Welcome to the first episode of This Disturbs Me. I had to think a lot when it came to choosing the subject for the first episode. It's part of this genre that there usually is a case or two per episode. I wanted my first case come in as a sort of no-brainer, but as something that's not done like a million times already. This case became Jammu Siltavuori. This is a case that is extremely famous in Finland. Certain trigger warnings apply. This story involves sexual abuse and murder of children, and graphic depiction of the bodies. If these are triggering issues for you, I recommend to skip this episode.
This is one of the first cases I have heard of. When these murders occurred, I was a 13-month-old baby, but when I was 9 or 10, my dad told me about Jammu as a warning example of things that may be lurking outside. Many true crime enthusiasts probably recognise the feeling I had, where in addition to the automatic shock of the case it started to intrigue me endlessly. I was a pretty precocious kid, so instead of swarming the word Jammu in my speech, like people used to by then, I talked about "case Siltavuori". As an adult, I still encourage to rather use the last name of the criminal rather than the first or the nick name. The word Jammu is easier in terms of storytelling, but it's pretty blunt to refer to a murderer casually by their first or nick name.
I seem to know a lot of rumours and unconfirmed details about the case of Jammu Siltavuori, which probably is only natural, since I've grown with this case and it's Finnish. In spite of this, I will only use facts that are confirmed by a pro that has worked closely with this case, or by a family member. I also name this source whenever I can.
Apart from the internet and other books, I've used the book Kuusi suomalaista murhaa (Six Finnish murders) by Hannes Markkula. Markkula's name is one you should pay mind, if you're interested in Finnish true crime. He is a now retired crime reporter of Ilta-Sanomat, whose very long career features a vast quantity of Finnish cases and other books like Kuusi suomalaista murhaa. This book came out in 1997, when Siltavuori still sat his sentence, less than 10 years since the crimes. This is one of the reasons I take a slightly more moderate attitudes than this book displays. In this book, you can find pretty detailed addresses, up to the apartment number from Siltavuori, but here I will only post the street names. I believe there has been enough people to come stare and get shocked by these locations relevant to this case during these 30 years.
From a burglar to a family man to
a convicted pedophile
Antti Veikko Ilmari Siltavuori, called Veikko, was born in Vaasa in October 29th 1926. There's relatively little to know from Siltavuori's first years. He had a sister, but the childhood wasn't very happy, because the family was poor and their dad was a stern and violent alcoholic. Here can you put a check on your serial killer bingo, even if Siltavuori's wasn't exactly a serial killer. There's research, that violent criminals often have had a miserable childhood and/or a broken home. Based on it, it wasn't particularly surprising, that Siltavuori started his criminal career already on the 40s, when he was in his twenties. The verdicts mostly came from petty crimes and burglary.
When Siltavuori met his future wife AK in Helsinki, he had already sat in prison. His sister played the matchmaker and recommended his brother heartily to AK, who had already gone through several failed love affairs and was a lone mom. They got married in early 50s. The beginning was promising, since the man was sober and had a good reputation, and not even the prison sentence scared the woman off. Siltavuori also seemed to get along brilliantly with AK's little girl. The pair had a kid of their own, a boy. Siltavuori's sister organised them to move in a villa in Vihti, 50 km away from Helsinki. You will want to remember this villa. Unfortunately the marital bliss wasn't long-lived. Siltavuori transformed stern in similar way that his father had been, yelling at his wife for anything. When AK suffered a miscarriage and was checked into hospital, Siltavuori placed his son away from them in secret and informed his wife that he will file for divorce. When she got out of the hospital, AK travelled depressed to Imatra to her sister's place. She missed her son, who a social worker found placed in Otaniemi, Espoo. Then AK travelled back to the capital area and begged Siltavuori to take her back and bring the little boy back to her. Finally the man gave in. They reunited and moved back to Vihti.
Although Siltavuori had changed. His behaviour was weird and even neighbours picked on him calling him a grease beard. The situation escalated, when AK's little girl told her mom dad had shown his penis to her and behaved weirdly. AK got confused and told about it to her sister-in-law. Soon the police came and took Siltavuori. He was detained for 3 days, during which they also wanted to hear from AK, who tried to convince them the child had only joked. Finally the man was released and everyone tried to forget the case. Even the rumours ceased.
