Murder in Lapland: Who Killed 20-Year-Old Elli Immo?

A cold case from 1950s Finland

A professional studio portrait of Elli Immo, taken in Kemi, Finnish Lapland when she was 19. Image Source.

Elli Immo was murdered on a footpath in a city suburb two weeks before Christmas 1955. In the annals of Finnish crime, her unsolved killing should stand alongside the murders of Kyllikki Sari in 1953 and Riitta Pakkanen and Eine Nyyssönen in 1959.

But the Elli Immo case has been more or less forgotten.

Elli Maria

Elli Maria Immo was born on August 10, 1935 in Alatornio, a town on the Finnish — Swedish border in Finnish Lapland. She would be the older sister to four younger brothers. Elli lived most of her childhood in the shadow of World War II. When she was nine, Nazi forces retreating through Finland into Norway destroyed around half of all buildings in Lapland.

Elli’s father worked as a police constable in Alatornio, investigating cross-border smuggling. He died suddenly in 1950. After his death, the Immos moved 30km (18 mile) away to the small industrial city of Kemi.

In 1954, the family moved into a detached house on Hirvonkatu Street in the Ristikangas residential area north of central Kemi, about 30 minutes’ walk from the city centre. They rented out the upstairs of the house and a room in the sauna building in the yard to lodgers.