Viking Sally 1987 murder
The Viking Sally 1987 murder is a homicide which took place on 28 July 1987, aboard the cruiseferry MS Viking Sally, in Finnish waters en route from Stockholm, Sweden, to Turku, Finland. An assailant attacked two German tourists, Klaus Schelkle (aged 20) and Bettina Taxis (aged 22), killing the former and seriously injuring the latter. The crime remained unsolved for 33 years, until the Finnish police announced in September 2020 that they had determined the identity of the killer, and later that year passed the case to prosecutors.[2][1]
 MS Viking Sally, pictured in Stockholm harbour in the 1980s | |
| Date | July 28, 1987 |
|---|---|
| Time | Unknown, likely shortly before 03:45 hrs (EEST) |
| Venue | Aboard cruiseferry MS Viking Sally |
| Location | Åland archipelago, Finnish territorial waters |
| Deaths | 1 (Klaus Schelkle) |
| Non-fatal injuries | 1 (Bettina Taxis) |
| Accused | 1 (not named, as of January 2021)[1] |
| Charges | Murder and attempted murder[1] |
| Trial | Scheduled for May 2021[1] |
Background
Klaus Schelkle (born 28 January 1967) and Bettina Taxis (born 10 May 1965) were students from West Germany, who had met earlier in 1987 and become romantically involved. Together with Schelkle's friend, Thomas Schmid, they had decided to tour the Nordic countries on an Interrail rail pass, with the aim of travelling from Germany to Stockholm, crossing over on a ferry to Turku, continuing up through Finland to Lapland, and returning back south along the coast of Norway.[2][1]
They sailed from Stockholm in the late evening of 27 July. They became acquainted with a number of their fellow passengers that night, including a young British man on his way to meet a Finnish woman he had met earlier, and a Finnish car parts dealer returning from a business trip in Germany. Schelkle and Taxis were social and outgoing; Schmid was more reserved.[2] The three had limited funds, which explains why on the night of the incident they did not have cabins on the ferry, instead sleeping in the public areas.[3][2]
The ship in question, MS Viking Sally, was part of the Viking Line ferry fleet, which provides daily cruiseferry services between Sweden, Finland and the Åland islands. It had capacity for c. 2,000 passengers and 400 vehicles, and a crew of approximately 200.[4] The previous year, a passenger had been murdered on the same ship.[2] Viking Sally later became MS Estonia, which in 1994 sank in the Baltic Sea, claiming hundreds of lives.[2][1]
Night of the incident
In the early hours of 28 July, around 01:00, Schelkle and Taxis fetched their sleeping bags from inside the ship, where Schmid was asleep in a public area with the backpacks and other belongings of all three.[1] The couple headed for the open-air 9th deck at the rear of the ship, where they had earlier identified a sheltered spot next to the ship's helipad. Their chosen location was dimly lit, due to a broken lamp.[2]
At approximately 03:45, a group of three Danish boy scouts, on their way to a jamboree in Finland, were wandering around the ship's decks, and chanced upon the victims' sleeping area.[1] According to their witness statements they saw two people, whom they first thought were heavily intoxicated, as they seemed to struggle to stand up, before realising that both had serious head injuries and were barely conscious, and the whole area surrounding them was covered in blood. One of the boy scouts approached them, intending to provide first aid, but soon realised that their injuries were far too serious.[2]
The boy scouts alerted the ship's front desk, which ordered the ship's on-call nurse and security operative to the site of the incident. The nurse immediately recognised the severity of the injuries, and asked the ship's captain, also in attendance,[3] to request a Finnish Coast Guard rescue helicopter to be dispatched to carry the victims to the Turku University Hospital ahead of the ship's arrival in port later that morning.[2] At 05:48, the victims reached the hospital, where Schelkle was pronounced dead on arrival from massive injuries to the head, despite attempts by the ship's nurse to resuscitate him during the flight. Taxis was in critical condition with similar injuries, apparently resulting from heavy blows to the head.[4] A chief investigator later described the attack as "especially ferocious".[5]
Investigation
The crime almost certainly took place within the jurisdiction of the Åland Islands, but the Ministry of Interior decided that due to the significant investigative resources required, the Turku regional police force would investigate the matter instead, assisted by the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation.[4][2]
The first police investigators and crime scene technicians arrived on the ship at 06:30, while still at sea, on the same helicopter that had transported the victims to hospital.[4] When the ship docked in Turku at 08:10, the police had it surrounded, aiming to seal in the perpetrator who was still thought to be aboard.[2]
