Transcript: 52. Three Girls Named Pia | Finland

(The Pia Murders)

You are listening to: The Evidence Locker.

Our cases have been researched using open source and archive materials. It deals with true crimes and real people. Each episode is produced with the utmost respect to the victims, their families and loved ones. 

On the morning of October 5th 1991 a retired fisherman was out on his boat in Vassor Bay, Finland. He was making his way to Mustasaari, or ‘The Black Island’, where the Kyrönjoki River flows into the Gulf of Bothnia.

It was cold and misty out, so when the man saw a floating object in the water, he could not quite see what it was. On closer inspection, he was shocked to find the body of a young woman. She was wearing jeans and a blue denim jacket. The fisherman threw a net over the body as a marker, so he would be able to find it again. He rowed back to land to find help. 

As soon as he made it back to shore, he went to the first house he saw, woke up the residents and told them to call police immediately.

When he returned to the water, this time with police, the body was not where he had left it. Searchers spread out to look for the body. The current was extremely strong and later in the morning, one of the officers spotted the body, about a mile away from the spot where the fisherman first saw it. The fisherman’s plan to attach a fishing net to the body had worked. Without it, the body would have floated out into the open seas. The search team had to retrieve the body as quickly as they could, as the current was pulling it farther and farther away. 

Back on dry land, first responders examined the body. She was a young woman with no identification on her. She was wearing light blue jeans and a white blouse. Around her neck some abrasions were visible.

The unidentified body was taken to the morgue for a post mortem examination. The report confirmed what investigators suspected from the start. She did not drown; she had met with foul play. The cause of death was strangulation. 

Police launched a homicide investigation of this unknown victim and published some information about their Jane Doe in the Sunday newspaper the following day. They also sent the information to all police stations in Finland. 

Officers in the town of Seinäjoki were able to match the victim to a missing person’s report. She was 17-year-old Pia Kuru, who had disappeared two days before. 

The case remained unsolved, until 1994, when another young woman vanished. Strangely, another woman by the name of Pia. These two cases were eerily similar – but was it purely coincidence, or was it all part of a bigger plan?

>>Intro Music

Pia Kuru

Pia Kristina Kuru was born on the 13th of August 1974 in the town of Isokyrö. It’s a small town in the scenic region of Ostrobothnia. About 4,500 people call Isokyrö home and the town prides itself for being a cozy, family friendly haven. It is a farming community and a the Kyrönjoki River flows through the centre of town.

Pia enjoyed living in Isokyrö and had many friends in the region. Like most young people at the time, the crowd moved between the villages of Isokyrö, Seinäjoki and Nurmo. The best way to get around was to hitchhike, everybody did it. The distances between the towns averaged about 25 miles or 40 kilometres, and catching a ride was never a big deal.

On Friday night, the 3rd of October 1991, Pia and her older sister went to a restaurant in Nurmo to hang out with some friends. Pia was under-aged, but her sister convinced the waiter to serve Pia some medium strength beer, as she was almost 18. Pia was outgoing and said things as they were – a straight shooter with a sharp tongue.

Pia left the restaurant at 11PM, catching a lift with an acquaintance in to Seinäjoki, only a 10 -minute drive. She spent an hour there before calling it a night. She was supposed to go home with another friend, but the friend was nowhere to be seen. So Pia asked another person who was leaving the party if they could give her a lift as far as Itikka Junction. They accepted as Pia said she would be able to make her own way home from there. 

She was dropped off at the junction around midnight, never to be seen alive again.

Vassor Bay, where Pia’s body was discovered, was 50 miles (or 80 kilometres) from where she was last seen. For the most part, there is a road that follows the path next to the Kyrönjoki River. Police had to determine how far a body could float in the River in two days, the amount of time it took for Pia’s body to be found. 

Police searched the banks of the river to see if they could determine where Pia was taken into the water. They were looking for any clues that could help: drag marks, tyre prints, anything tell-tale, really. The search area was very large, and it was important to narrow it down, before vital evidence went missing-- lost in the elements. 

Police divers set out to do a series of tests. They jumped from a bridge en route between Weeping Junction and Vassor Bay and floated with the current to see how far they would go. They did the same from the Bodstranden Pier in Vassor as well from several spots on the beach and even jumped in from nearby bridges. In the end they concluded that Pia’s body was too far out to have floated all the way there from Weeping Junction. She must have been driven to the Pier by car, then either thrown into the water from there, or taken out to sea in a boat. 

