i feel like that's something i totally would have done that's what teenagers love that kind of thing when we would God, we'll record our next episode about the satanic cannibal cult at Lake Bodum on the anniversary. That's a good idea. A few days, he killed himself after he confessed, but a few days after the murder, he was seen filling up a well on his property. Is that odd? Is it relevant?
Starting point is 00:22:01 Does it have anything, because somebody apparently saw him throw something in there, a murder weapon possibly yeah it's if the police checked his background if they did a search at his house didn't find anything then this might be just a coincidence the human mind has a tendency to connect events where the human brain is a pattern seeking yes so this might may have actually happened a week after the killings but when they asked the locals I think it may have been right after. Absolutely. So I think that's explained by something like that. No I wouldn't disagree with that but I think as you said after
Starting point is 00:22:35 the murders the police searched his property really thoroughly with dogs with everything and they didn't find anything incriminating. But it's, again, absolutely possible that any evidence related to the murders could have been hidden or destroyed or thrown in this well. And still, neighbours and family members claim that the murder weapon is in the filled-up well. Did they have a property to get up? And I also read that there are hundreds of wells on his property. So which one were they even talking about? At the time, his wife gave him an alibi.
Starting point is 00:23:04 That's right yes for the night of the murders uh his alibi is that he was sleeping next to his wife yeah who said she was awake all night and he never left the bed that's right it might be him the killer might actually be him absolutely you have to always understand that the human brain is a pattern seeking device so is your own brain. So if I have a favourite suspect, then I sort of just leave out the information about Waldemar that convicts him and just concentrate on the information that sort of points at another direction.
Starting point is 00:23:36 So maybe it was Waldemar. He's certainly a very good suspect. Definitely. He would be my first guess if I was just looking at the superficial. Yeah, and also because after he died, after he drowned in the lake in 1969, his wife said that she retracted her alibi and said that she had just done it because he was incredibly abusive and had threatened to kill her if she didn't say that he had an alibi.
Starting point is 00:24:00 I don't necessarily think that incriminates him, though, because if there's this crime in the area all of the things about him are known and he's abusive anyway that doesn't mean he did it oh no it absolutely doesn't mean he did it he needed an alibi yeah but it's so many of those things put together and again it is just like we said at the start any of these suspects in any other case would be it's that person but again i think the next one increases in this is my favorite yeah this is full-on not necessarily because i think he did it i just think he's an interesting guy i mean yeah i mean i'll put up a picture of the book
Starting point is 00:24:36 that timmy was kind enough to give us with a picture of hans assman who is suspect number three on the front cover he is a sinister cover. He is a sinister looking dude. He is a sinister looking guy. He's a sinister looking guy and most importantly he fits the description that Nils Gustafsson gave of the killer under hypnosis almost perfectly. Under hypnosis? Have you seen the forensic sketch of the Buda May killer? I like very vaguely heard about this
Starting point is 00:25:02 but I couldn't find any information about this that I could find let me show it to you guys this is the description of the killer drawn by a police artist we will post a picture of this on instagram because you can't see what we're seeing but basically the artist's impression that neil's gave under hypnosis yes no i think you're right. I do remember reading about that. That he gave a sketch artist to draw looks exactly like Hans Asman who's on the front cover of this book. That's mad.
Starting point is 00:25:32 Tell us about Hans Asman. I'm so excited. Hans Asman, originally, most of the suspicion surrounding this case fell on alleged KGB spy. I love me a spy. A now confirmed Nazi Auschwitz guard thanks to Timmy this comes down to stories we don't have DNA or practice up but back
Starting point is 00:25:52 in the late 1990s I remember correctly I'm very bad with dates and numbers so we Hans Osman was dying in I Sweden. And he invited a reporter, a Finnish reporter, a man named Matti Paloaro, to his deathbed. So Paloaro took the trip. He went to Sweden and talked to the guy. And he was there for several days, recording Asman's confession, his life story. And during his time there at Paloaro,
Starting point is 00:26:21 based on his experiences and what he heard from Asman, he wrote a book called Luottamusta Kuolea'ema. This is the book that Zohr mentioned earlier. It means trust or death. And basically, to make a long story short, Osman lived a very bizarre life. He was most likely a guard at Auschwitz during the Jewish Holocaust, during World War II. He may have worked for the KGB. The police, the people that gave Osman up as a suspect, offered the police all kinds of evidence, all kinds of assistance.
