Nykopp-Koski was born in 1950 and worked as a nurse in nursing homes and private homes in the Helsinki region, moving frequently between employers, often as agency staff.
Between 2004 and 2009 she gave patients aged between seventy and ninety-one overdoses of sedatives and opiates, including oxycodone and diazepam, taken from the drug cupboards of the places she worked. Five died and five more suffered serious harm. Because she moved between employers, the deaths were spread across several institutions and none of them saw a pattern.
She was arrested in 2009 after a hospital noticed drugs missing and a patient's unexplained sedation, and the deaths at her previous workplaces were then examined.
She was convicted of five murders and five attempted murders and sentenced to life imprisonment on December 21, 2010. Finnish life sentences are subject to release consideration after twelve years.
No motive was established, and the court did not find one. She denied the offences. The case caused a review in Finland of how agency nursing staff were checked and of the control of controlled drugs in care homes, which is the mechanism this archive records in every case of this kind: the movement between employers is what allowed the count to accumulate.
On the sentence: Finnish life imprisonment is reviewable after twelve years. She was sentenced in 2010, so her release has been capable of consideration for several years, and nothing accessible records the outcome of any application. This is one to re-check before reprint.