The family decided to move to Joensuu in Easter Finland for a job. The move seemed like a sorely needed new beginning and Siltavuori got a job. But he was changing into even more restless and withdrawn. He would disappear into the night with a crowbar in his backpack. Every now and then he would accuse his wife of poisoning his food with ratsbane. The rumour had also started that there was a predator stalking girls. He would ride a red speckled bicycle and he was described with a protuding chin and cheekbones. He was also said to had raped a 5-year-old girl. AK didn't connect the rumours to her husband until the police came to take her for a hearing. At the station she heard Siltavuori had been arrested accused of the rape and several burglaries. In the court he got a prison sentence of 7,5 years. In the meantime, AK had her third child. But this time, she divorced Siltavuori herself. The year was 1955 or 1956.
I have to say, based on this interview, where AK tells about her life with Siltavuori, she has had incredibly difficult 10 years. She arrived to Helsinki in 1945, after which she got pregnant with her first child, then got married to Siltavuori around 1950, had two children and one miscarriage with him, the decline of his mental health, all of these rumours, the abuse of her own child and finally the verdict. It's easy to look back from 2010s and wonder why she didn't go after him showing his peen, but if we think that the year was around 1952, a mom with small children has had a gigantic threshold to divorce a husband, who first seemed to be godsent.
But not even the prison kept Jammu Siltavuori from being an ass. He made a lot of escape attempts. In 1956, he got an attempted murder on his account. He served in Turku central prison, Kakola, and he was working on an appeal on his verdict. He had asked to see Kakola's vice director to talk about his appeal. When Siltavuori arrived to the booked meeting, the director paid attention to him being very nervous. The director asked the head guard perform a search on Siltavuori. That's when Siltavuori drew a knife from under his belt and stabbed the director in the stomach and the head guard in the back. Fortunately neither of them passed away because of the attack. Siltavuori got an additional 9,5 years to his verdict for attempted murder and a first degree assault. He made several more escape attempts even after this and managed to escape in 1966, until he was found in Hyvinkää north of Helsinki. A little later he was paroled.
I was interested in the name Jammu. I didn't really find an explanation for it, since it's not derived from any of Siltavuori's first names. In her anonymous 1966 Hymy interview, the ex-wife uses the name Veikko. Apparently he was known as Jammu in his home in East Helsinki, where he and his car had been spotted in March 1989 during the disappearance of the girls. Also some of the police officers on the case have used this name in some interviews, so I assume this is a legit nickname. Also the kids who knew Siltavuori in those days called him Jammu-setä, Uncle Jammu. Siltavuori apparently had a lot of ex-cons around him, so maybe this name has started from there.
Our trace on Siltavuori ends to the latter half of the 60s, when he is paroled. Here's almost a 20-year leap before the story gets new relevant information. Does this mean that Siltavuori walked the line all this time? Hardly. In the online discussion you tend to run into all kinds of rumours on what he did, but since I couldn't find confirmed information, I'll jump straight into year 1984. At this point Siltavuori is in his late 50s and a full on geezer. When you look at his mugshot, he looks at least 70, some think even 80. Around 1984-85 he fell guilty for the prolonged abuse of 10-12 year-old girls. Markkula describes in his book, that Siltavuori hosted parties for children and teenagers. He sold them chocolate, refreshments, alcohol, and prescribed drugs. Sometimes he abused the children as their payment for these goods. He never confessed to any abuse, but always had an explanation to who had turned him in simply out of malice. Regardless of it, he still got another prison sentence. Not for long enough, I'm afraid.
The murders
Päivi-Maria Hopiavuori, called Päivi, was born May 4th 1980, and Tanja Johanna Pirinen, called Johanna, was born November 7th 1980. The girls lived in the same block and were good friends. Both of their moms were sole custodians, who looked after their children conscientiously by setting them strict curfews, like 8-year-olds should have. March the 3rd in 1989 was a Friday, when the girls went outside to play to the yard of their block by Yläkiventie in Myllypuro of Helsinki. It was around 7 p.m. At some point a man appeared, and he started chatting with the girls. The man was Jammu Siltavuori, of course. He lived a couple of kilometers away by Kauppakartanonkatu in Itäkeskus.
Even though Siltavuori has from the beginning given an impression of a shady and shabby guy, he wasn't exactly low on currency. He had received an inheritance from his sister in 1983 and owned now the villa in Vihti. He had also inherited an apartment on Aleksis Kiven katu near the central Helsinki and it had been rented out for years. Siltavuori himself resided in so called Heka flats, or the rental apartments from Helsinki city, which were rented out primarily to homeless people. You could say Siltavuori absolutely didn't fit the bill. Wonder if he just gabbled his way into applying one of these, and based only on the appearance of the applicant, he was given one. He also had several motor vehicles, such as a truck, a tractor, and a couple of cars. He was cheap, so he had cash too, especially as he sold refreshments he had in store for kids.