Starting point is 00:26:53 We'll give you his bloody clothes. We'll give you everything we have. The police never picked it up. For some reason, they were avoiding Osman. They were avoiding truly looking into him and who he was. There are people who suspect that he may have been working for Russian intelligence. avoiding us they were avoiding truly looking into him and who he was there are people who suspect that he may have been working for Russian intelligence and this was during the time when Finland was very much under the thumb of
Starting point is 00:27:14 the Soviet Union so basically things were really afraid of the Soviet so if somebody was spy for them that person would have done a free pass on Russians and get mad. And Osman probably, I believe this as well, he worked for Russian intelligence. And he confessed to Paloaro on his deathbed. To the Lake Bodom murders? To the Lake Bodom murders and to the murder of Kulikisar, who was killed in Finland in 1953. So now actually we have three people. Confessing, yeah.
Starting point is 00:27:46 That's right. And a deathbed confession too. That's right. He knew he was going to die. There was no way he was going to live. Oh my God. And he was a grandiose person. He certainly liked to talk about himself.
Starting point is 00:27:57 But this really, what kind of adds weight to his story is the fact that he had a son living in Finland and this would have made his life very difficult. So clearly he had some deep incentive for confessing to these different killings. He didn't seem to have just done it for media attention. That's quite a career, Auschwitz and the KGB. And then a murderer, like, of teenagers.
Starting point is 00:28:23 It's also quite a shit crime to confess to. It's not like he stole loads of diamonds or he pulled off this execution. He just went and murdered a bunch of teenagers that were sleeping in their tent. It's a very weird thing to confess to, if you were looking for glory. But then maybe it's because it was such a case
Starting point is 00:28:40 that was high profile in Finnish society. Oh, it's weird. It was high profile, but then he connects. This wasn't just random. Yeah. I think we probably, as you read on about Osman's past, you'll notice that he actually showed up at a hospital wearing probably bloodied clothes, very close to the date of the crime.
Starting point is 00:28:59 Being very strange. Hannah, do you want to tell us some more about what he did? On the 6th of June, so this is the day after the crime, Hans went to Helsinki Hospital, and his behaviour was seen as odd, and that's 20k, we're saying. It might not even be that. It's very close.
Starting point is 00:29:15 It's entirely possible, time-wise, he may have made the journey. Do we think he drove, or did he get there on a public transport situation? He probably drove. He would have been seen on a bus or a train or something he was disheveled with black fingernails and clothes covered in red stain he was aggressive and nervous and even pretended to be unconscious at one point which would obviously raise eyebrows in a hospital like they know what an unconscious person looks like
Starting point is 00:29:40 it's their job also like why go to hospital and then pretend to be unconscious like i don't actually i couldn't actually find what was wrong with him that he went to hospital because say he was the perpetrator and he was the killer and he somehow got hurt at the scene of the crime did they ever even find a sort of an external party's dna blood at the scene i couldn't find anywhere that they mentioned that. So if he wasn't hurt, or maybe it was like a non-pleading injury. I don't understand why, after committing a murder, you would go to a hospital and give your actual name.
Starting point is 00:30:16 Perhaps to hide from the police, or to somehow give yourself, whitewash yourself, and say, I'm just, I'm sick here, I'm a victim of some other incident. Especially if you're unconscious, you think the doctors will tell the police you can't speak to this man, he's unconscious, he's very unwell. Yes, and the Finnish laws regarding privacy
Starting point is 00:30:35 are extreme mysteries. If the cops want to know something about the health of a suspect, it's extremely difficult for them to get that information. But even it seems like here that the doctors were really suspicious of him, because the book that you
Starting point is 00:30:50 gave us, Palo? He was the one that wrote the book. He was the doctor. Actually, no. This was written by two people. Palo was a journalist, but Palo was the doctor who received Usman, who spoke with him, and was totally freaked out by him.
Starting point is 00:31:06 He talked about killing people. He talked about using the knife on people. He was a very disturbed. Disturbed, yeah, and disturbed in a very loud way. The best kind of disturbed. He made it very clear that he wanted other people to fear him. He was a very scary person. The doctor that we're talking about here was uh he isn't just a random person yorma apollo who was working there as a doctor
Starting point is 00:31:31 when osma showed up later became the um i think he was the professor of neural neuropsychology yeah at the university of helsinki and he later led a clinic in Brooklyn, New York. So this is a guy who sort of was not known for tall tales or anything like that. And he also later, because he was for the rest of his life, he died a few years ago, but he was totally convinced that it was Osman. And he actually went through the injuries that Nils Gustafsson had gotten during the attacks. And he released a statement saying that Gustafsson was speaking truth. I'm jumping ahead here a little bit. Basically, to make a long story short,
Starting point is 00:32:11 for the rest of his life, he believed that he was Osman. He was on TV talking about it. He wrote two books about it. And he was the receiving doctor that Osman saw. That's right. He treated Osman and spoke with him on several occasions. That's really interesting. And also observed things that happened around Osman while he was in the hospital. One of the things being the fact that while Osman was being treated at the hospital in Helsinki,
Starting point is 00:32:34 there was an unmarked, it was in some other foreign country's place, there was a car parked outside of the hospital for the duration of Osman's stay there. And while he was there, he was visited by somebody, a strange person, and they spoke a foreign language, and then this person left, and she was never identified. And when Osman finally left the hospital, the car drove off. And the car was never located. It was never made clear. The police could not locate this car anywhere. So why was the car outside the located. It was never made clear. The police could not locate this car anywhere.
