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Real Police Sketches That Haunt Investigations




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Transcript
00:00The Lake Bodum murders are one of the most infamous unsolved homicide cases in the history
00:04of Finland. Lake Bodum is located in the town of Espoo, near the southern tip of the country.
00:10On June 4th, 1960, a group of four teenagers rode around the edge of the lake on their
00:15motorcycles, heading toward a small patch of woods where they planned to set up a tent
00:19and spend the weekend camping. Driving the motorcycles were Nils Gustafsson and Seppo
00:24Boisman, two 18-year-old boys who had been best friends for years. Both of them had their
00:29girlfriends hanging onto them on the back of their mopeds, making for a total of four
00:32of them. Riding behind Seppo was 15-year-old Tuliki Maki, who had introduced her own best
00:38friend Irmeli Yorglund to Nils just a few weeks after she started dating Seppo. And now, just
00:43a few weeks after the two couples had become official, they were off to welcome the summer
00:47with the couple's camping trip. As they stopped in town to pick up some beer and food, the
00:52teenagers got a few suspicious looks from the locals, who thought it was strange to plan
00:55a camping trip near Lake Bodum, which was mostly used for fishing and swimming, but not
00:59so much for camping. Regardless, the teenagers soon reached the campsite, and after pitching
01:04their tent, they enjoyed a carefree evening of drinking, swimming, and fishing. A little
01:09after 2 am, the boys crawled back into a single tent with the girls and went to sleep. The
01:13following morning, the joy of the teenage dream from the previous night had been replaced
01:17by a scene straight out of a horror movie. The tent had collapsed on itself, and the bloody
01:22bodies of the 4 teenagers appeared to be wrapped up inside the tent, with three of them losing
01:27their lives to several stab wounds and blunt force trauma to the head. The only survivor
01:32was Nils Gustafsson, who had been seriously injured, but somehow managed to stay alive
01:36enough time to be rescued. At around 6 am, a group of bird watchers spotted the collapsed
01:41tent and caught a glimpse of a blonde man walking away from the scene. Chalking it up to a wild
01:46party the previous night, they thought nothing of it and failed to call the police. At around
01:5111 am though, a man named Esko Johansson went down to the lake to swim with his young son
01:56when he spotted the collapsed tent in a clearing. When he went over to investigate, he found
02:00the four teens wrapped up in the shredded tent. By the looks of it, someone on the outside
02:05had cut the guy ropes, sliced through the tent, and viciously attacked the kids in their
02:08sleeps with a knife, and possibly some type of bludgeon. Interestingly, all the kids'
02:13wallets, moped keys, and even some of their clothes had been taken by the attacker. As he
02:19took in the gruesome scene, Esko suddenly saw Nils take a sharp breath and move ever so
02:23slightly. As soon as he realized the boy was alive, Esko sped back into town with his son
02:28to alert the police. Upon arriving at the campsite, the cops immediately took Nils back to the hospital
02:34to recover. Although he had suffered from serious brain injuries, Nils recalled the face of a blonde
02:39man dressed in black and red staring down at him through a hole in the tent before the attack.
02:44From his description, police were able to make a sketch of the suspect, which has since become
02:48infamous for its disturbing nature and the man's cold, lifeless stare.
02:53Other fishermen and bystanders also reported seeing the mysterious blonde man walking in the
02:57woods in the early hours of the morning of June 5th, but the only details police really knew about
03:01him were that he was probably in his 20s and around 5 foot 8. You would normally hope that a
03:07police investigation would help shed more light on cases like this, but that's not really the way
03:11things happened in the Lake Boda murders. As soon as the Finnish police began investigating,
03:16they made a series of rookie mistakes that made it even more difficult to solve an already confusing
03:21case, starting with the fact that they failed to put police tape around the crime scene,
03:24leading to the tampering of potential key evidence. The only relevant clues they managed
03:29to gather were Nils Gustafsson's shoes that were less than a mile away from the murder scene.
03:34Shockingly, after setting up dozens of road checkpoints in the woods, the cops ended up
03:38arresting a total of 88 criminals on Finland's most wanted list, but none of them was the Lake Boda
03:43murderer. As the investigation progressed, the cops narrowed down the list of suspects to two.
