Persons Unknown
Persons Unknown
Kyllikki Saari (Unsolved Murder) PART 2
Part 2 of the episode Kyllikki Saari (Unsolved Murder). If you haven't already, please go back and listen to part 1 before continuing.
See show notes in Part 1 for episode desription.
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Kyllikki Saari - Part 2
This is Part 2 of the episode Kyllikki Saari (Unsolved Murder). If you haven't already, please go back and listen to part 1 before continuing.
Over the years several suspects have emerged in the case of Kyllikki Saari’s unsolved murder. At one stage even Kyllikkis’ own father Eino was considered a person of interest. Some suspects are worthy of more consideration than others but I will give details of each suspect I have come across in the process of my research. It goes without saying that while some were arrested in connection with Kyllikki’s murder, none of them were ever prosecuted, let alone found guilty.
A 38 year old local workman often referred to as a ditch digger was long connected to the case. His name is in the public domain and he has been deceased for over 50 years; I will refer to him by his first name, Vihtori. Vihtori lived less than 2 km from the burial site and owned a field less than 50m from where the body was found. When the field was searched by police they found a shovel which they believed was used to dig Kyllikki’s grave. According to the true crime blog Finnish Crime Story Vihtori had been found guilty of a sexual crime during the 1940’s. Later he was accused of being a voyeur, peeping in on girls in the local communal sauna, though in 1953 many locals said he displayed no interest in young women. Vihtori had a long history of mental health issues. He also struggled with a drink problem.
Vihtori came under suspicion very early on in the case, before Kyllikki’s body was even found. There were stories that he was heard saying his 37 year old brother-in-law had “covered up Kyllikki”. The brother-in-law had a criminal record. This followed another rumour that Vihtori had killed Kyllikki while attempting to assault her. Both men were arrested and questioned by police in the Autumn of 1953.
Vihtori was said to have seemed confused during the police interview and at one point allegedly said something along the lines that Kyllikki was no longer alive and she would never be found. Vihtori later retracted this statement and said he had been misunderstood. Due to his fragile mental state he was sent for psychiatric assessment and treatment at Mustasaari mental hospital. Police officers attempted to continue questioning Vihtori at the hospital but medical staff had to put an end to the interview as he was far too confused to make any sense. During the whole process he remained under arrest.
Eventually both Vihtori and his brother-in-law were released for lack of evidence. Vihtori had an alibi for the night of the murder. Both his mother and sister said he was in bed by 7pm following a heavy drinking session. Shortly after the pair were released the brother-in-law moved to Sweden and is said to have died before 1972. Vihtori was institutionalised in a psychiatric hospital and died of TB in 1967.
Finnish historian Teemu Keskisarja wrote a book about Kyllikki’s unsolved murder in 2015. He was able to study some of Vihtori’s evaluation documents from the mental hospital.He got modern day psychiatrists to give their opinion on the information contained within the files. Vihtori would nowadays likely have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and PTSD. The PTSD was from his involvement in the war between Finland and the Soviet Union over the winter of 1939-40. During the conflict Vihtori lost control and in a rage shot himself in the leg.
The psychiatrists concluded that Vihtori’s medical notes did not show he was a person capable of murder. On the contrary they found him to be not violent and good natured. They suggest that Vihorti’s mental illness would have meant that, if he was involved in the murder, it would have been nigh on impossible for him not to tell someone about the murder. Despite the stresses he underwent whilst being interrogated and the added strain of being confined to a mental hospital Vihtori never offered a confession.
While Vihtori was under suspicion for Kyllikki’s murder he was accused of the sexual molestation of other young women in the town. Eventually all these charges were dropped and one was proven to be false.
Although there was only circumstantial evidence pointing to Vihtori, according to historian Teemu Keskisarja, Vihtori remained at the top of the suspect list for the police for many decades.
If you remember, Kyllikki worked at the local church office and after Kyllikki’s disappearance rumours circulated that she was pregnant with a child fathered by a local vicar. This man’s name was Kauko Kanervo and perhaps unsurprisingly the 42 year old clergyman became a suspect in the case.