Starting point is 00:33:07 So why was the car outside the hospital while he was there? That's so weird. And this is the kind of information that we never would have found on our own. Yeah, Paolo, he was so passionate about Aslan as a suspect that he kind of sustained a reputation, unfortunately, as a cool come on some people. But most of those people have not read his books. He actually arguments fairly well.
Starting point is 00:33:28 He went to the places where this happened. He examined blood tests and samples and things like that. That was Paulos. Basically, his life's work was trying to prove that Osman was the killer. So this doctor who received Osman on the day that he came in made it his life's work to convince the world that it was Asman that committed these murders. That's crazy. There was other interesting things about.
Starting point is 00:33:53 But what's really interesting is that Asman matched the description down to the clothes he was wearing in hospital given by the boys who were bird watching of the man they say they saw walking away from the crime scene. Yeah, so if we jump back to the start when we said that there were a group of boys who were birdwatching near where the crime scene was, they said that around 6am that morning, so around the time that the attack would have happened, they saw a man with blonde hair walking away from the scene of the crime. Asmund seems to match that description somewhat. How detailed was this description? I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding,
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Starting point is 00:36:14 You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial today. First of all, these witnesses were interviewed on two occasions. First in 1960, then again in 2004 all that certain and it's when you read the actual interviews which a geek like me has actually done gone through the police interrogation we could read finish we would too it's literally a couple of thousand pages but i went through it back in the day and they're not all that certain but certainly they never said anything that closes Osman as a potential suspect, closes him out.
Starting point is 00:36:50 You could say that it's possible that it was Osman at the end of the cape. The person on this incident that you're referring to, it happened when the killer clearly saw that he was being observed, so he quickly turned his back to the witnesses so that he would not be seen. The kids did not really get a very good look at him. But again, entirely possible that it was Osmond. But it was also interesting what you told me, that maybe some of us think that when we think of this lake
Starting point is 00:37:18 surrounded by woods, that it's a really remote place. And when I read this, I thought, if there's a guy walking away from the scene of the crime at 6 a.m in the morning and these these guys were bird watching saw him it must have something to do with the crime but what you tell me about what's actually happening in those woods really changes changed my perception of who that man could have been actually this particular witness sighting was of the murderer. Those two kids saw the killer. Oh. Yes. The person was standing at the end of the cave and clearly was working around the
Starting point is 00:37:53 murder scene and was probably the killer. And when the kids came and saw him, he quickly, like I said, he turned his back. So this was the killer. There's no question about it. But yes, like you said, when the police started to go through the area with the army, actually helping them out, literally hundreds of people combing through the area around the murder scene during the investigation, they found that there were these little communities of homeless people living in the forests. They had, some of them were making alcohol by themselves, they had these little improvised shacks there, almost like a micro economy, and they were like a little community in the woods. So the woods, like you said, they were not empty. When you think Finland, you
Starting point is 00:38:39 think forest, you think a place where nobody has gone for the past thousand years. But this is Espoo. This is not Lapland. This is not Siberia. Espoo is a fairly busy area. And the woods surrounding Lake Budum were not empty. There were people living there. And some of these witness sightings, not this one, this one was of the killer. He was at the murder cape that morning. But the other sightings made by other witnesses may have just been these homeless people walking around, moving around in the forests.
Starting point is 00:39:10 And the other thing, which I'm not sure, days after the murder, so the description of this man is that he's got longish blonde hair, is that correct? Yes, and a high forehead, big eyes and thick lips. That was the description of him. Babe. What? Babe. What a babe. Is was the description of him. Babe. What? Babe.
Starting point is 00:39:25 What a babe. Is he a bit of you, is he? So yes, he had longish blonde hair. And Asmund cut off this longish blonde hair. That he had, which is interesting. And this is a couple of days after this all goes up on TV, is that correct? Yes, basically, more or less, yes. And he tells them, I cut my hair off because of what was said on TV about the fact that
Starting point is 00:39:52 you were looking for someone with longish blonde hair. But then he comes into hospital wearing, I think this was actually the next day, wasn't it? It wasn't even a couple of days. Did they immediately televise this? No, no. Back then, televisions were not that widely spread throughout the country anyway.