03:50The main suspect was a man named Vala Jolstrom. Jolstrom had a history of violence towards campers,
03:56and it wasn't unusual for him to throw rocks at people who tried to set up their tents in the woods,
04:00and even put razor blades in their apples for them to swallow. Even though he confessed to the murders
04:05to his neighbor while he was drunk, his wife provided a dodgy alibi for him which the cops ended up
04:10believing for some reason. Some sources claimed that on her deathbed, Jolstrom's wife took back
04:15her statement and confessed that she lied about the alibi, but this was never officially confirmed.
04:21Still, even if Vala Jolstrom was guilty, it would have been impossible to prove as he took his own
04:25life in 1969 by drowning himself in a lake. The second main suspect in the case was Hans Asmin,
04:32a German immigrant who had moved to Finland in the early 1950s and was 36 when the murders took place.
04:37According to police records, Asmin had gone to a nearby surgical hospital the day after the crime
04:43with dirt under his fingernails and red stains on his clothes. Although he was allegedly a camp guard
04:49at a German concentration camp and was later linked to the murders of other teenagers in Finland,
04:53Hans had a rock-solid alibi for the evening of June 5th and was never arrested. With the two men
04:59cleared, the police only really had one lead left. During the victim's funeral, a photograph of the
05:04crowd was taken and the cops found something pretty disturbing. The image in question shows a
05:09mysterious man bearing a striking resemblance to the official composite sketch of the killer.
05:14However, after searching nearby areas for months, police were unable to find the man,
05:18and his identity remains a mystery to this day. In the absence of any more solid leads,
05:23the case went cold until 2004 when the Finnish police re-examined the evidence with more modern
05:28forensic techniques. Exactly 44 years after the murders, in a strange turn of events they charged
05:34the lone survivor, then 62-year-old Nils Gustafsson with the gruesome crimes committed at Lake Bodum.
05:41Up until he was accused, Nils had been living a quiet life as a bus driver and a married father of two,
05:46and the evidence used to build the case against him was flimsy to say the least.
05:50The prosecution alleged that he had murdered his girlfriend and two friends out of jealousy,
05:55an accusation that the victim's family supported throughout the trial. In the end though, it was
06:00ruled that, given the severity of his injuries, it would have been impossible for Nils to murder
06:04his friends and then drop his shoes off about a mile from the campsite. In 2005, Nils was acquitted
06:10of all charges and was awarded the equivalent of $60,000 for damages caused to his image by the media.
06:16The identity of the murderer is still a mystery, and to this day, the spot where the three teens
06:20were brutally murdered is still used as a camping ground.
06:29On January 14, 1989, a Chicago-based television station called WMAQ did its usual nightly sign-off
06:36with footage of the raising of the flag and the star-spangled banner playing in the background.
06:40As soon as the national anthem finished playing, the screen cut to a mysterious missing person
06:45poster featuring a woman named Joanna Lopez. Disturbingly, the image was accompanied by
06:50complete silence. For some reason, the poster was aired all night by WMAQ until it was interrupted by
06:57the morning news. Back then, it wasn't very common for news stations to simply broadcast images of
07:02missing persons, but when they did, they followed a very specific structure and format to give viewers
07:07as much information as possible for them to have a fighting chance of finding the victims.
07:12Details like their age, height, gender, race, last known location, and hair color were always listed
07:18next to the image of the victim, which was always of the highest quality possible.
07:23In Joanna Lopez's case, however, none of those crucial details were included, and all we can
07:28really gather from the poster with the extremely grainy and eerie image is her name.
07:33Two years later, in 1991, the same poster was shown on WMAQ, but this time there were a few key
07:39differences. Although the name and phone number were the same as in 1989, the image appeared to
07:44have been cleaned up, which made it easier to see Joanna was wearing sunglasses. Strangely,
07:49in the 1991 broadcast, the image was only shown for about 10 seconds before cutting to a screen
07:54filled with colored bars. I was able to find that the number listed below the poster corresponded to
08:00the youth division office of the Chicago Police Department. After digging even deeper,
08:04I found that many of the missing person announcements made by the Chicago Police Department back then
08:09were pretty similar in appearance, with a diagonal banner intersecting the image,
08:12as well as a phone number and last known location below the picture.
