The Cainian Chronicle murders

Ancient's "The Cainian Chronicle" album of 1996 was brought up in the press in Finland in 1999 in a rather nasty context. There was lots and lots of press about a very brutal murder that took place in Hyvinkää ( close to Helsinki ) in late 1998.

Here goes the story:
In October 1998 a man's left leg was found on a dumping ground and naturally made headlines. The police started huge operations to find out the missing parts of the body and trying to find out what had happened. Only clue they had was the leg. Sometime after that newspapers said that the police had arrested three people suspected of the murder and that had been some indications of Satan worshipping. Police kept thing pretty quiet at that time. In April 1999 the incident came back to headlines when the case went to court and the three youngsters were charged with the murder and some details of the murder were published. The trial was ordered to be kept behind closed doors and all the investigation material and court records were declared confidential for the next forty years. Only the first indictment trial was open for public and press. In that trial the prosecutor re-veiled some general details of the murder including torturing, mutilation, necrophilia and cannibalism. In the newspapers one could read the following after the first trial: "A 23 yrs old man was tortured and killed by three of his friends - aged 23, 20 and 17. The youngest one of the pack is a girl. The victim was tortured, mutilated (with scissors) and eventually killed. After he was killed the threesome cut of the victims head and limbs and removed some his internal organs, including the victims heart, totally chopping him up. And on top that - as unbelievable as it sounds - they actually ate some some parts of the body. The all three murderers are openly satan worshippers and black metal fans. And one of them (the primus motor of the murder) has a criminal record, which includes an attempted church burning among other stuff". Obviously this murder was on all the frontpages and there was lots of press about satanism and stuff. Naturally black metal music was mentioned. One of the major Finnish afternoon newspapers had a full spread story about a CD that the three murderers had been listening to before and during the killing according to police investigations. This CD as you have propably already figured out is the above mentioned Ancient album. The newspaper story had a big picture of the CD's cover, quotations of the lyrics and some details about the band and it's members. The story also had some background information about black metal's history.

In August 1999 the three guilty ones got their sentences in court. The main responsible was sentenced to the maximum penalty - 21 years in jail, while the two others got rather low penalties.

Below you can see scans of some newspaper- articles that was published around the time the 3 were arrested :

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* NOTE * : ANCIENT want to clearly take a step away and disassociate themselves from any judgement, involvement or opinion towards these happennings and place this article on the web-site merely for informational purposes !