Unsolved Case: The Disapperance of Piia Ristikankare

Scandinavian Crimes (w/ Devante & Delila)

Year(s) of Incident: October 1988
Location: Finland
Unsolved Case: The Disapperance of Piia Ristikankare 
Victim(s):  1
Method: Missing Person

On Friday, October 7th, Piia Ristikankare, a vocational school student studying housekeeping, experienced what began as a normal school day. She had planned a sleepover with a friend in Paimio but canceled it to babysit her 3-year-old brother. Her parents were divorced, and her mother had moved out of the family home several years earlier. 

That evening, while Piia was at home with her two brothers, aged 3 and 14, her father was in the sauna with his father-in-law. After Piia and her older brother argued over television programs, Piia left the house, likely carrying a small bag with some money. She has not been seen since. 

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Transcript

(Sighs)

I'm just gonna start.

(...) (Clears Throat)

Welcome to Scandinavian Crimes. My name is Devante, and say hello to my lovely co-host, Delila.

(...)

Hi.

And on this podcast, we talk about famous Scandinavian criminals who made their mark throughout Scandinavian history.(...) So welcome to another episode of the podcast. It's been a little bit primarily because, as you know, in America, it was Thanksgiving,(...) relatively recently. So traveling and a lot of things popped up at the last minute for myself, and then immediately after, Delilah got sick.(...) So, yeah. Sorry. It was a lot going on. But nonetheless, we are here to provide you with the sustenance you need and your true crime satisfaction, so that way we can help make your day a little bit easier.

(...)

So this case is not gonna be super long. We're not gonna have a super long discussion, and there won't be a video for this one because too much. But nonetheless, this will still be a very interesting case.

(...)

So on the night of October, 1988, it was a cold autumn night, 15-year-old Pila stepped out of her family's home in the quiet, finished town of Pekia.(...) She never returned, vanishing into a mystery that has never been solved. But to keep things simple,(...) you already know what I'm about to say.

(...)

Grab your tea, grab your snacks.

(...)

If you're on your way to work, tuck yourself into that nice little corner on the bus of the train so you can put your headphones in real tight

(...)

because this is the disappearance of Pia Rista-Con-Kare.

(Soft Music)

Pia Rista-Con-Kare was 15, a quiet but determined teenager growing up in a small Southwest finished town of Pekia. She lived in a modest house with her father,(...) Heiki,(...) her maternal grandfather and her two younger brothers, 14-year-old Teo and three-year-old Kale.

(...)

Her parents had divorced after her mother's long struggle with alcoholism and Pia had gradually lost contact with her.

(...)

Friday, October 7th, 1988, began like any other school day.(...) Pia had planned to spend the night at a friend's house in a nearby Pameo, just a few kilometers away.

(...)

At the last moment, Pia canceled her visit and decided to stay home to look after her little brother, Kale, when when Kale was unexpectedly allowed to go with their father, Pia was left at home with only her grandfather and her brother Teo for company.

(...)

As evening settled over the house, the family followed their familiar Friday routine,

(...)

sauna night. While Heiki and grandfather bathed, Pia and Teo stayed in the living room.(...) A petty disagreement over the television remote sparked into a sharp quarrel.

(...)

Irritated and upset, Pia decided to leave. She slipped out carrying only a small bag with a few finished marks, dressed in jeans and a denim jacket. Beyond the front door, the countryside was anything but quiet. In Pameo, the Pontella Youth Center hosted a school disco that had drawn more than 100 teenagers from surrounding towns, including Pika. Alcohol followed freely despite the presence of minors. Police eventually shut the party down after fights broke out, sending groups of youths and carloads of visitors spilling into the dark rural roads.

(...)

For a region where strangers were rare, the night had unusual movement and noise. If Pia intended to reach her friend's home in Pameo, she faced several kilometers of unlit country roads.

(...)

Cars and groups of teenagers were reported throughout the area that night, yet not a single reliable witness ever confirmed senior.

(...)

From the moment she stepped into the cold rain, her trail simply vanished. When Haki returned from the sauna, Teo explained that Pia had left after their argument.(...) Believing she had gone to her friend's house, as originally planned, Haki expected her to return over the weekend or appear at the family's Sunday Jehovah's Witnesses meeting. But Sunday passed without a word from Pia.(...) A call to the police that evening brought only reassurance that she was likely out by choice and will soon come back.

(...)

By Monday morning with no sign of his daughter, Haki filed an official missing person report at the Corrina police station. Despite extensive searches, no trace of Pia was ever found. Her home remains the last verified place she was seen.

(...)