However, this was only their strongest working theory, as there was nothing at the pier to indicate that Pia was ever there. 

After a couple of weeks, police still had no crime scene. They had no suspect. They realised that they would need help from the public and were transparent about any clues found to the media. Public notices were put up, all appealing for information about Pia’s last hours alive. Because she was hitchhiking, they needed to find out who had given her the ride. Police tried to appease the public, making it clear that the person who had picked Pia up, wasn’t necessarily her killer. But they could have important information. 

Police received many tips and followed up on each and every one. Weeping Junction was under constant surveillance, looking out for people in vehicles with strange behaviour. Despite tips, nobody ever reported seeing Pia in the area between where she was last seen alive, and the water where her body was found. Because hitchhiking was common, the police suspected the person who picked Pia up lived locally. 

The only thing police could do was to take a closer look at the clues from Pia’s body and clothes. When her body was discovered, she was wearing light blue jeans, a white blouse and a bra. Her bra had been moved up and was not covering her breasts. She was not wearing panties or socks and she was barefoot. The high heel shoes that she wore out on her last night was missing, and the hope was that the perpetrator had kept it. They had also not been able to locate her wallet or keys. Evidence like this could link a random killer to his victim.

In the early 1990s, in Finland, DNA was still new science, so in the Pia Kuru case, the main focus was still on the clothing fibres and other evidence found during the autopsy.

Microscopic analysis of Pia’s clothes was done, to see if they could find elements from the crime scene. Foreign fibres were eventually found on her clothes as well as her skin. Samples were sent to the Technical Investigations Group to determine if there was plant matter or any clue whatsoever to link Pia’s body to a location or a crime scene. But it would not yield fast results. In fact, it took three years to complete testing. We’ll touch on these results later in the sequence of events.

Another peculiar discovery was the presence of small metal balls, about 1mm in diameter, on Pia’s clothing. This is something that could be found in a workshop of sorts. When welding, the sparks flare away from the metal, forming small particles that look like metal balls. There were also blue paint chips on Pia’s clothes, which supported the theory that the killer probably worked in a workshop. Another theory was that these particles came in contact with Pia when her body was transported by boat.

Because Pia was found without underwear, police suspected the motive was sexual in nature and interviewed sex offenders in the surrounding villages of Seinäjoki, Nurmo, Isokyrö and Vassor. Investigators also searched through their properties, examining their cars and their uniforms – always looking for metal balls, blue paint chips or perhaps an out-of-place pair of high heel shoes.

But nothing was found. Some sex offenders had solid alibis. Others did not even own a car. No one looked like a probable suspect. It seemed like another dead end.  

Investigators were not about to give up, however. They questioned property owners who lived near the water or in the vicinity of Bodstranden Pier. All boats in the area were inspected and photographed and forensic samples were collected. Despite this extensive search, none of the evidence collected from the boats indicated that Pia Kuro was ever on any of them. 

Pia went missing just before winter, and as spring rolled in, they revisited all of the boat sheds in the surrounding area to ask for records of people who had rented boats just before, or in the days after, Pia’s disappearance. Background checks were run on everyone who had a hunting and fishing card, or anyone who had ever rented a boat in those proceeding months. 

Some witnesses remembered a van driving to the water’s edge one late night in autumn, but could not give definitive information. One Vassor resident said that the vehicle had a distinctive sound that he would recognise if he ever heard it again. It was a powerful car that made a low, rumbling noise, probably a diesel engine. There wasn’t much more to it, residents only recalled the van, as it was the only unusual thing that happened at the time.

Police narrowed their search down to sex offenders living in the area who owned a van. However, they were unable to locate anyone fitting the description. Because there were no strong suspects or specific people named in the investigation, and because forensic testing seemed to take forever, police received a lot of bad press around that time. 

Pia Töyli

Then, in the fall of 1994, police received information about another young woman who had gone missing from the Seinäjoki area. On the 11th of October, 20-year-old Pia Mary-Ann Töyli was reported missing by her family. She had not been in contact with anyone in over a week. She was last seen in Seinäjoki on Friday, the 30th of September.

It caught investigators’ attention that the missing woman had the same name as their unsolved murder victim, but at the time, they thought that this fact was a mere coincidence. As the case unfolded, though, there were many more similarities that sent chills down the spines of even the most seasoned detectives.