08:16However, again, for some reason, in Joanna Lopez's poster, you can only see a phone number,
08:21making it even more difficult to locate her. What's most disturbing about the incident is that
08:26Joanna Lopez can't be found on any databases for missing people or any other kind of national
08:31directory. Her name doesn't come up anywhere, no matter how far you look back. The lack of
08:37information on the alleged victim has led many people to believe that Joanna is either dead,
08:41she never went missing, or that she never even existed at all. One theory that has gained massive
08:47traction on Reddit is that Joanna's face could have been artificially constructed or somehow
08:51digitally modified as part of a prank played by someone at the studio, or by a hacker who somehow
08:56managed to get into WMAQ's system. With about 8,500 people going missing each year in Chicago
09:02between 1989 and 1991, it's also possible that Joanna Lopez was simply another victim of the
09:08widespread violence in Chicago in the early 90s, and that the youth division used the terrible quality
09:14image as a last resort to see if they could get someone to recognize her. Despite the traction that
09:19the case gained online, there wasn't a lot of new or relevant information surfacing on Joanna Lopez.
09:24In 2022 however, a couple Reddit users claimed to have contacted the WMAQ station. When they asked
09:32about the mysterious broadcast, they were told that the records showed that the information had been
09:36submitted anonymously by a source who claimed they would call back later and never did. Other requests
09:41for information to the FBI and the Chicago PD came back with no matches, making it possible that
09:46Joanna Lopez never really existed. To this day, the Joanna Lopez subreddit remains active with all kinds of
09:53updates, but so far nothing conclusive has surfaced. The mysterious nature of the case leaves all kinds
09:59of questions unanswered. Could her name have been an alias? Did she ever even exist? If so, what really
10:05happened to Joanna Lopez? We'll likely never know.
10:13On May 3rd, 2007, 3-year-old Madeline McCann was on vacation with her parents Kate and Jerry and her
10:19two younger siblings at the Ocean Club in Praia de Luz, Portugal. In the evening, her parents went to
10:24dinner with a group of friends at a restaurant in the complex about 100 yards from the holiday
10:28apartment they were staying in. Because of their young age, Madeline and her two younger siblings
10:33stayed back in the apartment. Before leaving for dinner at around 8.30pm, Kate and Jerry left
10:38the door to the apartment slightly open. Throughout the night, the McCann's and their
10:42friends took turns checking on each other's children, and when Jerry went to check on Madeline
10:46and her siblings at around 9pm, he noticed the door was in a slightly different position than he
10:50left it half an hour earlier. 15 minutes later, Jane Tanner, one of the other parents in the group,
10:55went to check on her kids and noticed something suspicious. As she walked past the McCann's
11:00apartment, she saw a man with long hair, bushy eyebrows, and a mustache carrying a child and
11:05walking down the hallway. She didn't think much of it at the time, which she later came to regret.
11:11At around 10pm, just 45 minutes after Jane came back to the table, Kate McCann went back to the
11:16apartment and noticed the door was now completely open. Fearing the worst, she stepped into the room,
11:21and that's when she started living every parent's worst nightmare. Madeline was missing,
11:26the windows were open, and the shutters were up. In a panic, Kate went back to alert her husband,
11:30her friends, and the staff at the club complex. Unfortunately, nobody could find Madeline,
11:36and the next morning, an official police investigation was launched. For an entire year,
11:40the situation went from bad to worse for the McCann's, as Kate and Jerry were later formally
11:45labeled as prime suspects in the disappearance of their daughter and blamed for the entire incident
11:49in a Portuguese newspaper. However, the accusations were later dropped as Jane Tanner made her
11:54statement about the suspicious man she had seen carrying a little girl close to the McCann's
11:58apartment around the time of the disappearance. Jane's description of the man matched the statement
12:03given by Gail Cooper, another tourist who had reported seeing a similar suspicious man walking
12:07around the complex in the days leading up to the disappearance. When asked about the man, Gail said,
12:12He made my blood run cold and gave me the creeps. He seemed really strange. He said he was collecting
12:18money for an orphanage and nearby espyage that was caring for three children whose parents had
12:22recently been killed in an accident on the main coast road. The man was rambling and becoming agitated.
12:28I thought he was a con man trying to pull a fast one. It was later confirmed that the orphanage he
12:33mentioned does not exist, and there was no evidence of the fatal car crash he mentioned.
12:38The description of the suspicious man was later confirmed by another 12 year old girl who had seen him
12:42multiple times in the days leading up to May 3rd, and based on the testimony of these three different
12:47people, police released this official disturbing sketch. For the next four and a half years,
12:52the man in the sketch became the prime suspect in Madeline's disappearance, but the international
12:57manhunt that ensued resulted in nothing but a series of false anonymous tips and cold leads.
