I covered this already a few years ago here:
http://www.zodiackillersite.com/viewtopic.php?f=99&t=1237&p=12470&hilit=bodom#p12470

But as the years go on there is less and less available online in English. Back when I wrote my original post there was a lot of translated coverage of the retrial, but most of this seems to have disappeared over the years.

I am also very interested in the case of Kyllikki Saari so if, as your username suggests, you are Finnish yourself it would be great if you can share any information here on these cases that isn’t available to non-Finnish speakers

What do you think about Nils Gustafsson? It’s a close one, but I think his injuries were too severe to be self-inflicted. Plus there are at least 2 very good suspects, and I believe 2 fishermen saw an unidentified man at the tent around the time of the murders (I think the sketch is a great likeness for Hans Assman, who is my preferred suspect). I also don’t put much faith in any analysis of the tent this far down the road – it is extremely unlikely that it was stored in such a way that blood stains or other biological evidence wasn’t smeared from inside to outside etc. (this being 1960s standards of evidence storage).

Kyllikki Saari might have been an accident, potentially eliminating Assmann as the Lake Bodom guy:

https://fotostrasse.com/lake-bodom-murders/

Karl Gyllström was known to cut tents. Someone could have copy-catted him by doing so, however he actually had confessed to the crimes. Thus, putting away any speculation, both cases might be accepted as ‘solved’ (as long as there are no additional ‘facts’). Also, Gyllströms wife can be understood when claiming her man was asleep. Guess she knew about the tent-cutting stuff and she didn’t want her husband (thus also her) to be connected to that homicide, especially after he had taken his own life anyway.

QT

FinnishThinker
Is the actual ‘suicide note’ of Karl Gyllström viewable in its entirety? If so,
is the wording of his note ambiguous or unclear in its claim that he
committed the Lake Bodom murders?

Sure i can write here as much thing i find, Kyllikki Saari case is very interesting too, i have visited the swamp spot where she was found many times. I actually could get some information that is not public anywhere.
I think that Nils is agood suspect, if i remember right he said he did it but denied when it was on court (sorry im not sure how to say this :/).

ido live in Finland and i have some decent contacts. If you have questions im more tha n happy to answer.

Unless the wife of Karl Gyllström has stated that Karl Gyllström thought police
were going to charge him with the crime, and her also, then there’s not much
else to discuss. Karl Gyllström, in his degraded mental state before his apparent
suicide, may have hoped he could spare his wife being placed in prison – that’s really
the only reason he could have for writing in a note that he committed the murders if
he didn’t commit the murders (other than that other reason he could have, that he
actually did commit the murders…)

In the absence of a declaration from Karl Gyllström’s wife stating some reason as I have
suggested, it is reasonable to conclude that he did commit the murders because his
note apparently asserts he did. We can’t read Swedish or Finnish, so we have to form an
opinion on any such note only from people who can read any such note.
Cheers

And he could have cleared his wife’s reputation by writing "I didn’t do it" before his suicide. The only option for him not being the assailant was if the note had not been written by him. Was the note found at his home or near Lake Bodom, anybody knows?

QT

I’ve read a couple of books they’ve published here in Finland about these killings and although all kinds of suspects are proposed, I have to say I’m strongly of the opinion that it was a love drama of some kind and that Nils Gustafsson did it. It’s just the simplest and most likely explanation. He even confessed to it back in the day. The injuries he sustained were in fact much milder than what has traditionally been reported. It would have been entirely possible for them to be self-inflicted.

By the way, there’s a lengthy thread on a Finnish crime discussion forum where they talk about the possibility of Zodiac being at Bodom

Yeah Nils is one of the most likely suspects imo aswell. And that could actually explain misspelling of Z, most of finnish peoples suck in english, either writing or talking. T

I agree that Gustafsson being the perpetrator is far and away the most probable explanation, but there are too many unanswered questions to rule out a couple of the other front runners.
There is the mysterious case of Assman at the hospital the morning after the murders, although apparently this has now been debunked. I find it very odd that a doctor or other hospital staff would make up such a story, so it’s hard to know if that did indeed happen. If it did, it’s far too odd to be a coincidence.
I am fairly certain that the fishermen who saw someone by the tent are good witnesses, and this is why Assman remains top of my suspect list. This picture of Assman, the police sketch based on the fishermen’s description, and the picture from one of the victims’ funerals is another coincidence that is hard to ignore:

This is so much the killer on his victim’s funeral. Definitely the same person, imo.

Very good find.

QT

This is so much the killer on his victim’s funeral. Definitely the same person, imo.

Very good find.

QT

A brilliant find, I agree…. but not mine. I found it on another forum but the internet trail is too vague to see who should be given credit. I think Assman lived only 5km from the lake at the time of the murders, so there is the possibility that he was simply swept up in the communal grieving, it’s the type of event that would have had led to unusually high funeral attendance, as still occurs today.
He has quite a distinctive face and that sketch is a really good match – which opens up another odd but (barely) plausible scenario. He may well have been the man at the tent, but not the murderer. If he was the killer of Kyllikki Saari a few years prior then he would have wanted to stay away from police. As a former Nazi officer at Auschwitz, coming across the Bodom crime scene may not have been traumatic for him and he may have decided simply to walk on and not get involved. But I see that scenario as something desperate a defence lawyer would employ, it’s hard to believe.

One thing that has always niggled me about Gustafsson’s injuries is his broken jaw. There are 2 possibilities that cause conflict:
1)It was self-inflicted – Imagine the conviction you would need to strike yourself hard enough to break your own jaw. Not only that, I am not sure the physics is even possible to gain enough power/momentum in a strike on your own face to achieve it.
2)It was caused by one of the other victims in a fight earlier that night, which then led to Gustafsson taking revenge on them all. The reason this doesn’t work for me is that any broken bone is agony – and a broken jaw would be highly agitated by the kind of upper body movement necessary to murder 3 teenagers. Any fight back by a victim would have been extremely hard to bear, but I will admit it sounds like they were very much taken unawares in their sleep. It seems hard to believe that he could murder all 3 without any waking and fighting back, however.

Gustafsson’s shoes are also a mystery. I cannot think why an unsub would take the time to change into his shoes, commit the murder, then hide the shoes in a tree and presumably change back into his own shoes.
Equally, I can’t see why Gustafsson would hide the shoes in a tree rather than put some rocks in them and throw them in the lake (I can’t find any record of divers searching the lake for other evidence). The claim that he removed his shoes because he was worried about evidence is odd considering that, if he was the killer, it is very unlikely that only his shoes had sustained blood spatter, so why didn’t he remove his shirt and trousers also?