26: Murder On The Lake: Finland’s Greatest Unsolved Mystery
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Sponsored by Chumpa Casino. No purchase necessary. VGW Group. Void where prohibited by law. 18 plus terms and conditions apply. Listener discretion is advised. Though it was early summer, there was still a chill in the water when Esko Johansson arrived at Lake Bodum on June 5th, 1960. It was the Sunday of a holiday weekend, and Esko lived nearby the lake in the town of Espo, Finland.

He was headed for a swim around 11 a.m. It was typical for locals to spend their weekends out on the lake once the weather warmed up and the sun came back after months of perpetual night. Esco turned off the road and trekked through a short patch of woods towards the lake, and in the distance, about halfway between the road and the water, he saw a tent. That's strange, he thought.

It wasn't common, nor particularly safe, for people to camp in these woods. At first, it looked like whoever was camping there had given up on taking down their tent. The site was a mess, belongings strewn everywhere, and the tent was mostly collapsed. He thought he'd check it out, but as he got closer, something didn't feel right. Laying on top of the tent was a boy, about 18 years old,

with blood on his face, looking as if he had gotten into a terrible fight. And underneath him, a tangle of three other bloodied bodies. Esko couldn't make sense of what he was seeing. His mind was in panic mode, when all of a sudden, the boy on top of the tent took in a sharp breath. Help me, he gasps, and then falls back unconscious. It's that feeling.

When the energy in the room shifts. When the air gets sucked out of a moment and everything starts to feel wrong. It's the instinct between fight or flight. When your brain is trying to make sense of what it's seeing. It's when your heart starts pounding. Welcome to Heart Starts Pounding, a podcast of horrors, hauntings, and mysteries. I'm your host, Kaelin Moore.

This is a community for people who like to follow their dark curiosity wherever it leads them. Those of us that sometimes spend hours in Reddit black holes, creeping ourselves out way past our bedtimes. If you'd like to dive further into the community, check out our Instagram and TikTok at HeartStartsPounding, or you can join me on Patreon for some bonus content in what we're calling our Rogue Detecting Society.

I want to tell you a story today about one of Finland's greatest unsolved mysteries. It's the tale of a summery, idyllic weekend that turned deadly. Four teens that were attacked on a camping trip and the mystery that ensued. I thought it was fitting as we plunge straight into summer. And if you're listening to this in the future when it's not summer, I encourage you to build a pillow tent and pillow campfire in your living room and pretend.

Let's dive in. June 4th, 1960. It was a beautiful holiday weekend in Espo, a lakeside town in Finland. Four teens sped down a winding road by the lake on motorcycles, heading towards an off-road spot in a small patch of woods by Lake Bodum. That's where they were going to set up a tent for the weekend.

The drivers were Nils Gustafsson and Seppo Boisman, two 18-year-old boys that had been best friends for years. And each of them had their girlfriend behind them on their bike as well. Behind Seppo, with her arms wrapped around him and her brown hair whipping in the wind, was 15-year-old Tuleki Maki. She and Seppo had only been dating for a few weeks when she introduced her own best friend, 15-year-old Irmeli Bjorklund, to Nils.

And now, just a week after planning the trip and a few weeks since they all became official, the two sets of best friends were kicking off summer with a camping trip. It was by all accounts a teenage dream. But as they made their way through the winding streets, stopping in town to pick up some booze and food, the locals couldn't help but look at them with suspicious glances.

Sure, Lake Bodum was a beautiful pine tree-lined lake that the community used for fishing and swimming. It wasn't common to see outsiders, though. Espoo was a small town. Everyone knew everyone. And maybe that's why they tensed up when they saw the love-drunk, giggly teens. Espoo was not the place you'd want to be out past midnight in. What were they doing camping out there?

