A criminal trial surrounding the disappearance and death of a Turku lawyer nearly 30 years ago resumed on Tuesday, with the prosecutor accusing the defendant of taking the victim on his sailboat, shooting him dead and then tossing him into the sea, wrapped in trash bags and weighed down by an anchor.
The victim, Ilpo Härmäläinen, disappeared in August 1994. However, early last month — after the criminal trial had already started — police announced that they had found the missing lawyer's remains on the sea floor off the coast of Turku.
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The trial began at Southwest Finland District Court in December 2021. The defendant, now about 68 years old, was an advertising businessman and an acquaintance of the lawyer.
The suspect was convicted of fraud at the time of Härmäläinen's disappearance, a case which also involved the lawyer, according to an Yle report published last November. The men spoke on the phone moments before Härmäläinen was last seen at his building's doorstep on Eerikinkatu.
"Execution style"
As the trial resumed on Tuesday, the prosecutor said the defendant had tricked the lawyer into boarding his sailboat and shot him "execution style" in a "cowardly" manner, after the vessel departed Turku's Satava Marina.
According to district prosecutor Niina Merivirta, the defendant shot Härmäläinen once in the back and then again through the front of his head, with a handgun that was very likely a Colt King Cobra revolver that he owned.
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Police suspect that the defendant bought the revolver in 1992, a couple of years before Härmäläinen went missing.
Forensic examination of a bullet fragment discovered in the victim's body determined that it was from a 9mm, .38 or .357 calibre cartridge.
The prosecutor said the defendant then sealed the body in four plastic bags with tape and then tied the parcel to an anchor before pushing it overboard.
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Allegations denied
The defendant denies having killed Härmäläinen, with his defence lawyer, Heikki Uotila, contending that there is no physical evidence about exactly when his body ended up in the sea.
Additionally, Uotila said the defendant had been in the neighbouring town of Raisio at the time of Härmäläinen's disappearance that August day in 1994 and therefore unable to have carried out the crime.
The defendant testified that the anchors on his boat were different from the one that was found tied to the victim's body, explaining that he had changed both of the vessel's anchors in the 1980s.
In February, the defendant's ex-wife told police that she recalled that one of the boat's anchors had gone missing around the same time as Härmäläinen's disappearance.
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On Tuesday the court heard witness testimony from the defendant's ex-wife who said she was unable to say whether the anchor found attached to the victim was the same anchor which had disappeared from the sailboat.
She also testified that she found her husband's reaction to the missing anchor to be particularly calm. The prosecutor then asked the her how the defendant would have reacted if he heard that the anchor had been stolen from his boat and she said he would have gotten angry.