Surprise witness testifies at Bodom murder trial

Breaking 45 years of silence, woman says she heard argument at campsite in June 1960

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A prosecution witness testifying at the trial of Nils Gustafsson, who is charged with the murder of three companions during a camping trip at Bodom Lake in June 1960, said on Tuesday that there had been a drunken argument between Gustafsson and one of the victims, Seppo Boisman, on the previous evening.
      The woman, who says that she was camping on the other side of a small inlet of the lake, told the court that she later heard shouting from the area where Gustafsson and his friends had set up camp.
     
At the time the woman was on a camping trip with another woman and two men. Like Gustafsson and his group, they had two motorcycles and a tent. They had set up camp on the land of a local manor house where camping was forbidden.
      The woman's boyfriend at the time knew Gustafsson because of their common motorcycle hobby
      Gustafsson, Boisman, and the two girls, Tuulikki Mäki and Irmeli Björklund, arrived for a visit in the evening. The witness said that Gustafsson had a bottle of spirits with him, and that he was arguing with Boisman.
      "There was something between them. It is hard to say what it was. We did not interfere. We knew that we were in a place where we were not supposed to be."
      She said that she got the impression that the argument concerned the girls somehow.
      After about an hour Gustafsson and his group were asked to go back to their tent, because there was too much noise.
      A few hours later, at about half past eleven, the witness said that noise was heard from the other shore, and soon after that, a motorcycle left and did not return.
     
In the morning the witness says that her group of campers noticed that there were many people on the other shore, and they went to the area. There they saw the collapsed tent, and that someone was being carried into an ambulance.
      Gustafsson himself has said that his friends had not visited the woman's campsite during the evening. He also said that he did not know her boyfriend.
      The witness did not emerge until recently, when she told her story in an interview on a television current affairs programme. Her colleague had put her in touch with the producer of the programme. The police interviewed her in June.
      Asked why she had been silent for 45 years, she said that the group had decided that if nobody comes out and asks them, they would not offer any information.
      One of the people in her group has died, and police were not able to ascertain the identities of the other two. The witness says that she may have remembered their names incorrectly.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Bodom murder trial visits crime scene, 45 years after the fact (23.8.2005)

Helsingin Sanomat