Oven murder

The oven murder (Finnish: uunisurma) refers to the murder of Hilkka Hillevi Saarinen (born 1 November 1927)^[1], in the village of Krootila in the municipality of Kokemäki, Finland in December 1960. The event is one of Finland's best known cases of homicide, and the killer has never been officially identified.

Events

Hilkka Saarinen was last seen alive in December 1960, when she was 33 years old. She lived in an old, large wooden building together with her husband. The house was Hilkka's childhood home and an heirloom from her grandparents. The couple had paid part of the house with a bank loan to the other inheritors. They had five children, which had been adopted by the state and placed in different foster homes because of the family's troubles, and the father's tendency to violence. According to the family's children and neighbours, the father was extremely jealous when he was under the influence of alcoholic beverages, and continuously acted violently towards his wife. According to them, he had repeatedly threatened to kill his wife in a way that would not be able to be identified. The eldest son of the family visited the house on Christmas Day 1960 together with his schoolmate, a day earlier than he had announced he would be coming. The purpose of the visit was to spend a couple of the Christmas holidays together with his parents. When he wondered where his mother was, his father replied that she had gone somewhere while he was sleeping. When the son asked if his mother was in a house in the same village, where she had previously worked, his father replied that "she is never there".

As they were going into the house, the boys noticed a strange situation. The front door of the house was not locked, so the boys went into the foyer and opened the door leading inside the house. At this time, the father opened the kitchen door in the foyer from the inside, and prevented the boys from passing by standing in the doorway. The father was surprised about the boys arriving earlier than announced. At the same time, he came to the foyer, locking the door behind him. Later that night, when it was dark, the boys went to fetch more bedclothes from the mother's room, located behind the kitchen. When the son asked why the kitchen was dark, "why won't you turn on the lights?", his father said the lamp was broken. They walked through the kitchen in the narrow streak of light coming from the doorways of the foyer and the mother's room. However, the boys saw that all the miscellaneous junk that had accumulated on top of the large oven in the living room over the years had been thrown over the kitchen floor. The father said he had been cleaning up, in the dark behind locked doors, even though the smaller kitchen and the foyer were lit. Also, the knuckles of his one hand had been scraped.

The father had closely followed the boys' movements and acted nervously. Because of this, the schoolmate left back to his home after a couple of days. The son left the matter be. There was no sign of the mother. The father lived in the house in peace.

During several years, the son visited his home every now and then, staying a couple of days at the most. He also observed changes in the house and around it. He inspected the basement at the end of the house, with a ground bottom and stone walls, and the outdoor toilet and its surroundings a short distance apart. He was puzzled by the disappearance of the pile of sand that had previously been in the front yard of the cow barn. As time passed, the boy began to suspect that his mother was no longer alive. After inspecting the surroundings, he began inspecting the building's plank floors, its large attic, and the stone foundation that the building rested upon, aided by a flashlight. Later the boy also tested the seams in the wall with his fingers. On top of the wall, the seams felt like full, fine and separate pebbles.

In 1966 the son sent a letter to the police: "I suspect that my father knows more about the disappearance of my mother than he has told me. He has clearly opened the oven and walled it shut again. However, the oven had not been used in seven to eight years before this. My father was cleaning in the dark, even though another room was lit, when I arrived. I think the oven should be dismantled. My father could do anything." The letter was not noted. Later, the son wrote an article in the May 1967 issue of Elämä magazine, titled "Where do they disappear/I suspect my father is a murderer", where he suspected his father of having murdered his mother. Later, when the father and son met, the father said: "Let's just both mind our own business."

It was only in 1972, after new investigators had been ordered to go through old, unsolved cases, that the son was contacted again, because of the letter. He also got to read the interrogation material related to the case. It contained many irrelevant rumours that had been circulating around the village. Small inconsistencies between the stories gave reason to inspect the son's suspicions further.

On Hilkka's nameday 27 November 1972, 12 years after Hilkka Saarinen's disappearance, the Turku district commissar Gunnar Kivelä and his assistant arrived in Kokemäki with a document that authorised them to dismantle the Saarinen family oven. The husband was moved to the police station before the police started to dismantle the oven. In one metre's depth, they found the mummified head of a woman. After digging some more, they found a foot, and finally the entire body. The body was transported to Pori, the regional capital. The next day, the eldest son identified the body as Hilkka Saarinen, his mother.

The husband told both the court hearing and his children that he knows nothing about the matter.

Trial

The case was heard in the local court. In court, the man did not request a defense attorney, but he was given one, because the court felt he could not pursue his own interest and rights by himself. During the whole hearing, the man denied the charges. At one time, he told that gypsies had broken into his house shortly before Christmas 1960, but the theory was immediately rejected. Many witnesses told the court how Hilkka had complained about her husband hitting her, and her injuries. She had repeatedly visited the doctor because of her injuries. This was the best case, in addition to the evidence, that the prosecutor had in aid of him. One piece of evidence that was ignored was the husband's loans from the library: from April to December 1960, he had borrowed 75 crime fiction novels from the library, of which many were about murder, including the murder of one's wife.

The Kokemäki local court decided that the husband had not caused Hilkka Saarinen's death on purpose, and sentenced him to eight years' imprisonment for severe assault. However, the man only served one year of his sentence, because the Turku district court and the supreme court freed him, claiming that neither the cause or manner of Hilkka Saarinen's death was known, and one could no longer be sentenced for accidental killing after 12 years. Hilkka's husband returned to the house, which had been empty all the time, and was well on its way to deterioration, and lived there alone until his death on 1 August 1986.

The case has been marked in the police records as an unsolved crime.

Literature

• Hannes Markkula: Kuusi suomalaista murhaa. (Gummerus, 1997) ISBN 951-20-5081-1
• Pohjolan poliisi kertoo/Poliisi kertoo 1974 (Pohjolan Poliisin Urheiluliitto). Printed by Elanders Boktryckeri AB 1974 / Kungsbacka, Sweden

References

1. ^ Helsingin Sanomat 29 November 1972