It was Nils who chose the spot. He had remembered coming here once before on a boys' fishing weekend and insisted the couples all come together. If it wasn't safe, you'd never guess that from the scene the teens saw as they parked their motorcycles by the trees. They picked out a small clearing and a section of woods that jetted out into the water, making a little peninsula of land, and they set up their cozy four-person tent.

The girls jumped in the water, but it was still the early days of summer and the lake had just barely warmed up. So the boys decided to sit it out, opting instead to drink some of the pilsners they picked up and eat some food. They watched as other people in the area swam in the lake and rowed around on boats. Nils could feel a shift in the air sometime in the afternoon.

He looked up from his camping bag to see that everyone in the area had cleared out. It was now completely empty, except for him and his friends. Where had all the people gone? That night, the group continued swimming, eating, and Nils and Seppo drank a bit more. The girls went to bed first, and later, when Nils crawled into the tent, he could hear Seppo outside, rummaging around in his bag.

Nils peeked his head out to see what was happening, and Seppo admitted he couldn't sleep. His mind was restless and he wanted to go fishing to relax. Nils opted to join him, and the two boys sat on the shore, drinking and sharing stories. What Seppo was so anxious about, we'll never know, but I can imagine it was some of the anxiety that comes with being a recent high school graduate.

The boys had just finished school and were now hit with some of the responsibilities of being adults. They had both gotten jobs that summer to carry some of the financial burden of their families. Plus, there was the issue of what would happen with their girlfriends. Seppo already knew that Tuleki's dad didn't like him that much. On the way to the lake, she had confessed to Seppo that her dad didn't want her to go. Something about the trip didn't feel right to him.

Seppo couldn't help but figure it had to do with their relationship. The boys chatted and fished until about 2 a.m. when they came back to the tent, crawled in, and fell asleep. I can't imagine Nils knew that that would be the last time he ever spoke to Seppo. With Lucky Land Sluts, you can get lucky just about anywhere.

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He fluttered his eyes open as he came to, feeling mostly numb except for an intense, deep pain in his jaw. When he went to open it, he found it too painful to do so. Why was he here? What about the camping trip? Where were his friends and why did his face feel like it went through a windshield? Nil's mother and the nurses who were there in the room were happy to see he was awake,

it quickly became apparent that he had no idea why he was there. The trauma from a head injury had wiped his memory clear of everything that happened to him after he had fallen asleep. They all looked at each other, dreading what they were about to tell him. Nils was informed that Esko Johansen had found the four teens beaten and bloody around 11 a.m. the next morning.

The scene Esko came upon was particularly dreadful. Tufts of hair, blood, and teeth were scattered around the four teens who were wrapped up in a shredded tent. It looked like someone from outside the tent had taken a knife and sliced through it to get to the kids. Esko was sure they were all dead. The flies circling the scene were a giveaway.

But that's when Nils started moving. He was alive. Esko ran to the nearest phone and rang the police. "Which rooms were his friends in?" Nils cried out. "His friends weren't in the hospital," the nurse informed him. All of a sudden, Nils' jaw went numb. His whole body went numb. He knew what that meant. This was too much for him to process.

He was still trying to make sense of what happened to him, and now he had to mourn the death of his girlfriend? Her best friend? His best friend? But before he can even think about all that, the police are on him. Through a haze of painkillers, Nils was interrogated as to what the hell happened that night. But how could he know what caused any of this? He didn't remember anything. He didn't even know his friends had died.

It was his parents and doctors that later explained to him that he had a broken jaw and a concussion, which was probably why he couldn't remember anything. Something had hit him in the head after he had fallen asleep. But this wasn't some freak accident, because he was found with defense wounds. Nils' knuckles were bruised and bloody, meaning that whatever happened in the early morning hours of June 5th, Nils fought like hell.

The police helped fill in the rest of the gaps for him. He was found at 11 a.m. lying on top of the shredded tent while his friends were all found still under the tent. It seemed like whoever did this had a knife as well as a flat stone and both stabbed and beat his friends to death, somehow sparing Nils the worst of it. Though Nils was hit with something hard, he had no knife wounds on him, unlike his friends.

