[0:00]Today's story is about four teenage friends who decide to go camping in this big beautiful forest in Finland that's right near this huge lake. And when they get there, you know, it's awesome, there's so many people there, the weather's perfect, they're having a great time. But that night, it turned into an absolute nightmare, because someone or something paid those teens an unwanted visit. But before we get into that story, if you're a fan of the strange dark and mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right place. Because that's all we do and we upload once a week. So, if that's of interest to you, please offer to change the oil in the like button's car, but after draining it all out, go ahead and replace it with horse manure. Also, please subscribe to our channel and turn on all notifications, so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads. Okay, let's get into today's story.
[1:03]On the afternoon of June 4th, 1960, a 15-year-old girl named Maila Björklund climbed off the back of her boyfriend's motorcycle. Her boyfriend was an 18-year-old named Nils Gustafsson, and this couple had just driven 18 miles from the city in Southern Finland where they lived to get to this beautiful forest and lake where they, along with another couple, were going to go camping. The other couple who was still a few minutes behind them was Nils's best friend, Seppo, and his girlfriend, whose name was Anja. As Nils parked his motorcycle, Maila looked out over the lake, and she saw it was totally beautiful, the forest completely wrapped around the lake, and there were all these people out on the lake, boating and swimming and having a great time. But despite all these people here, to Maila, it still kind of felt very quiet and peaceful. This didn't feel like a big touristy destination, it really felt like they were out in the wild. And for Maila, who loved the outdoors, you know, this felt like a great spot to celebrate her 16th birthday. Because that's actually why the couples were out camping, Maila was turning 16 in a couple of days, and so this was going to be her party. Just then, Maila heard another motorcycle approaching, and she turned around and she saw it was the other couple. It was Seppo, who was driving, and Anja was right behind him. And Seppo, he looked up and saw Maila looking at him, and he grinned and braked hard with his motorcycle, and kind of swung the back wheel out, like he was in an action movie. And Maila thought it was totally funny and she started laughing, and that's when Nils turned around and he saw his girlfriend laughing heartily at Seppo. A moment later, all four friends were giving each other hugs and saying hello, and then after catching up, the friends walked over to this small shack that was right by the water. It was the snack kiosk. Their plan was to load up on supplies and then quickly make their way into the forest where they'd actually be camping and just relax, enjoy the night, and go to bed. But as the friends walked towards the snack kiosk, Seppo made a joke about how his motorcycle was way better than Nils's motorcycle, and Maila, who was Nils's boyfriend, she laughed at this joke and thought it was really funny. But as she was laughing, she happened to look over at Nils, her own boyfriend, and she could tell, you know, he just looked upset, like he was scowling at her and also at Seppo. And immediately Maila felt really bad because she was thinking, you know, maybe Nils thinks I'm flirting with Seppo by laughing at all of his jokes. And so Maila really did not want Nils to think anything was going on with her and Seppo because there was nothing going on. But when Maila looked over at Nils again to kind of confirm that he really did look mad, he didn't look mad. He was smiling and laughing again, and so Maila told herself, you know, she must have just imagined that, that Nils was never upset, it was all in her head. So, Maila reached over and grabbed Nils's hand, and the two couples walked the rest of the way over to the kiosk. The snack kiosk was really just this little shack right near the beach, and then behind the shack was a small house where the owners of the snack kiosk lived. And as soon as they got up to the kiosk, Maila noticed the woman who was manning the kiosk, had her back to them and didn't seem remotely interested in turning around and helping them get what they needed. And so Maila was just like, okay, hey, excuse me, we just want to buy something. And the woman, at this point, she whipped her head around and she looked at Maila really angrily and just said, what do you want? And Maila, who was totally taken aback by this, she kind of mumbled an apology, not really even sure if she did something wrong or not, and then she asked the woman if they could just get a couple of beers and sodas and they'd be on their way. And as this is happening, Seppo and Anja, who were right behind Maila, they were just giggling the whole time. Because this woman's behavior was so bizarre and so unexpected, they just couldn't help themselves. So as the teenagers are giggling, this woman is bending down and getting the sodas and beer and she's huffing really angrily, like this is such a huge inconvenience, and then she just slammed them up on the counter. As the woman was punching in the total into the cash register, Maila found herself looking over at the house behind the shack where this woman presumably lived. And Maila noticed there were all these empty beer bottles that lined the front railing of the house, and so Maila figured, you know, maybe this was a clue