Speaker 1: Hello, it's Richard mccleinsmith here with a quick update before
Speaker 1: we dive into today's episode. Unexplained is very excited to
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Speaker 1: coat and lock in your cabin. We'd love to see
Speaker 1: you on board. Early in the morning of July twenty eighth,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty seven, a rescue helicopter flew fast and low
Speaker 1: over the Baltic Sea. At this latitude of almost sixty
Speaker 1: degrees north, the sun had already risen and there was
Speaker 1: excellent visibility as the pilot and flight crew searched the
Speaker 1: rippled sea below for their target. Shortly before five a m.
Speaker 1: They saw it, passenger ferry m S Viking Sally, heading
Speaker 1: steadily towards the port of Toriku, on the southwest coast
Speaker 1: of Finland. The pilot steered expertly toward the ship's small
Speaker 1: helicopter deck, located directly behind one of the Viking Sally's funnels.
Speaker 1: It would have been a tricky landing site in bad weather,
Speaker 1: but the sea was calm and the ship barely rocked.
Speaker 1: The flight mechanic opened the side door and guided the
Speaker 1: pilot down over his helmet headset. In the back seat,
Speaker 1: twenty seven year old nurse Hiki Masculine was readying himself
Speaker 1: to respond to whatever the situation presented. Roused from sleep
Speaker 1: barely an hour earlier. Neither he nor the flight crew
Speaker 1: had been given any details of the emergency medical transport mission.
Speaker 1: Typically such distress calls from ferries sailing this route were
Speaker 1: for an elderly patient who suffered a heart attack or
Speaker 1: an intoxicated passenger who'd fallen down the stairs. But as
Speaker 1: Masculine stepped onto the deck, he realized immediately that this
Speaker 1: emergency was very much out of the ordinary. You're listening
Speaker 1: to unexplained and I'm Richard McLean Smith. Thomas Schmidt can't
Speaker 1: remember what prompted him and his friend Klaus Schlk to
Speaker 1: go interrailing to Finland, a form of travel whereby one
Speaker 1: train ticket grants you unlimited rail travel across thirty three
Speaker 1: countries in Europe. Schmidt and Schlker, who had both just
Speaker 1: turned twenty, had met at a local football club in Stuttgart,
Speaker 1: where they'd become friends. Both were studying to beat mechanics.
Speaker 1: Joining them on the trip was Bettina Taxis, who had
Speaker 1: met Shelker in a night club the previous year and
Speaker 1: the pair had quickly become an item. The trio planned
Speaker 1: to use inter rail passes to tour the Nordic countries,
Speaker 1: traveling by train from what was then still West Germany
Speaker 1: to Sweden's capital city of Stockholm. Next, they were traveled
Speaker 1: by ferry up the Baltic Sea to Torku in Finland,
Speaker 1: where they planned to attend the music festival Ruis Rock.
Speaker 1: After that, they would continue north to finish lapland then
Speaker 1: head to Bergen in Norway, before taking a boat south
Speaker 1: along the coast to Oslo, the nation's capital. The trio
Speaker 1: arrived in Stockholm and boarded the ferry shortly before ten
Speaker 1: p m. On July twenty seventh. The Viking Sally provided
Speaker 1: a daily service between Sweden, Finland and Orland, a chain
Speaker 1: of islands at the entrance to the Gulf of Bothnia.
Speaker 1: With a crew of around two hundred, it could take
Speaker 1: up to four hundred vehicles and two thousand passengers. It
Speaker 1: was only seven years old and came equipped with three restaurants,
Speaker 1: several bars, a movie theater and a swimming pool. It
Speaker 1: must have seemed luxurious to the three twenty somethings who
Speaker 1: had everything to look forward to as they leant on
Speaker 1: the rail to watch the late summer sunset as the
Speaker 1: ship sailed off into the freezing waters of the Baltic Sea.
