Finland's Most Sinister Unsolved Mystery

(no audio) (gentle somber music) (gentle somber music continues) - [Nexpo] On the 4th of June, 1960, four teenagers decided to camp at Lake Bodom in Finland. While their trip began just fine, all of them would wind up dead, except for one. (gentle somber music) Grab a snack and kick back because tonight in story time.

Welcome back, my friends, to Late Nights with Nexpo. (ambient music) You awake from a shallow sleep. For a moment, you think it's morning already, but then you remember it's still night.

During the summer in Finland, midnight is indistinguishable from dawn. From where you lay inside your tent, the night sounds perfectly peaceful. Crickets chirp softly outside.

Not far away, the lake's gentle waves slap rhythmically against the shore. It's idyllic and yet you can't shake the sense that something is wrong, something imminent. (tense music) (footsteps crunching) Then you hear it, a crunch of foliage outside the tent.

(rope snaps) Then a quick twang, the sound of a rope snapping. Someone is cutting the corns that hold up your tent. You try to escape, but the tent is already collapsed down around you smothering your cries for help.

(tense uptempo music) (tense uptempo music continues) (tense uptempo music fades) June 4th, 1960. A pair of motorcycles drive through the countryside of southern Finland, carrying four teenagers and their camping gear. On one motorcycle sits Seppo Boisman and his girlfriend Anja Tuulikki Maki.

The other is driven by Nils Gustafsson, with his girlfriend Maila Bjorklund in the back. Maila's 16th birthday is coming up, so it's the perfect excuse for the friends to escape the city for a weekend camping trip. And soon, their destination Lake Bodom comes into view.

It's about three kilometers long and one kilometer wide, surrounded by pine and birch trees that make it feel quite remote. In spite of its relatively close proximity to the city of Espoo. At an intersection near the lake, they stop at a roadside stand.

The mature woman working the kiosk is less than pleasant to them. She seems wary of their group, and when asked, she suggests that they camp far away. Confused, but undeterred, the group buys some soda and beer, then heads off to find a campsite, as planned.

As they pull away, Maila shoots a glance back at the stand. The woman is watching them go. Maila finds herself wondering whether it's safe to camp here.

She's already noticed that there are not many tents set up along the lake shore. There are plenty of hikers and swimmers and the occasional boats out on the lake. It seems odd that there aren't more overnight campers on the weekend.

As they scour at the lake shore for a campsite, Maila, Nils, Seppo, and Anja encounter a handful of daytrippers, people there for hiking or fishing, but they make sure to find a nice secluded space to set up. It's not long before they find the perfect spot, a small outcropping on the south shore. They're right by the water, but screened from public view by the trees.

They lean their two motorcycles against nearby trees and pitch a small tent that's just big enough to fit them all inside. Maila keeps thinking back to the woman who sold them their drinks, the look she gave to the four of them. Her cryptic warning.

Maila hopes that they won't get in trouble for staying here. Since this is her birthday celebration, she'd feel awful if something happened. But her concern starts to evaporate as everyone settles in by the lake.

It's been an especially hot summer, so the cool breeze over the water is just what they needed. The boys crack open their beers. Anja stops complaining about how annoying her dad was about letting her go on this trip.

And finally, Maila relaxes as well. (crickets chirping) The day comes to an end, but the sun doesn't set. They may be in southern Finland, but they're still close enough to the Arctic Circle that the sun never fully sets in the summer.

It dips low until it's barely touching the horizon and stays there. And as night falls, the sky dims to a sort of warm twilight, a phenomenon known as a midnight sun. All in all, it gives everything a beautiful, eerie look.

By 2:00 AM, both of the boys are drunk and Anja is sleeping. It gives Maila enough privacy to make a quick entry in her diary made possible by the light of the midnight sun. She writes that the boys are still awake, that Seppo is out fishing.

She doesn't write for long and soon she's putting away her diary to try to get some sleep. That entry would be her final words. (tense music) Nine hours later, morning, by the shores of Lake Bodom, the midnight sun has brightened to a warm summer's day once again.

A local man, Esko Johansson, arrives with his two sons. They take in the stunning scene before them. If today's going to be anything like yesterday, it'll be perfect weather for swimming.

They make a brisk walk towards the lake shore eager to plunge into the refreshing water. Yet, on their way, an unusual sight stops them. From a distance, it looks like a pile of trash.

