Antti Olavi Taskinen was convicted of two homicides in Finland, eight years apart. In February 1997 a 30-year-old man, described as his friend, died in Tampere, and the courts found Taskinen guilty of manslaughter. In November 2005 his registered partner, a 54-year-old former business executive, died in Heinola, and the courts found him guilty of murder. Both men died of overdoses of medicine taken with alcohol. The Kouvola Court of Appeal found that the motive for the Heinola killing was money: Taskinen wanted to inherit his partner's estate.
He was also charged over a third death, that of a 20-year-old student in Tampere in August 1996. The district court convicted him of aggravated negligent homicide, but the Court of Appeal dismissed that charge in 2007, so in law he is not responsible for that death. The sentence was life imprisonment. Taskinen denied every charge and said the men had taken the overdoses themselves.
In prison he changed his name to Anton von Schrowe and studied law, graduating as a Master of Laws in 2020. The Helsinki Court of Appeal ordered his release, and he left prison on July 31, 2023, after 17.5 years. In September 2025 he reappeared in the news as the new legal counsel of Milan Jaff, a rapper and convicted gang leader whom the Finnish authorities had ordered deported to Iraq.
Taskinen was born in 1976, according to Yle, the Finnish public broadcaster. Little is known of his early life, schooling or work before 2006. When the Kouvola Court of Appeal ruled in March 2007, the news agency STT described him as a 30-year-old living in Helsinki. Yle reported in 2025 that his former name was Antti Olavi Taskinen and that he took the name Anton von Schrowe while serving his sentence.
The case was known in the Finnish press as a medicine killing case. STT called it a sensational one when the appeal judgment came down in 2007.
The earliest death in the case was that of a 20-year-old student in Tampere in August 1996. Yle's English-language service reported in 2025 that Taskinen was first convicted of aggravated negligent homicide over this death. The Finnish name of the charge is törkeä kuolemantuottamus.
The Kouvola Court of Appeal dismissed the charge in 2007. STT described it as the least serious of the three charges. With the dismissal, Taskinen stands cleared of any criminal responsibility for the student's death, and the young man's death is not counted among his convictions. The student has not been named publicly.
The second death was that of a 30-year-old man in Tampere in February 1997. STT described him as Taskinen's friend and reported that he died of poisoning by medicine and alcohol. Both the district court and the Kouvola Court of Appeal found Taskinen guilty of manslaughter, tappo in Finnish, over the 1997 death.
The Court of Appeal's ruling on the 1997 death was reported in 2007, about ten years after the death. When and how the Tampere case came back before investigators has not been made public, and the man has not been named.
Taskinen and his partner were in a registered partnership, Yle reported. In November 2005 the partner, a 54-year-old business manager whom STT described as a former company executive, died in Heinola. Like the man in Tampere, he died of poisoning by medicine and alcohol.
The courts found this death to be murder, murha in Finnish. The Kouvola Court of Appeal found that the motive was money. In the words of Yle's report on the ruling, the killing judged to be murder was driven by the fact that Taskinen wanted to inherit from his spouse. STT reported that the inheritance was worth millions of euros.
The partner was not named publicly during the trial and appeal.
The three deaths were tried together at the Heinola District Court in 2006. The court convicted Taskinen on all three counts: aggravated negligent homicide over the 1996 death, manslaughter over the 1997 death and murder over the 2005 death. It sentenced him to life imprisonment.
The district court also ordered him to pay 25,000 euros in damages for the suffering of his partner's mother and brother, and to cover the legal costs of the victims' relatives. Yle reported that all three dead men had died of overdoses of medicine. Taskinen denied all the charges from the start and maintained that the men had taken the overdoses themselves.
Taskinen appealed and asked the Kouvola Court of Appeal to overturn the guilty verdicts. On March 8, 2007, STT reported the court's ruling. The appeal court upheld the murder conviction for the Heinola death and the manslaughter conviction for the Tampere death of 1997, and it kept the sentence of life imprisonment. It dismissed the aggravated negligent homicide charge over the 1996 death.
The ruling had consequences beyond the sentence. STT reported that it meant Taskinen lost his right to the multi-million-euro inheritance from his partner. The appeal court confirmed the damages of 25,000 euros to the partner's mother and brother and the order that he pay the relatives' legal costs.
While serving his life sentence, Taskinen changed his name to Anton von Schrowe. He began studying law at the University of Turku and graduated as a Master of Laws, oikeustieteen maisteri, in 2020, Yle reported. He studied and worked while in prison and spent a long period in an open institution.
His prison record held one disciplinary penalty. In August 2020 he was punished for a narcotics use offense. According to Yle, he committed no other offenses while in prison.
Finnish life prisoners can seek conditional release once they have served at least 12 years, or 10 years if they were under 21 at the time of the offense, according to the Finnish Prison and Probation Service and the Ministry of Justice's legal information service. The decision belongs to the Helsinki Court of Appeal; a life prisoner may also be freed by a pardon from the President of the Republic. The probationary period for a conditionally released life prisoner is always three years.
