The Finnish Oven Murder

thank you In 1960 Hilka Hilevi Saronen lived with her husband's panty friends, Olavi Saranan, in the quiet but cold village of Krotola in Kokomaki, Finland. Everyone who knew Hilka described her as a sweet and loving woman and from the outside looking in she seemed to have it all. When Hilka was only 33 years old, she and Penty had had five children together, had been on their own and had bought her brothers' share of the family home and now they owned it all and her husband also had a good job. He was a stonemason, a trade with bright prospects and one that was always in need in the rural farming village they lived in, but what began as an almost quaint story quickly turned sour when Penty began drinking, the changes occurring slowly at first. and Penty was only really drinking a few beers with friends in the local pubs in the village, but once he tried there was no turning back, Penty started drinking a lot more and before anyone realized he was spending most of the family income in drinks and taking out his frustrations on his wife, he complained that she was a bad housewife and a lousy cook, without even taking into account that she had spent almost everything they had drunk on alcohol instead of food. and his family was left living in fear of his wrath with little to nothing to eat and often nothing to heat the house in a country that is known for its harsh winters and snowy weather.

According to some reports, the pushing and shoving turned into punching and kicking and then went even further, with villagers claiming to have seen Hilka around town with bruises. But what they didn't know was exactly how far things had gone behind closed doors. There are stories of Pente putting Hilka's head in a bucket of feces and another saying that she had stabbed her with a fork because she thought she had eaten herself. Like a pig at the table, rumors continued to circulate around town about Panty and her horribly abusive behavior towards Hilka, that it was much harder to do something about her situation, especially when she had five children living in the house with her and They were starting. show signs of severe malnutrition Complaints about the children's deteriorating conditions led to the authorities entering the home and taking them all to live in foster homes and although it can be argued that it was good that the children were removed of their homes.

At home, it also meant that Hilco was left completely alone with the man who was abusing her, with no witnesses to actually stop him. Hilka was seen around town again with more and more bruises, but there was someone in her life who was determined not to. Forget her, her eldest son, Serpo, was about 13 at the time and was growing into a brilliant young man. That year he managed to travel back to the family home saying that she was bringing a classmate with him and that she wanted to spend Christmas with his parents. but he was also planning something special for them, seppo showed up the day before and told his parents that they hoped he would want to surprise his mother and spend more time with her, but when seppo and his friend approached the wooden cabin, It was Sepple's house.

They were there to spend an unusual evening. There was no sign of anyone outside, but the front door was open, so the two boys walked in thinking they were about to give Seppo's parents a nice surprise. They did surprise someone, even if it was a You really can't say if it was a pleasant surprise or not, because only Penty was in the house and he ran out of the kitchen shouting that the grave was early. Panty closed the kitchen door behind him and led the boys to another room, seeing as she could only afford it. her to warm up a room so everyone would stay there, but she didn't say anything about Hilka or where she was.

Finally Sapple realized something was wrong and asked Penty where Helca was and Penty told the children that she had gone some reports. They say that Panty said that Hilka had disappeared while Penty had been putting fuel in the sauna and some say that he said that they had slept together and that she was gone when he woke up, but what both versions have in The most common thing is that it was Hilker who left the house and Pente despite the horrible way his father treated his mother. Seppo was still surprised to hear that she would have simply left Pente, especially without saying a word and he certainly didn't think that she would have gotten very far if Sepul had thought that Helker might have gone to a house where he sometimes worked to earn extra money for family, but Panty immediately rejected this saying that even when Hilka had said she was working in that house, she had been lying, this didn't sit well with Seppo, but nothing seemed out of place in the house or even with her father, who Despite the harsh things he had to say about Hilka she didn't seem to be acting any different than usual until it was time for everyone to go to bed and they had to bring some extra blankets from the back bedroom.

The only way to get to that room was through the kitchen and Panty opened the door keeping a close eye on the children as they walked down the hallway. room and gathered what they needed, but almost immediately that feeling that something wasn't quite right came back to seppo penty refused to turn on the kitchen light saying it was broken and the kids would have to find their way in the dark . but the light in the hallway was on and with that light Sepul could see that the kitchen was a mess, there was a large stone

oven

in the kitchen, one that had actually been extended between two rooms and could heat both of them, but also He knew that his parents hadn't used it in about eight years, this meant that over time the

oven

became extra storage space and became home to many objects and utensils, but for some reason all of those objects were now scattered all over the Seppo on the kitchen floor he asked Panty why it was like that and Penty told him that he had to move them all so he could clean the oven, but why did Penty suddenly decide to clean the oven when no one had used for almost a decade?