This is relevant, if you want to pay attention to Siltavuori's own mumbo jumbo about the course of events. He had determined, that a friend of his called Arska had stolen 200 thousand Finnish Marks from him. Apparently Arska lived near the girls, so Siltavuori had ended up loitering in Myllypuro thinking about "stalking" Arska. On the other hand, if this was Uncle Jammu known by all the pre-teens of the area, one can assume that he has loitered around quite a lot without having anything sensible to do.
However, Arska was a real person. Arska is a Finnish nick name for e.g. Ari, which is a male first name. His full name has never been revealed, and it doesn't have to. As a disclaimer I'm going to say that sometimes Arska is referred to as Nipa, which is based on the book Pohjolan poliisi kertoo ("The Nordic Police tells"). For the book, the names of Arska and also the girls have been changed. I'm going to use the name Arska anyway, because it's used in several reliable sources. Arska has later confirmed the most people's assumptions of Jammu Siltavuori being a pedophile as much as he's been able to. He had seen, how the gaze in the eyes of his friend had changed, when a girl around 10 had appeared. Siltavuori was always busy to deny his child molestation, only said he gave them car rides for money, but Arska never saw a boy in his car.
So Jammu Siltavuori was in Myllypuro spying on Arska as he said, or looking for new victims.
Päivi and Johanna were younger than most of Siltavuori's victims in the 80s, but older than the poor 5-year-old in the 50s. Maybe Siltavuori seemed like a harmless old man. He sweet talked to the girls skillfully and found common interests with them; cats and dogs. Finally he lured the kids in his car using maybe chocolate or soda.
What happened after this, is a little unclear. Everybody knows the end result, but a clear view on the course of events has been impossible to build. Siltavuori might have taken Päivi and Johanna around a bit with his car. Finally they ended up to the Vihti villa anyway. Through the fiber analysis it's been deduced that Johanna has never left Siltavuori's car inside the house. It's possible, that he has offered the girls e.g. soda mixed with something. Päivi has been confirmed to have been inside the house. Fibers from her clothes have been found in 5 different chairs and the bed in the house. A disgusting detail is that these fibers were also discovered in Siltavuori's underwear.
On the same night on Friday's eve 10.46 p.m. Päivi's mother called the police after the girls went missing. She had tried to find them by herself and her friends and looked for them in the vicinity of the house and the neighbourhood. The police started their own searches immediately. Several patrols were sent there, as well as dogs and a helicopter. The taxis, the traffic department, radio stations and television were informed. All of the neighbourhood residents were talked to before the Saturday morning. Searches were reached to cover off-roads. The girls were outgoing and the area was thoroughly familiar to them, so getting lost wasn't regarded likely, but since they had left no traces, the police had no choices other than grab every possibility. On the Saturday morning the off-roads searches were finished without results. The criminal police took over the responsibility, since missing people were their area, but the police kept patrolling the area. All of the class mates and teachers to the girls were spoken to.
It all started to clear, when the police got a tip from the public on the Saturday evening. The tip giver was a Myllypuro lady, who had walked past the girls' block on the night they went missing around 8.20 p.m. The lady had recognised the girls from the picture and told the police she had seen them with a short, beret-wearing old man. In the Pasila police station the lady was shown pictures out of people in the register, but she hadn't recognised any.
As Sunday dawned, the girls still hadn't been found. The criminal police got another tip, that accommodated the previous one, but in addition there was now an old car that belonged to the old man. The informant knew to say that the man had behaved oddly.
On the Sunday afternoon the police got the pivotal tip. This time the informant had recognised the man, and told them they had seen a man called Jammu in the area on Thursday already, and that he had been there with his old car. The informant also knew that Jammu had history as a child molestor.
It's not uncommon, that in these kinds of events the police turns to survey sexual offenders living in the area. The time was late 80s, and the databases weren't nearly where they are nowadays. When they had the list of sexual offenders, they didn't know, which ones of them were out of prison. And they didn't know of Siltavuori for certain. The tips were significant anyway, and the police got a search warrant for the geezer's apartment. The police weren't exactly announcing to come, but acquired a janitor's key and went inside Siltavuori's apartment.
Siltavuori sat on the couch looking slightly surprised, but completely calm. First he pretended he didn't know what was going on. The police paid attention to a lot of uncommon things in the apartment - a large quantity of children's videos - Siltavuori explained he liked movies - and almost 300 chocolate bars. Once again Siltavuori explained that he used to binge on chocolate, but after he had diabetes he had to stop. Because he was known as an unpredictable man, sergeant Jaakko Ridanpää performed a search on him. By closer inspection they found a knife hidden horizontally under his belt and a gas spray under him on the couch. The police decided to take Siltavuori to Pasila for interrogation.