Missing person, Pia Töyli was a vibrant, sporty blonde with blue eyes. She had recently returned to Finland, after spending the summer in Italy where she worked as an au pair. Pia was supposed to go back to Italy to meet a boyfriend she had met while she was there, but the family did not think she ever left. Her passport was still at home, as well as all the money she had saved for her trip. Her bank account had also not been touched.

Pia was last seen restaurant-hopping in the town of Seinäjoki. The last place where she was spotted, was a popular nightclub called Wall Street. As was the custom, when Pia was ready to go home, she intended to hitch a ride. 

The janitor at Wall Street told police that he saw a young woman who looked like Pia get into an American-type van, like a Chevrolet or similar. Other than that, police had no other clues. Whether it was actually Pia who got into the van was also not 100% certain. Police could not ignore that the clue of a van also came up in the Pia Kuru case.

From the start, foul play was suspected with regards to the Pia Työli case. One headline read:

“Disappearance of woman points to a crime.”

But who would have taken her? Police revisited the investigation into all sex offenders living in the greater Seinäjoki area. They could also not ignore the fact that the offender could have been from farther away – someone who passed through the area occasionally, so they broadened the search to the surrounding areas too.

Investigators were eager to learn other techniques to boost their investigation. Three FBI agents visited Finland to educate police in profiling criminals. Before then, various cases of violent attacks were looked at separately, as stand-alone cases. But in this instance,

remembering the death of Pia Kuru in 1991, police thought there might have been a link to Pia Työli’s disappearance. They broadened their search and looked at all sex related crimes reported in the area between 1989 and 1994. They found 14 reports that appeared to have the same characteristics.  

One person whose name featured more than once was a 26-year-old man called Harri Erkki Mikael Leppinen. He had his own apartment that he shared with his girlfriend. The couple had been together since 1990. A fact that piqued investigators’ interest was that Leppinen worked in his father’s warehouse as a welder. 

Police picked Leppinen up from his apartment in Seinäjoki and took him into the police station for questioning. They questioned him about the 14 cases with similarities. He denied being involved in any of the crimes. If police wanted to charge him for any of the 14 alleged rapes, they had to find evidence, because he was not talking.

Much to everyone’s surprise, however, Leppinen freely admitted to two other incidents of attempted rape, of which the police had not been informed. The first incident took place in 1989 and the second one in 1994. He also said that he was alone on the night of Pia Kuru’s disappearance three years before and had no alibi to vouch for his whereabouts. 

Digging up Leppinen’s background, investigators found that this was not true. On the 1st of October 1991, the night Pia Kuru went missing, Highway Patrol pulled Leppinen over and fined him for speeding. On that night, he was the person driving a Mazda 323 – the same car he was still driving in 1994.

When confronted with the evidence, he continued his story. He told police that he drove around by himself for the rest of that night, only in the Isokyrö area, not in Seinäjoki or Itakka. But he never saw Pia Kuru. He said that he knew Pia Kuru and that he had given her lifts in the past, before she vanished.

After three days, police had no solid evidence against Leppinen and they had to release the only suspect they had. However, police were able to confiscate his vehicle for forensic testing. 

Unbelievably, Leppinen admitted that he never cleaned his car, which meant that it had not been cleaned since 1991. If Pia Kuru was ever in his car, there was a chance that police would be able to find what they were looking for.

They learnt that Leppinen changed the exhaust on his car four years before and that it was rather noisy. In fact, he had been pulled over by patrol vehicle on Lahti Road and issued a warning about the noise. Could this be the car that witnesses said they heard near the water in the fall of 1991?

Forensic technicians set out to examine every square inch of Leppinen’s Mazda. Fibres from upholstery on the front seat of the car, matched the fibres found on Pia Kuru’s neck, as well as on the inside and outside of her jacket, trousers and bra. Multiple small metal balls, consistent with those found on Pia, was everywhere to be found in Leppinen’s trunk.

Then they also found a blue car jack in the trunk of the Mazda. The rubber seal on the trunk of Leppinen’s car had come off and the jack was used to close it properly. Blue paint from the jack matched the composition and colour of the blue paint chips found on Pia’s body. In a reconstruction, technicians used a young female, similar in size to Pia, to test whether she could fit in the trunk, and she did. The reconstruction also explained the 4-inch (or 11 centimetre) beam-like indentation that was found on the victim’s left buttock. It was the exact shape of a part of the car jack.