He couldn't understand that, so his mind kept coming back to it and he couldn't get rid of this nagging feeling that something was wrong after the kids saw the state the kitchen was in and started watching them even more closely, making sure that No tried to enter any other room in the house and watch them through the windows every time they left after only one day, Toad's friend cut his trip short and went home early, but Seppo was left trying to At least find out what he was doing, aside from his missing mother, the mess in the kitchen, and a missing patch of sand outside the barn, everything around the house seemed normal, at least the parts he could see.

Seppo had access, so he was left without answers. He knew that his father was abusive and had drunkenly threatened to kill his mother, but there was also the possibility that she had finally had enough of him and ran away, so Sepple let things continue to happen as long as possible. What was left of the vacation in that house with his father and returning to his foster home after the days turned into weeks and then months and no one had heard from Hilka and both Seppo and the people who lived in the village began to suspect that something else was going on.

The villagers reported that Helca was missing. and sepul continued to make trips to the cabin spending days at a time going through the house and looking for clues, even tracing the walls with his fingers to check for hidden seams and searching the stone foundation, but nothing came up, the police came to talk. with panty who said that he had no idea where helca was and that she had simply left him overnight and sepul began to lose hope that he would ever find out what happened to his mother, that was until he took a look in the stone oven.

In the kitchen, for the most part, he looked like he always had, but then the sample saw some rolls of bricks on top that looked significantly newer than the others. He knew that if someone could have taken that oven apart and put it back in. Seppo wrote to the police and asked them to take a look at the furnace, but he heard nothing in 1966. He once again wrote them a letter six years after Helca disappeared and asked them once again to take a closer look at that furnace. oven. He wrote I suspect my father knows more about my mother's disappearance than he has let on.

I clearly opened the oven and closed it again, however the oven had not been used in seven or eight years prior to this, my father was cleaning in the dark even though there was another room lit when I arrived. I think the oven should be dismantled, my father. could do anything, but Serpal's plea again fell on deaf ears, even after he wrote to the press the following year and tried to publicly pressure the police to work on this case, but all he did was create more tension between father and son next time. Penty and Sepple met up with Penty, warned Seppo and told him to stop while he was ahead, suggesting that both men were trying to mind our own business, but Sepple continued to press even when it was necessary until 1972 for the case to be resolved.

The goal of re-examining unsolved cases and deputies was one of the first, especially when law enforcement arrived with the letter that Seppo had sent them more than six years before the detectives approached sir paul and asked him more about his mother and father and during the interview they showed him her panties official statement to the police the statement didn't say much, especially as penty had stuck to his story that hilka had just disappeared, but seppo noticed enough discrepancies between her and his own versions of events. so that investigators finally went to the house and opened the oven on Hulka's birthday on November 27, 1972.

The police arrived at the cabin and took the oven apart. At first they found nothing unusual, but as they went down they found a pile of sand. Only a little later did investigators find a rubber boot and when they pulled it out, a foot came with it. Hilker had been inside the oven for more than 12 years. She had been there the first Christmas Seppo visited. She had been there. During all the searches and when the police first came to talk to Penty and now they finally found her, the combination of the sand and the environment inside the oven had almost mummified her body, including her clothes, she was dressed as if she was going out. including her boots and wool gloves on her hands, and Sepple was able to enter and positively identify her remains more than a decade after her death, but what the kiln did not preserve was enough physical evidence to demonstrate exactly how she He died knowing they probably would.

They got no answer unless Panty confessed, and thinking they had enough circumstantial evidence to try him, the authorities took Penty to court. Penty denied everything, even telling the story that some gypsies had robbed her house the day before Seppo. had arrived but everyone saw through him the court agreed that penty had killed hilka and hidden her body in the oven but what they could not agree on was whether penty had done it intentionally or by accident thinking that It was possible that his death could have been an accident and the result of a drunken ship of violence that went too far, he was tried for involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to eight years in prison, but there is still another twist in this story: the Court Supreme Court reviewed the case and Penty's sentence and determined that there was not enough physical evidence to support the conviction, no one could prove how Hilker had died, therefore no one could prove that Penty had actually killed her and her sentence was overturned despite After everyone knew that Penty had killed his wife, he was suddenly a free man and was allowed to return to the same house he had lived in with her corpse for 12 years.

He remained there for the rest of his life living in squalor until he drank himself to a premature death in 1986. He died at the age of 66. and when others returned to the property after his death, they discovered that the oven was still exactly as the police had left it all those years ago. Penty had lived in that same house judging by the debris and mess left behind, mostly in that same house. The same room as the dismantled brick kiln he had once used to cover his tracks and hide his wife's body in foreign places.