From the police's calculations, the attack most likely happened between the hours of 4 a.m. and 6 a.m. Mills, however, was not told about the condition his friends' bodies were found in. That remained a mystery to him until 2004. He knew that his friends died, but he never knew the graphic details until his 60s.

The police were still putting together what happened at the scene, and the three other teens were sent in for autopsies. Each teen's belongings were collected and sent back to their families. And when Tillicki's brother got her blanket, he could tell immediately that she was not asleep when this attack happened. The blanket was covered in kinetic streaks of blood and tufts of hair that had been pulled out.

Whatever happened, he could tell Tuliki was awake and she was fighting back. So what we know now, after the autopsies had happened, is that his friends were found mostly with stab wounds and blunt hits to the neck and head.

All of them had defensive wounds, meaning they were all awake at the time of the attack. Irmeli seemed to get the worst of the beating, and when she was found, she was also undressed from the waist down. It was clear from the tears in the tent that whoever did this was not inside the tent. They did enter from the outside. No weapons were found at the scene, but there were two pieces of evidence that were quite strange.

First, Nils' shoes were found a few hundred yards from the crime scene, and they were covered in blood. It was unclear why that was the only piece of clothing far away from the tent and why they were discarded so far away.

And second, there was a strange pillowcase found outside the tent. It had blood on it, but it was wrapped up and tied on the ends with string, except that the ties had been cut with a knife. It didn't look like anyone had been using it as a pillowcase that night. So if the attack happened from someone outside of the tent, it probably was an intruder, right?

Police immediately were suspicious as to why Nils was the only one without knife wounds. It turns out, there were a few closed door conversations being had about the condition Nils was found in. It was weird that his shoes were found so far away from the tent. Was he leaving the scene? The nurses had some concerns as well. They had seen people come in with wounds similar to Nils's,

As they described it, his injuries were consistent with getting into a fight or falling from 3 to 6 feet. Neither of those two scenarios had ever resulted in amnesia as bad as what Nils was describing. Temporary amnesia, sure, but not remembering a single thing from the event? That wasn't typical.

So, suspicions were mounting against Nils, but it was impossible to get any information out of him. He insisted he didn't remember anything. So, they started asking around the community for more information. And they found that there were a few people out that night who had seen the campers. So, let's run through what some of the witnesses who were out that morning had to say.

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Around 7 a.m., Martin and Ruth Coley were out on the water with their five-year-old daughter. They saw the tent on the shore from their boat. They could faintly see feet sticking out of the tangled mess, but thought there had been a bad fight and didn't want to get involved.

Then, at 10 a.m., three teens came to the beach when they saw the campsite. They went up close to the site to see what had happened when they noticed that Nils was lying there in rough shape. According to them, Nils waved and started speaking gibberish. The teens also assumed it had been a bad fight and continued on.

So multiple people that morning had seen the group and thought that they had gotten into a horrible fight. And no one called the police until 11:00 AM. It's really frustrating to hear, but the worst of the injuries were hidden under the tent. They were just seeing Nils with his bloodied face. It may not have been clear from the get-go that three people had been brutally murdered. So those witnesses can tell us what happened hours after the murder.

But the police were able to track down a few witnesses who saw the teens earlier in the morning, around the time that the murder happened. And they noticed something really interesting. Heike Salonen and Kalevi Halilainen were 16-year-old birdwatchers who were walking around the area at 5:30 a.m. the morning of the murders. At one point, when the two were near the site,

Heike heard a voice that sounded human. When he looked up in the direction of the voice, he saw two motorcycles up against a tree as well as a piled-up tent with a young man lying on top of it. He described the scene similar to what the other witnesses described, but with one important difference. Headed towards the eastern shore of the Cape, away from the tent was a man.

