Joona Hasselqvist, convicted of the murder of teenage girl Jenna Lepomäki in Mijas, Costa del Sol, 13 years ago, has died at 32 years old.
Hasselqvist, who in recent years went by the name of Christian Jonathan Harjanko, died of an unspecified illness on Thursday, February 13.
The murder of 18-year-old Jenna Lepomäki shook the Finnish community in 2012 when Joona Mikael Hasselqvist and Joel Aarne Esaias Lilo were convicted in Spain of Lepomäki’s murder in 2011 and sentenced to life imprisonment in Finland. The investigation into the girl’s disappearance had lasted months until her mummified corpse was found wrapped in a sleeping bag near to where the men were living.
The Court of Appeal later commuted Hasselqvist’s sentence to manslaughter and Lilo’s sentence to aiding and abetting. Hasselqvist was 19 years old at the time of the crime in 2011. Finnish law grants parole for crimes committed under the age of 21 after one-third of the sentence has been served.
Convicted Finnish killer Joona Hasselqvist went on to reoffend
Since serving his prison sentence, Hasselqvist has been convicted of a variety of other crimes, including robbery. He was also convicted of assault while in prison after throwing hot oil over an inmate. Hasselqvist was released on parole from prison on September 4, 2016.
According to the prosecutor, the men killed her because she refused to be a drug mule and a prostitute for them. The killing took place in a detached house in Mijas, Spain, in June 2011.
The day before the crime, Jenna Lepomäki reported the men to the police 13 times by phone for having threatened her with violence, but after this, the two men lured her back to the house, strangled, stabbed, and killed her.
