In March 1943, while Finland was fighting the Continuation War, an escaped prisoner named Toivo Harald Koljonen walked back to a farmhouse in Karhiniemi with a stolen axe. By morning, six people were dead — including two children, aged eleven and six. The country would remember him as Kirves-Koljonen: Axe Koljonen.

Alexander Lawson tells the story of the Huittinen massacre, the manhunt that followed, the twelve-hour wartime trial, and the firing squad at Kärsämäki quarry on 21 October 1943. Koljonen was the last person Finland ever executed for a civilian crime.

A story of hunger, a closed door, an unexplained motive — and a nation that still found time to carry out a death sentence while the war raged in the east.

A boy late for school opens a bathroom door in East Helsinki and sees his father standing over his mother. Ten years later he walks into a police station and says it was never an accident.

That phone call unmasks Ismo Junni — a Finnish construction worker, drinker, and father who murdered five people between 1980 and 1988. He drowned his wife in a bathtub, then burned drinking companions alive in summer cabins at Kivinokka. He pulled teeth from his victims and kept them.

Host Alexander Lawson tells the story of one of Finland’s rare serial killers: the “accidents” no one connected, the allotment-garden fires, the tin of trophies, and the son who finally made police look again.

Content warning: murder, domestic violence, arson.

A True Crime Podcast.

Just after 2 a.m. on 6 July 2010, a petty argument in a McDonald’s drive-through in Porvoo, Finland, ended with three men shot at close range. The gunman had turned 41 the day before — and seven months earlier he had walked out of prison after a life sentence for murdering his ex-wife.

Alexander Lawson tells the story of Esa Kalle Vihtori Åkerlund: the 1993 restaurant stabbing he was acquitted of, the 1995 home invasion that sent him down for life, the early release, and the minute of violence that put him back behind bars. Four confirmed dead. A fifth death that never stuck. A justice system that let him walk twice.

A sealed surveillance tape. An illegal Smith & Wesson. And a question Finland never quite answered: what do you do with a man the courts already knew was exceptionally dangerous?

Saturday morning, 14 March 2009. An 80-year-old woman in Helsinki is given yoghurt by the nurse who shops for her, walks with her, and is meant to keep her alive. The yoghurt tastes bitter. Minutes later she is slipping under — and the same nurse picks up the phone and calls emergency services herself.

This episode of A True Crime Podcast follows host Alexander Lawson into the case of Aino Nykopp-Koski, the Finnish practical nurse later known as myrkkyhoitaja: the poison nurse. Between 2004 and 2009 she was convicted of murdering five elderly patients and attempting to murder five more, using sedatives and opiates that were never on their charts. Then she called for help.

Lawson traces the years the deaths looked ordinary, the thefts that rode alongside the poisonings, the cluster of fatalities at Kannelkoti, the graves Finnish courts ordered opened, and a life sentence she has never accepted. No clean motive. No confession. A healthcare system built on trust, used as a key to the door.

Look after the people who look after you. And if the yoghurt tastes bitter — say so.

Summer 1971. A white Dodge Dart on a Finnish highway. A hitchhiker puts out her thumb. She never gets out.

In this episode of A True Crime Podcast, Alexander Lawson tells the story of Ensio Kalevi Koivunen — known as Häkä-Enska, Carbon Monoxide Enska — and the three young women who died in his car: Salme Metsänikula, 23, and seventeen-year-olds Ritva Raijas and Pirjo Laiho.

There was no knife and no gunshot. Exhaust was fed into the cabin through a hidden hose. The air itself became the weapon.

Lawson follows the disappearances, the bodies found in woods and a gravel pit, the fingerprint on a discarded photograph, the survivor who escaped, and the trial of a man who never kept one story and never confessed.

A quiet Finnish serial-murder case. Three last rides. One invisible killer.

In one of the safest countries on earth, a man strangled his mother, a twelve-year-old girl, and two more women — and walked out of prison again and again.

Alexander Lawson tells the story of Jukka Torsten Lindholm, later Michael Maria Penttilä: the only Finn the FBI is said to have classified as a serial killer, a man psychiatrists called extremely dangerous, and a justice system that kept giving him another door.

From Oulu in 1985 to a Helsinki apartment in 2018 — four homicides, new names, parole, an open-prison escape, and a life sentence that finally closed the file.

Listener note: this episode covers homicides, attacks on women and girls, and sexual violence. Take care while listening.

Friday night, 18 October 1974. A twelve-year-old girl thumbs a lift on a quiet road in Ørsta, Norway. A white Ford Taunus with black stripes pulls over. Two half-brothers are inside. She never makes it home.

Alexander Lawson tells the story of Terje Antonsen — the younger brother, the addict, the man psychiatrists called easily led — and the crimes he committed with serial killer Edgar Antonsen. Hitchhikers. A hidden cabin. A confession that only came when withdrawal broke him. Life sentences. A new name. A quiet death in Oslo.

This episode is about the passenger who was never only a passenger.

Victims are named. The violence is not dwelt on for effect.

A True Crime Podcast. Hosted by Alexander Lawson.

A white Ford Taunus with black racing stripes stops on a dark road in Ørsta. A twelve-year-old girl puts her thumb out for a lift home. She never arrives.

Alexander Lawson tells the story of Edgar Antonsen — one of Norway’s few serial killers — from the 1962 murder of neighbour Bertha Holten, wrongly written off as suicide, to the 1974 rape-murders of photographer Oddbjørg Helene Jystad and twelve-year-old Bodil Brungot, committed with his half-brother Terje. Released after a rape sentence, Antonsen rebuilt a life in a quiet west-coast town. Released again after life imprisonment, he took a new name in Finnmark. In 1993, facing arrest for the sexual abuse of a child, he took his own life.

This episode follows the investigation, the confessions, the psychiatric assessments, and the failures that let him walk free twice.

Content warning: murder, rape, and crimes against a child.

On a Friday in July 2011, a bomb tore through Oslo’s government quarter. Two hours later, a man in a police uniform stepped onto the island of Utøya, where hundreds of teenagers were at a Labour Party youth camp. By nightfall, 77 people were dead — most of them young.

Host Alexander Lawson reconstructs the day Norway lost its sense of safety: the blast in Regjeringskvartalet, the hour of killing on Utøya, the slow police response, the trial that asked whether Anders Behring Breivik was sane, and a country that answered terror with roses instead of revenge.

This episode is about the victims, the failures, and the aftermath — not a platform for the killer.

Content warning: mass murder, including the killing of children and young people.

Kongsberg, Norway. 13 October 2021. A quiet evening. Then a man in socks walks into town with a hunting bow, sixty arrows, and knives.

In thirty-four minutes, five strangers are dead.

Police already knew his name. Norway’s security service had flagged him. Psychiatry had diagnosed him years earlier. Still he reached Hyttegata.

Host Alexander Lawson tells the story of Espen Andersen Bråthen: the attack at Coop Extra, the killings on a residential street, the delusions of rebirth and blindness, the trial that found him guilty but not criminally responsible, and the systems that failed to stop him.

This episode names the dead. It does not linger on the wounds.

A True Crime Podcast.