as to why this woman was so hostile. Any household that produced that many empty beer cans, likely was not a very happy place to live. And so finally, the woman in the kiosk gave the teenagers their total, at which point Nils stepped forward and he actually paid for the stuff instead of Maila. And then as Nils and Maila grabbed the things they bought and were about to turn and leave, the woman in the kiosk kind of cleared her voice, and she asked them, you know, hey, are you camping out by the lake? And to Maila, it seemed like this woman was suddenly being really nice, maybe as a way to kind of make up for how rude she was when they first walked over. And so Maila put on a smile, and told this woman that, yeah, you know, we're staying out by the lake, we're really excited about it, you know, thanks for asking. But the woman did not seem happy to hear this. Instead, the woman kind of scowled and then told them that they better set their tent as far away from here as possible. None of the teenagers had any idea how to respond to this. So they just kind of stood there, and there was this really intense awkward silence for a moment, and then the kiosk lady just began literally shoeing the teenagers away, telling them to go, get out of here. And so finally the teenagers did turn around and started walking, but after walking pretty far away from the kiosk, they heard the kiosk woman yell out at them one more time. She basically yelled at them that her and her family had already had lots of trouble with wild teenagers in the past, camping out around this lake, and so now she and her husband were totally sick of it. And so after the kiosk lady yelled out this final comment, Seppo and Nils and Anja, they just started laughing because it just seemed so absurd how disrespectful and awful this woman was being to the point where it was comical. But Maila, she didn't think it was funny. She seemed mean and very angry, and it totally freaked Maila out. But just a couple of minutes later, the teens were back at their motorcycles, and Nils and Maila hopped on one and Seppo and Anja hopped on the other, and then they began driving down this wooded path that would take them to their campsite. The ride to their campsite was a very short one. And where they were positioned was on this piece of land that sort of jutted out onto the lake. It was very heavily forested, and so it's this amazing view of the water, but it's very secluded in the trees, and so right away, Nils and Seppo, they parked their motorcycles up against the trees. They pulled out a simple canvas tent, and they strung it up between two birch trees, and then with their campsite all set up, they grabbed some beers, and the friends began to drink. And it didn't take long before Maila had totally forgotten about the kiosk woman and how awful she had been. After all, Maila had really been looking forward to this trip, and now she was here at the campsite relaxing with her friends. I mean, this was great. Also, Maila was really excited about her relationship with Nils. It was a relatively new one, and it was obvious that, you know, for once, her boyfriend was somebody who liked her as much as she liked him. And also, Nils was very handsome, and he was popular, and he had this dark brown hair that he combed straight up, and he always wore this leather jacket everywhere. And so Maila just really liked being around him. He was super cool and made her feel really grown up. After sitting around for about 30 minutes to an hour, just having a couple of drinks and swapping stories and kind of easing into their night, the friends eventually made their way down to the water, and they went swimming for a while, and they continued to drink down by the dock. And then when they were tired of swimming, the teens just laid on the dock and enjoyed looking out at the sunset. Even though actually, in Finland, at this time of the year, it's not really a sunset, because the sun does not actually fully set. And so when this happens, these are known as white nights, which are very beautiful. I mean, it's kind of like this hazy glow in the sky from the sun not quite setting. And so on this night, the teens are out there on the dock, they had this beautiful, you know, white night to look up at. And for Maila, she felt like this was the perfect birthday celebration. In fact, she would jot down in her diary later that night, just how amazing everything was going and how much fun she was having with Nils and their friends. Finally, the teens were done down by the dock, so they grabbed their things, they went back up to the campsite, they dried off, they changed, and then all four of them piled into their one little tent to go to sleep. And eventually all four of them would drift off to sleep, but then at some point in the middle of the night, Maila woke up. And she heard rustling sounds outside the tent, and so she wondered if, you know, maybe one of the friends had gotten up. And so she sat up and looked out the tent, and she couldn't see anything, she just saw the kind of hazy night sky from the white night, and she couldn't really tell if everybody was inside the tent or not. But then suddenly, a dark shadowy figure moved in front of the tent flap, the open tent flap. And so this shadowy figure totally blocked all the light that was coming into the tent from the white night, and then this shadowy figure looked into the tent, and they had these bright glowing red eyes. And before Maila or anybody else in the tent could do anything, there was a snapping sound and the tent fell down on top of them.