Speaker 1: Finding their way to the bar, Thomas sat quietly drinking
Speaker 1: as Klaus and Bettina, the more sociable of the group,
Speaker 1: got chatting with several of their fellow passengers. Among them
Speaker 1: was a young British man named Patrick Haley, who was
Speaker 1: on his way to visit his Finnish girlfriend, and a
Speaker 1: man named Tawno, who the couple described to Thomas as
Speaker 1: a German speaking fun Finn, a car parts dealer returning
Speaker 1: from a business trip to Germany. Around one a m
Speaker 1: on July twenty eighth, Klaus and Bettina pulled their sleeping
Speaker 1: bags from their back packs and told Thomas that they
Speaker 1: were off to get some sleep. With limited funds for
Speaker 1: their trip, the youngsters hadn't booked cabins, opting to sleep
Speaker 1: on deck to save money. The pair told Thomas that
Speaker 1: they'd found a sheltered spot out on deck nine at
Speaker 1: the rear of the ship, next to the helicopter pat
Speaker 1: where a plexiglass barrier would provide shelter from the wind.
Speaker 1: It was a quiet location with the added benefit of
Speaker 1: being dimly lit since the nearest deck lamp was broken.
Speaker 1: Not wanting to intrude on the young couple's privacy, Thomas
Speaker 1: opted to bed down indoors on one of the lower
Speaker 1: decks and agreed to look after every one's back packs,
Speaker 1: which were left with him. Exactly what happened next remains
Speaker 1: unclear to this day. Also on board the Viking Sally
Speaker 1: that night was a boisterous group of Danish boy Scouts
Speaker 1: heading to an International Nordic Scout camp in Salvo, southwest Finland.
Speaker 1: According to passengers, some of the scouts had been causing trouble.
Speaker 1: A small group perhaps three or so, had been noisily
Speaker 1: roaming the ship or night, causing havoc. One of them,
Speaker 1: eighteen year old Thomas Nielsen, later told police that around
Speaker 1: three forty five a m. While mooching about the helicopter deck,
Speaker 1: he saw two people, a man and a woman, who
Speaker 1: at first appeared to be heavily intoxicated and struggling to
Speaker 1: stand up. He claimed that when he moved closer to
Speaker 1: get a better look, he realized that the pair were
Speaker 1: not drunk, but bleeding profusely from head wounds, apparently in
Speaker 1: a panic. He then went to get help. Shortly after
Speaker 1: three forty five, the attack was reported to ship's crew,
Speaker 1: and the OnCore nurse, along with the security operative, hurried
Speaker 1: to the scene, soon to be joined by the Viking
Speaker 1: Sally's captain. Recognizing the seriousness of the injuries, the captain
Speaker 1: requested immediate medical assistance from the mainland. This was the
Speaker 1: situation that nurse Hike Masculine stepped into as he alighted
Speaker 1: from the rescue helicopter in the cold morning air. A
Speaker 1: small group of people were clustered around two prone figures
Speaker 1: on the adjacent deck. When he got there, the unmistakable
Speaker 1: metallic smell of fresh blood filled the air. It covered
Speaker 1: so much of the deck area that masculine had to
Speaker 1: be careful not to slip in it. As he approached
Speaker 1: the two limph forms, he was shocked by the severity
Speaker 1: of their injuries. With the help of the ship's crew,
Speaker 1: the blood drenched patients were quickly loaded onto stretchers and
Speaker 1: into the helicopter. As they lifted off from the ship,
Speaker 1: Maskalin made a quick assessment. Just one glance told him
Speaker 1: that the injuries were life threatening. The damage to the
Speaker 1: back of the young man's head was especially bad. Maskelin
Speaker 1: did what he could, staunching the patients bleeding with the towels.
