r/UnresolvedMysteries • u/Ristler • 1d ago
Disappearance A Finnish man disappeared in 2001 but his disappearance only came to light when authorities entered his apartment 15 years later and found unopened mail dating back the entire 15 years
Vesa Matti Frantsila has been missing since 2001 and is now believed to have been gone since his apartment was rediscovered in 2015.
A property manager, Mikko Pyy, reported him missing after visiting the apartment in Pori due to maintenance work in the building. Frantsila’s maintenance payments had stopped after a change in property management, which led to the check.
When workers eventually gained access—after a locksmith was called because Frantsila had refused lock rekeying—the apartment appeared untouched for over a decade. There was a strong stale smell, heavy dust, and years’ worth of unopened mail piled in the hallway.
According to those who entered, the apartment looked completely frozen in time. One witness described being shocked at how long it must have been abandoned.
Inside, officials also found a note written by Frantsila that prohibited various inspections of the apartment, including electrical checks. The apartment reportedly contained improvised electrical setups and an unusually large number of speakers (reportedly hundreds).
Over the years, mail had accumulated in large amounts, mostly advertising materials. The caretaker removed much of it, while official letters were handled by police.
Frantsila reportedly disappeared in August 2001 while traveling on a package trip to Crete. He later reached Poland, where he claimed he had been robbed. He contacted the Finnish embassy but declined assistance. After that, no confirmed sightings have been reported.
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u/Several-Cry-4267 1d ago
I keep coming back to the stolen ticket to Riga.
If the Warsaw embassy account is right, Frantsila wasn’t just drifting randomly around Europe. He said he’d lost his passport, money and a ticket meant to take him onwards, which makes the route look a lot like a slow, deteriorating attempt to get home through the Baltics.
Add the earlier Athens stop where he’d apparently slept at a station and needed help getting a train ticket to Sofia, and the saddest explanation is probably very ordinary.
A vulnerable man with no papers, no money, very little trust in authorities and no one actively looking for him died somewhere along that corridor and was treated as an unidentified foreign male.
The later DNA submission through the Finnish NBI feels like the right clue to focus on, because Pori police were already considering exactly that possibility with unidentified remains in Europe.
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u/BriarKnave 8h ago
It sounds like some sort of therapeutic "if I get out of town for a while my brain will straighted itself out" roadtrip gone terribly wrong.
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u/Good-Pomegranate-655 20h ago edited 20h ago
Translation(s) I got from the picture of the note in the article, can anyone confirm?
“My apartment is not on the electricity network, and therefore electrical inspections or repairs cannot be performed there in my absence. The unlawful and life-threatening electrical installations in my apartment are pieces of criminal evidence that may only be handled when I am present.”
Or
“My apartment is not connected to the electricity grid, so no electrical inspections or repairs may be carried out in my absence. Illegal and life-threatening electrical installations in my apartment are criminal evidence that may only be touched in my presence.”
Very much suggesting mental health issues with paranoia this is so sad.
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u/Princessleiawastaken 29m ago
Very strange note. Also weird the apartment had “improvised electronic devices” and so many speakers.
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u/stefancooper 1d ago edited 14h ago
A friend of mine lived in a block of flats. He had a neighbour (or rather didn't) for I think 14 years. He owned the flat and had enough in the bank to pay his gas and electric. Eventually money ran out and the bank repossessed the place. My friend was there when it got cleared out and got boxes and boxes of 80s vinyl and guitars. The floor of the flat was covered in coins.
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u/Particular_Piglet677 11h ago
Interesting experience, very cool actually. I know I'd be pleased if someone was happy to my belongings if I didn't need them, so yeah.
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u/stefancooper 10h ago
For someone to leave a place for that long with a mortgage and gas / electric being paid they must have had a lot of money in the bank. I would think they died somewhere, possibly abroad and there's nobody in their life to sell up a £130,000 flat plus all the belongings.
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u/Zxvasdfthrowaway 23h ago
I’m a little confused. Friend there when it got cleared?
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u/stefancooper 14h ago
Editted sorry
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u/Zxvasdfthrowaway 5h ago
Thanks! So there was loose change covering the floor?
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u/stefancooper 5h ago
yes. the whole floor was covered in coins. but laid out with effort involved they werent just thrown around / piled up, they had been placed.
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u/Pawleysgirls 1d ago
It seems as if this man developed some sort of mental health problem. Evidence of mental health issues include having an abnormal number of speakers, leaving a written note about the specific types of check ins in his rental property (paranoid to an extreme), refusing assistance after being robbed in a foreign country (why refuse help from your own Embassy unless paranoia was ever present), disappearing, etc.
The article doesn’t say hold old Vesa was when he disappeared, but men can develop schizophrenia as late as 36 or so.
He may be living on the streets as yet another untreated person with schizophrenia. So sad.
