They Went Camping by a Quiet Lake. By Morning, 3 Were Dead — and Decades Later, the Survivor Was on Trial

The killer struck as they slept, stabbing through canvas and leaving the ripped walls of their tent soaked with blood. By morning, three Finnish teenagers were dead beside Lake Bodom, the lone survivor was barely conscious — and the assailant had vanished. 

On the night of June 4, 1960, four teenagers — Nils Gustafsson and Seppo Boisman, both 18, and their girlfriends, Maila Irmeli Björklund and Anja Tuulikki Mäki, both 15 — camped on the shore of Lake Bodom in Espoo, Finland, just west of the capital city of Helsinki. 

Early the next morning, two local boys on a walk discovered the scene: the tent had collapsed inward and was soaked with blood. 

Maila Björklund had been dragged partially out of the tent and was undressed from the waist down — she had suffered the worst of the violence, with multiple stab wounds and a shattered skull, according to documents obtained by the Casefile podcast. 

Boisman and Mäki were found dead inside, also killed with a mix of stabbing and blunt force trauma. Gustafsson was discovered lying nearby with a broken jaw, fractured cheekbones and a concussion. 

Several of the group’s belongings — clothing, wallets and Gustafsson’s shoes — were missing or found in surrounding brush, some half a kilometer away, per reporting by The Guardian. Murder weapons were never recovered. 

According to a 2005 report from Finland’s national broadcaster YLE, the crime scene was quickly compromised: local residents, journalists, and even curious campers wandered through the area before police secured it. No clear suspect emerged, but one witness described seeing a blond-haired man walking away from the scene around 6 a.m. 

The case went cold for more than four decades, until 2004, when Gustafsson — the only surviving victim — was arrested. 

Investigators had reexamined blood evidence found on the tent and on Gustafsson’s recovered shoes. Prosecutors argued that the blood patterns suggested Gustafsson had killed the other three, hidden his shoes, and returned barefoot to the scene to fake his own injuries. 

They claimed he had attacked his girlfriend in a jealous rage, then turned on the others, and later bludgeoned himself to create the appearance of a surviving victim, per The Guardian.

In court, prosecutors pointed to statements Gustafsson had allegedly made while in custody. According to testimony reported by YLE, one officer claimed Gustafsson muttered, “What’s done is done, I’ll get 15 years.” 

But the defense argued that his injuries — particularly a fractured jaw and deep head trauma — made it physically impossible for him to have killed three people with such force. 

They also highlighted the contaminated crime scene, lack of physical evidence tying him to the weapons, and the original eyewitness reports suggesting someone else had fled the scene, per YLE.

In October 2005, a Finnish court acquitted Gustafsson, ruling the evidence against him was too weak and inconsistent. He was awarded €44,900 in compensation for wrongful detention and mental suffering, per YLE. Prosecutors declined to appeal the verdict.

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Alternative suspects remain part of Finnish lore. 

One was a local kiosk owner, Karl Valdemar Gyllström, who was said to have hated campers and reportedly confessed to the murders while drunk, before drowning himself in the same lake. 

Another was Hans Assmann, a former German soldier who turned up at a Helsinki hospital shortly after the killings with bloodied clothes and dirt under his nails. Though he gave an alibi, many believed he fit the description of the blond man seen fleeing the campsite. (Assmann is also deceased.)

Neither was ever charged, according to the Casefile podcast. 

The long-unsolved murders have since inspired books, documentaries and a 2016 slasher film — and even gave a name to one of Finland’s most famous metal bands, Children of Bodom. 

But after more than 60 years, no one has been convicted of the killings, and most of the original evidence is long gone. The question of who truly killed those teens on a summer night by the lake still remains unanswered.