Suddenly, Esko seems tense, uneasy. He stops both his sons from walking any farther and tells them to stay where they are. He's going to go investigate and make sure everything's all right.

He approaches and sees that the pile of trash is actually a tent. It's collapsed in on itself and there are dark stains all over the shredded cloth. It looks like blood.

As he draws nearer, his fears are confirmed. (tense music) There's a bruised and mutilated boy lying on top of the tent and the body of a young girl partially concealed by the torn fabric. Immediately, Esko runs to the nearest phone and calls 112, Finland's emergency services number.

And within an hour the police are swarming the scene. The body that had first drawn Esko's attention is that of Nils. He's barefoot and covered in blood.

His face and skull show signs of intense blunt force trauma and the tent beneath him is slashed to ribbons. The other body spilling out of the tent belongs to Maila and the state of her body is even more horrifying. Her bones are broken and she's covered with deep stab wounds.

She's been stripped from the waist down. Inside the tent, the police find both Seppo and Anja with similar wounds all over their bodies. Though none as extreme as Maila's.

Each of the teenagers have been stabbed and bludgeoned. They all have broken jaws and severely fractured skulls. While searching the tent, the police make a shocking discovery.

Nils is still alive. The 18-year-old boy stirs, moaning in pain. Blood bubbles up from his mouth.

He can't do anything besides moan. His severely broken jaw prevents him from speaking and immediately an ambulance whisks him off to the nearest hospital. By this point, bystanders are already starting to crowd around the crime scene, morbidly curious about what all the commotion is about.

As the number of bystanders grows, it becomes clear that the police have neglected to set up a perimeter. The crime scene becomes an absolute mess with countless pieces of forensic evidence trampled or lost. (tense chilling music) Amidst the commotion, what police are able to piece together is this, there's no obvious murder weapon, though the tent has been slashed as if by some sort of blade.

It seems the attacker struck at them from outside the tent and the teenagers fought to escape before succumbing to their injuries. Out of everyone, Nils was the only one who managed to get out. The tent itself seems to have been roughly ransacked, its contents scattered around the woods.

A few key items are missing, including wallets and watches belonging to the boys, the shoes that Nils had been wearing and the motorcycle keys. However, even so, the motorcycles have not been stolen as both are still parked near the campsite. Maila still has her diary on her, but it doesn't provide any substantial clues.

It seems she was too busy relaxing by the lake to note if anything was amiss. The only thing of note is that she was still awake at 2:00 AM and that both boys were drunk. Though it's unsurprising for a pair of teenagers on a weekend get away.

The police also find the shoes that belonged to Nils, about a kilometer from camp. They're half buried in the undergrowth, and covered in blood. (tense chilling music) A couple of birdwatchers come forward to police with the description of a potential suspect, a tall, blonde man with a square jaw.

They claim that they saw him near the campsite in the early hours of the morning. This is corroborated by a 14-year-old boy who was fishing around 6:00 AM, and claims to have seen a blonde man standing beside the shredded tent from afar. Neither the fishermen or the bird watchers, however, were close enough to see the bodies.

Locals continue to come forward with their own theories, their own suspects, and soon the police are overwhelmed. What they really need is for Nils, the sole survivor, to help make sense of all of this information. He's recovering from his injuries, unable to talk to anyone, but the police are certain that once they have his account of what took place that night, the story will fall into place.

But there's only one problem. As he lies in his hospital bed, Nils can't remember a thing. (tense chilling music) Later on when Nils is finally able, he gives a short statement to the police.

He remembers little to nothing of the day before. His only memory of the attack is that of a dark shape, which he glimpsed through the holes in their tent. Any other crucial details have been lost in the head trauma he suffered.

The police drowning in clues offered up by locals want to see if they can jog his memory. After he's discharged from the hospital, they pay him another visit and with his consent, they hypnotize Nils and ask him again, "Who killed your friends? What did you see?

" In his interview, the results are more concrete. Nils describes the attack fighting to get free of the tent as the intruder batters away from the outside. He says he got free of the canvas, only for the mysterious man to kick him in the jaw, breaking it and knocking him unconscious.

Afterwards he was left for dead. Nils describes the attacker as a man around 20 to 30 years old, about 5'8, with blonde hair combed back, and a strong chin. This is promising news.