Starting point is 00:40:08 It was radio mostly. And also, you have to remember that Nils Gustafsson, who was the survivor of this incident, was down and out for a couple of days. So he was, at least he says he was basically a coma at the hospital.
Starting point is 00:40:24 So no really exact information went out about the killer. Okay. But they were, and again, this issue of what did the killer look like, it basically depends on who you ask. There are a couple of clear details that seem to be true. First of all, the killer was probably wearing a white or a whitish, blondish shirt, dark pants. He was a male, around 20 to 30 years of age. And these are the facts that it, and the white male, these are the facts that the descriptions kind of circle around.
Starting point is 00:40:58 These are established that he was a male, young man, wearing a blondish shirt and dark pants, dark shoes. So he cut his hair off, but didn't change his clothes before going to the hospital? That's right. Yeah, because he's got red stains. But then, after a couple of days, would blood still show up red? Actually, when he arrived at the hospital, he immediately asked for a substance. I don't know what you call it in English.
Starting point is 00:41:25 Like a solvent. Yes. The Finnish word for it is din. It's a very powerful... Thinner. Paint thinner. Yes, that's right. It removes paint, it removes blood, it removes everything. He asked for this. And they just gave it to him. They gave it to him because they didn't know about
Starting point is 00:41:41 the blood. He said, oh, it's just paint. I've been working at painting a house nearby, so I want to just clean up my shirt before I pretend to be passed out. He scrubbed his shirt clean of the substance. And this is, again, something that really adds to the suspicions regarding Asma. And there's an aspect to this that kind of adds to the suspicion that he may have been somehow connected with the intelligence work. The doctors, including Jorma Pala, who spent his life trying to promote Osman as the guilty man,
Starting point is 00:42:13 they offered Osman's clothes to the Finnish equivalent of the FBI, the Scotland Yard. And the police never picked up his clothes. They literally had them. I mean, this was a huge, first of all, breaking of rules. Hospital staff is not supposed to give out information on operations. But they stepped over that line because they were so convinced that it was us. They called the police,
Starting point is 00:42:37 they put all of his clothes in a paper bag, and one of the doctors went outside to wait for the police to come and pick up all this potential evidence. I'm not sure they should be handing out paper thinner either. That breaks my heart that these doctors were like so convinced and they were like wanted justice
Starting point is 00:42:56 so much they collect his clothes and like wait for the police to come get it and no one comes and gets it. That's insane. That's insane. That's insane. It's a total mystery. Later on, a police investigator admitted
Starting point is 00:43:11 that, not directly but indirectly admitted during a conversation, there were all kinds of international potential conflicts to consider with regard to Osman. That's very suspicious. So he can be made public as a suspect.
Starting point is 00:43:28 And the police, when they did speak to him, they only had a very brief meeting with Osman. I think that's what I read. That's right. And Osman is also one of these people who have an alibi from a girlfriend, somebody close to him, who may have been seriously afraid of him. He was a very violent man. He constantly was guilty of domestic abuse.
Starting point is 00:43:52 Once he beat his wife in the middle of Helsinki, this street, so poorly that his wife actually crawled under their car to get away from the kids and honchos. He was that violent. So he was just a totally nasty person. And then after that, he went on to be linked with five other unsolved murders in Finland. Yes, again, this comes down to this book and the deathbed confession. He had at least claimed that he also was guilty of several other famous, infamous Finnish unsolved crimes,
Starting point is 00:44:30 including the murder of Gylli Kisai, who was killed in 1953. Wow. So he confesses to more murders. Yeah. It was a deathbed confession. He confesses to more murders, and there's something that actually ties into my city. I'm from Turku in Finland. There's an unsolved murder in my town of a woman called Sirka Lisavalyus. She was murdered in 1964.
Starting point is 00:44:51 Her murder was never solved. It is provable, and the police have admitted that she knew Hans Asman. And Hans Asman had visited her in Turku in the 1960s. Wow. And this is not speculation. The police admitted that Asman and Walius knew each other. Osman had visited her in Turku in the 1960s. Whoa. And this is not speculation. The police admitted that Osman and Wadir knew each other. That's crazy.
Starting point is 00:45:11 Wow. So all of this sounds very peculiar and fantastic, but there are provable aspects to this. He's not pulling this out of his butt. He generally could prove some of these things. He offered photographs and documents to Palauaro, whom he confessed to. That's insane. Is there an element of because he was foreign?