13:02In 2012, it was revealed that the man Jane Tanner had seen had simply been an innocent dad carrying his
13:08daughter down the hallway, and he was in no way connected to the suspicious con man who had tried to
13:12collect money from Gail Cooper. In 2013, a new digital render of another man who was allegedly
13:18seen walking near the club complex in 2007 was released, and he didn't look anything like the
13:24previous suspect. Although the case continued to receive funding, the investigation went cold for
13:28the next several years, during which Kate and Jerry McCann continued to suffer and miss their daughter.
13:34In 2019, an eight-part Netflix series was released about Madeline's disappearance, and less
13:39than a year after that, police announced they now believe the man responsible for the crime was
13:42a man named Christian Bruckner. Christian Bruckner owned a suspicious Volkswagen camper van that
13:48was found near the club complex where Madeline disappeared. After being seen driving the van in
13:53the area on the night of May 3rd, Christian allegedly confessed his involvement in the crime to a man at
13:57a bar. Shortly after the disappearance, Christian and the other man were sitting in a German bar when
14:02a news report about Madeline's disappearance came on TV. That's when Christian allegedly said something to
14:07suggest he was responsible for her disappearance. Even though he later denied his involvement in
14:12the disappearance to the authorities, police are still investigating him to this day, and it's
14:16possible they'll soon make a break in the case. Hopefully they'll find the man responsible and bring
14:21him to justice to at least bring some sense of closure to Madeline's family after a traumatic 16 years.
14:26On May 31st, 2001, 22-year-old Charlotte Murray Pace had just graduated from Louisiana State University
14:38and was looking forward to moving to Atlanta to start a new life. Sadly, she was never able to
14:43launch her new career. For that very same day, a man broke into her home and stabbed her with a
14:48screwdriver 81 times, taking her life. In the years leading up to Charlotte's murder, Baton Rouge,
14:54Louisiana had become a hotspot for similar crimes, with several women losing their lives to a single
14:59violent criminal with a very similar pattern of attacks. According to police reports, the perpetrator
15:04would often watch these women for weeks or even months, becoming familiar with their routines and
15:08habits, looking for the perfect moment to strike. In many cases, he pretended to be a kind stranger
15:14asking for help. When the victims obliged, he would turn violent and do the same things he did to
15:19Charlotte. After Charlotte Pace's murder, a woman named Diane Alexander reported to the cops that an
15:24African-American man had attempted to strangle her in her home on July 9, 2002. According to her
15:31statement, the suspect came to her home asking to use the phone, and when she opened the door,
15:35he brutally attacked her. Thankfully, the woman's son came home and scared the perpetrator off before
15:40he could take her life. Based on the description that Diane and her son provided, the cops were able to
15:44have a better understanding of the perpetrator's physical appearance. But after the cops extracted
15:49physical evidence from several of the crime scenes, the FBI reported that the killer was
15:53actually a white male between the ages of 25 and 35. Based on the evidence and several witnesses
15:59descriptions, police came up with this horrifying sketch. However, the suspect being identified as a
16:06white man ended up being a mistake by the FBI, one that gave the killer enough time to take the lives of
16:10two other women while the authorities were searching for someone who didn't even look anything like him.
16:15It wasn't until forensic evidence from two more crime scenes was analyzed that a Florida lab
16:19confirmed to the police that the killer was an African-American man, not a white man. While these
16:24killings were taking place in Baton Rouge, there were more guns sold in Louisiana to terrified women
16:29who wanted to arm themselves than ever before. Fortunately, it didn't take long for the authorities to
16:34collect a DNA sample from their prime suspect, a man named Derek Todd Lee, who had been previously
16:39arrested in the years of the murders for domestic abuse and stalking. He had also been investigated
16:45for murder, but the cops couldn't legally arrest him because of a technicality. When his DNA was
16:50tested against forensic evidence at the crime scenes, it was a match for five of the victims of
16:54the brutal murders in Baton Rouge. When police went to Lee's home to arrest him for the murders,
16:58he was long gone. Fortunately, it didn't take long for authorities to find him in Atlanta and
17:03arrest him near a college on May 27, 2003. In October 2004, Derek Todd Lee was found guilty
17:10and sentenced to death for the murders of two women. Later, his involvement in the murders of
17:15six others was also confirmed. Derek Todd Lee never reached his execution day as he died of heart
17:21disease in 2016 at the age of 47. Often referred to as the Ghost of Baton Rouge or the Baton Rouge
17:28serial killer, Derek Todd Lee is remembered as one of America's most evil serial killers to this day,
17:34and as a man who was given one of the most disturbing police sketches in history.

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