His description seems to match up with the figure multiple eyewitnesses placed near the scene. The police hypnotized the 14-year-old who claimed to have seen the blonde man and again, ask for a description. He says the same thing, a blonde man with a square jaw.

Using the descriptions given by Nils and the eyewitness, the police are able to create a rough composite sketch of the man they're looking for. The three deceased teens are buried the following week. The event is photographed by the press and when these photos are developed afterwards, they reveal something that no one noticed at the time.

(intriguing music) Among the crowd of heartbroken mourners, there stood an unidentified man, a blonde man with a strong jawline. The author's first real lead on a suspect comes from the staff of Helsinki Surgical Hospital, located about 25 kilometers southeast of Lake Bodom. On June 6th, the Monday after the murders, a distressed blonde man is brought into the ward.

He's requested urgent assistance, though the doctors don't notice anything physically wrong with him. His shirt is stained red with what he claims is paint. This man, as it turns out, is already known to the Finnish police.

He's a 36-year-old German expatriate named Hans Assman. His background is shrouded in mystery, due to his habit of lying and exaggerating his past. Unsubstantiated claims Hans is made about himself include then he was a Nazi guard at Auschwitz, was reassigned when he fell in love with a Jewish woman and that he was recruited by the KGB after the war.

In spite of a suspect backstory, Hans has an airtight alibi. He claims he was with a girlfriend in Helsinki at the time, and she and her family confirmed this story. It would've been nearly impossible for him to drive all the way to Lake Bodom, commit a gruesome crime, and get back to Helsinki without them noticing.

The authorities dismiss him as a suspect, confident that he's not the man they're looking for, and his red stained clothes are never tested. Around this time, another suspect comes to their attention. It's a local named Karl Gyllstrom.

50 years old, Karl owns the roadside stand that the four teens visited before heading to the lake. Though often day-to-day operations are handled by his wife and 12-year-old daughter, his wife had directly interacted with the victims on the day before the murder, while selling them soft drinks and beer. Karl is the reason there were so few campers by that side of the lake.

He's known to be a temperamental alcoholic who treats the shore of Lake Bodom like it's his backyard. He's had numerous run-ins with campers and daytrippers over the years and has been known to throw rocks at people, cut the cords of tents, and to even fire warning shots with his shotgun. He looks nothing like the blonde man in the police sketch, but otherwise, he fits the perfect profile of someone who would have a violent outburst at noisy teens.

On top of that, he lives just a mere 800 meters from the scene of the crime. However, he too has an alibi. Karl's wife claims that he was with her and their two children the entire night the murders took place and Karl's 12-year-old daughter corroborates this story.

No new leads turn up and the case starts to grow cold. (no audio) (radio static crackles) (gentle music) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) August 1969, nine years after the murders by Lake Bodom. Karl Gyllstrom is drunk again, as usual.

He's made his house a living hell for his wife and two kids. At the tail end of his most recent binge, his daughter, now 21, has had enough. The two of them get into a heated argument during which she threatens to call the police.

Karl leaves the house to cool off and finds a neighbor who will lend a sympathetic ear. The two men spend the afternoon together and their conversation eventually turns serious, extremely serious. Karl confesses that something has been quietly eating away at him for years, that he, Karl Gyllstrom, is the man responsible for the Lake Bodom murders.

Through tears, Karl asks what he should do. The neighbor, alarmed by this confession, replies that there's nothing for Karl to do. He might as well just walk into the lake because he has no future but jail if he confesses to the police.

Karl falls silent for a long time, then finally asks for another drink. That evening, someone tells Karl's son that his father was seen swimming in the lake a little before 6:00 PM. Alarmed, Karl's son borrows a boat speeding to his father's swimming spot, but he can't find him out on the water anywhere.

The family calls the local authorities. Before long, Karl's body is found three meters from where the murders took place. He's clothed, with a pair of wine bottles floating alongside him.

At first, Karl's wife rushes to defend her dead husband, insisting that the neighbor must have misunderstood what Karl was saying. But in time, she changes her tune. After years of claiming that Karl spent the night of the murders with her, she ultimately admits that Karl had slept on the couch that night.

She had been too afraid of her husband to not protect him. The press labeled Karl's death as a suicide, but this was never confirmed by police. For their part, they remain unconvinced that Karl is the killer.

