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Lake Bodom murders, 50th anniversary
Notorious and unsolved Bodom Lake triple homicide took place fifty years ago
Helsingin Sanomat reporters spend a night at the site where three youngsters were stabbed to death through the fabric of their tent, in the early hours of June 5th, 1960.
Body bags. That was something 11-year-old Risto Sirén had never seen before. Now he was staring at three of them.
The sight was imprinted in his mind. As was the collapsed brown tent.
A carpenter who had happened to walk by the scene at 11 a.m. had alerted the police to the promontory. From the shore of Espoo’s Bodom Lake he had found a slashed tent with a groaning youth on top of it, plus three dead bodies.
The nearby residents say that the area has remained more or less unchanged over the last fifty years.
In a nearby village, the rumours started spreading quickly. There was talk of a fight on the headland - with some casualties even. Within an hour, the familiar lakeshore was filled with curious onlookers.
Now, exactly fifty years later, Sirén still returns nearly every morning to the forested headland where the murders took place.
“I know who killed them”, he says.
The murderer had carried Nils Gustafsson's and Seppo Boisman’s shoes to a place a couple of hundred metres away from the camp site on the headland. “The youngsters even today complain that shoes still go missing here”, says Risto Sirén from Espoo. He is convinced the killer was one Valdemar Gyllström, a local kiosk-owner, who allegedly confessed the crime four times before he drowned himself in the lake in 1969. His wife had given him an alibi for the night in question, but before her death she admitted he had threatened to kill her if she divulged the truth.
On Saturday June 4th 1960, two young couples set up a camp on the grounds of the Oittaa Manor House in the fringes of the southern city of Espoo.
Seppo Boisman, 18, and Tuulikki Mäki, 15, had been dating for a year. Nils Gustafsson, 18, and Irmeli Björklund, 15, had been going out for three weeks.
From his workplace, Seppo Boisman had acquired a ridge-tent and from his work colleagues some spirits and citrus liqueur. The boys had even acquired some condoms from the black market - just in case.
The place where the boys erected the tent is not awfully smart.
It is on a slight slope and in the shade. Today an X about a metre across that has been hollowed into the ground marks the infamous spot where the tent was, by the side of the path that leads to the apex of the little promontory.
The boys’ motorcycles rested against two large birch trees nearby.
Despite the gruesome reputation of the name Bodom, the place is genuinely beautiful.
The remnants of several campfires prove that people still come here.
In the course of the evening, around thirty people and eight dogs visit the headland.
“Nice place to visit, but I would not stay overnight”, says Seija Pettersson, who is on her customary bicycle ride.
A couple of Bodom Murder tourists also show up to take pictures with their mobile phone cameras, but most of the people come to visit the headland simply to exercise, to get some fresh air, or to do a bit of fishing.
It was never conclusively established whether Nils and Seppo did any fishing that night. Nils Gustafsson has recalled that their might have been a couple of anglers on the neighbouring headland.
The water in the lake feels cold. It is not certain if the youngsters 50 years ago took a plunge into the lake, though we do know that the weather the previous day had been warm - 23°C - with a pleasant breeze.
Seppo, Nils, Irmeli, and Tuulikki went inside the tent to make out at around 10:30 p.m.
In the tent, which was only 1.4 metres wide, the boys were lying in the middle with a girl on either side.
What happened during the night?
Was somebody drunk? Did someone go swimming or fishing at night, and was there an argument?
The police believe that at least some fishing took place. The nocturnal fishermen were seen by a woman who was washing some clothes on the opposite side of the lake.
On June 5th 1960, the sun rose at 3:06 a.m.
The murders took place between 4 and 6 in the morning. The police arrived at the scene just before noon.
At six o’clock that morning some birdwatcher boys saw the collapsed tent but were more interested in the motorcycles leaning against the trees.
The person lying on top of the canvas fabric the boys took to be a sunbather. They also witnessed a fair-haired figure walking away from behind the tent.
Maybe he went to the shore for a morning wash or to get water for coffee, the boys thought, and they proceeded to check out a nearby chaffinch nest for eggs.
The blond man is one of the mysteries related to the Bodom murders.
He was also seen by a boy who was fishing on a nearby islet.
The man’s identity was never established. The murders have remained unsolved despite the fact that a few years ago the police were nearly positive that Nils Gustafsson had committed the gruesome killings of his friends.
He was finally brought to trial in 2005, but was found not guilty on all counts.
The murder weapon has also remained elusive, despite the numerous amateur detectives who each summer search through the muddy lake bottom with mine-detectors.
Now the following morning is peaceful. Someone dressed in a blue outfit jogs along the path.
He is Risto Sirén, the man who believes he knows who the killer was.
Half a kilometre from the murder scene there used to be a kiosk, which was run by a man, one Valdemar Gyllström, who was known to be very hot-tempered and irascible.
“He hated youngsters. He used to walk in the headland at night, and he would throw stones at us when we cycled by his house”, Sirén explains.
Several individuals were suspected of the Bodom murders.
Many confessions were also heard, and a couple of people who had been under suspicion of the crime later took their own lives.
A couple of suitable candidates had alibis, including the kiosk-owner.
Even Gyllström, the locals' favourite for the crime, allegedly confessed four times, before drowning himself in Bodom Lake in 1969.
“He's the one who did it”, says Sirén firmly.
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Originally Posted by Vonnita
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