A Finnish court has fined an 81-year-old man nearly €2,000 after he kept his parents’ bodies in chest freezers for almost three decades at a property in Turku, southwest Finland. His 70-year-old brother was also fined for helping dig an unauthorised hole at the family’s burial plot.
The Varsinais-Suomi District Court convicted the older man of three offences relating to the improper treatment of human remains and the violation of a grave. The case followed the discovery of the bodies by police in June 2024, bringing to light a decades-long decision not to arrange their burial.
The brothers’ parents died of natural causes in 1994 and 1995. Instead of arranging a funeral and burial, their eldest son, a trained physician, stored their remains in chest freezers inside an outbuilding on the property.
The older brother collected his father’s body from the University of Turku’s pathology department in 1995, where it had been held for six months. He also collected his mother’s body from Åland Central Hospital and transported it by ferry to Turku.
Police discovered the remains during a search of the property in June 2024. The freezers were surrounded by stored belongings and other items. One of the freezers had no electricity supply when officers arrived.
During the trial, the 81-year-old admitted that he had kept his parents’ bodies in the freezers but denied that his actions amounted to a crime. He argued that he had acted in accordance with his parents’ wishes and had intended to place them in a family burial chamber.
He told investigators that his father wanted his body preserved for possible future scientific research rather than cremated or buried. The older man also described plans to establish a burial chamber in Washington state in the United States.
The court rejected his defence, ruling that the parents’ alleged wishes and the defendant’s religious beliefs did not remove his obligation to comply with Finnish burial laws.
Prosecutors argued that the unlawful storage of the remains constituted a continuing offence that lasted until police recovered the bodies in 2024. The court accepted that argument and rejected the defendant’s position that the offences dated back to 1995 and had expired under the statute of limitations.
The older man received 110 income-linked day fines, with eight deducted to account for time spent in detention. Finland’s day-fine system takes a person’s income into account when determining the financial penalty. His younger brother received 40 day fines, amounting to €640, for his involvement in the case.
The brothers were also convicted over an incident at their family’s burial plot in Turku cemetery in October 2025. The court found that they had dug a hole approximately 80 centimetres deep without the required permission.
The men maintained that they were carrying out repairs to a leaning gravestone. However, the court concluded that the excavation was intended to prepare a burial chamber.
The parents’ remains were eventually buried at Turku cemetery in late 2025. Authorities from Lieto and Mariehamn arranged the burial, bringing the long-running case over the handling of the remains to a close.
The district court’s ruling is not final. Both brothers have the right to appeal.