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[11:46]The next morning at 6 AM, two boys who were not in any way connected to these four teenagers were at this lake, they were over to the side doing some fishing, and they were looking kind of out generally in the direction of where the four teenagers had stayed the night before. And this particular day, the lake was not remotely crowded like it was the day before. Basically, it was a ghost town, and suddenly they saw emerge from the forest, basically where the teens had camped, was this young man with blonde hair who was just running away from where that campsite was. And so these boys just stared for a second at this random guy with blonde hair running away from the campsite, until the boys lost interest and just went back to fishing. As the morning wore on, more and more people came to the lake, but nobody made their way out to the campsite where the teenagers had been the night before. That is until a father and his two sons decided to head out that way to go to that dock to go swimming. And so this father and his sons began walking on the same wooded trail that Nils and Seppo had driven their motorcycles on to get out to that camping site, and he eventually makes it to the clearing in the forest where this campsite was. And right away, he spots what looks like a crumpled heap of canvas, kind of sitting between two trees. And he couldn't really tell what it was, and so the father walked a little bit closer to investigate, and eventually he realized what they were actually walking up on, at which point he threw up a hand to stop his sons from going any closer. And he turned around, and he told his kids, we have to leave right now. And so the father and his sons, they run back up that trail, they find a phone, and they call the police. When the police arrived at the lake just before noon, they would walk out to that campsite and they would see that crumpled heap of canvas, and then also in and around that crumpled heap were the four bodies of the four teenagers who had stayed there the night before. Anja and Seppo had not even made it out of the tent. They had been beaten and stabbed to death, basically through the canvas fabric. Maila did manage to get out of the tent. However, she did not escape. She was kind of laying on top of the tent, and she had broken bones, and it would turn out she was stabbed a total of 15 times, and some of those stabs came when she was alive, and some came when she was dead. And then laying next to her was the body of her boyfriend, Nils, and he was basically unrecognizable. His head had been beaten to a pulp.
[14:04]As officers descended on the scene and began rifling through the teenagers' backpacks and different belongings, one officer knelt down near all the victims to look more closely at each of their injuries. And as they were looking at each of the victims, they suddenly heard this gasping sound. It was very faint, but they could definitely hear it, and to their shock, Nils, so Maila's boyfriend, he suddenly opened his eyes, and he looked up at this officer. He was still alive. And this officer who's seeing this, who was totally convinced Nils was dead, as everybody else was, was at first unsure what to even do. But then a second later, the officer stood up and began screaming for a medic. After Nils was taken away in an ambulance, the different investigative teams that had descended on the scene began going over the evidence and different things they had found. And pretty quickly, the general feel amongst all the investigators was, this crime scene does not make any sense. There were some things missing from the crime scene that seemed to indicate this could have been a robbery, like missing wallets and missing watches. But there were other things that were missing that just didn't really make any sense to have been taken. Like, for example, the two motorcycles that the boys drove in, they were still there parked up against the tree, but their keys were gone. So why still the keys and not take the motorcycles? And then also Nils's prized leather jacket and his shoes were also missing. These were not particularly valuable, I mean, they might have been emotionally valuable to Nils, but they certainly were not valuable enough to warrant a robber, you know, killing people to get their hands on them. So, eventually, the police actually called in the military to come into the forest and help with the search. And when the military arrived and began fanning out all around this huge forest, they would make a really big discovery. They would find Nils's shoes, and these shoes were speckled with blood. And it was clear from the bloody tracks nearby that the killer must have, at some point, put these shoes on at the campsite and then walked away while still wearing them, and then ultimately, you know, ditched them 500 meters away underneath that pile of leaves. In the days after the murders, the police chased down dozens of leads all over Finland, but none of them amounted to anything. Nils would actually survive the attack, but his face was so badly damaged with so many broken bones in