Lake Bodom murders

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The Lake Bodom murders were an infamous multiple homicide that took place in Finland in 1960. Lake Bodom is a small lake in Espoo, about 22 kilometres west of the country's capital, Helsinki. On the night of June 4, 1960, four teenagers were camping on the shores of Lake Bodom when an unknown person murdered three of them with a knife and wounded the fourth. The sole survivor Nils Gustafsson has lived a normal life until 2004 when he became a suspect. In October 2005, a district court found Gustafsson not guilty.

The murders have proven to be a popular subject in the Finnish media and commonly have made it back to the headlines whenever new information or theories have surfaced.

1 Victims
2 Theories
3 Arrest of Nils Gustafsson
4 Trivia
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Victims

Maila Irmeli Björklund and Anja Tuulikki Mäki, both 15 years old at the time
Seppo Antero Boisman, 18 years old at the time
Nils Wilhelm Gustafsson, 18 years old at the time, the only survivor, arrested in 2004 for the murders, acquitted in October 2005. Pleaded not guilty.

[edit] Theories

Some years later – between June 3 and 6 of 1972 (approximately the 12th anniversary of the murders) – a man announced in his suicide note that he was the Lake Bodom murderer. On the day of the murders he was working in a kiosk near the lake and had sold lemonade to the victims. He was generally known to have hard feelings about campers. However, police investigation disproved his claims and found an alibi for the man (he was allegedly sleeping at his home with his wife, who verified it).

In 2003 Professor Jorma Palo published a book on his theory about the murder. In 1960 Palo had worked as a doctor at a nearby hospital. Shortly after the murders he had treated a highly suspicious man for his injuries at the hospital. The man was the German-born Hans Assmann who allegedly worked as an agent for East Germany. According to Palo the lack of thorough investigation into Assmann's involvement was a diplomatic cover-up. The police denied this and claimed that Assmann had a valid alibi. In 1997, shortly before his death, Assmann confessed the murders to a Finnish journalist.

[edit] Arrest of Nils Gustafsson

In late March 2004, almost 44 years after the event, Nils Gustafsson was arrested by the police on the suspicion that he was the murderer. In early 2005, the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation (Keskusrikospoliisi, KRP) declared the case was solved based on some new analysis on the blood stains. According to the official statement, Nils Gustafsson, the survivor, had had an outburst of jealousy involving feelings for one of the other teenagers, Irmeli Björklund, who was his newfound girlfriend. Irmeli was stabbed multiple times after the fatal blow, while the two other teenagers were killed less savagely. Gustafsson's own injuries, while notable, were less severe.

The trial started on August 4, 2005. The prosecution was calling for a life sentence against Nils Gustafsson on three counts of murder. They argued that the re-examination of the old evidence using modern techniques such as DNA profiling points to Gustafsson. The defence argued that the killings were the work of one or more outsiders and that Gustafsson suffered similar injuries to those sustained by the other three, and because of the injuries, he would have been incapable of killing three people. On October 7, 2005 Gustafsson was freed of all charges. [1]

Because Gustafsson was found not guilty of the murders, the State of Finland paid him €44,900 for mental suffering caused by the trial.