And there was more… Pia Kuru’s jacket was stained with blotches of oil. Technicians determined that it was the same oil that Leppinen was known to purchase to heat his apartment. Witnesses confirmed that he always transported the large containers of oil in the trunk of his car.

A piece of cloth was found under the driver’s seat. When it was tested and proven to be a possible item that was used to keep victims in a stranglehold. It had a specific double knot that matched marks found on Pia Kuru’s neck.

Police were confident that Harri Leppinen was guilty of the murder of Pia Kuru. But there was still no sign of Pia Töyli. That is until her handbag was found beneath the Heikkola suspension bridge. CCTV footage from the nightclub, Wall Street, showed that Pia had the handbag with her on the night she went missing. 

In the early spring of 1995, two tourists, made a grisly discovery at their waterside holiday residence at the Hirvijärvi reservoir near Nurmo. It was the half-naked, decomposing body of Pia Töyli. The six-month search had come to an end, and the missing person’s case was ruled a homicide.

Pia Töyli was partially dressed when she was found. She was still wearing a bra, but exactly like in the case of Pia Kuru, it was pulled up so her breasts were exposed. The coat and handbag she had with her the last time she was seen, were missing.

Because of the advanced stage of decomposition, it was difficult to determine the cause of death. Like Pia Kuru, Pia Töyli’s lungs contained no water, that confirmed she did not drown. There was a small sample of semen found inside her, indicating that she was sexually assaulted before she was killed. 

She also had small metal balls, similar to those found at Leppinen’s work on her skin and clothes. Inside her handbag that was found in the proceeding months, were fibres that matched the fibres from Leppinen’s car. It was a miracle that the evidence survived, despite being in the water for a significant passage of time.

It was also interesting that the handbag appeared more than 6 miles (that’s 10 kilometres) away from where Pia’s body was found. However, it was just around the corner of Leppinen’s apartment. This supported the theory that he threw it off the bridge after he discarded of her body – on his way home.

Police arrested Leppinen on the 15th of April 1995. He denied picking Pia Kuru up back in 1991 and said that he did not kill her. When interviewed about Pia Töyli, he also denied any involvement in her murder. 

Police were confident that they had their guy. From speaking to local teens in the area, they were able to build a profile. Many people knew Leppinen, but he was always seen as the outsider. He was known as someone who liked to go for long drives at night, after his live-in girlfriend had gone to sleep. Some people noted seeing him in the parking lots of dance clubs, he hardly ever went inside. He preferred hanging out at his car and chatting to people. 

Despite the overwhelming forensic evidence against him, police had to make sure that he would be convicted in court. They made the most of their time after his arrest to build the case against him. Investigators believed that looking at the cases of the two Pia’s together, would help to make the case stronger. 

The similarities between the murders of Pia Kuru and Pia Töyli were undeniable. Sure, Pia is a relatively common name in Finland, but there were other corresponding facts that linked the victims together as well.

Firstly, both victims disappeared on a Friday at the end of September or the first week of October. They were both last seen in Seinäjoki, out with friends at a restaurant or club. They were also both born in 1974. Both of their bodies were found in water.

Pia Ristikankare

But to make matters even more strange… Police found that yet ANOTHER young woman by the name of Piia (spelled slightly different to the other two Pia’s) who had also disappeared back in 1988. 

Piia Irmeli Ristikankare fit into this already bizarre pattern like a hand in a twisted glove. She disappeared in the first week of October, on a Friday night. Like Pia Kuru and Pia Töyli, she was born in 1974, but she was younger than the other two victims at the time of her disappearance. But, get this: all the disappearances happened three years apart. Three Pia’s, who each disappeared three years apart, and each time the victim was three years older than the prior victim. Piia Ristikankare was 14, Pia Kuru was 17, and Pia Töyli was 20.

Police feared that there was much more to this case than they originally thought. Perhaps the answers laid in the unsolved disappearance of Piia Ristikankare. They had a second look into the circumstances of her disappearance, hoping to find more evidence. 

Piia Ristikankare came from a town in southern Finland, called Piikkiö. She went to school in the nearby city of Turku and travelled there by bus every day. Piia lived with her father and her younger brothers. Her parents had separated a couple of years before, as her mom was an alcoholic, which did not fit in with their Jehovah’s Witness beliefs. Piia helped her father out with babysitting her younger siblings when he had to go out.

