December 12, 1910 - Toivo Koljonen

Toivo Harald "Kirves" Koljonen (12 December 1910 – 21 October 1943) was a Finnish mass murderer and the last Finn executed for a civilian crime. He was executed by firing squad for a sextuple murder.

Koljonen was born 1910 in Lahti, Finland. He had been sentenced to prison for stealing petrol and incarcerated at Riihimäki Prison, from which he was moved to Huittinen auxiliary prison. He escaped from prison in 1943 and attempted to hide from the authorities.

On 17 March 1943, he found a nearby farmhouse where five family members lived – a mother, two grandparents, and two children. Two additional family members, the father and the eldest son, had been conscripted into the army and, consequently, were not present at the time. Koljonen first hid in the stable, where he killed the daughter of the family with an axe (kirves in Finnish, which became his nickname).

Content sourced from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toivo Koljonen under CC BY-SA 4.0.