EDIT 7th December 2020: Charges pressed against Danish man!
In 1987, a West German national was murdered and another seriously injured in an attack on board Viking Sally, a cruise ship from Stockholm, Sweden to Turku, Finland. This was not the first disaster on the ship (another murder in 1986 was solved) and it would not be the last, as Viking Sally was later sold to Estline and renamed M/S Estonia, sinking in the deadliest maritime disaster in European waters.
A quick overview of the 1987 murder case can be found on Wikipedia. Many aspects of it are like straight out of a detective novel: a murder happens in the middle of the sea in an enclosed space, with the perpetrator still onboard as the investigators go around interviewing people. A bag of clothes is discovered on a nearby island, and a shoe is used to track down the city where the suspect lives.
About a month ago, the Finnish police announced that they have solved this 33-year-old cold case (source is the Finnish Broadcasting Company; available in Finnish and in Swedish). The case was passed over to prosecutors, who will now determine whether the available evidence fulfills the criteria of a first-degree murder charge. If it doesn't, and is only enough for a second-degree murder charge, the case will not be moved to prosecution because the statute of limitations has expired (20 years for second-degree murder). First-degree murder has no statute of limitations.
Now, there was another famous, old, unsolved mystery case in the Nordic countries that was purportedly solved this year, the murder of Olof Palme, so I thought it'd be good to underline the key differences between these two announcements.
In the Palme case, the conclusion was essentially “we have determined the person who is most likely the suspect, and that person is dead”.
In the Viking Sally case, however, the conclusion is that they know who did it, the person is alive and they can prove the person did it. The only unclear thing about this case, according to the police, is whether it fulfills the criteria of a first-degree murder and can still be prosecuted.
The YLE article linked previously contains a great long-form text of the events on the 28th of July 1987 for anyone interested in the events, people and the investigation process in detail. I took the liberty of translating it here, with linked pictures:

Background

The story involved three West German youths on an Interrail trip: Klaus Schelkle (20), Bettina Taxis (22) and Thomas Schmid (21). Schelkle and Schmid’s friendship went years back, having both played and enthusiastically supported football in Stuttgart. Schelkle and Taxis had met each other at a night club and had been dating for a little less than a year at the time of their Interrail trip. From the very beginning of the trip, they had their eyes set on visiting Finland: they traveled to Stockholm and spent only a single night there before boarding Viking Sally, intending to reach the city of Turku by the next morning. In Turku, they had planned on exploring the city, drinking beer and visiting Ruisrock, the second-oldest rock festival in Europe. The festival would be headlined by Peer Günt and Pretenders. From Turku, their trip was to continue towards Lapland and Norway.
Klaus Schelkle and Bettina Taxis in Stockholm the day before boarding Viking Sally.
In the 1992 book Poliisi kertoo (‘The Police tells’, essentially case stories from the police), a chapter written by criminal commissioner Eino Kivimäki is widely regarded as the most accurate and well-corroborated source on the events that transpired on the 28th of July 1987. The YLE article speculates that some of the information must have changed decisively to prompt the re-opening of the investigation in 2016. Nevertheless, the following description of events is largely based on Kivimäki’s text.
Fitting with the sense of youthful adventure an Interrail trip often involves, Schelkle and Taxis had decided to sleep outside on the ship’s deck in sleeping bags. Not wanting to bother the couple, Schmid had decided to stay indoors and keep an eye on everyone’s luggage.
Schelkle and Taxis were described as more sociable on the cruise than Schmid, who wasn’t particularly interested in the cruise ship experience in general. At one point during the evening, Schelkle and Taxis came to tell Schmid that they had met “a fun Finnish guy” who spoke excellent German. This “Finnish guy” was a businessman working in the automotive industry, while Schelkle himself was studying to become a car mechanic. Due to their common interests, they had tried to visit the car deck of the cruise line but found it to be locked. Having decided to try their luck again in the morning, the two men exchanged contact information during the night.