Kanervo worked at Isojoki church for only a short time between 1952 and May 1953. He moved to take up a new position in the town of Merikarvia, 45 km south of Isojoki just three weeks before Kyllikki disappeared. He was interrogated three times about Kyllikki’s case but was never charged. The first interview was shortly after Kyllikki had gone missing, due to the rumours going around and the fact that Kyllikki had written to him just days before she vanished. The letter contained nothing salacious and was mostly concerned with questions of theology and religion. However this coincidence obviously raised eyebrows.
Kanervo said he had not seen Kyllikki since moving to Merikarvia. On the night in question he had been at a party hosted by a fellow clergyman and had then spent the night in the parsonage. The following morning at 8 o'clock he was leading confirmation classes at a local school. Investigators looked into his story and managed to account for all but 20 minutes. This was not long enough for him to get to Isojoki, 45 km away to commit the murder, especially as Kanervo did not own a car and claimed not to have a driver's licence. Police appeared to stop considering him as a suspect at this time. However, Kanervo had a pretty dubious past.
Kanervo was married and had children but during the war years, 1939-45, he had an extramarital affair while working in the city of Joensuu in eastern Finland. Then later it was alleged that while staying at an evangelical Lutheran mission house he went uninvited into the room of a woman and tried to assault her. The woman complained about Kanervo’s behaviour but nothing was done about the matter For a short time Kanervo was stationed in what is now Namibia, Africa, but was fired after an affair with a Finnish deaconess. When he returned to Finland he then started an affair with a maid employed in his service.
In 2018 the Central Criminal Police released long-suppressed papers and case notes related to Kyllikkis murder. According to the Finnish news site IS these notes reveal that the maid said that she had once walked into the church office and witnessed an awkward encounter between Kanervo and Kyllikki. The maid said it was not yet intimate in nature but looked like it was heading that way. Kanervo was questioned again in September 1953 (before Kyllikki’s body had been found). He denied that he had made any sexual advances towards Kyllikki. His alibi about being in Merikarvia on the night in question was backed up by his 10 year old daughter. When Kyllikki’s body was found and the post-mortem proved Kyllikki had not been pregnant, the rumours surrounding Kanervos were quashed. It was noted that Kanervo did not attend Kyllikki’s funeral, which some find odd. He did however visit the Saari family in their mourning and was said to have behaved strangely. There was no concrete evidence against Kanervo and he was not pursued at this time.
Kanervo came back on the radar when in 1956 he was sentenced to a year in prison for sexually assaulting a 16 year old girl in the town of Kihnio, where he was then vicar. Following this Kanervo was again interviewed about Kyllikki’s case. He denied having anything to do with her death but did now confess to sexually harassing Kyllikki when she was working for him. It seems he attempted to kiss her but she was able to push him away.
During this round of questioning Kanervo's alibi for the night Kyllikki disappeared altered. He now said that he had in fact been in bed with his 24 year old maid or housekeeper all night. The maid agreed with this new version of events but was said to have acted nervously when questioned by police. The alibi seemed to be enough and he was not questioned further.
Finnish historian Teemu Keskisarja thinks that Kanervo was dismissed as a suspect too quickly. He thinks Kanervo’s claims that he did not own a car or driver’s licence were too readily believed. He says there is evidence that Kanervo was seen driving in Isojoki and Merikarvia. Kanervo did previously have a driving licence but it expired in 1953. This would not have prevented him from driving or borrowing a car. Apparently a relative of Kanervo owned a cream coloured van, similar to the vehicle spotted on the night. This person too was under suspicion for a short time but nothing came of it.
