A robbery near Helsinki's waterfront
At approximately 2:43 a.m. on 22 October 1997, Helsinki police received a report that the Hotel Palace had just been robbed. Sergeant Eero Holsti and Senior Constable Antero Palo were patrolling nearby and began looking for the suspect.
The officers approached a man on Tehtaankatu who matched the circumstances of the search. That man was Steen Viktor Christensen, a Danish escaped prisoner who had traveled to Finland.
The encounter on Tehtaankatu
According to the Finnish Police Museum and Christensen's later account, he produced a pistol when the officers tried to clarify whether he was connected to the robbery. He forced the officers toward their patrol car and ordered them down.
Christensen then shot both officers and fled. Holsti and Palo died at the scene. The killings immediately triggered a large-scale investigation and manhunt involving police units across the Helsinki region and beyond.
Capture and life sentence
Investigators identified Christensen during the search, and he was arrested at a hotel in Hämeenlinna on 25 October 1997, three days after the murders.
Helsinki District Court later sentenced him to life imprisonment for the two murders, together with other offenses arising from the robbery and flight. The conviction established criminal responsibility for the deaths of both officers.
Later imprisonment
Christensen was subsequently transferred to Denmark to continue serving his sentence. Yle reported in August 2025 that a Danish court had rejected his third application for conditional release. His incarceration therefore continued decades after the Helsinki murders.
The case remains one of the most prominent killings of police officers in modern Finnish history and is documented by the Finnish Police Museum's In Memoriam archive.