The attack

At approximately 1 in the morning, Schelkle and Taxis woke up the already-sleeping Schmid to retrieve their sleeping bags. The couple headed to the rear portion of the ninth deck, to the helicopter platform. The spot they chose for sleeping was shielded by a plexiglass and was dark due to a broken light fixture.
The West German youths were not the only international travellers on board. A group of international scouts headed to the Nordic LDS Jamboree (a camp for members of the church of the Latter Day Saints) had been wandering around the ship all night, reportedly to the annoyance of other passengers. At approximately 3:45, a trio of Danish scouts made their way to the helicopter deck. Initially not seeing anyone else on the deck, they eventually noticed movement in the dark and identified two persons by the air conduction vents.
Here is a crude reconstruction of the scene and location where the three Danish scouts found Schelkle and Taxis.
At first, the scouts thought the two people were incredibly drunk passengers - not an uncommon sight on Baltic cruise ships in the 1980s, and not an uncommon sight on Baltic cruise ships in 2020 either. One of the Danish people eventually decided to have a closer look at the two persons, only to find both of them covered in blood, with blood also covering large portions of the deck. Both Schelkle and Taxis were able to move but were seriously injured. The scouts were trained in first aid, but did not have adequate skills to deal with injuries of such a massive scale. They contacted the information desk of the ship who alarmed a security guard to the crime scene. The security guard has been heard as a witness in the re-opened investigation and did not want to be interviewed for the YLE article.
There have been conflicting reports over the years on the murder weapon and the condition in which Schelkle and Taxis were found: it was reported that they were found still in their sleeping bags, but this has not been confirmed. The murder weapon was confirmed as a blunt weapon, but media initially reported that the murder weapon was a fireman’s axe. Finally, it was initially reported that Taxis’ finger had been cut off, but the police or emergency responders did not report this. The confirmed fact is that they suffered blunt trauma to the head.
Schelkle and Taxis tried to communicate with the first responders, but they could not be understood. This could be because of their head trauma or simply because no German speakers were present. They were taken to the medical ward of the ship, and straight away their cranial injuries were deemed so severe that the sea emergency and rescue centre of Turku was contacted. A helicopter was sent to retrieve the couple. Taxis was reportedly delirious during the helicopter ride, constantly mistaking the emergency responders as attackers and attempting to shield herself from them. Schelkle had to be administered CPR during the ride. At 5:48 they arrived at the Turku University hospital, where Schelkle was pronounced dead. The helicopter team picked up three crime scene investigators and one technical inspector and headed back to the cruise ship.

The investigation

The investigators were unable to find any witnesses. Thomas Schmid had woken up to the sound of the helicopter during the night, but had falled back asleep. He was interviewed by the police early in the morning. The police did not tell him what had happened to his friends until he had been questioned over and over, and had grown so frustrated and worried that he refused to answer any more questions unless he was told what had happened.
A cruise ship is an atypical crime scene because the perpetrator was almost certainly still onboard. A murder had happened on this same ship the year before, and the passengers had already left the ship by the time the police were able to start their investigation. Learning from their past mistake, the police took a very thorough approach to the investigation: they decided to videotape and gather the contact information of everyone on board. While they did manage to videotape everyone, the task of collecting everyone’s personal information turned out to be so time-consuming that they eventually decided to not collect the information of elderly passengers, children, or people travelling with small children.
The initial onboard investigation determined a 26-year-old Englishman as the primary person of interest. He was found sleeping on the floor inside the ship with blood on his clothes. He claimed it was from a nosebleed. He was on his way to Finland to meet a woman he had previously met on a kibbutz in Israel. He had already been on a cruise ship from Stockholm to Helsinki, but had been denied from disembarking due to his “disheveled, drug addict-like appearance” and was returned to Stockholm. His presence on this cruise ship was his second attempt to enter Finland, which further contributed to him being considered a person of interest. During the night of the attack, he had had a wild night with a group of five Finns. Three of the five Finns had been gambling in Stockholm and lost all their money, and were given tickets back to Finland by the Stockholm social security services. This group of six - the Englishman and the five Finns - had spent the night on the ship enjoying meals at the restaurant and drinking alcohol in various places all over the cruise ship. When the cruise ship reached the harbour in Turku, the group of six were all taken directly to the police station.
The Finns were cleared of suspicion early on and were released. The Englishman was interviewed several times (the police initially had trouble finding a criminal investigator who spoke English well enough to conduct the interviews), but he maintained his innocence. He was kept in jail for two weeks during the investigation, the maximum time allowed without pressing charges. The criminal laboratory examined the blood on the Englishman’s shirt, and determined that it was his own - although it has later been noted that the technology in 1987 could not rule it with absolute certainty.
With no other evidence against the Englishman, he was released. He lived in Finland for several years after the event, but could not be reached by YLE for this article.
The investigation was exceptionally large and was allocated a great deal of resources, including the latest technology: the computer. Early on in the investigation, the police ruled out robbery and sexual assault as motives. Their best assessment of a possible motive was “an insignificant one”, committed by a mentally ill person or someone suffering from a severe personality disorder.
In 1987, the technology available to crime investigations was still relatively poor. CCTVs were relatively rare and image quality was poor. DNA testing only became a standard, systematic technique in the early 1990s. Blood sample analysis could primarily only determine blood group and whether the blood came from an animal or a human. Cruise ships did not properly collect and store passenger information. Passenger interviews remained the main source of information.
Bettina Taxis survived the attack. She was unconscious for weeks and did not regain consciousness until well after she was transferred to a West German hospital. After a year-long bureaucratic process, Finnish investigators were able to interview her, but she was unable to recall anything from the day of the attack.

