Lake Bodom murders

Lake Bodom murders
Lake Bodom in 2004
Location	Espoo, Finland
Date	Sunday, June 5, 1960
Attack type	Murder
Weapons	Knife, blunt instrument
Deaths	3
Non-fatal injuries	1
Perpetrators	Unknown

Coordinates: 60°14′30″N 24°40′30″E / 60.24167°N 24.67500°E / 60.24167; 24.67500 The Lake Bodom murders (Finnish: Bodominjärven murhat, Swedish: Bodommorden) were multiple homicides that took place in Finland in 1960. Lake Bodom is a lake by the city of Espoo, about 22 kilometres northwest of the country's capital, Helsinki. In the early hours of June 5, 1960, four teenagers were camping on the shores of Lake Bodom. Between 4AM and 6AM, an unknown person or persons murdered three of them with a knife and blunt instrument, while wounding the fourth. The sole survivor, Nils Wilhelm Gustafsson, led an otherwise normal life until 2004, when he became a suspect and was subsequently charged. In October 2005, a district court found Gustafsson not guilty on all charges against him.

As the paradigm of a cold case, the Lake Bodom murders have remained a notorious topic in the Finnish media and public discourse, and commonly return to the headlines whenever new information or theories, conspiratorial or otherwise, surface.

On Saturday, June 4, 1960, four Finnish teenagers had decided to camp along the shore of an elegant lake near the city of Espoo's Oitaa Manor. The lake was known as Lake Bodom (Finnish: Bodominjärvi, Swedish: Bodom träsk). Maila Irmeli Björklund and Anja Tuulikki Mäki were fifteen-years-old at the time; accompanying them were their eighteen-year-old boyfriends, Seppo Antero Boisman and Nils Wilhelm Gustafsson.