Speaker 1: At some point, Klaus's heart stopped, while Bettina passed in
Speaker 1: and out of consciousness. She tried to say something in German,
Speaker 1: but the nurse couldn't make out the words clearly enough
Speaker 1: to understand her. The patients were received by the Torkou
Speaker 1: University Hospital at five forty eight. Klaus Schelker was pronounced
Speaker 1: dead on arrival. Bettina Taxis was still alive and placed
Speaker 1: in intensive care in a critical condition. Meanwhile, back on
Speaker 1: board the boat, the police investigation was getting underway. At
Speaker 1: six thirty am, three police tactical investigators and one crime
Speaker 1: scene technician alighted onto the Viking Sally's helipad. One thing
Speaker 1: that was clear was that the injuries sustained by the
Speaker 1: young couple were in no way accidental. They had resulted
Speaker 1: from heavy blows in what the chief investigator would later
Speaker 1: describe as an especially ferocious attack. Perhaps most shockingly to
Speaker 1: several police officers, the assault was eerily reminiscent of a
Speaker 1: previous incident the year before on the exact same ship.
Speaker 1: On July ninth, nineteen eighty six, just over a year
Speaker 1: before the German trio's ill fated voyage, during a passage
Speaker 1: in the opposite direction from Torku to Stockholm, the Viking
Speaker 1: Sally had been the scene of a violent murder. It
Speaker 1: wasn't until the ship docked that the body of forty
Speaker 1: four year old business men Anti Eliyala was found in
Speaker 1: his cabin. It later emerged that a fellow passenger named
Speaker 1: Ray Yohama, said to be an associate of the murdered man,
Speaker 1: entered Eliyala's cabin and attempted to steal some money. When
Speaker 1: Eliyala told the intruder that he was going to report
Speaker 1: the theft to the police, the thirty three year old
Speaker 1: Hammer stabbed him five times in the throat with a
Speaker 1: dinner knife, then strangled him to death with a strip
Speaker 1: of fabric torn from the cabin's bed sheet. It was
Speaker 1: an open and shut case. Ammar was captured, tried, found
Speaker 1: guilty of murder, and given a life sentence. It seemed
Speaker 1: a strange coincidence, indeed, that a violent attack would happen
Speaker 1: on the same ship, almost a year to the day
Speaker 1: since the previous murder, when the Viking Sally docked in
Speaker 1: Torkou at ten past eight on that July twenty eighth
Speaker 1: morning in nineteen eighty seven. Unless the perpetrator of the
Speaker 1: attack on the two young Germans had jumped overboard, they
Speaker 1: had to still be on the ship. In theory, all
Speaker 1: the police had to do was surround the vessel and
Speaker 1: find the culprit. And so, as the Viking Sally arrived
Speaker 1: in Torkou harbor, the police were ready and waiting in
Speaker 1: the docking area. They planned to video record every passenger
Speaker 1: as they disembarked, asking a brief series of questions and
Speaker 1: taking down names and contact information, but with around fourteen
Speaker 1: hundred passengers on board that day, they soon realized that
Speaker 1: this would take far too long. Making a compromise, they
Speaker 1: excluded the passengers least likely to be the assailant, families
Speaker 1: with children and the elderly, and targeted others for close attention,
Speaker 1: including the dead victim's friend, Thomas, and the young British
Speaker 1: man who the German couple had spent time with in
Speaker 1: the bar the previous evening. At first, Thomas Schmidt appeared
Speaker 1: to be in shock. He said he'd heard a helicopter
Speaker 1: during the night, but thought nothing of it so went
Speaker 1: back to sleep. The police questioned him for some time
Speaker 1: before he demanded to know what had happened. It was
Speaker 1: only then that he was told of the terrible events
Speaker 1: that had befallen his traveling companions. In the end, Thomas,
Speaker 1: who appeared genuinely distraught to hear the news, was deemed
Speaker 1: to be telling the truth. He'd slept all night in
Speaker 1: a public space, and there were witnesses that he was
Speaker 1: in another part of the ship at the time of
Speaker 1: the murder. Attention then turned to Patrick Hailey, the young
Speaker 1: british Man who'd spoken with the couple in the When
Speaker 1: the ship docked, police found him in his sleeping back
Speaker 1: covered in blood. Hailey insisted it was the result of
Speaker 1: a nosebleed. The man was interviewed repeatedly until forensic tests
Speaker 1: eventually appeared to confirm that the blood in his clothing
Speaker 1: probably was his own, and he too was released. None
Speaker 1: of the twenty initial suspects who were interviewed by police
Speaker 1: in detail gave any reason to suspect them. The police
Speaker 1: had only two things to go on. A violent assault
Speaker 1: and murder seemed to have been committed with no conceivable motive,
Speaker 1: an extremely exceptional occurrence in Finland, and whoever the perpetrator
Speaker 1: was had just walked off the Viking Sally. The police
Speaker 1: soon ruled out robbery or a sexual attack as the motive.