In the first days after Pia's disappearance, police treated the case as a routine teenage runaway.(...) A formal missing person report was not filed until Monday morning, nearly three days after she walked out the house. The initial delay would haunt the investigation for years. By the time the search began in earnest, any fleeting traces Pia might have left were already lost in rain, traffic, as well as time. Once the seriousness of the situation became clear, authorities organized a wide search of Pia

(...)

in the surrounding countryside.(...) Combed nearby fields and forest, helicopters scanned from above in waterways or dragged were brought into sniff for human remains. Yet despite the effort, not a single footprint, piece of clothing or personal belonging was ever recovered.(...) Pia's savings, over 2,600 finished marks, remained untouched in her bank account, reinforcing the belief that she had not run away voluntarily.(...) Detectives began interviewing family members, school friends, neighbors, and anyone who might've seen Pia.(...) None of them reported anything suspicious.

(...)

Pia's home offered no physical clues.

(...)

Early reports of possible sightings fizzled. A teacher thought that she glimpsed Pia on a bus a week after her disappearance, but the lead was quickly ruled out.(...) Another student claimed to have seen her near the school wearing light clothing, but the girl turned out to be someone else.

(...)

Tips trickled in over the years.

(...)

Some were mundane, others unsettling.

(...)

In January, 1990, a relative received a cryptic phone call from a man who described the location of a supposed grave before abruptly hanging up. Police later searched the site and wouldn't shed on a property in Salvo, but found nothing. One of the most striking leads arrived in April, 2002.

(...)

Police received an anonymous letter postmarked in Sweden, but mailed from Torquo, Finland.

(...)

The writer signing as Tom from Boros. Claimed to have seen a girl who appeared unconscious being lifted into a white Volvo in Pica around midnight on the night of Pia's disappearance. The letter even included a partial license plate.(...) Investigators tracked down the car and its owner, a man with a history of violent crimes, but no concrete link to Pia could be proven. In 2003, a fisherman reported that on the night of Pia's disappearance, he had seen two figures on a boat in Pica Latte, throwing something heavy into the water. When they noticed him, they cursed and sped away. Diver searched the area, but no evidence surfaced.

(...)

As the years passed, the case shifted from a missing person search to a suspected homicide. The Finnish National Bureau of Investigation, KRP, took over in 2003, re-examining every file and tip.(...) They considered connections to known predators, including notorious child killer Jarmo or Jammu Siltevuri, and later Swedish murderer Anders Eklund. Both men remained persons of interest only in theory. At the time of Pia's disappearance, Jammu owned or had access to several properties in the southwestern Finland area, including one in or near Pica, where his ex-wife lived.(...) Anders' crimes shared unsettling similarities and often crossed into Finland for work. Investigators consider the possibility that Anders might have been in southwest Finland when Pia disappeared. However, neither Anders or Jammu could be definitively linked to Pia's disappearance because there was no concrete evidence tying either of them to the case.(...) Police determined that Jammu was in prison or otherwise accounted for at the times of Pia's disappearance. Cadaver Dogs and searchers on his property yielded no trace of Pia.(...) Investigators found no record of Anders being in Pica at the time of Pia's disappearance. No physical evidence, eyewitnesses accounts, or credible sightings connected to him in the area. Despite repeated searches, minor forensic testing, and interviews of old witnesses, the investigation never produced a breakthrough. In 2018, on the 30th anniversary of Pia's disappearance, police returned to the family home with Cadaver Dogs and collected personal items for DNA profiling.(...) Nothing was found.

(...)

In 2023, investigators again examined the white Volvo name, the white Volvo named in the Swedish letter, and even unearthed animal bones beneath the garbage floor of the family house.

(...)

Remains that turned out to be nothing more than a dog. As the years stretched on with no answers, a web of theories emerged.(...) Some theories arose from hard evidence or credible tips.(...) Others were born of speculation shaped by strange coincidences and gaps in the investigation. One of the earliest theories in the simplest explanation was an accident. That rainy October 9th, the roads around Pica were busy with cars leaving the Pantela youth disco.

(...)

Police theorized that she might have been struck by a passing car and that the driver terrified of the consequences hit her body.

(...)

This idea gained even more traction in 2002 with an anonymous letter from Sweden that described a white Volvo stopping in Pica and an unconscious girl being lifted into the car. But despite the extensive investigation, no proof ever emerged.(...) Another possibility pointed to abduction or murder. The Pantela disco had attracted unfamiliar visitors and some detectives believe Pia could have accepted a ride from a stranger or crossed paths with someone dangerous.

(...)

Others speculated that Pia had left voluntarily, possibly driven by tension at home or bullying at school due to her family's Jehovah Witness faith.(...) But her untouched bank account, lack of belongings, and complete silence since that night made the idea of a runaway increasingly implausible.

(...)

Over the years, bone skulls and false leads have surfaced across Finland, each briefly reigniting hope before fading into disappointment. Every theory remains a fragment of a larger puzzle that no one has been able to complete.

(...)

The disappearance of Pia has become one of Finland's most enduring cold cases. Her absence deeply affected her family, particularly her younger brothers, who endured years of speculation and cruel rumors at school.

(...)

Pia's father, Heiki, continued to live in the same house for the rest of his life, waiting for answers that never came.

(...)