Starting point is 00:45:34 Because he was German, wasn't he? No, first of all, he spoke Finnish. He had a very heavy accent, but nevertheless, and he didn't stick out in any way. You see he's a blonde white man yeah not from uganda or something yeah it's very unlikely it sounds to me like something he would have said to kind of get out of this got it yeah yeah because i'm german and i'm i'm a not ex auschwitz guard and a kgb spy oh my, just leave us alone, these bloody Nazi
Starting point is 00:46:06 hunters. Oh, wow. I mean, this case, you rightly put it, it is very dramatic, the whole thing. And to this point, we've covered three suspects, all of whom confessed to it. One deathbed, two confession, and then suicide. And now
Starting point is 00:46:21 we still haven't come on to the suspect that was most actually taken to court over this case, which is crazy. But now we come on to the final, possibly the most intriguing suspect, who is Niels Gustafsson, who is the survivor from the attack. In March 2004, so that's 44 years after the murder, the Finnish police arrest Niels.
Starting point is 00:46:48 And in 2005, the Finnish his new girlfriend and was the girl who had been slain in the most brutal way. On top of the tent. Found on top of the tent next to Niels, who was the one, the only one who had any sort of sexual element to her murder and also was the one that stabbed the most times, the most sort of overkill, brutal killing in that situation. And yes, Niels had also been injured in the attack, but his injuries were definitely a lot less severe than the others' injuries. He had a broken jaw, but that could have just been, like,
Starting point is 00:47:34 from being kicked in the face during the struggle. This is my issue with the broken jaw. Oh, please. If they're in the tent, and there's, what, three of them in the tent? Four of them. Four of them in the tent and there's what three of them in the tent four of them in the tent and someone's attacking from outside from the outside i just feel like it's quite difficult to get that amount of force to break someone's jaw while there's four of you in a tent and they're outside but neil's was found on top of the tent alongside mylar so
Starting point is 00:48:06 he could have been outside the tent been i feel like the the case is some of the things that i read was that it was when he was going after seppo and he was trying he was stabbing him the seppo kicked him in the jaw and that's what led to the break. So Nils' injuries are wounds from when he was being attacked in defence by, for example, Seppo, who he killed. What do you think, Timu? Nils Gustafsson, first of all, the average Finnish homicide is usually carried out by two men, well, not both of them, but one man.
Starting point is 00:48:44 Man A kills Man B, while man A is drunk and mad over something. So, Nils Gustafsson fits the bill, fits the killer's profile in terms of the average Finnish way of killing another person. The broken jaw, it would have been Seppo who did that, possibly by kicking or punching or something like that. But remember, Nils Gustafsson was a lot bigger than the others. Seppo was actually fairly short. He was not known for being an athlete or a particularly physical person. Nobody had ever seen him in a fight or anything like that. If he genuinely broke his jaw, if this wasn't just exaggerated,
Starting point is 00:49:29 as the prosecutor said in 2005 that Gustafsson's wounds were exaggerated, if his broken jaw really was broken, then it's possible that there was an outside killer because it would have taken a little bit of force to break the jaw off some of the size of news that's interesting but why wasn't he stabbed or have any of those injuries because this person whoever they were the attacker took the time to partially undress myla stab her even after she was dead but didn't stop so even if you say that's just to even after she was dead, but didn't stop.
Starting point is 00:50:07 So even if you say that's just to make sure she's dead, they didn't take the same time to make sure that Nils was dead and stab him. Because his injuries are, you know, surrounding his face. He had a concussion, a broken jaw, broken facial bones, bruises. But he wasn't stabbed, which is what seems strange. Okay, I'll come clean, first of all. My favourite suspect. I'm Niels. That's right, it's me.
Starting point is 00:50:31 And you bitches are dead. Like we said in episode one, don't be strangers off the internet. That's right. Niels is my favourite suspect. I believe, based on the available evidence I believe he was probably Nils Gustafsson oh why wasn't he stabbed
Starting point is 00:50:49 my opinion is that because he was the killer if I play devil's advocate for a moment maybe to frame him to leave him there alive but someone who was as disorganised a killer as we already said he was was he in the state of mind to be framing anybody there you go in my opinion it's especially the bloody footprints in neil's shoes
Starting point is 00:51:13 they're hidden his shoes are hidden 500 meters away partially buried bloody footprints his are the only shoes that were worn during it but also also, like, what you put your shoes on and then, like, murder your friends. Also, why? Why? Is the question. What's the motive? You've got the means, you've got the opportunity. What's the motive for Niels to kill his girlfriend and his two friends?
Starting point is 00:51:37 Well, according to the Finnish Bureau of Investigations and the prosecutor in the case in 2005, the motive goes something like this 2005, the modem goes something like this. During the night, first of all, both of the boys are drunk, the girls are not drunk. Actually, the final diary entry of Tuulikimaki says the boys were drunk, set by Nils or Thomas, Set by Niels were drunk. During the night, Niels perhaps makes some sort of an overt sexual gesture towards his girlfriend,
Starting point is 00:52:12 and his girlfriend turns him down. The two had, based on Niels' testimony, the two had not actually had a sexual intercourse yet. So maybe Niels tries to make the move. They had condoms with them after all. Milo turns him down and for some reason all of the other members of the group, the three dead members of the group, put up some sort of resistance to Niels who becomes aggressive. During the night they close him out of the tent, throw him out, and close the tent doorway. And Nils is now outside the tent.
Starting point is 00:52:51 He's mad. He's been turned down. And most importantly for Finnish murders, he's drunk. He's in the stage of drunkenness that we call laskuuma, which means like a downward drunkenness, that's the aggressive part, you haven't eaten in a while you're out of control, you're mad at something, and at this point he takes the knife that he brought with him, he drops
Starting point is 00:53:16 the tent on the three teenagers, his friends and to kind of save face or to, maybe that's the wrong expression, but in this sort of state of mind that is seen, drunk, rejected, feeling like his friends have betrayed him, he carries out this triple murder with the knife and the rock. That's my opinion.
Starting point is 00:53:40 I can believe that. I believed that it was an outside killer for a very long time. I think I believe that because when an L-circular for a very long time. I think I believe that because when I first heard about this case, I thought it was Nils. And then when I started the research, I thought, maybe it's not, because Valdemar and Osman, I'm like, they're so believable. They confess to it. It's so, so perfect.
Starting point is 00:54:01 And there are certain things that do still make me think, maybe it's not nils because okay where's seppo's leather jacket where could he have gone and hidden it in that time if he only hid his bloody shoes 500 meters away from the scene of the murder where's seppo's leather jacket where is where are the murder weapons even if he threw them in the lake i assume they drained the lake well not drained the lake that's it by aggressive tra them in the lake, I assume they drained the lake. Well, not drained the lake. That's the thing where I said, trawled the lake. Trawled it. Like, look.
Starting point is 00:54:28 Divers looked for some murder weapon in the ground. But it's so difficult to find anything in a lake. Dil, where's the leather jacket, you know? In the lake. From that float? Not if you put rocks in the pocket. But he's got time to put rocks in the pockets, but he buries his shoes for 500 metres away.
Starting point is 00:54:42 Maybe the rock pockets took up all of his time. He was so obsessed with this. But then why is he hiding Seppo's leather jacket? It's just a leather jacket that's the jacket of someone who's in that den. I don't know. It's a fair point. It's a very good point. The police and the army and Jesus, everybody
Starting point is 00:54:59 that was available was there to investigate the murder scene. They went through the lake. They had metal detectors that they used. That's a very fair question. And also if Niels did in fact push the or press the leather jacket to the bottom of the lake, he would have had to swim out really far away because the area within sort of throwing distance from the cape where the murder happened that was all gone through with a comb yeah and no leather jacket so it's a fair point it does indeed point to an outside killer there's no denying it's the shoes though that's what i can't i just however i come at it i can't see a reasonable situation where someone would put
Starting point is 00:55:43 someone else's shoes on only Only because he stole other clothing. Potentially stole the leather. Well, yeah, if there's homeless people living in that area... Did they do something, yeah. ..that I could buy, maybe. Well, indeed, to kind of specify a point, the police analysed the shoes for blood prints or blood traces all the other shoes besides these Gustafsons had blood like spray in them
Starting point is 00:56:14 Gustafsons shoes also had blood in them but they were from fingers they were touch yeah so the killer's bloody hands used were used to pull the shoes off. So there was blood inside these shoes, but they were on somebody's feet while the killing was carried out. And why they were hidden, it's a mystery. It's just a genuine, nobody knows why
Starting point is 00:56:38 that happened. No, it's such an interesting part of this case. But I also think, I have to come back to the fact of, when it's one killer, do normally one killer use two different types of weapon? Bludgeon and stab that seems strange to me very aggressive if it was one person it was just a
Starting point is 00:56:55 waving away and shoving and hitting away like a madman a very brutal way to kill another person let me throw a curveball. Again, this is some information that came out during the trial, and I don't think this is readily available in English. There is a witness that has never been identified.
Starting point is 00:57:18 Her name has never been made public. Let's call her Taina. Taina claims that she and her friends were camped out at Lake Budom on the night of the murders, at another spot near the lake. Taina claims that on the night of the killings, and she said this in 1960, she said this in 2004, she still says it, she's totally convinced, and there's no question about this, that this happened, at least in her head. She claims that the Voodoo group visited her encampment, her camp, on the night of the murders, before the killings happened. She claims that while the group was there, the two boys, Seppo and Nils, had some sort of a row, and Nils was trying to
Starting point is 00:58:06 pick a fight with Seppo. And because they couldn't behave, Taina and her friends asked the Burom group to go back to their own camp, leave their camp, and not spoil their evening. And this person was actually hurt at the trial, and again, without flinching, she relayed the same story, that the two boys had some sort of aggressive exchange of words and that Niels had tried to pick a fight with them. So this is another aspect of this that ties at all to what you just said. Yes, but again, there's a but, as there is with pretty much all the aspects of this case. When the police in 2005 went through the area where she claims,
Starting point is 00:58:55 Dinah claims, that her camp was at, they found out that there was basically no way to get from the murder campsite to Dinah's campsite back in 1960. That the foliage was too thick. There was a field between them that couldn't be crossed and so on. So this is another one of these mysterious aspects of the case. Did it happen? Did the group really visit this other camp or did they not?