Time passes

Over the next couple of years, the police were looking for several people. Two separate people, referred to as “beanie man” by media based on their description (both had worn beanie hats that stood out), were sought after by the police. One of them was reached in Western Germany and was ruled out as a suspect, but the other one was never reached. This particular “beanie man” was 30 years old, approximately 175 centimetres tall and dark-haired. His appearance, in addition to the beanie hat, was described as disheveled, and he spoke to himself in English. He had been seen carrying something canvas-y (unclear whether this refers to a canvas bag containing something, or some other object that was made of canvas).
A month after the attack, two fishermen landed on the small island of Lilla Björnholm along the cruise ship’s route. The island is uninhabited, surrounded by cliffs and covered in forest. The fishermen noticed a black trash bag on the shore and found clothes inside. Not realising a possible connection to the cruise ship murder, they left the bag on the island. Upon returning to the island in the summer of 1988, the fishermen noticed the bag still in the same place they had discovered it the previous August. This time, they took the bag with them and brought it to the police.
Here is an image of the island where the bag was found, as well as an image of the discovered clothes dressed on a mannequin.
Among the clothes was a Finnish-made Umberto Loofer shoe. The police discovered that the shoes had been sold by a shoe store in Turku, in the year 1985 or 1986. The other clothes found were beige shorts, a red sweater, and a grey working glove with the initials H.K.. The police concluded that based on the location of the trash bag as well as “certain technical investigations”, it seemed likely that the clothes had been on board Viking Sally.
The police investigated well into the 1990s. Passengers caught on the videotape were looked for all over Europe. Some people didn’t report themselves to the police because they felt they had nothing to contribute (this was said by two Swedish youths who didn’t report themselves but were found anyway), whereas some people avoided contacting the police because they considered their cruise trip “unsavoury” or embarrassing for personal, but non-criminal reasons. (The article does not give an example of such a reason.)
Eventually, the case went cold.

Recent developments

The investigation stayed cold until the year 2016. The police has not revealed what happened that prompted the re-opening of the investigation. Finally, in September, the lead investigator announced that the case has been solved. However, a legal problem presents itself: in Finland, homicides are classified as kuolemantuottamus, surma, tappo or murha depending on the premeditation and the act itself. Close enough approximations are the American classifications of involuntary manslaughter, voluntary manslaughter, second-degree murder and first-degree murder, respectively. Murha is equivalent to first-degree murder, while tappo is second-degree.
A tappo has a statute of limitations of 20 years, whereas a murha has no statute of limitations. In the 1990s, the case was considered a tappo, but in the early 2000s it was changed to a murha (i.e. a greater degree of premeditation was assumed). If currently available evidence can only support a tappo charge against the person the police have identified, he cannot be prosecuted anymore as the crime has expired in 2007. However, if there is enough evidence to support a murha charge, the police can and certainly will prosecute. The case is currently pending charge considerations to determine exactly this. However, until the charge consideration is finished, the police will not reveal the name, gender, nationality of age of the suspect. They confirm that the suspect did not know the victims beforehand, and has been interviewed several times, but has not been taken into custody. The suspect denies his/her involvement.
The prosecutor expects the charge consideration to be finished by the end of this year.
One thing we know for certain: no new crime scene evidence has been uncovered, because the cruise ship sank in 1994 in the deadliest maritime disaster in Europe.
The rest of the article concerns the life of Thomas Schmid after the attack. He was cleared of suspicion early on in the investigation (and re-cleared in the 2016 investigation), and now lives in Stuttgart with his family. He is hopeful about the result of the investigation, and hopes it brings some closure to Klaus Schelkle’s parents.

(Again, if you understand Swedish or Finnish and thought there was a poor translation or a misunderstanding in the text, please let me know!)

Personal thoughts

Man, I hope they have enough evidence to charge the person with first-degree murder. I don’t know what information they can reveal if they conclude the crime has passed the statute of limitations, but the YLE article says that criminal commissioner Kivimäki did not want to give an interview until the investigation material is published, out of respect to the current lead investigator. This would imply that the evidence, results and overall course of the investigation will be made public. To some degree, in any case. Maybe someone here knows more about this?
I’ll definitely post an update if and when this case gets an update, hopefully within the next couple of months!
And boy, was that cruise ship cursed or what? Two separate murder incidents and a deadly sinking?