Teemu Keskisarja suspects that Kyllikki may have made a plan to meet someone late that night in the woods. Perhaps Kyllikki was meeting Kanervo. According to the historian, Kyllikki’s talk of being afraid to go home alone may have been a ruse. Kanervo had received a letter from Kyllikki just a day or so before. The contents of this letter have been scrutinised. As I mentioned earlier most of it is about theology and religious matters and there is no arrangement to meet but it has been said that some lines could infer a secret meaning. There is also a rumour that Kanervo may have been left handed, as it is reported he threw the javelin at school with his left hand. Obviously this cannot be confirmed. While the post-mortem showed Kyllikki was not pregnant, Teemu Keskisarja thinks the mere suspicion that Kyllikki was pregnant could have resulted in the man responsible for the pregnancy turning to violence.
Another detail that casts suspicion on Kanervo is the fact that the 16 year old girl he was convicted of abusing said he could lose his temper very quickly. Police also discovered that Kanervo had borrowed 2 sheets and a pillow from a neighbour on the night Kyllikki disappeared and no explanation was ever found for this. Kanervo had a badly injured and deformed left foot that was crushed by a piece of machinery when he was young. In a 2021 article on Iltalehti newsite it is suggested this may be linked to the sock found near the burial scene. I also read in this article that the repair on the sock looked like it was made by a left handed person. I can not be sure of this as the translation was difficult to decipher.
Kanervo was fired from working in the church in 1958. He later moved to the town of Parkano and became a chicken farmer. He was interviewed by Hymy magazine in 1962 and stuck to his claim that he was in Merikarvia on the night Kyllikki disappeared. He did say he knew the area where the body was found well but insisted that he was not well acquainted with Kyllikki. He passed away in 1976.
A former police officer was a prominent suspect in the case for some time. This nameless man had been dismissed from the police due to a consistent poor record and this bad reputation followed him into civilian life. At the time Kyllikki went missing he owned a coffee shop in or near Isojoki. On the night in question he was seen with a group of other men (some reports mention it was two men) in a cream coloured car near the town of Kauhajoki, at the time at least a 45 minute to one hour drive from Isojoki. This man was arrested in connection with Kyllikki’s case. He was released after he was able to provide a strong alibi. He was seen in a hotel near the town of Karijoki, 30 km north of Isojoki with a well known businessman. The businessman took the former police officer to a friend's house in Karijoki where he spent the night. It was also discovered that his cream coloured car was actually at a garage undergoing repairs at the time Kyllikki went missing. The car had been at the repair ship from the 4th of May and was not picked up until May 30th. The garage owner confirmed that the car had not been taken out in all that time.
Despite his alibi this former policeman did stay on the radar and was arrested at a later date, though he was again released without charge. During the time he was considered a suspect, newspapers published other alleged illegal activity that he had been involved with. The whole incident destroyed the man's reputation and he never really recovered from the ordeal.
In July 1959 student nurse Eine Maria Nyyssonen and officer worker Riitta Aulikki Pakkanen disappeared while on a cycling and camping trip in Northern Karelia in east Finland. The bodies of the young women were discovered a month later buried in swampland just 200m from their campsite in Tulilahti. Eine had been stabbed to death and Riitta had been struck on the head. Eine was found naked but as in Killikki’s case there was no evidence of sexual assault.
Wooden logs had been placed over the grave and in an eerie echo of Kyllikki’s case a tree branch protruded from the earth marking the site. This was also believed to have been cut by a left handed person. The young women's bikes were found shortly afterwards at the bottom of a nearby lake. Some of their camping equipment and other possessions such as tents, sleeping bags, underwear and watches have never been found.
Police were keen to track down a man on a motorcycle seen in the area when the women had first arrived at the camping site. It was believed he had been stalking them.
A man named Runar Holmstrom was arrested for the crime in November 1959. He was found with a knife that looked as though it could have made the cuts to the tree branch found marking the grave. Under questioning he acted nervously and confessed to following the girls accompanied by two local boys. He later withdrew this statement. The police however said he divulged information that only someone present at the crime scene could have known.