Apart from the flat, Siltavuori's vehicles were also an interest for the police. They knew he had several, so even if he "forgot" to hand the keys to his car, one of the police mentioned, that he also owned a grey Ford Granada. This car was also decided to be taken to Pasila for inspection.
Sgt Ridanpää was about to sit behind the wheel of the Ford in order to drive it after the police car. Then he decided to check the car's trunk before it. As soon as he opened the trunk, the fumes of something burned all but smothered his face. He waved the police car closer. In the trunk he dicovered canisters, a shovel, and an obscure plastic roll of burned residues. In this situation maybe the most unscrupulous conversation was had. The police asked, what was in the roll. And Jammu Siltavuori replied: "Meat." The police proceeded to ask, if the girls were there. Siltavuori said yes. The weekend long manhunt was over. It was around 6 p.m. on the Sunday evening March 5th 1989. The girls had been found and the culprit had been caught.
The interrogations & the trial
Siltavuori's Ford Granada was driven straight to the forensic department of the University of Helsinki. The preliminary autopsies were performed the next day on 6th March. The children's bodies were extremely burned. The biggest separate pieces were only 46 and 41 cm long. Among the residue there was pieces of the heads and lower limbs and detached teeth. There was also dirt, pieces of plank, nails and melted plastic. Because the bodies were burned this bad, it was impossible to determine, whether the girls had suffered sexual abuse. In Johanna's body there was a substantial amount of pentobarbital, which is a strong sedative. Päivi's body had strangling bruises, but also some pentobarbital.
In the interrogations Siltavuori didn't admit to anything at first. After that his story has been more or less the same. And this is his story:
On Friday 3rd of March he had been in Myllypuro for stalking Arska, who he suspected to have stolen a large sum of money. At the yard of Yläkiventie, two little girls had joined his company, and he didn't know them before. As he said, he hadn't shown any interest whatsoever on the girls. As he was leaving the spot, the girls wanted to come with him. One of the girls even jumped to his backseat. So Siltavuori told the girls had persuaded him to drive away with them. When he was thinking, how to get rid of the girls, he had ended up in driving to a remote road and strangling the girls to death. After that he had placed them on the planks he had taken out of his trunk and set them on fire. The bodies he had packed in his trunk and carefully collected everything on the ground even though it was too dark to see anymore.
At this point Siltavuori's story has a break, after which he told he had come home to wait for the night, when he could dispose of the bodies so that people would find them. When the police asked, why he had ended up in killing the girls, he had thought he'd take a revenge on Arska, who the girls might have known.
Because the police knew Siltavuori had a cabin in Vihti, they informed the press about him and his car and asked for eyewitnesses to survey his moves. In Vihti his neighbours told the police they had seen Siltavuori burn something at his yard in the weekend, and they had thought it was trash. The remote road, where he had told he had burned the bodies, was never found. Instead the police found burn marks and residue at the yard, which happened to contain microscopical human residues. It's possible, that Siltavuori has burned the bodies in two location; first at the remote road and then at his own yard, even if the road was never found.
It was impossible to solve definitively, what was the girls' final cause of death. It might have been drug overdose, strangulation, or burning.
When the police asked for eyewitnesses to survey Siltavuori's acts, they unexpectedly got clues from Paltamo in Mid-Finland. Siltavuori had rented an old farm from there. When the criminal police got the tip, the local police was asked to do a home search at the place.
When the police when in, they were shocked. The farm was renovated as prison cells for children. The cells had bars and locked doors, and everything, even the small toilets, were measured for children. However, the investigations never proved the girls to have been locked in there, or anyone, for that matter. When Siltavuori was asked about it, he continued his mumbo jumbo about Arska and how the prison was part of his revenge on him. The house was burned down in early 90s, so whatever proof it might have had has probably vanished with the flames.
Jammu Siltavuori's trial began at the end of 1989. During that he already got assaulted in prison, when another inmate snuck into his cell and hit him in the head with a stool. Siltavuori's line of defense pled in guilty for manslaughter. Defense argued Siltavuori had killed the girls with a whim of mind thinking about Arska. The money theft had to be considered a valid excuse.
Arska denied any theft. He didn't even know Siltavuori had so much money. Siltavuori was performed a forensic psychiatric mental examination. In Finland these are done to determine, if the person has such a psychiatric condition, that would excuse them from a prison sentence and get admitted for involuntary treatment in a psychiatric facility. Siltavuori fell between the two categories and was determined to be only diminishedly culpable. It meant he couldn't get a life sentence, but he also couldn't get admitted into involuntary treatment. After an eventful trial he was sentenced for 15 years in prison, which was the max sentence to his deeds. In addition he was ordered to pay compensations to the girls' mothers for mental suffering.
