Hi everyone and welcome to the 3rd post on Lets Talk True Crime! Today we are going to be discussing a maybe somewhat unknown set of murders to those who aren’t as deeply invested in true crime. We are heading to Espoo, Finland to talk about the Murders at Lake Bodom.
This is one of the many cases that I simply cannot give you answers to for one very real fact: the case was never solved. They never found the true perpetrator of this heinous crime making it probably the greatest unsolved murder in Finnish history.
So, lets talk true crime!
On June 5th, 1960, at Bodom Lake, 2 young women both aged 15 and an 18-year-old male were killed through a combination of stabbing and blunt force trauma to the head. There was a fourth male along for the trip who actually survived the attack, and was found outside of the tent that the group had shared.
Taking it back to June 4th, 15-year-olds Maila Irmeli Björklund and Anja Tuulikki Mäki had decided to go camping with their 18-year-old boyfriends Seppo Antero Boisman and Nils Wilhelm Gustafsson. The group had decided to go camping at Lake Bodom, near the city of Espoo.
[Combined photo of Maila, Anja, Seppo, and Nils]
[Lake Bodom]
For all intents and purposes, this was supposed to be a nice camping trip between friends, however, sometime between 4 am and 6 am Maila, Anja, and Seppo would be brutally stabbed and have blunt force trauma inflicted upon them ending the short lives of these teenagers. Nils was the only survivor, coming away from the event with fractures to the jaw and facial bones as well as multiple bruises and contusions to the face. When the police spoke with Nils after he recovered, the only thing he remembered was that the assailant was wearing black and bright red.
The scene was discovered at 6 am by a few boys who had come to the area to go bird watching and noticed the collapsed tent. Around 11 am a carpenter by the name of Esko Oiva Johansson discovered the bodies and notified the police who arrived on the scene at 12 pm.
In the initial investigation by police, a surprising discovery was made. Unlike most cases, the victims weren’t murdered from INSIDE the tent. Rather, they had been stabbed and bludgeoned from OUTSIDE. The unknown assailant had essentially attacked the TENT and managed to murder and maim the victims. Unfortunately, the weapons have never been recovered. One of the more baffling things was that the assailant had taken a few random items from the campsite. For example, they took the keys to the motorcycles belonging to the victims but left the bikes themselves behind. Another weird discovery was Nils’ shoes that had been partially hidden about 500 meters from the crime scene.
The police, unfortunately, made some grave mistakes in the early investigation, much to their own detriment. They never cordoned off the crime scene, allowing officers and other investigative team members to essentially trample the scene, destroying any evidence that the assailant had possibly left behind. This unfortunate mistake was made so much worse by the team of soldiers who then came through in search of the missing items from the camp, many of which were never found.
Maila had unfortunately suffered the most at the hands of the assailant, her body discovered on top of the tent, naked from the waist down. She was stabbed multiple times after she was already dead. The other 2 victims were slain less brutally, and Nils was also discovered on top of the tent next to his deceased girlfriend Maila.
[The tent during the initial investigation]
Like any case we will discuss in the future, there are always a few suspects that may be brought in for questioning or due to a connection to the crime. For the Lake Bodom Murders, there are only 2 notable figures: Karl Valdemar Gyllström
and Hans Assman.
Valdemar Gyllström was a kiosk keeper from a town near Espoo called Oittaa. Valdemar was known to be hostile to campers but the police were never able to create a hard link between him and murders. According to police, Valdemar was known to make confessions for crimes but these were thought to be false due to him being considered mentally disturbed. The people in Espoo and Oittaa knew Valdemar to be violent; he had a history of cutting down tents throwing rocks at people who walked down his street, and there were reports of him coming back from the murder scene but the townspeople were too afraid to report anything. Valdemar died in 1969 by drowning in Lake Bodom of an apparent suicide.
Now the other suspect, in this case, is a man by the name of Hans Assman. The theory on him being the killer was proposed in a book on the Lake Bodom Murders due to his proximity to the crime scene -he lived on the shore of Lake Bodom- however as Hans had an alibi for the night in question the police never seriously looked into him as the perpetrator of the murders.
The final topic we need to discuss regarding the Lake Bodom Murders is…. It’s a doozy. Rather than build up or give comfort to you, dear reader, we are simply going to dive into it.
In late March 2004, nearly 44 years after the murders, Nils Gustafsson was arrested for the murders of his girlfriend, and their 2 friends on that fated night in 1960. In early 2005, the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation declared that they had solved the case! Based on new forensic technology they released a statement on what they believed had happened that night. Nils had been drinking and been left out of the tent after getting into a physical altercation with Seppo. Seppo broke Nils’ jaw which led to the events later in the evening.
The trial began on August 4th, 2005. Nils’ lawyers argued that the murders had to have been committed by more than one assailant and that Nils’ injuries were too severe for him to have been able to commit the injuries on the other victims. Remember, Nils had also been stabbed and suffered a broken jaw and multiple facial fractures. He didn’t walk out unscathed.
[Nils Gustafsson and lawyer at trial]
Going back to a bit earlier, remember when it was mentioned that Nils shoes had gone missing but were later found? These played a key in the prosecution’s case because they said that the fact that Nils’ blood was NOT on the shoes, but the other 3 victims’ blood was found on the shoes that Nils’ had to have been the killer. They pointed to this to say that Nils must have been stabbed at a different time than the murders -after he had hidden his shoes- and then stabbed himself to make it seem like he was also a victim rather than the perpetrator. However, the case against Nils just wasn’t concrete enough and on October 7, 2005, he was acquited of all charges. The State of Finland paid him 44,900 euros (or $49,044), but he was refused permission to sue the newspapers for defamation of character.
That’s, unfortunately, where we end. There is no answer, and the case remains unsolved.
So what do you think happened? Was it Nils’? Was it an unknown assailant who just happened upon the teenagers having a good night? Hopefully, an answer will be found.
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See you next time and Lets Talk True Crime!
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