Nevertheless lots of things pointed against Holmstrom being the killer. He was right handed for a start. He was small in stature and it was doubted he would have had the strength to carry the bodies into the swamp in order to bury them. Evidence suggested that the murderer was a local and knew the area well but Holmstrom was only passing through and lived over 400km away.
The case went to trial in June 1960. Almost a year later in May 1961 with the trial still ongoing, Runar Holmstrom died by suicide in his prison cell. It was his third attempt. On the first occasion he had left a note saying “I Am innocent”.
While never convicted, Holmstrom remains the only suspect in what became known as the Tulilahti campsite murders. Due to the obvious similarities with the murder of Kyllikki Saari he has also been viewed as a suspect in her case. However it is believed Holmstrom was imprisoned in a labour camp for another offence when Kyllikki was murdered. Detective Axel Skogman who worked both cases said he does not believe Holmstrom killed Kyllikki but does believe that whoever is responsible for the Tulilahti campsite murders was aware of Kyllikki’s murder and may have even taken inspiration from it. Whether Holmstrom was responsible for the murder of Eine and Riitta will never be known and there are many,including the prosecutor at the trial, who believe him to have been innocent.
There does remain the possibility that the same killer is responsible for the double murder in Tulilahti and that of Kyllikki six years earlier.
Just three days before Holmstrom's trial started in July 1960, probably the most infamous multiple murder in Finland's history occurred at Lake Bodom in Espoo in the far south of the country. During a summer night four teenagers were attacked while sleeping in a tent. Maila Bjorklund, Anja Maki both aged 15 and 18 year-old Seppo Boisman died from a combination of blunt force trauma and stab wounds. A fourth youth, 18 year old Nils Gustafsson was found injured but alive outside the tent.
The case remains unsolved and there are several suspects, one of which was a man named Hans Assman. He provided an alibi, namely that he was in his native Germany on the night of the murders, which police were satisfied with. However popular theories amongst the public sprang up about Assman and several books were written claiming he was the perpetrator. In turn Assman has also been linked to Kyllikki’s murder.
A former police investigator, Matti Paloaro, claimed to have talked with Assman in 1997 whilst he was gravely ill and near to death. According to Paloaro, Assman talked about a car accident that had occurred years before that he had attempted to cover up. Assman gave no names nor any specific details but Paloaro thought he may have been referring to the Kyllikki Saari case. He theorised that Kyllikki had been run over, possibly accidently before her murder.
Assman’s wife is said to have placed Assman in Isojoki on the night Kyllikki dispapered. He was apparently in the area looking for work. (He was a painter/decorator). Assman owned and drove a light brown coloured car. His wife went on to say that when he returned from the short trip he was missing a sock and his shoes were soaking wet. Days after returning home he set off again in the car with a friend. They took a shovel with them. Assan was said to have attended Kyllikki’s funeral. Assman was also reported to have been left-handed.
Much of this seems like hearsay; Finnish intelligence were able to confirm that Assman had come to Finland in July 1952 but had returned to Germany shortly afterwards and not moved permanently to Finland until July 1953. This was two months after Kylliki went missing. You might wonder why Finnish intelligence was involved in tracking Assmans whereabouts. This is because Assman was alleged to have been a soviet spy.
Assman died in 1998. He was never charged with or convicted of the murders at Lake Bodom or that of Kyllikki Saari.
In 2004 retired firefighter, Esko Varpelaide put forward yet another suspect. This suspect was said to have been very bright in school but aged around 18 began displaying signs he was suffering from a mental illness. The year before Kyllikki was murdered this suspect was said to have been caught touching the private parts of a woman who was killed in a car crash. This man had also been accused of harassing women in the locality and according to the Finnish Crime Story blog a court had ordered him to be castrated. In the months before Kyllikki’s murder the suspect, who by that time was 51 years old and sported a large black beard, often visited Kyllikki at her place of work and would stalk her. Henceforth I will refer to him as Blackbeard.