Heike remembered him as being an adult person dressed in a light shirt or jacket, but had no other details. The man was 30 meters away from the tent, and from where they stood, it looked like the man on top of the tent was just a hiker starting to wake up, so they felt no need to contact authorities.

Olavi Kivaladi was a 14-year-old boy who was out at 6 a.m. that morning to go fishing, and he too remembered seeing a man. He said he was about 50 meters away from a 20- to 30-year-old man who was traveling rather quickly. He described him as having a straight build, straight light brown hair combed back, dark pants, and a light jacket.

Olavi didn't mention seeing the tent. So who was the strange man seen leaving the area of the tent? And how would they ever find out who that was? Well, just a day and a half after the attack, someone was admitted to the hospital that made all of the nurses suspicious after the break.

On June 7, 1960, a man by the name of Hans Osman was admitted to a hospital in Helsinki for stomach pain. He was unconscious when he arrived at the hospital, but it kind of looked like he was faking it.

His eyes were squeezed shut as if it were intentional, not like what an unconscious person would be doing. To figure out if he was really unconscious, one doctor used a highly effective medical technique called tickling, which got him to wake up immediately. While a nurse was doing intake, she made note of Hans' appearance.

For one, his fingernails were disgusting. It looked like they were caked in dirt. And he had mysterious red stains all over his clothing.

His shoes were also muddied and gross. One nurse said it looked as if he'd been running through a forest. Hans was also someone that everyone in the community knew. He was a German workman who had lived in Finland for 10 years, and in that time, he had made quite a name for himself.

Mostly because he had ties to the murder of Keleki Sari, a 17-year-old Finnish girl whose body was found in a bog after she went missing while riding her bike. Hans' car was identical to the car seen at the bog, but he was never convicted for Keleki's murder. Hans also mostly fit the description.

He had blonde hair, which could have been mistaken for light brown in the dark and from a distance. He was 36 at the time of the murders, and he had a build that matched what the boys saw. Hans also lived with his wife in a small house that was on the property of where the teens were killed. It was several kilometers away, but he would have almost definitely been in the immediate vicinity.

At the same time that the police were starting to question if Hans was involved, Nils was being taken away for hypnotherapy. The police figured if he couldn't remember anything, maybe a hypnotherapist could help him dig into his memory bank and remember what happened that night. Hypnotherapy is incredibly controversial in modern forensics, but this was 1960, baby, the heyday of junk psychology.

In 1960, you could be hypnotized to bring up a false memory, a psychologist could tell you with a straight face that that memory indicated you wanted to murder your father to marry your mother, and then you could be lobotomized. All in one weekend. But in all seriousness, researchers have found that hypnotherapy does bring up as many false memories as it brings up real ones, only it increases patients' confidence in the false memories.

There have been incredible memories recovered, like the bus driver whose bus was hijacked and buried with 26 kids inside. Under hypnosis, he was able to recall most of the perpetrator's license plate, which led to their arrest. However, many people in the field today are turning their backs on the practice after multiple people have been put on death row over shoddy memories retrieved during hypnosis.

I mention all that to say, take this next part with a grain of salt. During Nils' hypnotherapy, the police and hypnotherapist were really keen on getting a description of the man that others had seen. So in this session, the therapist had Nils relax into a meditative state and then worked with him to pull details of a face, the jacket, anything he could out of his memory bank.

And Nils started remembering something. Hey guys, it is Ryan. I'm not sure if you know this about me, but I'm a bit of a fun fanatic when I can. I like to work, but I like fun too. And now I can tell you about my favorite place to have fun. Chumba Casino. They have hundreds of social casino style games to choose from with new games released each week. You can play for free and each day brings a new chance to collect daily bonuses. So join me in the

At first, it was screams. Nils could hear the sounds of the girls screaming. He could see the outside of the tent being ripped with a knife. And then he remembered seeing a man enter the tent with a knife and what looked like a lead pipe.