Both the prosecutor and the defence appealed to the higher court. The sentence stayed the same, so they made an appeal to the supreme court. The supreme court held the sentence, but took down the compensation demand as unlawful. By the law of that time the court could only demand for compensations, if the convicted had meant to cause mental suffering to the victims' families. Because Siltavuori wasn't deemed to have done this, the demands lapsed. This of course was a difficult setback for the low-income mothers, who had lost their children and had only been able to bury them and pay for the funeral because of charity and people's goodwill.
By that time, the families of crime victims were basically left on their own. That can also be told from the press circulating around this case. The whole case bases mostly around the story of Jammu Siltavuori, which unfortunately is the solution I have had to make, because there simply isn't a lot of information about the victims and their families. On the other hand, it's all good, after it's all private information. On the other hand, I found the girls' obituary. These are little "ads" you can post in your local newspaper. They have the names of the deceased, their dates of birth and death, usually a cross, a little verse and the list of the people, usually family, who mourn for them. These obituaries cost nowadays around 500-600 euros, so to post one it assumes a certain financial status. When it's about victims for crime, it's very understandable, if you don't want to post an obituary, even if you had the money, because these kinds of cases gather a lot of curious people around them and it may cause strong anxiety to the family. Despite all of this, these obituaries have been published, and the last line of it reads "the compassion of the outsiders has carried us in our grief". What I mean with all this analysing, is how unfortunate it is, how profiled this case has become into one sick piece of shit.
Late years
Speaking of profiling and being prominent, Jammu Siltavuori has given one televised interview in 1999, on a Finnish TV show called Kolmas pyörä. This interview can be found on YouTube. It's a very disgusting thing to watch, because Siltavuori plays a victim real hard, but doesn't deny murdering the girls. Something about the geezer's habitus is extremely appalling. Him trying to talk down everything connected to his mumbo jumbo way of talking makes it somehow very repulsing to listen to.
The publication year of this interview is very topical. In 1999, Siltavuori had done 10 years; two thirds of his sentence of 15 years, and he was getting out within a year. Understandably his upcoming release caused a lot of rage in people and a lot of people expected to get to play a vigilante on Siltavuori.
Siltavuori was released from Helsinki Central Prison, "Sörkka", on January 31st 2000. However, he was transferred almost immediately to involuntary treatment in Niuvanniemi hospital for the criminally insane in Kuopio. Because he had done his sentence, he was admitted to Niuvanniemi as a civilian inpatient. Throughout the 2000s, there was a lot of rumours going on about his whereabouts. He was "spotted" in Turku, Hyvinkää, Espoo... But apparently based on a lot of assaults he suffered while being imprisoned, he was almost completely immobile, and spent his final years in a wheelchair. He was significantly unhappy to his involuntary treatment verdicts, and tried to appeal many times during the 2000s. Towards the end he became increasingly demented. Veikko "Jammu" Siltavuori died in Niuvanniemi on March 9th 2012. He was 85.
As it's characteristic to a lot of stories of crime, this too is very frustrating in a lot of senses. In his past, Siltavuori had done a lot of violent crimes, also murder attempts. Deeds against children had occurred almost through his entire adulthood, of which the most recent verdict was less than 5 years old. Siltavuori was a known pedophile in East Helsinki and the investigations went to the right direction from the beginning. These things make you wonder if the murders of Päivi and Johanna could have been prevented, if the legislation by the time would have linked child abuse and violent crimes, and based on e.g. the case from 1984-85 Siltavuori would have been treated as a dangerous recidivist. On the other hand, Siltavuori's case became a turning point in Finland and in the 90s, a lot of the laws concerning pedophiles were renewed. Unfortunately that seems to be the case, that you need a sufficiently high profile case to put the pressure on the legislators to change these laws.
However, in the summer 2019 another vast case of pedophilia was discovered in the East Helsinki, when a 64-year-old man called Eno was arrested. Eno's case holds a lot of eerie similarities to the Myllypuro murders. By the time I'm writing this, Eno apparently is not suspected of homicide. I'm going to follow this case and hope that this time the sick asshole is treated like he's supposed to, so this case wouldn't escalate any more from this.
Sources (only in Finnish):
Books:
Markkula, Hannes. 1997. Kuusi suomalaista murhaa. Gummerus. Helsinki.
Pohjolan poliisi kertoo. 1991. Pohjolan poliisin urheiluliitto. Helsinki.
Links: