Koskela teen murder

The Koskela teen murder happened in Koskela, Helsinki, Finland on 4 December 2020. The victim of the homicide was a 16-year-old boy. The police suspect three boys of the same age as the perpetrators, and they were incarcerated in the Helsinki District Court on 10 December under charges of murder. The perpetrators and the victim knew each other beforehand. According to the police, the motive for the act was to punish the victim for some earlier activity.
The prosecutors demanded a sentence of nine years in prison without parole for the accused. The district court gave an intermediary sentence on 24 March 2021, sentencing the accused to psychiatric assessment.
Background.
The victim of the homicide was a 16-year-old boy, who was described as loyal, nice, gifted and personal, but also as very lonely and quiet. He had got to know two of the accused already in kindergarten and went to school together with them in Käpylä. They got to know the third of the accused in the upper stage of the school. One of the victim's schoolmates described the victim and one of the accused as being best friends during the lower stage. The victim had however suffered from extensive bullying already since the lower stage, which had not only been performed by the accused but also by other students. The bullying had begun as name-calling and insulting, but later progressed to physical violence. In his last years the victim had suffered from severe depression and his circle of friends had shrunk.
The victim's parents long sought for help for their son, and in autumn 2020 the victim was placed in an orphanage in Helsinki per his parents' request.
Before the homicide, the accused had robbed the victim in August 2020. The robbery had involved violence and the victim was robbed of property and money. The incident was reported to the police in September. The accused had repeatedly assaulted the victim since summer. According to the police, the killers had treated the victim as a "rag doll" on whose expense to have fun. The killers had seen him as submissive. The theme of the assault and homicide was a "punishment game" connected to the bullying.
Course of the events.
The victim and the perpetrators had been at the birthday party of one of the perpetrators near the Koskela Hospital on Friday 4 December. The perpetrators had planned in advance to force the victim to drink alcohol. At first the four spent the evening quietly. At some point three of the boys had begun to assault the partially defenseless fourth boy. The victim had begun to cry, asked the perpetrators to stop and tried to stop the blows with his arms, but did not participate in violence himself.
The victim suffered from violence in various places around the hospital. According to the police, the violence went on for three to four hours and was humiliating to the victim: the perpetrators had forced the victim to drink an entire bottle of Vergi vodka, hit him very violently with their fists and a metal pipe to various parts of his body and spit and urinated on him. The victim had become severely inebriated from the alcohol. One of the boys strangled the victim, tried to break his arm and jumped on him from on top of a crate.
A woman who had been walking at the Koskela Hospital area at eight o'clock in the evening had seen three boys of which one was in poor condition. One of the perpetrators was absent at the time and returned later to continue the violence. They were also seen by a younger woman who had been walking in a park near the hospital at eight o'clock and seen three boys of which one was lying down. The woman had shouted to ask what was happening, to which the boys had replied that there was no problem and asked the woman to leave. The woman could not judge the situation herself as it was too dark. She telephoned her big sister to come judge the situation. The women saw the situation to be threatening and did not intervene. The boys moved to the other side of the hospital and dragged the boy who had been lying down supporting him by the shoulders.
The accused recorded their act on video with their mobile phones. The accused recorded on video how they exploded a firecracker between the victim's buttocks, and at the end of the video all three perpetrators laughed very loudly and shook hands with each other. On the video, the victim was lying down on his side with his trousers drawn down and could not move at all. As the assault continued, the victim could no longer speak but just tried to draw his hands on his face to shield it from the blows. As he was being strangled, he tried to pull his hand downward to get air. The most violent of the perpetrators said he had felt an inexplicable sense of rage during the assault, which had only gone away when he was walking back home.
The victim's face was full of wounds when the perpetrators started to carry him to the next site of assault. They inspected the victim by the flashlights on their telephones. At about eleven o'clock in the evening the perpetrators left to a grocery store to shop and did not call for help for the victim. The victim was left lying down on the ground although the wounds on his face were clearly visible and he could no longer walk. He had managed to move but only a short distance. The victim died a couple of hours later.
Two of the perpetrators had come on the next day to see the body, which was still at the same site. The perpetrators discussed the matter repeatedly over the weekend and were shocked. They had planned to hide or destroy the body. They also planned to clean the body with bleach. The purpose of the bleach was to cover the DNA evidence and the fingerprints.
The victim's body remained on the murder site over the weekend until Monday 7 December, when it was discovered by a construction worker at eight o'clock in the morning. The body was partially naked. The man had first though the boy was unconscious and had called the emergency help centre, which had advised him and his work colleague to start to revive the boy. The revival was stopped when the body was found to be cold and stiff. Soon an ambulance, the fire brigade and the police arrived at the scene and questioned the discoverer. On the same morning one of the perpetrators told his mother about the assault, and she called the police immediately.