The police initially planned to interview and video-record all passengers as they disembarked, but soon realised this was not possible due to the sheer numbers involved, with c. 1,400 passengers on board that day,[5] and decided to exclude families with children and the elderly.[2] They had also detained certain persons of interest including the victims' friend Schmid, as well as the young British man they had associated with, who was found in the morning with his clothes stained in blood, which he claimed was the result of a nose-bleed.[2] Schmid was soon ruled out, but the British man was interviewed repeatedly, until forensic studies confirmed that the blood in his clothing was indeed almost certainly his, although due to the 1980s forensic technology this was not wholly conclusive.[2]
In August 1987, shortly after the incident, local fishermen discovered a plastic bag full of clothes on the uninhabited skerry of Lilla Björnholm, outside Korpo in the Turku archipelago, only some 200 metres (660 ft) from the shipping line used by the ferries to and from Turku. They left it there, but when they returned a year later and found the bag still there, they passed it on to the police.[2] The investigators published the bag's contents, including the fact that a glove found in the bag was monogrammed with initials 'H.K.', and stated that some forensic evidence suggested that the clothes originated from Viking Sally, but this did not lead to a break in the case.[2]
Over the next several years, investigators traced and interviewed as many of the video-recorded passengers as possible; some could never be identified. The investigators sailed on the same ship several times, hoping to find clues, to no avail. As forensic technology advanced, the evidence gathered provided some clues, but ultimately not enough to solve the mystery. There were no eye witnesses to the incident, no useful CCTV footage, no apparent motive, and Ms Taxis has no recollection of the incident, all of which made solving the crime particularly difficult. Despite unprecedented scale of police effort, the investigation was discontinued as fruitless in the 1990s.[2]
New developments and charges
In 2019, the police revealed that they had a prime suspect for the crime, but would not reveal the suspect's age, sex or nationality, confirming only that the person was alive, and thought to have acted alone.[5] They later added that the perpetrator is thought not to have known the victims.[6]
In September 2020, the Turku police department finally announced that they had solved the case, and were passing it on to prosecutors.[2] In December 2020 a district prosecutor announced that homicide charges have been filed against a Danish man born in 1969, one of the former boy scouts who discovered the victims.[1] He has not been arrested.[1] The trial has been provisionally scheduled for May 2021.[7][1]
The case had originally been investigated as a manslaughter, which has a statutory limit of 20 years; this would have meant that the case could no longer be brought to court.[1] The new charges are murder and attempted murder, which do not expire, and can be brought even after more than 30 years.[1] The prosecutors explain the new charges with the exceptionally cruel nature of the act.[1] If the charges result in a conviction, it would represent the longest offence-to-conviction lead time in Finnish judicial history.[2]
See also
References
- "Tanskalaismies saa syytteet saksalaisturistin 30 vuoden takaisesta murhasta Viking Sallylla" [Danish man charged with the murder of German tourist on Viking Sally thirty years ago] (in Finnish). Helsingin Sanomat. 7 December 2020. Retrieved 28 January 2021.
- "Opiskelijapari nukkui makuupusseissaan ruotsinlaivan kannella, kun tappaja hyökkäsi – Turun poliisin mukaan 33 vuotta vanha murha on nyt selvinnyt" [Student couple slept in their sleeping bags on a ferry deck, when the killer attacked — Turku police claim to have now solved the 33-year-old case] (in Finnish). Yle. 11 September 2020. Retrieved 11 September 2020.
- "Viking Sallyn 32 vuotta vanha murhamysteeri nousi uudestaan tapetille, poliisi uskoo ratkaisuun" [32-year-old murder mystery on Viking Sally back on the agenda, police confident of solution] (in Finnish). Iltalehti. 3 August 2019. Retrieved 11 September 2020.
- "Murder on the Upper Deck. An Unsolved Crime". Forenseek. Retrieved 11 September 2020.
- "Poliisi vahvistaa: Viking Sallyn murhasta epäilty on elossa" [Police confirms: Viking Sally murder suspect is alive] (in Finnish). Iltalehti. 22 November 2019. Retrieved 11 September 2020.
- "32 vuoden takainen Viking Sallyn murhamysteeri etenee syyttäjälle – poliisi kuullut epäiltyä useita kertoja, mutta häntä ei ole vangittu" [Viking Sally murder mystery from 32 years ago going to prosecutors - the suspect has been interviewed several times but not arrested] (in Finnish). Aamulehti. Retrieved 11 September 2020.
- "Finland to try Danish man for 33-year-old crime". Yle. 7 December 2020. Retrieved 28 December 2020.
Further reading
- Murder on the Upper Deck. An Unsolved Crime. English translation of a chapter from a Finnish 1992 book, written by Detective Inspector Eino Kivimäki, recounting the incident.