Episode 164: Lake Bodom murders

The early summer dawn at Lake Bodom was deceptively tranquil: mist curled above the dark water, frogs croaked in the reeds, and pale birch trunks gleamed silver in the pre-sunshine haze. Yet in the small clearing near Espoo’s Oittaa Manor, the placid surface concealed a horror that would haunt Finland for decades. On the night of 4 June 1960, Maila Irmeli Björklund, fifteen, and her friend Anja Tuulikki Mäki, also fifteen, pitched a small canvas tent beside the lake’ s pebbled shore. Joining them were their boyfriends, eighteen-year-olds  Seppo Boisman and Nils Gustafsson, laughing and passing around cigarettes as they settled down to sleep under a vault of sparkling stars.