his head, that it took a really long time before he could even speak. But when he finally could and the police were able to interview him, it became immediately clear that Nils did not have a good memory of the attack. And in fact, the day of the attack, basically the whole day, he didn't really remember it. However, Nils would remember one thing. He said, during the chaos of the actual attack, he distinctly remembered seeing a dark shadowy figure with these bright red glowing eyes. But the police couldn't just go out and look for a dark figure with red eyes, and so instead, they just made a note of this and continued their investigation. The only real lead the police got were from those two boys who were fishing out on the lake a day after the murders happened, where they saw that guy with blonde hair running away from where the teens had camped. Now, these two boys didn't know the significance of what they were seeing, but obviously, when the news broke about the murders, they were called seeing that guy right in the area where they now knew, you know, that's where the murders had happened. And so the police created a composite sketch of, you know, what the boys thought they saw, this blonde guy running, and they would send this sketch all over Finland, and they would ask people, you know, to come forward if you've seen this guy. And loads and loads of people immediately came forward and said, yep, I've seen that guy, but it would turn out the police were getting loads of false reports because the sketch looked like lots of men in Finland. So this was not a unique enough sketch basically. However, there was one tip that came into police that did really stand out. The day after the murders happened, a man named Hans Assmann checked into a hospital located about 13 miles away from where the lake was, where the murders happened. And this guy, Hans, when he checks into the hospital, he starts complaining of having these really intense stomach pains. But the doctors don't believe him because Hans actually just appears to be very drunk and very aggressive. First of all, he looked exactly like the police composite sketch of the blonde running guy. Like he was that guy, and also, Hans was filthy, he was covered in dirt and mud, and there was all this dirt kind of embedded in his fingernails like he had been digging with his hands. And he also had all these red stains all over his clothes that he refused to explain. And so eventually, one of the doctors called the police, and when the police interviewed Hans, they would discover that he had a history of violence. And he also said he used to be a member of the Nazi party, and he also was a member of the Russian secret police. And all of this just seemed like a lie, but basically, he seemed like a very erratic and unstable person. But Hans had a rock solid alibi. On the night of the murder, Hans was located in a city about 15 miles away from where the murders happened, at his girlfriend's house with his girlfriend, and also his girlfriend's sister and brother-in-law. And so as much as they wanted Hans to be their guy, the police learned, you know, obviously he's not. And this was basically how the entire investigation went. The police would interview over 4,000 people, but despite all that, they still could not figure out who did this. And so slowly, the case went cold. And that was it for 44 years. Lots of theories, but not one suspect. But then, in 2004, prosecutors made a stunning announcement. They said, the killer was Nils Gustafsson, the 18-year-old boyfriend of Maila, who was the only one who survived the attack. And the prosecutors pointed to two pieces of evidence to support this theory. The first piece of evidence was, there was this woman who was staying out at the lake on the night of the murders, not far from the teenager's campsite, who remembered overhearing two men really aggressively fighting before the murders ultimately happened. Prosecutors hypothesized that what that woman overheard was Nils and Seppo fighting with each other. That Nils was mad at Seppo about something to do with Nils's girlfriend, Maila, you know, perhaps he really was upset that it seemed like Maila was flirting with Seppo, and so Nils felt betrayed. But, you know, something was happening there where these two young men were fighting over a girl. In the prosecutor's eyes, this would also explain why Maila had been stabbed so many times. That basically Nils must have been so furious about whatever was happening between Maila and Seppo, and then, you know, his rage took over and he really took it out on his girlfriend. The second piece of evidence the prosecutors used to support this idea that Nils was the killer were Nils's shoes, which were found under those leaves about 500 meters away from their campsite. The prosecutor said there was blood on the shoes, but not in the shoes. And none of the blood that were on these shoes belonged to Nils. And so prosecutors say that shows Nils murdered his friends while wearing his shoes, and then, you know, ran away from the campsite and ditched those shoes to hide them, you know, underneath those leaves. And