Investigation and trial.
During the police investigation all three of the perpetrators denied having planned to kill the victim. In February 2021 the perpetrators were charged with murder, robbery, incitement to robbery and nine counts of assault. The victim's parents demanded a sentence of 12 years in prison for murder for the perpetrators. Two of them admitted to grave assault and grave manslaughter, while the third one only admitted to simple assault.
The trial started in a secure room at the Helsinki District Court on 17 February 2021. A lawyer representing the victim's family asked that the trial be wholly held behind closed doors. On the other hand, the prosecutors demanded as wide publication of the trial as possible because of the severity of the crimes and the great public interest towards the matter. The chairman of the court announced that the publicity of the trial will be discussed separately for each charge. The charges were handled in order of the happening of the crimes starting from a robbery in August and ending on the homicide on 4 December.
The final statements of the trial were announced on 3 March 2021. The prosecutor demanded a sentence of at least 12 years in prison without parole for the oldest of the accused, at least 11 years for the youngest and at least 9 years and 6 months for the third. All of the accused were demanded to stay incarcerated. In addition, all of the accused were demanded to undergo psychiatric assessment. The youngest of the accused asked to be released from incarceration for the main investigation, but the court denied the request as he was being charged with the serious crime of murder.
According to the prosecutors the act was a murder because it had been committed with great violence and cruelty. According to them, the perpetrators must have known the violence would very realistically result in the death of the victim. Also according to them, all three of the accused were participants in the crime. The prosecutors cited text messages sent by the accused to each other discussing "hitting" the victim as evidence of pre-meditation. The prosecutor also said that the perpetrators had already assaulted the victim earlier three times, and the violence had grown greater on each time.
The lawyer of the youngest of the accused said that the most serious part of the violence had been done by the oldest boy, and the youngest boy had tried to calm him down. The lawyer of the second oldest boy said that the accused could not be demanded to have an adult's view of what results the violence might have. According to him, the accused had thought the victim would eventually get up and walk home. The defensor of the oldest boy said that the two other of the accused tried to shift blame on the oldest boy. According to the defense, the weapons used in the assault had not been such that the accused would have understood at the time that the act would result in death. According to the defense, the idea the accused had had of the human body's resilience to violence was based on mixed martial arts videos.
Negligence by authorities.
The victim had been a child care customer, who had been placed outside his home. The parents had made an authoritative help request to the police when the boy had not returned to his child care site. Despite the request, there had been no search for the boy during the whole murder weekend.
During a wide investigation by Yleisradio it became apparent that the victim had been left without support during the lower stage of school and later during child care. According the school's teachers, the victim's difficulties were handled too late and sometimes even left unhandled.
Reaction.
The matter caused shock all over Finland and caused heated discussion about violence among the youth. Large numbers of candles were brought to the murder site in remembrance of the victim. In honour of the victim's memory and in opposition to bullying, an unofficial remembrance event was held on 5 March 2021 where candles were lit on visible sites throughout the country. The idea for the event came from the "Oikeutta Koskelan uhrille" ("Justice For Koskela's victim") Facebook group. Candles were lit for example in Helsinki in front of the Parliament House, in Turku in front of the Turku Cathedral, in Lahti on the stairs of the Ristinkirkko church and in Kuopio near the Statue of the Wounded Soldier. The murder also caused a wide discussion related to lynching, and stricter punishment and stricter discipline were offered as solutions in public discussion.
The police gave an exceptionally wide announcement of the investigation already at the start because of the great communal significance of the matter. Jonna Turunen, the chief of the criminal investigation unit of the Police Department of Helsinki, said the matter was completely exceptional. The matter also brought the need of resources for child care to light. The investigation leader Marko Forss described the event as sadistic. According to Minister of the Interior Maria Ohisalo the incident reveals the mental health problems of the youth have been accumulating. According to Professor Emerita of criminal justice of the University of Lapland Terttu Utriainen the Koskela murder was exceptionally violent and very rare in Finland. Utriainen also said the incident shows that many youths have lost sense of responsibility of their own actions and their values have become blurred.
The editorial column of "Helsingin Sanomat" on Sunday 21 February said that the immense and completely unmotivated violence directed at the victim has awoken questions about the basic premises of humanity. According to the column, in addition to punishing the perpetrators and explaining the responsibilities of the authorities, it has to be investigated what could lead to evil of this level. According to an editorial column of "Ilta-Sanomat" on 4 march the Koskela incident should attract public attention to the situation, and causes and effects should be discussed. The column suggest discussion about whether the court of law and the community can deal with violent crimes caused by the youth.