He died in June, 2024, never knowing what happened to his daughter. Local residents, amateur investigators, and journalists have kept the case alive through documentaries, podcasts, and online discussions.(...) Some private citizens even offer significant cash rewards for information leading to the discovery of Pia's remains or the capture of her killer. The theories of Pia's disappearance reflect the breadth of possibilities that investigators have explored.(...) Each holds fragments of plausibility, but none has been proven.(...) Despite decades of forensic testing, renewed surges, and relentless examinations of tips, there is no body, no confirmed suspect, and no definitive account of what happened after the 15-year-old stepped into the cold October night. Today, the case remains open, officially classified as a suspected homicide.(...) The Finnish police still welcome tips, but after decades of searching, Pia's fate remains one of Finland's unsolved mysteries, a story without an ending.

(...)

This case has actually been recommended by another of our listener from our social media platform.

(...)

So thank you so much for this case and this tip, and we were able to find so much information of this ongoing unsolved case.

(...)

And if you guys are interested in like sharing any tips or any cases that you're interested in, feel free to do that on our social media platform, and we can have a podcast episode of it.

(...)

So yeah,

(...)

obviously there's a lot of theories of what could have happened, but due to the lack of any evidence available of anything,

(...)

it's really hard to like know what happened to her.

(...)

But I do think it's possible of it being an accident. And then, but it's also weird because like they wouldn't be able to like, they would have been able to find something then.

(...)

So it's like, it's super weird either way, but maybe it could have been a kidnapping situation as well.(...) And she could have still be alive, who knows?

I don't really have much to say about this case, just one thing I'm curious about.

(...)

Did they ever contact the mother to see if possibly she could have been involved in any way at all?(...) I know she said, well, I know in the story that they lost contact over the years, but there have been some instances of some overlap where maybe the mother, and I'm not saying this is the case, but I'm comparing to other cases where situations like this could have happened and the parent could have cleaned up or wanted to see their child and it just so happened to fall on that night or something like that. So regardless of, you know, I'm not saying the mother killed or anything like that, but I'm just curious if they reached out to the mother to see if there was any information they can pull from her.

(...)

Based on the information I saw,(...) no. It sounded to me that she was completely out of the picture

(...)

and the reason she was out of the picture was because she was an alcoholic. An alcoholism, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's the only thing I could find, but I do agree that most murder cases is often people who,

(...)

like people you know,

(...)

then like strangers.

(...)

I'm not saying it couldn't happen if a stranger could do it. I'm just like, in general, that's often the case.(...) So she could be a, like, I don't think they did anything.

(...)

Like maybe they did do some type of investigation on her,(...) but there was nothing I could find that they actually did anything of that either. So I can't really answer, so.

(...)

Just curious. Maybe that's something, if they haven't already, maybe that's something that they can look into possibly, but that's if the mother's still alive because it's been a long time, but that is a route maybe they could have took just to get more information. Not saying she did anything, just saying maybe she might have known something.

It just sounded like they did everything and nothing came out of it.

Yeah, which is why I can't believe.

(...)

Yeah.

(...)

So as you guys have probably noticed,

(...)

we've covered a lot of unsolved cases, kidnapping cases, cold cases, this first half of the season, and it was not intentional.

(...)

It just happened to be that way for some reason.

(...)

And obviously it's super sad to talk and share

(...)

about these cases that are unsolved because somewhere you want to like kind of have like an ending to a case,(...) but I think spreading information, maybe new information can be given to the investigators who are still investigating this till this day.

(...)

Yeah.

So I still think it's important that we share these cases and talk about them.

(...)

For the victims.

(...)

Absolutely.

(...)

So that's why I also wanted to say that in general.

(...)

Sorry, I'm still a little sick.(...) I was trying not to like, my nose is not working with me right now.

(...)

But there's an unsolved case. So once again, if you know anything, if you've lived in the area and know anybody who's lived in the area or anything of that nature, feel free to reach out to the appropriate sources, law enforcement in the area, and maybe you can help turn this case around.

Because maybe that little piece of information could actually solve the case. We've had a couple of solved cases

(...)

that were solved years later, so don't give up. If you have information, please share.

(...)

Yeah, so I don't have anything else to say. Like I said, there's not really much we can say about this case. I think it's a, I don't know how to keep it up.

It's similar to the other cases.(...) Yeah, I think if you guys are interested in the Jammu Siltavur case, we have covered that already.

(...)

And if you're interested in learning about the Anders Eklund case,(...) it was a very huge thing in Sweden. So feel,

(...)

if you guys are interested in that, we can also cover that in the future of this podcast. So yeah, okay, that's pretty much what I'd say too.

(...)

So we'll wrap it up and I'll just say Thanksgiving was good food,(...) macaroni, cheese,

(...)

Soup, soup, soup, soup, soup all the way, soup all the way, cleanse my everything.

(...)

That's how good food for the day, the love. So once again, I appreciate y'all. Feel free to check out any of the old episodes. Remember there's no video for this episode, but there will be from the next one. But I will see y'all in the next episode.

(...)

Have a lovely day. Peace out.

Bye.