On Friday, the 7th of October, Piia left Turku around 3:30PM and arrived home about an hour later. She cancelled plans with her friends, as she had promised her dad, Heikki, that she would look after her 3-year-old brother, Kallea. That night, her father was back home at 8PM. Heikki left Piia and her 14-year-old brother, Teio in the living room to go have a sauna in the basement, and that is when Piia and Teio got into a fight over the TV remote and Piia left. She told Teio that she was going to her friend Tina’s house in the nearby village of Paimio, but she never turned up there. 

Heikki drove around the whole weekend, looking for his daughter. She had never run away from home before, and the fight with her brother was not really serious. It was more like a little brother who annoyed his teenage sister. He knew she would not have left her family because of that. She was simply too reliable, and she knew that they needed her.

Heikki also went around to the Pontela youth club, as it held a disco the Friday night of Piia’s disappearance. But nobody saw Piia that night, and even if she had been there, chances are that no one noticed her, as the night ended in chaos, with a brawl.

When Piia had not turned up by Monday morning, Heikki Ristikankare went to police and filed a missing person’s report. He told them that it was unusual for Piia not to be in touch with him and that he was convinced something bad had happened because there was absolutely no sign of her. 

Police decided to interview her schoolmates and friends. Piia had no enemies and her friends described her as quiet, but strong. There were no indications that she was bullied or targeted in any way, so police concluded that no one in Piia’s circle of friends or family would have wanted to cause her harm. If she was taken, it must have been by somebody she did not know.

In the weeks after she vanished, there were a couple of sightings of Piia in Turku. Police followed up and found a teenager with a strong resemblance to Piia and realised that she was the person whom people saw around town.

Winter was drawing closer and Heikki was desperate to find his daughter. He had a feeling that she was no longer alive, but he wanted investigators to find her body before it disappeared under the snow.

Leppinen

Sadly, Piia Ristikankare’s case remains unsolved to this day. So back in 1995, all investigators could do was try and connect a man they already had in custody with her disappearance. It was a long shot, as Piia’s hometown of Piikkiö was more than 180 miles (or 300 kilometres) south of Seinäjoki. 

However, investigators learnt that in 1988, Leppinen was doing his military service in Niinisalo, only a two-hour drive from Piikkiö. It was plausible that he could have gone there, but there was no way of proving it. 

Police in Seinäjoki decided to stick to the two cases where the victims had been located. The cases of Pia Kuru and Pia Töyli were investigated together. Did the same man murder both Pia’s? And was this man Harri Leppinen?

Leppinen’s Mazda was searched again, this time to see if there was anything linking the vehicle to Pia Töyli. The last time she was seen, Pia as wearing a red woollen jacket. Fibres from this jacket was found in Leppinen’s car. But there was no sign of the jacket. In turn, fibres from the Mazda also matched fibres found on Pia’s body. The viscose fibres were rather unique. There was no doubt that the fibres found on Pia was from Leppinen’s car.

The snow was melting after another unrelenting winter. In Leppinen’s backyard, police found a firepit. The immediately sent forensic technicians to the site to look for anything related to the Pia murders. They found a half-burnt buckle, matching the one from Pia Töyli’s handbag. There was also a variety of buttons and some burnt pieces of leather.

Coincidentally, a transportation worker at Orismala Station came forward and said that, on a night in early October, a girl knocked at her door, and asked her if she could call for a taxi. The girl had only a leather vest and no overcoat. Pia Töyli’s family confirmed that she owned a leather vest. She loved to wear it, and she was probably wearing it on the night she disappeared. They found a photo of Pia wearing the vest and investigators saw that the buttons on the vest were similar to the buttons found in Leppinen’s firepit. 

However, the woman who needed a taxi on that night, was not Pia. Another woman came forward, identifying herself as the person at Orismala Station. The brand of the leather vest was New Basic. 1600 pieces were sold in Finland since 1989. Although the woman was not Pia, this side-story put police on the right track and strengthened the case against Leppinen. Up to that point, all the focus was on Pia’s red overcoat. Nobody thought about what she wore underneath the jacket.

Both Pia’s helped investigation in some way… When Pia Töyli was found, significant progress was made into to Pia Kuru case. It was obvious that the cases bore the same characteristics and prosecution decided to charge Leppinen with both murders.

