Sanna SILLANPAA

Classification: Homicide
Characteristics: Shot three men to death in a shooting club - No motive for the act was found
Number of victims: 3
Date of murders: February 21, 1999
Date of arrest: Same day
Date of birth: April 15, 1968
Victims profile: The shooting club's 23-year-old supervisor, a 25-year-old car mechanic and a 37-year-old car driver
Method of murder: Shooting with a rented pistol
Location: Albertinkatu, Helsinki, Finland
Status: Found legally insane on October 11, 1999. Sillanpää was sent to the Niuvanniemi mental hospital in Kuopio

Sanna Riitta Liisa Sillanpää (born April 15, 1968) is a Finnish woman, who shot three men to death with a rented pistol on 21 February 1999 in a shooting club on Albertinkatu, Helsinki, and wounded another man, who received lifetime injuries. One man present was not harmed. The dead were the shooting club's 23-year-old supervisor, a 25-year-old car mechanic and a 37-year-old car driver.

As Sillanpää was leaving the club, she said: "This is what they taught us at the FBI academy, isn't it?". She then travelled from the Helsinki centre to the Helsinki-Vantaa Airport in a city bus, carrying a gun and ammunition. At the airport she was trying to buy a ticket "somewhere". Sillanpää was caught after four hours as she was boarding a plane to London. Before boarding the plane she left the murder weapon in a trash can in the airport terminal. It was discovered by a cleaner.

At the trials and hearings Sillanpää did not speak at all. No motive for the act was found.

Sillanpää was sent to a mental health examinations on 2 June 1999. She was found to suffer from paranoid schizophrenia. In district court, the state prosecutor Maarit Loimukoski demanded Sillanpää be imprisoned for three acts of manslaughter without full understanding (partially insane) and for two attempted acts of manslaughter, but on 11 October 1999, the district court found Sillanpää to be without understanding (legally insane).

Loimukoski appealed the decision to the Helsinki Court of Appeal, but the decision was upheld on 11 October 2000. Loimukoski explained that the reason for her demand for punishment was that Sillanpää had acted with premeditation in attempting to flee Finland and hiding the gun after the act. Sillanpää was sent to the Niuvanniemi mental hospital in Kuopio.

Sillanpää, 30 years old at the time, has a Master's degree in computer science and is an IT expert.

After the incident, a public discussion about renting firearms on shooting ranges started in Finland. Many wanted to tighten the availability of weapons. New propositions were made by the authorities and in shooting clubs.

Sillanpää guilty of three counts of manslaughter

Helsingin Sanomat

October 12, 1999

Monday saw the resolution of one of the strangest cases in recent Finnish criminal history, as a court in Helsinki found 31-year-old Sanna Sillanpää guilty on three counts of manslaughter and a further two of attempted manslaughter, but waived sentence on the grounds that the accused was not mentally fit, based on psychiatric reports. Sillanpää, who is suffering from acute paranoid schizophrenia, will be placed in a mental hospital.

Sillanpää was initially charged with murder after she opened fire and killed three men at close quarters in an indoor firing range in downtown Helsinki last February. As she was leaving the firing range, she also attempted to shoot two other men who were present. Sillanpää escaped from the building where the shootings took place, but was later picked up by police - largely as the result of a fortunate series of coincidences - as she attempted to board a plane for London.

Not least because of the gender-factor involved (Finnish women do not make a habit of executing men with pistols), the case attracted a great deal of media attention. Ms Sillanpää compounded the mystery of what had caused her to shoot three apparent strangers on a whim, as she refused to speak a word to police or anyone else in the wake of the incident. Her only words at the original arraignment were a compulsory "Not guilty". It became obvious to investigators, however, that a mass of physical and other evidence pointed to Sillanpää's having committed the crime, though with clearly diminished responsibility.

The court also ordered compensation to be paid by Sillanpää in the sum of around FIM 900,000 (EUR 150,000), which is roughly equivalent to the property confiscated from her shortly after her arrest. The payments in damages were much reduced from those requested by the plaintiffs, and this gave their counsel an opportunity to complain that the sufferings of dependents who had lost a husband, father, or son were being undervalued. He noted that they were conspicuously smaller than the hefty sums paid out to Finnish Ski Federation officials after a libel case involving the Finnish News Agency earlier this year.