Speaker 1: The only viable explanation they felt was that the crime
Speaker 1: had been sparked by a seemingly insignificant reason and likely
Speaker 1: carried out by someone who was mentally ill or possessed
Speaker 1: of a severe personality disorder. In today's high tech world,
Speaker 1: the investigators would have had more evidence to work with,
Speaker 1: but at the time, forensic DNA testing was in its infancy,
Speaker 1: and it had only been used for the first time
Speaker 1: in a criminal case in the UK the previous year. However,
Speaker 1: it had proved crucial exonerating an innocent suspect and resulting
Speaker 1: in the conviction of the Trooe perpetrator in a case
Speaker 1: known as the Enderb murders. The outcome of the Viking
Speaker 1: Sally investigation might have been very different if DNA testing
Speaker 1: had been widely available to the Finnish police, but at
Speaker 1: the time, the most the Finns could expect from their
Speaker 1: blood sample analysis were determining the blood group and whether
Speaker 1: the sample was human or another animal. On board CCTV
Speaker 1: footage was mostly unavailable too. The ship only had surveillance
Speaker 1: cameras on the car deck and in the engine room,
Speaker 1: and at that time there was no requirement for Swedish
Speaker 1: ships to keep comprehensive passenger lists. Victim testimony didn't help either.
Speaker 1: When Bettina Taxes eventually regained consciousness and Finish investigators finally
Speaker 1: managed to question her, it was months after the incident
Speaker 1: and Bettina couldn't remember anything about the attack. Nevertheless, investigators
Speaker 1: did what they could, even sailing on the Viking Sally
Speaker 1: between Turku and Stockholm several times hoping to find clues,
Speaker 1: but all to no avail. The only real evidence the
Speaker 1: police were left to work with was the footage they
Speaker 1: had shot of the disembarking passengers poring over it for
Speaker 1: endless hours. Investigators identified several potential suspects and released footage
Speaker 1: of them to the public. One man was especially elusive.
Speaker 1: He'd been spotted moving around near the fifth deck cafeteria
Speaker 1: in the early hours on the morning of the attack.
Speaker 1: Aged around thirty five foot five inches tall, with dark hair,
Speaker 1: it was reported that he spoke English and wore a
Speaker 1: distinctive beanie hat. He was never traced. And then there
Speaker 1: was the Danish boy scout Thomas Nielsen, who appeared to
Speaker 1: have been the first person to find the injured couple.
Speaker 1: It was late October nineteen eighty seven when the police
Speaker 1: questioned Thomas Nielson again. Nielsen had only recently been in
Speaker 1: trouble with the police in Denmark on suspicion of theft.
Speaker 1: The Finnish police believed he was looking for something to
Speaker 1: steal on the night of the murder. This second time,
Speaker 1: when asked to described the morning he'd found the couple,
Speaker 1: Nielsen told a slightly different story. Rather than spotting the
Speaker 1: couple immediately, he said now that he'd gone to the
Speaker 1: helicopter deck two or three times before he spotted them,
Speaker 1: and it was only when he followed members of the
Speaker 1: crew as they rushed to the helicopter deck that he
Speaker 1: saw they were injured. The police also questioned the Danish
Speaker 1: scout leader, who said at the time that Thomas had
Speaker 1: woken him on the Viking Sally in the early hours
Speaker 1: of the morning covered in blood, which he'd said was
Speaker 1: from helping the victims of the attack. The scout master
Speaker 1: had asked the ship's staff to wash the boy's bloody clothes,
Speaker 1: and shortly before they arrived in Torku, items were returned
Speaker 1: clean and dry, and the man thought nothing more of it.
