Lindholm had spent the previous evening out with her sister and a male acquaintance – first in Haaga, then in a Helsinki nightclub – before ending up at Hotel Hesperia on Mannerheimintie.[5] As none of her colleagues wanted to join her, Lindholm asked a male friend in Haaga to give her a ride to western Helsinki.[9] Jouko Saarto, a tenant who lived under the Lindholm family's apartment, later reported that he heard footsteps from the stairwell, the sounds of a man and a woman, and the cellar door slamming at 2:10 a.m.In 2021, Jari Koski, the head of the Helsinki homicide squad told the state broadcasting in a podcast that Lindholm had gone home by foot and that she met her killer on a sidewalk in front of the building where she lived.Lindholm had been seen arriving to her home building by foot before 4 a.m. and meeting a young man on the sidewalk whom she had started a conversation with.[11] The following afternoon, on 8 August 1976, Esko Savolainen, a newly-arrived tenant at Sofianlehdonkatu 9 B, discovered Lindholm's bloody body while he was fetching a bicycle pump in the cellar.[14][9] They also investigated the taxi drivers and other potential offenders, but, in the end, Lindholm's route and journey home remained unclear.[9] The situation became increasingly difficult, as no solution could be found for months, and the number of suspects grew in the dozens, even hundreds.[3] At the time of Lindholm's death in 1976, crime scene investigation was already advanced to such a degree, that police were in possession of material that could be analyzed with modern methods.This theory was supported by the fact that Lindholm was portrayed as an exceptionally beautiful woman, who easily attracted attention.[7] Commissioner Martti Latikka also thought that the killer was less than middle-aged, and estimated that the killing wasn't pre-planned, but came as a means by which the rapist sought to overcome the situation.[2] The judicial autopsy revealed that Lindholm had been violated in a particularly brutal manner, indicating that her killer might've been mentally disturbed.[14] Väinö Rantio, Head of the Violence Bureau of the Helsinki Criminal Police, said that the perpetrator was an abnormal, sexually problematic and lonely person who avoids relationships.[7] Lindholm's murder was long investigated as an isolated homicide, until similarities were noticed between her death and those of 41-year-old Seija Tuulikki Kekkonen in Kontula (6 December 1980) and 42-year-old Helka Onerva Ketola in East Pasila (30 January 1981).[18] In 1982, authorities investigated the sexually-motivated crimes of a bus driver living in Espoo named Jalo Eetu Seppänen (b.[19] The possibility of a serial killer was discussed as far back as 1979, when authorities tried to make connections between Lindholm's murder and that of 28-year-old Helena Korlin in 1979.
