Unsolved Mysteries: The Alleged Crimes of Hans Assmann

Was an Ex-Nazi Living in Finland Really an Undiscovered Serial Killer and Master-Criminal?

Hans Assmann is infused in the lore of Finnish true crime and, in many respects, exists as almost a boogeyman. He has been linked to numerous more killings than we shall cover here, where we will focus instead on the most famous. They are the 1953 murder of Kyllikki Saari, the 1955 slaying of Elli Immo, the double campsite murder at Tulilahti in 1959, the infamous Lake Bodom murders of 1960, and the 1963 killing of Sirkka-Liisa Valjus. All of these cases have been covered in depth on this blog, however, now we shall look deeper into the suspect some think is responsible for them all.

The first time Hans Assmann was ever on police radars for involvement in a serious crime was in 1960, following the Lake Bodom affair. Assmann had emigrated to Sweden and then Finland following the Second World War, and by 1960, he lived in the village of Bodom. On June 6, 1960, following the murders of two women and a man at the lake, Assmann turned up at Helsinki Surgical Hospital behaving unusually, said to be aggressive and nervous. He had red stains splattered on his clothes, and the doctor who treated him was confident that he had been the killer. Following a police sketch that bore an…