In 2021 von Schrowe applied to the Helsinki Court of Appeal for release from his life sentence. The court noted that his crimes had called for a sentence clearly longer than the average. A violence risk assessment was prepared and kept confidential. The public part of the decision said that a forensic psychiatric evaluation had rated his risk of a new violent offense as moderate. The court found no evident danger that he would commit a violent offense after release.
The court listed the factors in his favor: his work in prison, his determined study and work, a long and well-run period in an open prison, and authorized leaves that had mostly gone well. It ruled that he could be released once he had served 17.5 years of the sentence, a period that included six months of supervised probationary freedom. It set the release date as July 31, 2023.
Von Schrowe was released on July 31, 2023. As of September 2025, Yle reported, he had served his sentence for the killings and was in the three-year probationary period of conditional release. He had not been convicted of any new crime.
A Master of Laws in Finland can hold many posts that require a law degree and can act as counsel in the administrative courts. Yle reported that von Schrowe did not have permission to act as counsel in the general courts, such as the district courts.
In September 2025 the Finnish Immigration Service revoked the residence permit of Milan Jaff, a rapper who had come to Finland from Iraq as a minor in 2017 and lived there under subsidiary protection, and ordered him deported to Iraq with a ban on returning. In 2022 the Helsinki District Court had described Jaff as the leader of the Kurdish Mafia street gang and sentenced him to 10 years for attempted murder and gang-related crimes, a term cut on appeal to six years and two months. A later conviction for a sexual offense against an adult was upheld on appeal.
Jaff first appealed the deportation to the Helsinki Administrative Court and then told his lawyer he wanted to withdraw the appeal. On September 23, 2025, Yle reported that he had replaced that lawyer with Anton von Schrowe. The newspaper Iltalehti had reported the change first. In an email to Yle, von Schrowe said that Jaff had switched to him in the administrative court case over the revoked permit, the deportation and the entry ban, and that he had already helped Jaff in other matters.
Von Schrowe told Yle that the case had produced new and significant evidence, and that the competent administrative court had to be given the chance to weigh it. He argued that deportation to Iraq would put Jaff's life in serious and immediate danger. Jaff, he wrote, was a convicted offender but also an artist, and the threat to him was greater because he had used his freedom of artistic and other expression, a right protected as a fundamental and human right. Finland, he wrote, could not as a state deport people to countries where they faced grave danger. Yle could not obtain documents to support those claims; the administrative court said the case files were secret, as in other foreigner cases.
Yle asked whether his past, with two homicide convictions and a life sentence, affected his work as counsel. He said he did not want to comment on his past. Asked whether he could fully assist clients without being an advocate or holding a licence as a trial counsel, he answered by email that many clients wanted him in particular because he knew what it meant to be the target of the authorities' power, possibly having lost his liberty, his means of contact and many of his rights. Clients, he wrote, had told him they felt he was solely on their side and pursued only their interests, rather than acting as an extension of the officials.
Jaff did not stay in Finland. Yle reported on December 13, 2025, citing Iltalehti and the Helsinki police, that he had been flown back to Iraq on a joint Nordic return flight. How the administrative court appeal ended has not been reported.
Taskinen denied all the charges throughout and said the men had taken the overdoses themselves. The courts rejected that account for the 1997 and 2005 deaths. He has not commented publicly on his past since his release, telling Yle in 2025 that he did not wish to discuss it.
The 1996 death of the student in Tampere was the subject of a conviction at first instance that the Court of Appeal overturned. That death is not one of his convictions and cannot be counted as one of his killings.
1976: Antti Olavi Taskinen is born.
August 1996: A 20-year-old student dies in Tampere; Taskinen is later charged with aggravated negligent homicide over the death, a charge dismissed on appeal in 2007.
February 1997: A 30-year-old man, a friend of Taskinen's, dies of medicine and alcohol poisoning in Tampere; Taskinen is later convicted of manslaughter.
November 2005: Taskinen's registered partner, 54, dies of medicine and alcohol poisoning in Heinola; Taskinen is later convicted of murder.
2006: The Heinola District Court convicts him on all three counts and sentences him to life imprisonment, with 25,000 euros in damages to his partner's mother and brother.
March 8, 2007: STT reports that the Kouvola Court of Appeal has upheld the murder and manslaughter convictions and the life sentence, dismissed the 1996 charge, and that he loses his right to his partner's estate.
During his sentence: He changes his name to Anton von Schrowe and studies law at the University of Turku.
2020: He graduates as a Master of Laws. In August he receives a disciplinary penalty for a narcotics use offense.
2021: He applies to the Helsinki Court of Appeal for release from his life sentence.
July 31, 2023: He is released after 17.5 years, including six months of supervised probationary freedom, and begins a three-year probationary period.
September 2025: Yle reports that he has become legal counsel to the rapper Milan Jaff in Jaff's appeal against deportation.
December 2025: Yle reports that Jaff has been deported to Iraq.