Volunteers search seabed for woman missing for 52 years

Volunteers are searching the seabed of Gennarby Bay for the body of a woman whose husband said he sank it in a pressure tank in 1974, Yle reports. The searchers believe the remains may lie a few metres below the surface.

A small dark green rubber boat rocks in the bay, about 20 kilometres northeast of Hanko. Jenni Sundell dives from the boat while Anne Järvinen waits above. The two are members of Pääkaupunkiseudun Etsintä, a search association that is part of Finland’s Voluntary Rescue Service.

The volunteers have spent two summers investigating the family killing in Kauniainen in the 1970s. During one dive, Sundell resurfaced with disappointing news: the divers had found logs, apparently from an old jetty, rather than a body.

The case began on a Friday evening in February 1974. The family had welcomed a baby boy a few weeks earlier, but the father did not believe the child was his. He later told police that he had been drunk that evening.

According to his account, the man lifted the baby into the air to upset his wife. The wife kicked him in the groin, causing him to fall while holding the child. The baby most likely died immediately from a fractured neck vertebra.

The mother picked up the dead baby and threatened to call the police. The man then aimed a homemade weapon at her. The bullet struck her face and killed her. The weapon was fired by striking it with a hammer.

On March 17, 1974, the father confessed at the Espoo police station. He said he had placed the baby in a cloth bag and dragged his wife’s body to the basement of their home. He told police that he had put the body in a pressure tank and welded the lid shut. Police found welding equipment in the basement.

He then loaded the cloth bag and pressure tank into his car. After removing the rear seat to make room for the tank, he drove from Kauniainen to Hernesaari in Helsinki. He threw the baby into the sea from the tip of the district. The baby’s body was never found, despite searches by divers from the Helsinki city fire brigade.

The following day, police took the man to Hanko, where he identified Öby village as the place where he had disposed of the pressure tank. He said he had not dared to sink it in Hernesaari and had instead continued to Gennarby Bay, where he knew there was open water.

At the shore, police found a white fibreglass boat at the location he described. Its mooring chain had been cut, and part of a chain link lay on the ground. The man said he had pulled the pressure tank about 100 metres from the shore with a rope, towed it alongside the boat and then removed the rope. He told police that they had only heard bubbling as the tank sank.

Järvinen and Sundell spend much of their free time searching for missing people. In addition to volunteer searches in the terrain, their association investigates old unsolved cases in which official searches have ended, focusing mainly on bodies believed to be in waterways.

“Searching is a calling for me. I have to go and search,” Järvinen says. She became interested in searches after her grandfather disappeared during the Winter War. Sundell says that the searchers were taught about weather conditions, currents and how a body moves in water by the late searcher Reino Savukoski.

Järvinen says a search is not a failure even when a missing person is not found. Excluding possible locations is also part of the work, she says. For relatives, she adds, it is important that someone takes an interest in their grief, makes an effort and, in the best case, finds the missing person.