The Strange Case of Anneli Auer - Returns to Court Again

[Vixen]

So this case has been sent back to trial. Auer was originally convicted of killing her husband, Jukka Lahti, claiming a strange man wearing dark clothing entered through the glass of her back door. She was charged with murder. An undercover cop named 'Seppo' tried to familiarise himself with her; but this was found to be unethical by the courts, and her conviction overturned. She was awarded €500K in compensation. Auer took up with Jens Kukka but the pair were arrested when three of her four children told the foster parents they had been placed with, of how Jukka Lahti, had been 'sacrificed' in a satanic ritual, and that they, together with three of the neighbour's children, had sacrificed small birds and animals in their yard. Auer and Kukka, it was claimed, performed blood rites and got them to draw stuff with Lahti's ashes, the kids claimed to the foster parents (who was actually, Auer's brother). As well as these claims, which the foster parents filmed on video, the children, then aged three- to ten-years-old (the eldest fourth child, having left home) claimed to have been raped in various ways. So, the foster parents went to the police and Kukka and Auer were given long prison sentences for child sex abuse, with the satanic stuff dropped by the prosecutor.

The current twist is that the children have grown up and are now claiming they told their foster parents a pack of lies. The higher courts quashed the child sex convictions and sent the case back to trial, which is now ongoing. The grown-up children are claiming the sex abuse never happened. The prosecutors say the kids were only witnesses to the case and therefore, do not have the legal power to challenge the convictions.

A further twist in the tale is that the gynaecologist who used ultra violet light at the time to highlight hidden bruises and marks on the children's bodies may now not be able to give evidence in the new trial because the Finnish version of the National Health Service, THL, says it doesn't recognise ultra-violet light detection and that bruises and marks should be visible under ordinary white light. So, if the key expert witness for the prosecution is barred from testifying because of this edict of non-conformity to best practice, Auer and Kukka might well have a chance of having their child sex convictions struck out. However, the prosecution believes there is no way a three-year-old child up to a ten-year-old could have had such sophisticated sexual knowledge without some adult interference. The adult children have now claimed that the foster parents were strict bible bashers who treated them overly strictly and manipulated their accusations of satanic rituals. The new trial is expected to last until January 2026.

This is how events have progressed​

December 1, 2006: Jukka S. Lahti is murdered in his home. Initially, the police suspect that the perpetrator is an unknown attacker who entered the house through a window.

2007: Anneli Auer starts dating a man named Jens Kukka.

2009: The police conduct an undercover operation in which a police officer named "Seppo" joins Auer's company.

September 2009: Anneli Auer is arrested on suspicion of murdering her husband.

November 12, 2010: The Satakunta District Court sentences Auer to life imprisonment for the murder of her husband.

July 1, 2011: The Vaasa Court of Appeal dismisses the murder charge. Auer is released.

August 2011: Auer's brother contacts the police. He says the children have told him about the night of the murder and the sexual crimes from 2007 to 2009.

September 8–16, 2011: Auer and Kukka are arrested and imprisoned on suspicion of sexual crimes.

June 29, 2012: The District Court of Southwest Finland convicts Auer and Kukka of sexual crimes and other violence against children.

19.10.2012: The Supreme Court returns the murder of Jukka S. Lahti to the district court. Prosecutors requested a new hearing based on new accounts from the children.

June 27, 2013: The Turku Court of Appeal delivers its verdict in the sexual assault case. Auer's sentence was slightly harsher.

December 12, 2013: The Satakunta District Court convicts Auer of murder again.

June 11, 2014: The Supreme Court does not grant leave to appeal in a sex crime case. Long sentences remain in effect.

February 19, 2015: The Vaasa Court of Appeal again rejects Auer's murder conviction.

February 20, 2015 and November 2, 2016: The Supreme Court rejects Kukka and Auer's first applications for acquittal related to sexual crimes.

2016: Anneli Auer receives one of the largest compensation payments in Finnish history for serving an innocent sentence in prison. The compensation is over half a million euros.

In the same year, Auer's book Murhaleske's Memoirs was published.

2023: Auer and Kukka are again seeking to overturn the verdict. Now Auer's children say that their previous statements were not true.

December 5, 2024: The Supreme Court overturns the sex crime conviction and returns the case to the district court.

December 2024: The murder investigation of Jukka S. Lahti has been transferred to the Central Criminal Police Office.

January 17, 2025: The Public Prosecutor announces that he will re-file charges against Auer and Kukka in the sexual crimes case.

September 17, 2025: The Southwest Finland District Court will hold a preparatory hearing. The trial is scheduled to last until early 2026.

ILTA-LEHTI

 

[Myriad]

Nothing in the summary amounts to any evidence of whether or not Auer killed her husband, which is the only legal issue of interest, given that the case for the sex crime charges is a pile of garbage.

 

[Vixen]

Nothing in the summary amounts to any evidence of whether or not Auer killed her husband, which is the only legal issue of interest, given that the case for the sex crime charges is a pile of garbage.

Bear in mind, it is the defence putting out the PR about how the foster parents were a couple of religious disciplinarians, who sent the children to their rooms at 18:00 and wouldn't let them raid the fridge; expected them to change out of school uniform on arriving home (which is exactly what I used to do); and what have you. It is claimed Auer's brother, Ari, was convinced Anneli, his sister, had killed her husband, Jukka Lahti, and therefore went to some lengths to try to prove it by planting suggestions in the children's heads and then going to the police. So far, so good, sounds like the kids now withdrawing their earlier claims is perfectly innocent and nothing to do with a likely multi-million Euros pay out in compensation for Auer's 8-year-prison sentence, and Jens Kukka's 10-year one.