Rising women literacy rate promotes the Global Feminine Hygiene Market
Market overview:
The global Feminine Hygiene Marketwas worth USD 26 billion in 2020, and it is foreseen that it will reach a valuation of USD 38.7 billion by 2025 at a CAGR of 6.9% during the outlook period.
Feminine hygiene products are personal care products used by women, consisting of a padded cotton fabric and an alternative layer of highly absorbent and liquid impervious polymer and plastic. These products include tampons, panty liners, sanitary napkins/pads, and menstrual cups. Sanitary napkins are made of different types of materials, such as padded cotton fabrics and a layer of highly absorbent polymers that are impervious to liquids
Recent developments:
In March 2020, Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL), a leading brand in FMCG, announced that Glenmark Pharmaceuticals Ltd. has acquired VWash, a popular global feminine hygiene product.
Market Drivers and Restrains:
Commodity prices in hypermarkets/supermarkets have risen as demand for consumer staples has increased due to the novel coronavirus. Factors driving the global market for feminine hygiene products are increased disposable income, increased awareness of hygiene treatment, and increased demand for products such as tampons and panty liners in developed countries. Conventional napkins contain various synthetic products such as rayon dioxins, metallic dyes that cause allergens, and highly processed wood pulp that cause allergies, infections, and inflammation. Raising awareness of feminine hygiene and health and the emergence of low-cost feminine products are expected to increase the demand during the forecast period. To reduce the health risk from irritants, dyes and harmful chemicals found in sanitary napkins or tampons, there is a growing demand among women for cloth sanitary napkins, towels made from organic materials and biodegradable products.
Health problems and increasing environmental problems caused by sanitary napkins are factors that have a negative impact on the global market for feminine hygiene products. This provides a favorable opportunity for suppliers to strengthen their market position through the development of innovative and premium products in this segment. However, increased interest in the diffusion of consumer goods in stores and joint efforts by governments and companies to improve the economy will contribute to the growth of the market in the near future. With indefinite closures announced by government agencies around the world, the storage of goods by people has caused disruptions in the supply and demand for goods, hampering market growth to some extent.
To know more read:
https://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/feminine-hygiene-market
Report is segmented as:
The global market for feminine hygiene products can be segmented according to distribution channels and product types.
By product type, the global market for feminine hygiene products can be divided into sanitary products and cleaning and deodorizing products. The sanitary napkins accounted for the largest share in the products segment.
According to the distribution channels, the global market for feminine hygiene products can be segmented into pharmacies, drug stores and beauty shops, supermarkets, online channels, and others.
Geographical Segmentation:
Asia Pacific has become the largest market due to the high penetration of sanitary napkins in this region. Menstrual hygiene remains a social taboo in Asia, but personal hygiene awareness campaigns carried out by government agencies have contributed to the growing demand for hygiene products in the region. Demand for premium products such as tampons and indoor cleaners and sprays is highest in developed regions such as North America and Western Europe. However, with the growing awareness of these products in the Asia Pacific region, the adoption of these products has increased significantly.
Impact of COVID 19 on Feminine Hygiene Market
The coronavirus has sensitized people to the need to adopt personal hygiene practices. This awareness and the importance of basic hygiene practices have become important, which are expected to increase the growth of the feminine hygiene market in future.
Key market players:
Key players in the global market for feminine hygiene products include Procter & Gamble, Kimberley-Clark Corporation, Svenska Cellulosa Aktiebolaget SCA, Unicharm Corporation, Lil-lets UK Limited, Johnson & Johnson, Ontex, Sanofi and Egdewell Personal Care.
View sample and decide:
https://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/feminine-hygiene-market/request-sample
Scope of the report:
The report offers a comprehensive examination of the industry by providing the estimations of market potential and forecasts with utmost granularity. Along this, the factors influential in influencing the market dynamics and trends discussed in detail at the product level. Further, the performance of the market at the regional and country-level had assessed and the prospects with huge growth potential identified and debated.
The key players in the industry are profiled giving insights on their financial performance, market position and growth strategies. Comparative analysis on prime strategically activities of the market players delineating the key developments like mergers & acquisitions, collaborations and an evaluation of the competitive environment within the industry had provided. The report also provides a broad outlook of the current market along with recommendations from industry experts on the opportunities for investment activity.
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