Status boundary: Contemporary investigators and prosecutors alleged that Märt Ringmaa was responsible for a sequence of explosions that killed seven people. The court convicted him only for two devices that did not explode and for fraud. It acquitted him of murder and the remaining explosion counts for lack of proof. This page therefore does not call him the legally established perpetrator of the fatal bombings.
A neighborhood under repeated threat
Lasnamäe is Tallinn's largest residential district, built around long rows of apartment blocks, pedestrian routes and small commercial sites. From the late 1990s into 2005, improvised explosive devices appeared in and around ordinary public spaces there. The pattern became associated particularly with Pae and Punane streets.
Authorities saw no clear political target or consistent personal dispute. The Estonian Internal Security Service wrote in its 2005 annual review that the explosions appeared to occur without a comprehensible motive and that innocent people who happened to be nearby were killed or injured. That apparent randomness intensified the fear: a stairwell, kiosk or telephone booth could become the site of the next blast.
The human cost
The indictment assembled eleven alleged explosion episodes from 1998 to 2005. Across that charged series, seven people died and six were injured. The individual incidents included a December 1998 stairwell explosion at Pae 48 that killed a forty-six-year-old woman and her two-year-old grandchild; a May 2003 blast at Pae 23a that killed a fifty-six-year-old woman; and a September 2004 telephone-booth explosion that killed two adults.
Later blasts killed a sixty-six-year-old man in September 2005 and a twenty-seven-year-old man in November 2005. The names of several victims were not consistently published in the sources reviewed. Rather than reconstruct identities from incomplete reporting, this archive records the verified toll and preserves the judicial boundary around each allegation.
The 2005 arrest
Security Police detained Märt Ringmaa on 11 November 2005. The official annual review described his arrest as the year's most prominent development in the investigation of the Pae Street explosions. Reporting later noted that the neighborhood series stopped after his detention, but temporal sequence alone could not establish guilt for each earlier event.
Investigators assembled technical and circumstantial material. ERR reported that evidence supporting two device-placement counts included a fingerprint fragment on tape connecting bomb components and an electronic circuit associated with an unexploded device. Ringmaa denied involvement and maintained that he had been framed.
A prosecution much broader than the verdict
Prosecutors sought to hold Ringmaa responsible for the fatal series and asked for life imprisonment. The case required the court to examine multiple explosions spanning years, different locations and different evidentiary records. A pattern that appeared coherent to investigators still had to be proved episode by episode under the criminal standard.
On 23 March 2009, Harju County Court separated what it considered proved from what remained suspicion. That distinction is the central fact of the case: the public label attached to Ringmaa was broader than the final conviction.
What the court found proved
The court convicted Ringmaa of placing an improvised explosive device beside a bottle-return kiosk at Punane 15 on 11 April 2001 and another near Pae 23 on the night of 19 November 2003. Both devices were found before they exploded. He was also convicted of using a falsified employment record to obtain pension payments.
The combined sentence was 15 years, calculated from his detention in November 2005. The conviction established criminal responsibility for two dangerous device placements. It did not establish that Ringmaa caused any of the seven deaths attributed to the broader charged series.
What remained unproved
The court acquitted Ringmaa of murder and of the fatal and injurious explosion episodes because his guilt was not proved. Those acquittals included the explosions at Pae 48, Pae 23a, the telephone booth near Pae 68/78, the kiosk area at Punane 17a, the balcony at Pae 56 and the final 2005 blast near Pae 19.
An acquittal is not a finding that another named person committed the offense. It means the prosecution did not meet the burden required to convict this defendant. The deaths therefore remained without an adjudicated perpetrator in the judicial record reviewed for this page.
Final sentence and later years
The Tallinn Circuit Court left the 15-year sentence in place. The prosecution ultimately did not take the acquittals further, explaining that the Supreme Court would not reassess the evidence in a way that could worsen the defendant's position. In February 2010, the Supreme Court declined to hear the defense appeal, making the sentence final.
Courts repeatedly refused early release. Ringmaa completed the sentence and left prison on 11 November 2020. He continued to deny involvement. ERR reported that he died in Tallinn on 30 June 2021 at the age of eighty-three.
What the case means today
The Pae Street file has both a solved component and an unresolved core. Two unexploded-device placements produced a final conviction, but the killings that defined public memory of the series did not. Treating the conviction as proof of every explosion would erase the acquittals; treating the whole case as if nothing were proved would erase the two adjudicated placements.
This archive therefore classifies the series as partially adjudicated and the fatal episodes as unresolved. The distinction respects both the victims and the evidentiary limits of the judgment.
Case timeline
- 18 December 1998 A stairwell explosion at Pae 48 kills a woman and her two-year-old grandchild and injures two others.
- 11 April 2001 A device is placed near a bottle-return kiosk at Punane 15 and discovered before detonation; this becomes one of the two proved counts.
- 11 May 2003 An explosion at Pae 23a kills a fifty-six-year-old woman.
- 19 November 2003 A device is placed near Pae 23 and found before it explodes; the second proved placement.
- 2004–2005 Further blasts kill four people and injure others in the district.
- 11 November 2005 Security Police detain Märt Ringmaa.
- 23 March 2009 Harju County Court imposes 15 years for two device placements and fraud, while acquitting Ringmaa of murder and the remaining explosion charges.
- 10 February 2010 The sentence becomes final after the Supreme Court declines the defense appeal.
- 11 November 2020 Ringmaa completes the full term and leaves prison.
- 30 June 2021 Ringmaa dies in Tallinn.
Questions readers ask
How many people died in the Pae Street bombing series?
Seven people died and six were injured in the eleven explosion episodes prosecutors attributed to Märt Ringmaa.
Was Märt Ringmaa convicted of the fatal bombings?
No. He was acquitted of murder and the fatal explosion episodes because the court found the evidence insufficient.
What was Ringmaa convicted of?
He was convicted of placing two improvised bombs in Tallinn in 2001 and 2003; both were found before they exploded. He was also convicted of pension fraud.
What sentence did he receive?
The courts imposed a combined sentence of 15 years. The sentence became final in February 2010.
When was Ringmaa released?
He completed the full sentence and left prison on 11 November 2020.
Is the bombing series fully solved?
No. The two unexploded-device placements were adjudicated, but no murder conviction established responsibility for the fatal explosions.