The confession was only witnessed by one person and under unreliable circumstances. Both men were drunk and there's still no probable cause. Even though Karl was a drunk who did hate campers with a fiery passion, there's a big difference between harassing people and violently killing them.

For the second time in a decade, they dismissed the possibility that Karl Gyllstrom is a killer. Meanwhile, the other long dismissed Lake Bodom suspect, Hans Assman, actively cultivates a reputation as a Lake Bodom boogeyman. He eagerly tells fanciful, unverifiable stories of his life to true crime magazines.

He claims, among other things, that he was a member of the German SS during the Second World War and that he was later employed by the KGB. Though he never admits anything about Lake Bodom, it's clear that he enjoys the limelight. Finally, in 1997, at the age of 73, he invites a journalist to his deathbed.

In a rambling interview, he alleges his own involvement in a number of unspecified crimes. The journalist assumes that Hans is referencing another unsolved double murder in the area from 1959, just a year before Lake Bodom. This case, in which two young campers were killed in their tent at night near a lake bears undeniable similarities to the Lake Bodom case.

However, when the journalist inquires directly about Lake Bodom, Hans doesn't confess. Ultimately, Hans Assman dies shortly thereafter leaving his true life story clouded by exaggeration. For a while, it seemed like nothing new would ever happen to revive interest in Lake Bodom.

Any hope and truth has been lost to time in crime scene mismanagement. The '90s roll into the early 2000s and then shockingly, there's a sudden development. Forensic science has advanced considerably since the 1960s prompting reexamination of old evidence.

This directs police to a new suspect and it's one who's been hiding under their nose the entire time. (somber music) (no audio) April, 2004. Nils Gustafsson has lived a normal life for the past 45 years.

Now in his early 60s, he's retired with a wife and two kids. The events of Lake Bodom seem so distant now like they happen to another man, in another life. That is until he receives a visit from the police.

They tell him that he's under arrest for the murder of Anja, Maila, and Seppo, and he's shocked. There's no statute of limitations on murder, but Nils had moved on from that traumatic period of his life. Or at least, so he thought.

The blunders the police made back in 1960 make it a particularly thorny case to re-litigate. But one particular piece of evidence seems to have opened up new possibilities. The bloody shoes that belonged to Nils, the ones that were found over a kilometer away from the scene of the crime.

A forensic analysis of the shoes determines that the blood came from Nils' murdered friends, but none of it is from Nils himself. The conclusion prosecutors draw from this is that the killer was wearing shoes when he attacked the tent. And the killer, by this reasoning, is Nils himself.

(menacing music) The original description Nils gave of the attacker, that of the blonde man with the square jaw, is no longer considered relevant as it was given under hypnosis. And so, Nils is held in jail for a year preparing for his defense. While he waits, the case becomes a media sensation.

Long dormant speculation about the murders splashes across tabloid headlines. It's now where they have a juicy new angle to explore in this case, the lurid story of a teen who murdered his girlfriend and got away with it for 45 years. August 2005, the trial begins.

The prosecution paints a damning story of what happened almost a half century ago. They theorized that June 4th was a tense day by the lake. Nils had gotten drunk and became aggressive, fighting with his girlfriend Maila.

It got so bad that he was exiled by the others from their shared tent. After midnight, Seppo attempted to calm him down. This was unsuccessful sparking a fight between the two boys.

Seppo had won this fight, explaining the blunt force trauma that Nils suffered to his jaw and skull. Seppo then returned to their tent, leaving the defeated Nils behind. Sometime after 4:00 AM, when he was sure the others were asleep, Nils returned to the tent with a knife and a rock.

He viciously stabbed and bludgeoned his friends to death, then made it look like a burglary. He took the keys for the motorcycles, Seppo's leather jacket, their wallets and watches and got rid of them somewhere nearby, likely the lake. This explains why the motorcycle keys were missing, but the murderer did not use either vehicle for a quick getaway.

Once he staged the scene, Nils got rid of his shoes and returned to the scene of the crime where he laid down beside his dead girlfriend and waited for their bodies to be discovered. (menacing music) The injuries Nils had received earlier that evening at the hands of Seppo helped make it seem as if the killer had attacked him as well. The prosecution's case hangs on two key pieces of evidence, the shoes which were likely worn by the murderer and the stain of the tent which had been slashed to ribbons.