Starting point is 00:59:22 It has not been able to. Nobody's been able to conclusively establish or take down that argument. Oh, my God. This case just blows my mind. It's so weird. So, like, three people confessing. Dinah, as we'll call her, giving the story.
Starting point is 00:59:38 Yes. Again, unflinchingly, unwaveringly giving the story. But the police saying it would be almost impossible for that to have been the case. It's bizarre. But I think, so bringing up Diana and talking about the trial, coming onto the trial. So it started on August 4th, 2005.
Starting point is 00:59:57 So 45 years after the murders occurred. That's right. And the prosecution called for life. So it's Niels Gustafsson who's standing trial, and they want life for him. So the case was based on re-examination of the old evidence using modern techniques such as DNA profiling. And the results did seem to apparently point the finger at Niels,
Starting point is 01:00:22 but the defence argued that the attacker or attackers must have been outsiders because Niels couldn't possibly have killed all three of his friends with the injuries that he had sustained himself. So the broken jaw, the concussion. And on October 7th, 2005, Niels was acquitted of all charges and even given almost 45,000 euros compensation for the mental suffering caused by his long remand. What are they DNAing?
Starting point is 01:00:53 Because his DNA is going to be all over the tent anyway because he was sleeping in it the murder weapon was never found thumbprints of like in his own shoes but bloody thumbprints they DNA'd the blood samples. Okay.
Starting point is 01:01:07 They took DNA samples from the blood. But what makes their story, the police story, a little less believable is the fact that they didn't DNA all spots of blood. So they took a sample here, a sample there and made their conclusions based on that.
Starting point is 01:01:24 So in other words, there may have been an outside killer and maybe his blot was at that corner of the tent that was not DNA. So they just took random samples. DNA is actually fairly expensive and difficult to test. So they just took samples. They didn't analyze every single spot of blood on that tent or the shoes. And they built their case on that. And that's also what the case sort of fell on.
Starting point is 01:01:49 That's why Niels was let go. It's because they could not conclusively establish, the prosecutor, that all the blood would have been from, in other words, that there could not have been outside blood there. There could have been outside blood there and plus DNA it's not as it deteriorates all the years
Starting point is 01:02:13 so was the case built on the fact that all of the blood at the scene was the campers and there was no exterior because there were signs of a struggle so therefore if it was an outsider there should have been their blood too, was that the case?
Starting point is 01:02:29 That was the case. That's what I read pretty much on like in any Reddit forums that I could come across on this as well but the fact of the matter is also if this person snuck up on four sleeping teenagers there's no necessarily there's no evidence necessarily that they would have been injured
Starting point is 01:02:45 and their blood would have been sprayed anywhere anyway. For victims' bloods, all the four teenagers' bloods found inside of the tent, it doesn't necessarily point to the fact that it was one of them. Indeed, that's a fair point. I mean, for the killer's blood to have been all over the place,
Starting point is 01:03:01 he would have accidentally stabbed himself. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I hope they didn't check this that's a fair point it does indeed there are aspects that bespeak that it was steals there are aspects that bespeak an outside killer
Starting point is 01:03:17 but and again let's use this Finnish language skill of mine. It's full extent. Here's another nugget of information that I can find in English. At least I can find it in English. Markku Tuominen was the homicide detective in charge of the investigation when Gustafsson was arrested in 2005.
Starting point is 01:03:41 Tuominen personally interrogated Gustafsson and informed him that your story is not believable, we have new evidence, you're under arrest. He personally walked Gustafsson to his cell, and later on Tuominen swore to this in court with his hand on the Bible, so to speak. Tuominen says that as Gustafsson lay on the bed he sort of threw himself on the bed in the cell and he said tehty mikä tehty viis tovsta vatta tui which means in English it means fuck it. What's done is done. 15 years of jail. And this came from the head investigator of the case.
Starting point is 01:04:25 This is a man who solved several cases. I asked about Tuominen from my homicide detective friend, and he said Tuominen was one of the best. Oh, my God. He was not corrupt. Later on, when Gustafsson was asked about this, like, why did you say this if you later say that you're innocent of these crimes, Gustafsson said in a press conference,
Starting point is 01:04:45 I was probably just joking. Huh. Oh, yeah, funny time to make a joke. Yeah, that's right. That's hilarious. That's so funny. You're not going to joke if it's life in prison. And that's not the joke you'd make. But then, again, we have to look at this from another angle and not be victims of our own patterns of being afraid.
