Man charged with freezing parents’ bodies accused of digging up family grave with brother

Two brothers, aged approximately 80 and 70, are suspected of violating grave peace after they were caught digging at a family plot in Turku cemetery last October, burial services have confirmed.

The incident was first reported by Ilta-Sanomat and has now been confirmed by Pekka Sorri, head of burial services for the Turku and Kaarina parish union. Sorri told Finnish broadcaster Yle that cemetery staff observed the men digging over several days before intervening. The hole they dug remained small, he said.

Sorri filed a police report and stated he had spoken with one of the men, forming a theory about their motives—though he declined to disclose it. “Nothing terrible happened at the cemetery,” he said. “Our monitoring was alert, and we stopped the situation.”

The men were seen digging in broad daylight, Sorri added.

The older brother had already faced charges for violating grave peace after police discovered the bodies of their parents—who died in the 1990s—in a home freezer in summer 2024. No foul play is suspected in their deaths. The remains were temporarily stored at the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) before burial in late 2025.

The new alleged grave disturbance occurred between October 10–23, 2025, before the parents were interred, according to Lasse Höysti, lead investigator at Southwest Finland Police. Their names had been engraved on the family headstone years earlier, though the grave already held two others who died in 1914 and 1935.

Both the freezer case and the grave digging charges will be heard in Turku District Court this autumn.