then he came back to the campsite and inflicted those horrible injuries on himself to make it seem like he also had been attacked. So, in the end, Nils, 44 years after the fact, got arrested for these murders. And at the time he was arrested, Nils was 62 years old, he was working as a bus driver, and he was married with kids. But at Nils's trial, he absolutely maintained his innocence and did not waver from his story one bit. He basically said, look, I can't remember all the details of that day. I don't remember the attack very well. I don't really know what we did leading up to it, what happened after it, but what I do remember is I saw a dark shadowy figure with glowing red eyes. That's all I remember. And the jury completely believed him, and he was easily acquitted, and in the end, Finland would even give him a huge monetary settlement for his mental suffering. Today, people tell lots of stories about these murders. I mean, the lake itself, where this happened, Lake Bodom, is now completely famous for these murders. People go there just to be in the same place where these teens were killed. But a lot of the stories that circulate about these murders are so far-fetched that they just do not seem believable. Like suggesting that the campsite was cursed and that, you know, the ghosts of murdered campers attack the teens, it just does not seem like a viable theory. Other stories that circulate are really intriguing, but they don't really get you anywhere. Like periodically, there's this photo that will circulate on the internet, and it's a picture of the crowd at one of the teens' funerals. And in the middle of this crowd is this guy, whose face looks identical to that composite sketch of the running blonde man. And in fact, people have come out and said he looks exactly like that guy, Hans Assmann, who had shown up in the hospital, you know, the day after the murders with the dirt and what looked like blood all over him. But he had that alibi, and so that picture makes its rounds on the internet, and everybody gets jazzed up and says, there he is. That's the guy who killed the teens, but no one's ever been able to actually identify that person, and so it's gone nowhere. But there is one story that circulates about these murders that a lot of people believe is the truth. When the teenagers were killed, there was a 55-year-old man named Karl Valdemar Gyllström, who lived right on Lake Bodom. And Karl had a reputation for being really nasty and sometimes even lashing out at the campers who stayed in this area. And in fact, Karl would often get drunk and literally go and attack the other campers. He would cut down their tents in the middle of the night, he would throw rocks at their campsite, and then one time, he even fired a gun at a camper who was riding past him on a moped. He missed, but I mean, this guy is an absolute nightmare. And so after the murders happened, locals who knew about Karl immediately went to police, and they were like, that's the guy who very likely did this. I mean, this is totally something he would do. But when police went and tried to speak to Karl, they wound up speaking to Karl's wife, who was the kiosk woman. The woman who was so nasty to the teens when they first arrived and basically told them to get away. Yeah, so the police talked to her, and she would tell police that Karl was with her and her kids when the murders happened. And so the police believed her and never really considered Karl a serious suspect. But in the Lake Bodom area, when people heard he was not being looked at closely, people felt like this was a huge mistake. But nine years after the murders, so at this point, the case is totally cold, Karl is having a drink with his neighbor out near the Lake Bodom area. And as they're just sitting there, having drinks, relaxing, Karl winds up admitting to the neighbor that he was the Lake Bodom murderer. He literally said to his neighbor, don't you understand that I'm the murderer of Bodom? And the neighbor apparently was so caught off guard and so horrified by this, that they said to Karl, well, if that's the truth, you should go drown yourself. And then the next day, where was Karl found, out in the lake drowned, right near where the teens had been attacked. Now, the police were never able to actually figure out if its death was accidental, or if he had done it to himself, or if somebody else had done it to him. But that's the story, and lots of people believe that Karl was so racked with guilt over what he had done that he did what his neighbor suggested.
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[27:04]So that's going to do it. If you got something out of today's story, be sure to check out our podcast called the MrBallen Podcast, where we have literally hundreds more stories, a lot like this one, but many of those stories are only available on the podcast. Again, it's called the MrBallen Podcast and you can listen to it on Amazon Music or wherever else you get your podcasts. Thank you so much until next time, see you. Wait, don't go anywhere. If you're looking for more strange dark and mysterious videos, click here.
