Lake Bodom Murders

Lake Bodom Murders

The Bodominjärvi Murders is one of the most infamous unsolved homicide cases in Finnish criminal history. On June 5, 1960, at Bodom Lake, 15-year-old females, Maila Irmeli Björklund and Anja Tuulikki Mäki, and 18-year-old male, Seppo Antero Boisman, were killed while sleeping inside a tent by stabbing and blunt force trauma to their heads. The fourth youth, then 18-years-old, Nils Wilhelm Gustafsson, was found outside of the tent badly injured.

Sometime between 4:00 AM and 6:00 AM during the early morning hours of Sunday, June 5, 1960, Mäki, Björklund and Boisman were all stabbed and bludgeoned to death by an unknown assailant. Gustafsson, the only survivor of the massacre, sustained a concussion, fractures to the jaw and facial bones and bruises to the face, but lived. He stated afterwards that he had seen a glimpse of an attacker clothed in black and bright red coming for them.

At about 6:00 AM, a number of boys birdwatching some distance away had reportedly seen the tent collapsed and a blonde man walking away from the site. The bodies of the victims were discovered at about 11:00 AM by a carpenter named Risto Sirén. Upon his discovery of the bodies, he subsequently alerted the police, who arrived on the scene at noon.

The killer had attacked the occupants from outside with a knife and an unidentified blunt instrument through the sides of the tent. The murder weapons have never been located.The killer had taken several items which detectives found puzzling, including the keys to the victims' motorcycles, which themselves had been left behind. Gustafsson's shoes were later discovered hidden 500 meters away.

Despite extensive investigations, the perpetrator was never identified, and various theories on the killer's identity have been presented over the years. Gustafsson was unexpectedly arrested on suspicion of murder in 2004, but he was released the following year.