We have only heard the defence side so far, via the tabloid media. The prosecutors (three of them) have been rather more circumspect and likely to present their case in court.

BTW if you or anyone sees this stock character dressed in the uniform 'dark clothing' with a habit of entering through smashed windows, do let the police know ASAP, as he seems to pop up everywhere!

 

[Vixen]

So, I've been trying to get my head around this case. I've had Anneli Auer's book, Murhalesken muistelmat for a while but have only got round to reading it now. It came out in 2016, so from this perspective, she had since had her conviction and sentence for the murder of her husband dismissed and quashed by the Supreme Court but the sex crimes remained extant. Thus it is quite an absorbing read as she is free from fear of telling her story about the murder.

You can hear the call she made to the police ont he night of the murder, 1.12. 2006 from about 2:28, in English. It all sounds very authentic and super urgent. There is a moment when Auer leaves the phone with her eldest daughter, to the sound of Jukka, her husband shouting out in the background. It's quite harrowing


Her story was that theintruder came in through the window, was wearing black, and stabbed her in the chest. The eldest daughter said she saw the intruder leave by the same way he came in. It was almost three years before police arrested and charged Auer with murder. According to her book, she claims the police sent the tape to the FBI who analysed it but could hear no sound of footsteps or voice of the intruder*. Police in addition, said they could see no footprints given the shards of glass. The post mortem showed that although Lahti had been stabbed several times, his cause of death was blunt force trauma to the face. So police formed a theory Auer had finished him off by smashing him with a heavy object. They found it suspicious she claimed to have looked at him in the face as he lay dead but hadn't noticed his smashed in jaw. Plus, the police claim they could hear the words, 'Kuole, helvetti!' in the background ('Die, go to hell!') but Finnish has many words with the vowel/dipthong combination, '-uo-le'. Plus add in dialect, and it could have been any number of words other than 'kuole'. The swear word being no more harmless than '◊◊◊◊!' as an expletive of surprise or shock, rather than of hurling a curse at a person. So, police believed it was a domestic row murder.

Now, of course, the grown up children are now claiming in the current re-run of the sex abuse trial they never told the foster parents that their father was killed as part of a satanic sacrifice, and that they made it all up at the encouragement of their uncle, the foster parent. The eldest boy had claimed his mother had switched on a tape for the phone call (i.e., of prerecorded death thralls of Lahti) but forensic police could find no sound of the clicking of someone turning on a tape recorder. Certainly, it is all very weird.

* The defence counter argument based on scientific fact, re that type of landline phone, was that it was designed specifically to only pick up the voice of the person speaking into it and wasn't geared to picking up background noise. Also the cables were lower of a low Hz.

 

[Vixen]

Case opens today. Jens Kukka - who has now changed his name to something else - turned up in person to the retrial of the alleged sex offences against Auer's children when they were young, giving interviews to the press. Auer, too has turned up, 'demanding' that everything be made public. However, the District Court ruled that certain information should remain confidential and the Supreme Court in ordering a retrial, said it doesn't have the remit to go against this decision. The defence attorney for the pair, Manner, has led a PR publicity campaign, claiming the childrens' claims were fabricated by Auer's brother, who was the foster parent who videotaped the children's claims as advised by the prosecutor, when the foster parent reported it.

The prosecutor urged the foster father to videotape the children's statements about the murder.​

10 hours ago

The prosecutor now recounts in her presentation how events have progressed to this point. Prosecutor Leena Koivuniemi says that Auer's children had lived in foster care for about a year before they began telling their foster parents about the murder and abuse in late July 2011.



At that time, the foster father had contacted the prosecutor in the murder case.

- The prosecutor then ordered that [the foster father] videotape the children's stories.

According to Koivuniemi, the children in these videos did not yet talk about sexual acts. Only one of the children had said that he had once had to sleep in the same bed with Auer and Kukka. TURUN SANOMAT

In another curve ball, although the conviction for murder of her husband was overturned, this time the Central Criminal Squad is reinvestigating the murder (taking over from the local Pori police), with again, the suspects being looked at are Anneli Auer or an unknown outsider, yet to be identified.

 

[Vixen]

Also discussed today is the issue of whether the use of ultra-violet light to identify injuries to the children's bodies is a legitimate practice.

Prosecutor Leena Koivuniemi announced that during the trial, the prosecutor will present a new, supplementary statement as evidence, which will discuss the method used to examine the scars found on the children. ibid

Auer's defence lawyer, Fredman, wants to offer an alternative explanation for the 'scar' findings:

Auer's lawyer, Markku Fredman, plans to present an alternative version of events for the alleged crimes during his speech. Auer continues to deny any sexual or violent crimes. ibid

Likewise, Kukka's lawyer, Gummerus, argued in court that the ultra-violet findings were unreliable.

Jens Kuka's defense also criticized the prosecutor's claims about the traces found on Auer's children at length in their own speech. Kuka's lawyer Kaarle Gummerus considers the gynecologist who examined the children, like Markku Fredman, to be biased.

- She has used a research method that is not suitable for the case, namely that UV light, Gummerus pointed out. ibid

Case continues tomorrow.