Starting point is 01:05:04 Gustafsson has always agreed to all investigations. We want to place you under hypnosis. Go ahead. We want to take your blood sample. Sure. We want to talk to you in 2005, decades after the murder. Oh, my God. Okay, I'll show up.
Starting point is 01:05:19 Like a lifetime after that. That's right. So he never put up a resistance. He was never aggressive towards the police. Anything he could help with, he did. So my theory, and I don't want to go to court for defamation or something, but this is just my opinion, the immensity of the bloodbath that happened that night
Starting point is 01:05:48 he has some sort of dissociative reaction to the killings he has been living for the past decades genuinely under the belief that somehow he didn't do it or that he was justified in doing it or that somehow he's been able to compartmentalise.
Starting point is 01:06:06 And he was just a kid too, hey? He was just a kid, 18 years old. Let me throw a curveball at you. They say that towards the end of a movie there has to be a good twist. So here comes the twist. 1959, that's one year before Boolam. Two young girls decide to take a little road trip during the summer. They pack their bicycles with snacks, tent, and they head from Jyväskylä southward.
Starting point is 01:06:34 Half road trip through half of Finland basically. Or road trip through half of Finland. They stay here and there, you know, they put up a camp there, put up a camp there, cycle a little more, then put up a camp there. One night they arrive at a lake called Tuli Lahti, which means, by the way, literally, a lake of fire or a fire lake. They set up
Starting point is 01:06:55 camp there, they say their goodnight, and they go to sleep. During the night, somebody attacks them with a knife and probably a rock. Murders them both. The case is unsolved. What? Yeah, I mean, come on. If that's... It's not Nilsven.
Starting point is 01:07:13 I mean, it just exploded. That's right. There was a... Somebody actually did go to court for this. It was a man named Runar Holmström, who was a sort of village idiot. He lived in a shack in the middle of the forest. He had nudie magazines and dirty pictures there. He had a reputation as a... Sorry for the expression, but I'm sort of panty-sleefer,
Starting point is 01:07:34 a guy who followed girls around and just was a general perv. He actually went to trial for these crimes, and he killed himself. He left behind a suicide note that said, I'm innocent but in the eyes of the public a crook like me, he had an extensive list of all kinds of crimes he had committed. I'm already guilty in the eyes of the public
Starting point is 01:07:56 so I may as well kill myself. What year did he kill himself though? In 1959 or 65. So before Bodum though? Yes, this happened one year before Bodum. And there was never any conclusive evidence against Rune Hormsdom. The case is officially unsolved.
Starting point is 01:08:13 And even the prosecutor who prosecuted Rune for the Tullilahti murders a year before Bodum, he admitted that he never believed that it was Rune. The judge who presided over the case later wrote a memoir where he said, I never believed it was Rona. The case is unsolved. Everybody, on the count of three,
Starting point is 01:08:35 who killed the Bodum kids? One, two, three. Hands off my face. Genuinely not. No, no, no. I don't know. I don't think it was Niels. No, no, no. I don't know. I don't think it was Neil's now. Oh, I feel very confused.
Starting point is 01:08:49 It's either... Oh, it's any of the three. I want it to be Mr KGB. Like, I want it to be, like, some sort of Famous Five mystery where they were all, like, a bit in too deep for some massive government conspiracy. What are you doing as a KGB spy? Just out there murdering some random teenagers?
Starting point is 01:09:06 But maybe they weren't random teenagers this is my point maybe they were the actual famous five. There's only four of them. It's hardly possible. Oh my god
Starting point is 01:09:14 so basically inconclusive. Yeah. We don't know. We don't know. Personally based on all the available evidence
Starting point is 01:09:21 I believe and my opinion is that it was Niels but then when I start going through the available evidence, I believe, and my opinion is that it was Niels. But then when I start going through the case files again, I realise I don't know shit about this. So none of us know shit about this. But that was a very, very, very interesting case. Thank you so much, Timu, for joining us today.
Starting point is 01:09:40 Thank you, ladies. It was a wonderful evening. It was fantastic. It's been such a pleasure. Honestly, it's been fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much for our books. We hope you enjoy the rest of your stay here in London. And we hope that you
Starting point is 01:09:52 will stay in touch with us. We would love to do satanic cannibal murder. There's all kinds of weird shit happening. Well, there you go. Then we will have to continue this in our podcasting. Be sure to join us next time when we will be talking about the honeymoon yes which we'll be recording later please also rate review and subscribe also
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