Nils who had been found lying on top of the tent, had only received wounds to his head. The prosecutor claims that he would've been severely cut as well if he had been inside alongside them. The other pieces of evidence are circumstantial.

The state of the bodies implies things about the killer that the prosecution say can only be explained by their story. Of the three bodies, Maila's was left in the worst state. She was stabbed many times even after she died and her lower body was stripped naked.

This, the prosecution says, shows us that Nils was furious at his girlfriend in particular. A random burglar would not target one of the two girls so brutally. (menacing music) Nils' lawyer does not account for the blood on the shoes, nor does she account for the awful state of Maila's body.

But she does provide a stirring rebuttal to the allegation that her client is some sort of mastermind at staging a crime scene. If the prosecution is to be believed, then that means Nils committed a crime of passion out of blind range, then arrange the scene meticulously to hide his horrible deeds. She implies that someone who has just murdered three people on violent impulse does not lie down and pretend to be unconscious beside his victims.

Besides, there's a factor that the prosecution has completely overlooked, the severity of the injuries Nils received that same night. When he was picked up by police, Nils had a broken jaw and skull fractures. He was unable to speak due to his severe head injuries.

Pictures of him at the hospital following the attack show his entire jaw bandaged and braced and one of his eyes swollen shut. The prosecution story alleges that these injuries came from a fight with Seppo sometime after 2:00 AM, while Maila was writing her diary entry and Anja was probably already asleep. This means that Seppo hurt his friend badly enough that Nils couldn't even talk the following morning.

Would a young man with head injuries this severe be able to overpower three people even if he surprised them? Would he have been able to walk half a mile away from the campsites to dispose of his incriminating shoes before returning and pretending to be unconscious? Head wounds are temperamental things.

They can impede clear thought, memory, motor functions. The version of Nils Gustafsson that the prosecution has painted is someone who is both severely injured and preternaturally controlled in his revenge. This picture of Nils, his attorney argues, does not square with the facts.

Besides, there's always the fact that teenage Nils' hair was decidedly more brown than blonde. Nils, for his part, maintains that his own memory of the night in question is spotty thanks to his head injuries. (slow music) In the end, the jury finds Nils not guilty.

He's released from custody and is allowed to return to his quiet life with his family. But even still, he is not done with his life in the spotlight. The last year has been a harrowing relitigation of the most traumatic event of his life.

And so, Nils sues the Finnish government for unjustified imprisonment. The case is settled and Nils walks away with the payment of nearly 45,000 euros. Nils' life eventually goes back to normal and his innocence is never questioned again.

So, who's responsible for the Lake Bodom murders? Was it Hans Assman, the unreliable attention-seeker, who loved to imply that he knew more than he led on, even making many suspicious statements on his death bed? Was it Karl Gyllstrom, who was often violent towards campers at the lake he considered his property?

Was it Nils Gustafsson who committed a crime of passion that could never be proven in court? Or was it a random person long since disappeared somewhere in Finland? Curiously, another suspect came to light in the late 1960s, just a couple months before Karl took his own life, a man named Pentti Soininen, who hanged himself while in prison.

For many years, he bragged to fellow inmates and he committed the Lake Bodom murders. He did indeed grow up near Lake Bodom, but otherwise his claims were given little credence by police. Soininen was only 14 or 15 years old at the time of the murders, and it seems unlikely he could have overpowered four people, two of whom were 18-year-old men.

Though guilty of plenty of other crimes, Soininen is considered innocent in the Lake Bodom murders. However, his alleged confession shows a chilling possibility. Perhaps the murderer's name was never known to police at all.

The tall, blonde man supposedly on the shores that morning and allegedly photographed among the crowd at the funeral in 1960, was never identified. Even if he was just a bystander who looked suspicious to passersby, the real murderer could be just as anonymous. A nameless face in the crowd that helped trample evidence after the killing.

And lest we forget, the murder weapon has, to this day, never been found. (menacing music) Wherever it lies, whether at the bottom of Lake Bodom, buried on its shores, or somewhere else entirely, even the midnight sun may never reach it. (menacing music) (menacing music fades) (chilling music) Thank you guys so much for listening to another video adaptation of my podcast Late Nights with Nexpo.

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