Doctor accused of freezing parents’ bodies appears in court

An 81-year-old man is due to face charges of violating the sanctity of the dead after his parents’ bodies were kept in freezers for about 30 years, Yle reports.

The charges will be read on Friday at the Southwest Finland District Court in Turku. The hearing is expected to be conducted in Swedish.

The man faces two charges. His brother, who is 10 years younger, is also accused in one of the cases.

Police found the two bodies during a search of a detached house in Turku in 2024. The parents had died of natural causes in 1994 and 1995 and had been stored in freezers in the house’s storage area.

The elder son was charged after the preliminary investigation. Prosecutors initially decided not to charge the younger brother in connection with the bodies. Police said they had not established a clear motive for keeping the remains.

In an interview with Yle, the man said he had frozen the bodies because that was what his parents had wanted. Investigators said the case did not appear to involve a financial motive and described the background as an unconventional way of thinking.

Brothers also accused of opening family grave

The second charge relates to an incident at a cemetery in Turku in October 2025. Cemetery employees saw the brothers digging open a family grave over several days before intervening.

It remains unclear why the brothers were digging at the grave. According to the investigation leader, Lasse Höysti, the parents had not yet been buried there at the time.

The parents were eventually buried by the authorities in their former municipalities, Mariehamn and Lieto.

Special prosecutor Outi Pyykkönen brought the new charges against both brothers. The hearing was originally scheduled for April but was postponed because one of the brothers was not served with the summons in time.

Internationally rare cases

Forensic psychiatry expert Alo Jüriloo has described the freezing of the parents’ bodies as internationally unusual. He said he had found no comparable crime in the research literature, although similar cases have been reported in Britain, Greece, India, the United States and Poland.

In most of those cases, relatives continued collecting the deceased parent’s pension or benefits. No such financial motive appears to be connected to the Turku case.

The elder brother, who previously worked as a doctor, was convicted in 2017 of unlawfully practising a healthcare profession after writing a medical certificate without authorisation.

The younger brother has also received previous convictions, including a suspended sentence for aggravated fraud in 2020 and convictions for accounting offences and copyright infringement in 2017.