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u/Bluecat72 1d ago
This write up from 5 years ago has more of his personal history. He’s previously been declared an incapacitated adult and put under guardianship after a stint in a forensic psychiatric hospital (I’m unsure if he had been convicted of a specific crime for which he was too ill to be responsible, or if the court ordered treatment due to him being to severely ill to take care of himself). It sounds like he still had a significant mental illness, but it’s unclear whether he still had a guardian. It’s odd to me that he may have had one and was allowed to travel internationally on his own. Especially after he was robbed on a previous trip.
It sounds like he was probably estranged from his only close relative, and the only payment that needed to be made was the property maintenance - his apartment was paid off and he wasn’t connected to the electrical grid. It wasn’t until the management payment wasn’t made to the new company that anyone had reason to enter; the Finnish embassy in Poland did request that the local police check to make sure he arrived home, but they never followed up after he didn’t answer the door.
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u/BriarKnave 8h ago
So another of the thousands of cases partially caused by police incompetence? He might have still been recoverable in the following weeks after his initial report
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u/Bluecat72 8h ago
I don’t know enough about Finnish law to know whether they legally could have gone in at that point or what responsibility they legally had to follow up further. This man had a history of being anti-authority and anti-government as part of his mental illness, so there was built-in uncertainty whether he was home and not answering. Normally people would have other safety triggers like being on the electrical grid or having a mortgage or rent or a job or medical appointments or seeing friends or neighbors. He did not have any of those. Unusual case for sure.
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u/tomtomclubthumb 1d ago
That sounds plausible. His mental health issues might also be compounded by the language issue. A lot of people, like Catherine Yasinchuk, have been incarcerated or put into mental institutions because they didn't speak the local language.
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u/kantrikana 15h ago
Vesa was over 60 yo, when he disappeared. As a finnish person, this case is bizarre. So weird, that he went to seek help from Poland but then refused it.. For me this sounds like he had some issues with his mental health. But honestly i don't know. This case just.. it's so bizarre.
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u/analogWeapon 8h ago
Evidence of mental health issues include having an abnormal number of speakers
I feel attacked
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u/notabigmelvillecrowd 1d ago
How was his rent being paid for so long?
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u/sealixxir 1d ago
He owned his flat. He was just paying the building maintenance fee by direct debit which then bounced when the maintenance company changed, and that's when this whole thing started unravelling.
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u/notabigmelvillecrowd 1d ago
Ah, okay. Where I live apartment would imply a rental, and a condo would be something you can own, so that didn't occur to me.
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u/GypsyisaCat 1d ago
Wow! Your learn something new every day - where are you from? I have never heard of apartment implying "rental" - it's just a name for the dwelling the same way that a house or town house is.
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u/ranchspidey 1d ago
In the U.S., the vast majority of apartments are rentals. We typically say “condos” for apartments that are owned by the occupants.
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u/anonymouse278 1d ago
In the US "apartment" in general use implies a rented unit in a multi-unit building pretty much everywhere except for New York City.
There are multi-unit buildings where occupants own the individual units, but these are typically called condominiums- "condos" in everyday use.
In much of the US, single family homes are overwhelmingly more popular than condos for home ownership. Plenty of people rent units in multi-unit apartment buildings, but relatively few choose to buy them. You tend to see condos mostly in densely populated, high cost of living areas, and they are much less common than single family homes..They tend to be preferred by younger childless couples and downsizing retirees, so they are more of a starter (or... ender, I guess?) home. Something you live in before or after your "real" home.
NYC is an obvious exception as a place where even the very very wealthy often live in an owned unit in multi-unit buildings,so the idea of apartments as exclusively rentals isn't really there the same as in the rest of the country.
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u/Particular_Piglet677 11h ago
In Canada it's the same, apartment is something you rent, a condo you buy. I knew it was different in (some? all?) countries, though.
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u/disy22 1d ago
They are American. Americans are the only country in the world that use condos other than maybe parts of Canada.
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u/Particular_Piglet677 11h ago
Condos are "owned apartment" in all of Canada as far as I know (Quebec might be different??)
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u/GypsyisaCat 1d ago
But people buy apartments in America, don't they? I don't recall Carrie talking about condos in SATC lol
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u/anneylani 19h ago edited 8h ago
Carrie and Co would be buying not rentingEdit: Oh whoops I was thinking of AJLT, not the original series. Withdrawn
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u/Particular_Piglet677 11h ago
She had a rent-controlled apartment, i remember that clearly, lol. So she rented. Showing my age haha.
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u/ratrazzle 6h ago
Thank you for posting this. Im finnish and learned about this case as a kid, still think of him sometimes. The odd amount of speakers and diy electric grid just have stuck in mind, and how no one noticed he wasnt around. I wish he lived decent life after disappearing but sadly it seems like mental illness/paranoia led to some sort of accident far from home.
