The secret of the baking oven
Time of the event: Christmas Eve 1960
Hilkka's husband Pentti beat her repeatedly. Hilkka told the neighbors about the beatings, such as the marks from the fork in her arm. Her husband had hit her
with a fork when she had allegedly eaten like a pig. Pentti had threatened Hilkka with killing and told her that she was going to be the same as Kyllikki
Saari.*
After years of assault, Hilkka Lahtinen disappeared. It was Christmas Eve 1960.
The family's home had a large baking oven, the mouth of which had been closed after Hilkka's disappearance. The son of the family wondered and told police in
1966 that the baking oven had not been used for at least 7 years. He also said he suspected his father had killed his wife.
When the case of disappearance was a cold case, the 1972 baking oven is finally dismantled. A woman's mummified body was found at a depth of one meter
above the wall. It was in a transverse position at the bottom of a one-meter-wide baking oven so that the deceased's head and feet were slightly above the
grate surface of the oven. The deceased's head was measured from the top of the wall at a depth of 75 cm.
The knees of the body were hooked, the body tilted to the right and the head deep between the shoulders.
Hilkka Lahtinen had thus been “at home” since her disappearance for the entire 12 years.
Pentti denied his guilt. Pentti Lahtinen said that he had closed the opening of the baking oven because from the oven had become dust and sand in the room.
After the first masonry, some dust had still come from there, so he had laid another layer of bricks in front of the mouth of the kiln. Pentti Lahtinen
vehemently denied that he had closed the mouth of the oven due to a body odor coming from the oven.
The Kokemäki District Court found that Pentti Saarinen had not intentionally caused Hilkka Saarinen's death and sentenced him to eight years in a penitentiary
court for aggravated assault. Pentti Saarinen had only one year to complete it, as the Turku Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court acquitted him on the
grounds that Hilkka's cause of death or method of killing could not be ascertained and that he could no longer be convicted of death after 12 years. Pentti
Saarinen returned to his empty house, which was already in a state of disrepair, and lived there alone until he died on August 1, 1986.
*Kyllikki Saari is one of Finland's most famous criminal cases, where a young girl was found murdered in a swamp grave in 1953.*