A fire revealed two homicide victims
On 18 January 2019 emergency services were called to an apartment fire in Valkeakoski, south of Tampere. After the fire was brought under control, two men were found dead inside. Investigators concluded that the deaths were homicides rather than fire fatalities.
Police said the victims had been subjected to serious violence before their deaths. Investigators also alleged that the apartment had been set on fire to conceal evidence. A vehicle belonging to one of the victims was later found burned in nearby Akaa.
Arrests and prosecution
Two men from Tampere were apprehended after police investigated the burned vehicle. Prosecutors charged them with two murders and additional offences, including arson-related conduct and property crimes. A third defendant was accused of helping them evade police, but that allegation was separate from responsibility for the killings.
At trial in Pirkanmaa District Court, the prosecution argued that the killings met Finland's threshold for murder and sought life sentences.
Two murder convictions and life sentences
On 27 June 2019 the Pirkanmaa District Court convicted Petri Tapani Alppi and another defendant of two murders. Alppi was sentenced to life imprisonment. The Court of Appeal later upheld his guilt and, after a forensic psychiatric examination, confirmed the life sentence in its final judgment of 15 December 2020.
The case later reached Finland's Supreme Court because one Court of Appeal judge had participated by video link during part of the proceedings while in COVID-19 quarantine. The Supreme Court recognized a procedural error but concluded, in Alppi's case, that it did not require the murder judgment to be set aside.
European human-rights challenge rejected
Alppi then applied to the European Court of Human Rights. In a 2023 decision, the court recorded the two murder convictions and the life sentence and declared his fair-trial complaint inadmissible as manifestly ill-founded.
The later litigation is important to the procedural history, but it did not convert the case into an unresolved homicide. The two deaths remain adjudicated murders, and the life sentence at issue remained in force.