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u/CuddlyClubCEO 9h ago
my american brain cannot comprehend this. i get that he owned it so no rent and he rigged electricity. but is water not billed? are there no property taxes? insurance? makes me want to move to finland ngl
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u/BriarKnave 8h ago
Property taxes would be covered by the building, and if there's no one using water the water bill wouldn't charge the account for anything. It would just auto-charge as 0 every month.
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u/Different_While1656 4h ago
I don't mean to be rude, but do you not have direct debit for your bills in the US? My insurance payment has been coming directly out of my bank account every month for the past 6 years or so. Every year they send me a letter saying it's increasing by X amount, but I've never had to do anything about it.
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u/CuddlyClubCEO 3h ago
my insurance wasn’t tied to a mortgage and in a hurricane prone area. insurance companies will just stop writing/renewing completely or raise rates. in the 6 years i owned that home i had to change policies at least 4 times. it was exhausting and annoying bc you had to shop around yourself or through an agent. having it with a mortgage would remove all of this and direct payment from an account would def be no problem. all that said though i guess you could have just had the policy lapse and that be that. that would be the same for water or power. but the yearly property tax changed every year and you had to pay in person 🙄
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u/sharksarecutetoo 3h ago
In America the majority of us live pretty close to paycheck to paycheck. So yes, our bills are set up with direct debit, but if we're not going into work then those direct debits would bounce back as unpaid very quickly.
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u/I_love_Hobbes 3h ago
Who was bringing in the mail and stacking in the hallway?
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u/Different_While1656 2h ago
Nobody. It's common for European homes to have a mail slot in the door.
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u/brokencasbutt67 2h ago
I'm gonna end up like this. My siblings and I are estranged because they always had drama and I just needed peace in my life after 20+ years of trauma.
I struggle with any kind of friendship/relationships (thanks Autism), so spend most of my life alone outside of work.
Throw in poor health, I don't have much hope.
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u/SaltyArtemis 1d ago
How’d his mail get inside?
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u/Tulpukka 1d ago
There’s just a little hatch on the door for mail. It’s the standard in Finnish apartments.
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u/othervee 1d ago
Through the mail slot in the door. It’s a feature of many European homes.
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u/SaltyArtemis 1d ago
Huh, Didn’t think those were still around anywhere
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u/BestFoxEver 10h ago
Extremely common still in Finland and other Nordic countries. That is why we have a meme of "kusipelti" (pee tray): if your Finnish neighbour is annoying then pee on a baking tray, freeze it and then put the frozen pee in the mail slot of their door.
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u/SaltyArtemis 9h ago
Thank you for giving me a fun fact and not told me to go fk myself for not knowing something
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u/SaltyArtemis 9h ago
Woah wtf, I got downvoted for not knowing something? About other country tries. On an unsolved mysteries subreddit of all places. I wish ill on all yall, yall gotta grow up at some point
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u/Junior-Key-5043 10h ago
This is what I dont get about this kind of story: who tf was making payments on his rent?
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u/Different_While1656 10h ago
He owned the apartment, there was no rent.
As for other cases like this one, many people (myself included) have their bills on autopay. Irrc there was a case in the UK where a woman passed away in her apartment but because her pension was on direct deposit and her rent was on direct debit it took years for anyone to notice.
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u/BestFoxEver 10h ago
He owned the apartment so no need to pay any rent then...
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8h ago
[deleted]
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u/BestFoxEver 7h ago
This happened in Finland, I am from Finland and here it is completely possible to own an apartment from an apartment building. This disappeared man owned his apartment and it is a well known fact of this case.
I am not sure why someone has downvoted me.
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7h ago
[deleted]
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u/BestFoxEver 6h ago
I read all the comments in this thread and my theory is that some (Americans?) downvote comments that don't call owned apartments 'condos'. I had never heard or seen that word before. I only know the English word apartment.
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u/Junior-Key-5043 3h ago
That's probably what it is, sorry you got downvoted. I was originally going to comment that we call those condos in the u.s. and an apartment is something you rent and the landlord does a periodic inspection of.
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u/BestFoxEver 1h ago edited 1h ago
Reddit is international site so it is odd to expect that everyone uses American slang, especially when we are discussing at stuff that did not happen in USA. English speaking people in Finland usually use a word 'apartment', also when it is bought and not rented. A same building can have both rented and bought apartments.
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u/Princessleiawastaken 17m ago
I understand he owned the apartment, was off the electrical grid, and wouldn’t have a water bill if he wasn’t there to use any water. But, wouldn’t he have to file taxes? Even if he didn’t owe money, wouldn’t the government notice he wasn’t filing at least after a few years? In the U.S. I believe that’s what would happen.
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u/Professional_Ear6020 1d ago
Nobody came forward to report him missing for over 10 years. And then it was a maintenance person. That breaks my heart. Nobody should be that alone in the world.