Speaker 1: A magazine reporter who interviewed Nielsen around a month after
Speaker 1: the attack also noticed something strange. The young man seemed
Speaker 1: to have remarkable recall of the details of the pair's injuries,
Speaker 1: despite the traumatic nature of the events, the time of
Speaker 1: night and the area being dimly lit. The eighteen year
Speaker 1: old described how the couple's faces had not been hit, kicked,
Speaker 1: or slashed with a knife, but rather were like slush,
Speaker 1: as if they'd been hit with something like a hammer.
Speaker 1: But who would suspect a fresh faced boy scout of
Speaker 1: such a brutal attack. During the investigation, around one thousand
Speaker 1: people were interviewed in nine different countries and several hundred
Speaker 1: forensic samples were sent for analysis, but with no eyewitness
Speaker 1: to the incident, no useful CCTV footage, and no apparent motive,
Speaker 1: after four years, the investigation was discontinued. Traditions about bad
Speaker 1: luck attaching itself to ships have been around for centuries,
Speaker 1: and often date back to ancient times. In the past,
Speaker 1: many ships had a cat on board to help control rodents.
Speaker 1: If the ship's cat fell overboard, it was believed that
Speaker 1: this would summon a terrible storm. Even if the ship
Speaker 1: survived the storm, it would be cursed with nine years
Speaker 1: of bad luck. Whistling on board a ship has long
Speaker 1: been frowned upon. Doing this is said to literally whistle
Speaker 1: up the wind, causing a strong gale to appear. Perhaps
Speaker 1: the most well known of all maritime superstitions is that
Speaker 1: it's bad luck to renamership, a tradition so ingrained in
Speaker 1: seafaring culture. It's even mentioned in the classic novel Treasure Island,
Speaker 1: when pirate captain long John Silver chooses to keep the
Speaker 1: name of a captured ship to avoid any potentially negative consequences.
Speaker 1: According to legend, When every ship is christened, its name
Speaker 1: goes into a ledger of the deep, maintained by the
Speaker 1: god Neptune, who views it as devious to use a
Speaker 1: new name. To this day, many mariners still insist that
Speaker 1: if you must change a ship's name, you should perform
Speaker 1: a purging and renaming ritual to demonstrate to the sea
Speaker 1: gods that you have no hidden agenda. There are numerous
Speaker 1: cautionary tales of ships being renamed without this ritual, then
Speaker 1: meeting a tragic end. On the evening of September twenty seventh,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety four, the cruise ship the MS Estonia, powered
Speaker 1: westwards across the Baltic ringing through twenty foot high waves
Speaker 1: into sixty mile per hour headwinds carrying sheets of icy rain.
Speaker 1: The vessel had left its home port of Talent bound
Speaker 1: for Stockholm, fifteen minutes behind the scheduled seven pm departure,
Speaker 1: and the crew were pushing it at maximum speed to
Speaker 1: make up time. As the Estonia pitched through the heavy seas,
Speaker 1: most passengers were sleeping when around one am, a gigantic, deep,
Speaker 1: metallic sound reverberated throughout the entire ship. A crew member
Speaker 1: later said that he saw one of the loading bay doors,
Speaker 1: taking in water. The high waves had crashed the bow
Speaker 1: doors to separate from the ship, allowing water to flood
Speaker 1: into the vehicle deck. Panic ensued as the Estonia began
Speaker 1: listing heavily to its starboard side. Less than forty minutes later,
Speaker 1: the boat capsized and sank. Of the nine hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty nine passengers and crew on board, eight hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty two died, most of them trapped inside the sinking ship.