Hari Leppinen’s trial date was set in December 1995, after his psychological evaluation was completed. The evaluation found that Leppinen was of sound mind and that he was fit to stand trial. Psychologists agreed that he was emotionally cold and apathetic. All the reports of attempted rapes against him painted the picture of a sexual deviant with hostile impulses. His prior sexual assault victims said that he was disgusting and violent. 

The trial commenced early the following year. At his trial, defence argued that Leppinen had been framed by police and accused law enforcement for planting the fibre evidence to incriminate their client. Also, it was known that Leppinen habitually left his keys in the ignition, so anyone could have taken his car, committed the crime and then returned it. They also pointed out the coincidence with the leather vest and accused police of falsifying evidence. An alternative theory from the defence was that the same person who possibly ‘borrowed’ Leppinen’s car, returned the car, then burnt the evidence in his firepit. 

Then prosecutor reminded the court of the traffic fine Leppinen received on the night of the 1st of October 1991. Harri Leppinen was driving his own car on the night of Pia Kuru’s disappearance, no one else.

On the 16th of March 1996, Harri Leppinen was convicted of both murders and sentenced to eight and a half years for the murder of Pia Kuru and 8 years and 2 months for the murder of Pia Töyli. 

The public and media were outraged and demanded a heavier sentence. Leppinen’s case came before the Court of Appeal in August 1996. At this hearing, he was sentenced to a total of 20 years and six months and ordered to pay compensation to the families of the victims of tens of thousands of Markkas.  

Leppinen’s final bid for an appeal was denied by the Supreme Court.

Throughout his time in prison, Leppinen was steadfast in professing his innocence. He said police planted the evidence against him, simply because they wanted to solve the case. Police responded to his claims, saying that it was absolute nonsense.   

However, when another young woman called Piia was murdered in 1998, the public momentarily doubted Leppinen’s guilt. But her murderer was captured a month after her death and police confirmed that the case was unrelated to the Kuru and Töyli cases. It also happened in January, not October, in a town three and a half hours’ drive northwest from Seinäjoki. 

Online forums and gossip mills theorised about the Pia murders. There were simply too many similarities to believe that Leppinen had not planned it in advance. One story that surfaced was that Leppinen’s brother had a girlfriend called Pia in the early 1990s. Were the murders perhaps because of a fixation on her? The speculation on the forum carries on to say that the brother’s girlfriend defended Leppinen, saying that he never made her uncomfortable or caused her any trouble. All of this, of course, is speculation. 

In April 2002, there was a new development in the Piia Ristikankare-case. 14 years after she was last seen, a strange letter arrived at Kaarina Police. It was an eyewitness account of someone who claimed to have driven around in the area of Piikkiö on the 7th of October 1988. The person claimed that he saw a man carrying an unconscious girl to a car, and then load her into the trunk. This happened around midnight. The letter even gave the registration number of the vehicle. When police followed up, the car belonged to a known sex offender in Turku, but there was not enough evidence to prove whether the anonymous eyewitness account was true or not.

The sender of the letter signed the letter “Tom on Borås” and did not leave any contact details. They only clue was that the letter was sent from Sweden. Police appealed to the public for information and used the media to ask the anonymous writer to come forward. But there was no further communication. 

But because of renewed interest, more witnesses made themselves known. In 2003, a retired fisherman called the police hotline and reported an incident that had been haunting him for more than a decade. He said that, one day – around the time of Piia’s disappearance he saw a strange big boat in the water near Piikkiö. The boat seemed out of place, as it was made for sea and the bay at Piikkiö was only a shallow one. On the boat, he saw two men throwing a large object into the water. When they noticed the elderly fisherman, they were visible startled and left as quickly as they could. However, so many years after the fact, police could not find the boat or the two men described by the fisherman.

Sad as the story of Piia Ristikankare’s disappearance was, there has never been any concrete evidence linking Harri Leppinen to the case. The fact that it fit into the pattern of the Pia-murders, was deemed to be mere coincidence.  

For the families of Pia Kuru and Pia Töyli, there was little justice in their tragic stories. Harri Leppinen was released in 2004. And went back to his father’s warehouse where he continued working as a welder. He went back to live in the same town, keeping his own name and carried on with his life as if nothing ever happened.

If you’d like to read more about this case, have a look at the resources used for this episode in the show notes. 

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