He said the man had flowy, blonde hair and big eyes. Nils was able to describe more of the facial features for a sketch artist who was in the room, and soon they had a composite sketch of who the man was.

There's no doubt that it does look like Hans, and apparently Hans thought so too, because within days of the sketch going wide, he cut his hair short so it didn't match the flyer.

That's not enough though because the police still do question him. At this point, they had questioned thousands of suspects. If you lived in the area, it was pretty much guaranteed that the police were going to be at your door. And they knew Hans lived near where the murders happened. But Hans had an ironclad alibi. See,

Hans was having an affair at the time, and the night of the murders, he wasn't in his home. He was with his mistress, who confirmed that he was with her the entire night. Her brother was at the house too, and substantiated her story. Police agreed that his alibi was solid. It couldn't have been Hans.

They instead turned their focus to two other local men who had criminal records and were known for having short fuses: Arne Loco and Eska Longa. But neither of the men seemed to be the guy either. So they took to the streets, interviewing all of the locals and taking photos of the town.

One of the photos that was taken by police is of a man named Valo Gylström, also known as the kiosk man, because he ran a food and drink kiosk in town. The photo is in black and white and shows the kiosk man leaning forward, shirtless, incredulously looking into the camera. It's hard to tell what he's thinking in the photo. Is he suspicious of the police or is he hiding something?

Police wondered the same thing, but cleared him after a brief search of his home. Witnesses had only seen this mystery man walking away from near the scene. No one saw the murders happen, and it wasn't like they had DNA testing back then. So with Hans' alibi and no other leads to follow, the case turned cold, fading into a bitter winter hibernation.

But just because there was no DNA testing when the crime happened, doesn't mean that DNA testing couldn't be used in the case. Years later, 43 years later to be exact, in 2003, Nils Gustafsson gets a knock at the door. It's the police, and a new, younger detective has taken on the case. And he's come with an important update for Nils.

Nils is being arrested for the murder of his three friends, and they believe they have the evidence to prove it was him. After the break. In 2003, the bottom file came off the back shelf and opened up once again. It was a case that had been on every police officer's mind over the last 43 years. But for most of those years, there was nothing they could do. Most of the suspects had died over the years, including Hans Osman, who was a suspect.

But now, four decades later, police had the tools to reopen the case. Two really important clues were discovered once the tent was sent to the lab and the bodies of the three deceased teens were exhumed. DNA profiles and blood types were able to be collected from the teens, giving a much more comprehensive view of the tent that night.

police were now able to see whose blood was where in the tent and confirm exactly whose DNA was there. And that's how they discovered the first clue that made them stop in their tracks. When retesting Nils' shoes, the ones that were found confusingly hundreds of yards from the tent,

They realized his blood wasn't on them, just the blood of his three friends. And on top of that, they already knew there was no blood inside of his shoes, which made it seem like he had been wearing them at the time of the attack. Could Nils have been the one attacking his friends? That would explain the blood not being on the shoes.

Maybe he went outside of the tent, took off his shoes, came back and injured himself to make it not look so suspicious. But, and perhaps most shocking of all, remember that towel that was found outside of the tent? The small wrap towel that had been sliced with a knife? On that towel, they found blood from Irmeli, but they also found DNA from a fifth person.

a man who was not part of their friend group. Could this prove that there was another person there that night? The blood on the towel seemed menstrual, leading them to believe Irmeli had been using it as a pad. So police collected DNA from Irmeli's ex-boyfriends and ruled all of them out as suspects. It was looking like this was not someone who Irmeli had known intimately. In a frustrating turn of events though,

This evidence was used to put Nils on trial for the murder of his friends. The shoes seemed damning, and Nils had kind of been acting suspicious over the years. His story of what happened that night kept changing over the years. He had talked about having stab wounds in his head. Not true. He swore he got dragged out of the tent towards the lake, dropped in the water, and then dragged back.