In the early part of the night when Kyllikki went missing, this suspect’s whereabouts are unknown, but at 2am he was seen throwing sand at the upper windows of the town hall. He was trying to get a woman who lived there to come down and see him. The woman refused and he then walked away in the opposite direction from his home. He was carrying a bag over his shoulder.
The following morning this man attacked his landlord with a metal chain. Just a note, I’ve used the word landlord but the strict translation from Finnish is caretaker and I’m not 100% the word translates from Finnish as caretaker and I’m so not 100% what this means in this context. Landlord seems to fit best. Also, I'm not completely clear that the victim was a man. It may have been a woman. In self defence the landlord shot Blackbeard in the chest. He survived the wound. The ex-firefighter who brought forward this information suggested that Blackbeard had used the chain to kill Kyllikki. This is what had been in his shoulder bag. The theory is that when he was seen walking away from his home in the middle of the night he was returning to bury Kyllikki’s body.
Detective Axel Skogman who was the lead investigator on Kyllikki’s case for many years, looked into Blackbeard but determined he was not capable of murder. Blackbeard died in a mental hospital in the early 1970’s.
The final suspect was brought to police attention by Reino Ojanpera who wrote a book about the case. His theory was that Kyllikki had been hit by a black car during her journey home through the woods. In the car were three men including a local musician. Ojanpera thinks that Kyllikki was knocked unconscious in the collison and while she was being carried away from the crash site she awoke. The men panicked and killed her with a shovel. The reason the grave was marked with the tree branch was because the men felt remorse. Apparently a receipt and piece of paper with musical notation was found at the scene. (I'm not sure if this means along the forest road in the woods, or near the burial location.)
Ojanpera said he heard this story when he was 16 and working in the town of Vaala, which is 400km away from Isojoki in the north of Finland. After the accident the three men could not keep what had happened to themselves and talked openly about the experience. The black car involved in the crash was repainted white. By the end of 1960 all three men alleged to have been involved in the death of Kyllikki had died in horrendous circumstances. One man is said to have drowned after first murdering his wife, another shot himself and the third died of a drug overdose.
In later years a profile of Kyllikki’s killer was made by Pekka Santtila, a researcher and lecturer at Finland's police academy. He estimated the killer to be a man in his 30s. He would be a loner with few social relationships and would be considered odd by those who came into contact with him. He had planned the murder and knew Kyllikki but he may not have specifically targeted her. He may have come across her in the woods that night and taken the opportunity to live out his murderous fantasy. The fact that the killer was able to hide evidence, some of which has never been found, suggests the man has committed other criminal acts in the past. There is a chance the killer even volunteered to be involved in the searches and flocked to the burial site when the body was first found.
The initial police investigation finished in February 1954 when detectives left Isojoki seemingly at a loss. The case was periodically investigated when new information came to light such as when the vicar Kanervo was sentenced for sexual abuse in 1956. In the region of five thousand people had been interviewed in connection with the case. There were over 370 lines of investigation and yet no arrest has ever been made. Over the decades Kyllikki’s family stated in interviews that they believed they knew who the killer was, but they never publicly shared this person's identity. In the year 2004 police suggested that they knew who the perpetrator was but they would not reveal the name as the person had died. Police investigator Jari Neulaniemi appeared to contradict this in 2013 saying it could not be stated with certainty who killed Kyllikki.
According to a 2021 piece on the news site Yle, over the last decade Finland’s Central Criminal Police ran modern forensic tests on the man’s sock found in one of Kyllikki’s shoes. They were hoping to find traces of DNA. The sock had been washed over the years and for a time was displayed in a crime museum, so it was a long shot that anything useful would be uncovered. Those doubts proved correct and In 2015 crime commissioner Jussi Luoto announced that no forensic information was found on the sock. There was also no documented chain of evidence so even if something had been discovered, in the unlikely event of the case going to court it would have been inadmissible as evidence.
2023 marks 70 years since Kyllikki Saari murder. As the years go by this tragic murder of one so young has never been forgotten, and the case of Kyllikki’s Saari remains one of the most high profile unsolved crimes in Finland.
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