Speaker 1: Many escaped the ship, only to freeze to death in
Speaker 1: the Baltic's icy waters. Only one hundred and thirty seven
Speaker 1: people survived in what became one of the most deadly
Speaker 1: European peace time disasters at sea, second only to the
Speaker 1: sinking of the Titanic. But Ms Estonia hadn't always been
Speaker 1: called that. It was, in fact none other than the
Speaker 1: Viking Sally, which had been sold and repurchased in the
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties. In twenty sixteen, twelve years after the former
Speaker 1: Viking Sally had sunk to her watery grave, and almost
Speaker 1: thirty years since the mysterious assault on the Young German Cup,
Speaker 1: the police received information that prompted them to reopen what
Speaker 1: had been a very cold case. Initially, Torku police refused
Speaker 1: to reveal any details about the new evidence. Finally, in
Speaker 1: September twenty twenty they announced that they had solved the case,
Speaker 1: and in December that year, a district prosecutor filed homicide
Speaker 1: charges against a fifty two year old Danish man. It
Speaker 1: was none other than the former boy scout Thomas Nielsen,
Speaker 1: the very person who'd claimed to have discovered the victims.
Speaker 1: The police received a tip from a Danish jail where
Speaker 1: Nielsen had spent half of his life for various crimes
Speaker 1: and had confided to a fellow inmate that he'd gotten
Speaker 1: away with the crime on the Viking Sally. They also
Speaker 1: discovered that in twenty fifteen, the man began to threaten
Speaker 1: his ex wife, sending her numerous text messages in which
Speaker 1: he said he committed the shipboard attack. Doroku police sent
Speaker 1: two officers to question him, who changed his name by
Speaker 1: then to Hermann Himmler. Danish police warned the Fins that
Speaker 1: it would be a wasted trip, but to everyone's surprise,
Speaker 1: Himmler more or less confessed to committing the crime. Himler's
Speaker 1: trial started in May twenty twenty one, with the statutory
Speaker 1: limit of twenty years on cases of manslaughter, the charges
Speaker 1: had been changed to murder and attempted murder, which have
Speaker 1: no expiration date in Finland. Prosecutors pointed to the accused's
Speaker 1: apparent knowledge that the murder had been committed with a
Speaker 1: welding hammer, and that he had told several people that
Speaker 1: he had killed and gotten away with murder. There was
Speaker 1: only one problem, or three to be precise. There was
Speaker 1: no lawyer present when Himmler made his confession, which he
Speaker 1: later retracted, the murder weapon had never been found, and
Speaker 1: a key witness, the defendant's former wife, refused to give
Speaker 1: evidence at the trial, defense attorneys insisted that their client
Speaker 1: now denied all the charges. In the end, the court
Speaker 1: sided with Hermann Himmler since there was insufficient proof that
Speaker 1: he was truly responsible, and in June twenty twenty one
Speaker 1: he was acquitted of all charges. Today, the ill fated
Speaker 1: ship lies deep beneath the cold, dark waters of the
Speaker 1: Baltic twenty two nautical miles from the Finnish island of Utah.
Speaker 1: The precise reason for its sinking is also a somewhat
Speaker 1: murky and contentious story, perhaps one for another episode, but
Speaker 1: yet another grim warning to the perils of offending the
Speaker 1: god Neptune by renaming a ship as for knowing who
Speaker 1: it was exactly that assaulted Bettina Taxis and killed Klaus
Speaker 1: Shekel as they slept on deck that harrowing night in
Speaker 1: July nineteen eighty seven that remains to this day Unexplained.
Speaker 1: This episode was written by Diane Hope and produced by
Speaker 1: Richard mclin Smith. Diane is an audio producer and sound
Speaker 1: recordeded in her own right. You can find out more
Speaker 1: about her work at Dianehope dot com and on Instagram
Speaker 1: at in the sound Field. Thank you as ever for listening.
Speaker 1: Unexplained as an Avy Club Productions podcast created by Richard
Speaker 1: McLain Smith. All other elements of the podcast, including the music,
Speaker 1: are also produced by me Richard McLain Smith. Unexplained. The
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Speaker 1: Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever you get
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