There was no evidence anyone was dragged from the tent that night. The theory that was developed was that Nils must have been horribly drunk that night, gotten ragefully jealous, and killed his friends. The fact that Irmeli got the worst of the teens made it seem like a personal attack. Perhaps she had been flirting with Seppo and Nils couldn't handle it. But what about the fifth person's DNA? Well,

After all these years, police kept questioning Hans Osman's alibi. Even though he had passed away years prior, police had always had in the back of their minds that the people corroborating his alibi were maybe coerced into doing so. And now, they were going to have concrete evidence. In a lab in Finland, a technician opens up a box with an old pair of glasses inside.

They're Hans's, sent in by his son who wants answers about his father's involvement in the case. He believes that two dark specks on the glasses are blood and the lab tech agrees. So now the tech is going to figure out if he can get a DNA match. Upon initial testing, he can tell that the speck on the glasses has human DNA. It probably is blood. And not only that,

There's two separate male DNA profiles in the spec. Could one of them be Seppo or Nils? Could this be the breakthrough in the case that they've needed after all this time? The tech compares the DNA to the boys. And it's not a hit. Not only that, but Hans' DNA is not the DNA on the pillowcase. It wasn't him.

Nils was also found not guilty of the murder. The theory of Nils doing this in a jealous and drunken rage was too unbelievable. And then there was the eyewitness testimony of another man leaving the area. Nils also explained that the reason his story changed so much over the years was that he still didn't remember the event. Everything he knew about that night was from what people had told him and what he read in newspapers.

And not everyone got it right. DNA evidence also ruled out Arne and Eska. Both men had sons who submitted their DNA to rule out their fathers. So now, over 60 years later, we're back to square one. Still, no one has been charged with the murder. And most suspects have been ruled out. But there is one suspect left that hasn't been completely ruled out.

The man in the black and white photo, the kiosk man from earlier. Though police ruled him out early on, apparently people in the community continued to talk. The kiosk man was known for his violent nature around town. One time he hid razor blades in an apple that he served to children. His kiosk was also only 800 meters away from where the kids were camping.

The people around town knew not to camp in that area because the kiosk man would cut tent cords with a long knife, laughing as he watched your tent fall. And rumor has it, he confessed to the killings. The kiosk man drowned in Lake Bodum in 1969. And the rumor around Espoo was that he was having a conversation with a friend when he confessed to the murders.

His friend apparently told him that if it were true, if he were really responsible for those kids' deaths, he might as well drown himself in Lake Bodum because that would be better than the life in prison he would live. And within 20 minutes, he was dead, drowned in the lake. But today, it would be easy to see if his DNA matched the DNA found in the tent.

The only thing is his son won't submit his DNA to police. They have not been able to get a full DNA profile on the kiosk man. Everything about this case has been a mystery that's plagued Finland for the last 60 years. No motive, no murder weapon, hardly any physical evidence. And now, almost everyone involved in the original event has passed away.

And you may be thinking, well, one thing doesn't sound that mysterious. Everyone in town felt like it was one guy. The one guy who didn't submit a DNA profile. So surely, it must be him. Well, let's look back to the photo. The photo police took of the kiosk man was from the day after the murders. And in it, he's shirtless. And there's not so much as a scratch on his bare skin.

After how badly it appeared the kids fought that night, it would be nearly impossible that the killer didn't have scratches or bruises on their skin. So maybe it wasn't the kiosk man after all. Maybe it was some other stranger who committed the crime and was able to slip away into the night without a trace. All we can do is hope that one day we'll get a DNA profile and know for sure.

This has been Heart Starts Pounding.

Written and produced by me, Kaylin Moore. Music by Artlist. Special thanks to my new patrons...

And another special thanks to Travis Dunlap, Grayson Jernigan, the team at WME, and Ben Jaffe. Have a heart-pounding story or a case request? Check out heartstartspounding.com. Until next time, stay curious.

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