The Ulvila murder case is an infamous Finnish homicide that happened in the town of Ulvila in Finland on December 1, 2006. The murder victim was fifty-one-year-old Jukka S. Lahti. Police suspected that the motive of the murder might be revenge.
Murder night
The victim's widow and convicted child molester Anneli Auer, born on March 19, 1965, claimed that a masked outside assailant stabbed her husband several times before hitting him over the head with a heavy object. For a long time police believed Auer's story about an unknown assailant. In September 2009 however she was arrested on suspicion of having murdered her husband, of which in November 2010 the District Court of Satakunta found her guilty. One of the judges would have acquitted the charges against Auer, but the two other judges found her guilty.
Auer filed an appeal against her sentence with the Vaasa Court of Appeal, which in July 2011 acquitted her of all charges against her. The Court of Appeal verdict was unanimous unlike the verdict given in district court.
In October 2012 The Supreme Court decided to send the case back to Satakunta District Court, because of the new evidence the prosecutors presented after the Vaasa Court of Appeal acquitted Auer.
In December 2013 Satakunta district court sentenced Auer into life imprisonment for the second time. The verdict wasn't unanimous, one of the three judges found Auer not guilty of her husband's murder.
Auer appealed against her conviction and the trial in Vaasa Court of Appeal begun in September 2014 and ended in October. In February 2015 Court of Appeal acquitted Auer for the second time. Verdict was 2-1, one of the judges would have upheld the district court verdict. The majority of judges said that prosecutors have not proven that Auer was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt and the murder charge must be dropped.
Prosecutors appealed to the Supreme Court, but in December 2015 the Supreme Court dismissed the appeal and upheld the Court of Appeal verdict that found Auer not guilty of the murder of her husband.