Header

Feed mill murder



Time of the event: June 1980, Juuka

The most brutal murder committed in Finland in the 1980s, in addition to the "Kannelmäki bunker murder" and the finnish murderer/sexual offender "Uncle Jammu".

The fur farmer Sinikka Marja Saastamoinen disappeared in Juuka in June 1980. Later Saastamoinen was found. She had been beaten to death with a stone or a knife. The most shocking thing was that part of Saastamoinen's body was grinded in a feed mill and parts of the body was hidden in a swamp grave.

The perpetrator really tried to grind the body into mink feed, but the mill short-circuited due to too much load and the grinding was left unfinished. The motive for the act was that the perpetrator suspected that the victim had "borrowed" his breeding minks without permission in order to improve the stock of her own mink population.

Engagement court, Eastern Finland's court of appeals and the supreme court sentenced Kari Koivuranta, a former UN soldier from Rovaniemi, to life imprisonment for the act.