Kimmo rebuilt his life after serving time for murder

A Finnish man who killed someone at 18 has found work, friends and a home after prison and has committed no further crimes, Yle reports. He is now 35 and is identified only by the pseudonym Kimmo because his criminal record could harm his working and private life.

Kimmo was sentenced for murder, aggravated assault and aggravated robbery. He was found criminally responsible for his actions. He stabbed a middle-aged man dozens of times and cut his throat.

At the time, Kimmo had been drinking and using drugs for weeks, after years of substance use. “It didn’t matter whether I or someone else died,” he said, looking back on the killing.

Kimmo was taken into care when he was 10 because conditions at home were unsuitable. He began drinking at 12, using cannabis at 14 and injecting drugs a few years later. Around the same time, his brother died. Kimmo says his family and care institutions did not know how to talk about the loss, and he began following his brother’s path.

He describes his years in residential care as marked by humiliation and mistreatment, which further damaged his trust in adults. After turning 18, he spent eight months spiralling further into substance use and violence, seeking acceptance among criminal circles. His life outside care ended with the murder.

Kimmo was sent for a forensic psychiatric examination and came to in Vaasa psychiatric hospital. He later continued using drugs in prison and was involved in violence, which lengthened his sentence. He says that courses, meetings with psychologists and a drug-free prison unit did not initially help because he did not trust authorities or know how to accept support.

Towards the end of his sentence, a prison counsellor helped him begin to trust people. Kimmo says he gradually learned that not everyone wanted to harm him and found it possible to speak openly in a safe setting.

The Institute for Health and Welfare’s special researcher Teemu Vauhkonen said Kimmo’s childhood and youth reflect common experiences among people who commit homicide at a young age. These can include inherited disadvantage, an unsafe childhood, being taken into care, substance use and mental health problems, hopelessness and undiagnosed neurodivergence. None of these factors alone causes homicide, Vauhkonen said, but they can increase the risk.

Young people committing homicides remains rare, although the number of homicides and attempted homicides has risen since 2019. Within three years of release from prison, about half of people convicted of homicide receive a new criminal conviction, while most are outside work and education, according to the article.

Kimmo says the motive reported publicly at the time, the theft of two bottles of liquor, was not the real reason for the killing. He believes years of accumulated anger, hopelessness and substance problems lay behind it. “I did wrong, and I have to live with that,” he said.