#How is choking you mother to death negligent homicide and not murder?

[coochiequeens]

Finland’s Center for Legal Protection of Health Care also stated that Penttilä should be classified as an extreme danger to others, and the Appellate Court intervened and extended his prison term by one additional year.“ The original sentence was only 9 and a half years and that was the THIRD woman he strangled to death.

A Finnish serial killer who targeted young girls and women has been categorized as a “female” criminal by Wikipedia, prompting criticism on social media. Michael Maria Penttilä, 57, has been described by national media as the “only Finn to meet the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) definition of a serial killer,” having sexually abused and strangled multiple female victims to death, including children. Penttilä was born Jukka Torsten Lindholm, but is also known as Michael Pentholm.

Penttilä has a lengthy criminal record, which was recently highlighted in response to the revelation that he is classified as a “female” by Wikipedia. Many women expressed their outrage using the hashtag “notourcrimes,” which indicates opposition to male violence being recorded in statistics as having been committed by a woman.

Even as an adolescent, Penttilä committed sexually motivated and violent crimes. In 1981, at the age of 16, he abducted a teen girl, locked her in a basement, and beat her. Penttilä choked the girl with scarves and threatened to rape her, but she was able to flee. As punishment for the sadistic offense and a series of petty thefts, Penttilä was held at the Kerava Youth Facility in 1984 for one year.

Penttilä’s first known murder victim was of his own mother, Laina Lahja Orvokki Lindholm, whom he strangled on August 26, 1985, just after his release from the youth detention center. However, the crime was initially considered accidental by authorities, and the verdict in Penttilä’s case was ultimately decided to be wrongful death.

The next year, Penttilä met two 12 year-old girls and convinced them to accompany him to his apartment by promising to give them money to buy alcohol. He then locked one of the victims in the bathroom before using a belt to fatally strangle the other girl. Penttilä proceeded to rape the surviving girl, who was eventually able to escape after neighbors overheard her screams for help and contacted law enforcement.

It was only upon his arrest for the rape and murder of the young girls that the truth about Laina Lindholm’s death was revealed. During interrogations, Penttilä described to police how he had waited for his mother to fall asleep before donning her blue leather gloves and one of her scarves and choking her to death. He told authorities he killed his mother because she had begun dating another man since divorcing his father, and because he blamed her for not attempting to secure an early release for him from the youth facility.

In March of 1987, the Oulu District Court ruled that Penttilä was guilty of the murders of his mother and the child, and sentenced him to 9 years and seven months’ imprisonment. Despite this, the Rovaniemi Appellate Court intervened and held that Laina Lindholm’s death was not a murder, but instead a lesser crime of negligent homicide, and reduced his sentence to seven years.

Disturbingly, Penttilä confessed that he visited his mother’s grave after the killing.

Just one year after Penttilä was granted parole in May of 1992, he again choked a woman to death in his apartment in Kempele. The victim was a 42 year-old woman identified in press as Arja, and Penttilä admitted to causing her death, but claimed the murder was accidental and a result of engaging in the sadomasochistic sexual practice of erotic asphyxiation. 

Months later and while in prison, Penttilä told law enforcement his chilling motive behind the slaying. He said that he had confessed to having a “sexual abnormality” to Arja. Before her death, he told Arja that he was only capable of sadomasochistic sex, which included bondage, whipping and strangulation.

The Oulu District Court sentenced Penttilä to 9 and a half years, and a psychiatric evaluation was conducted. The examination concluded that Lindholm was sane and aware of his actions, and was therefore guilty. Finnish media reported that “[Penttilä’s] sexual inclination towards S/M sex and desire for strangulation did not show up in the examination because he focused on being as normal as possible.”

Finland’s Center for Legal Protection of Health Care also stated that Penttilä should be classified as an extreme danger to others, and the Appellate Court intervened and extended his prison term by one additional year.

In 2000, while incarcerated in Hämeenlinna Central Prison which houses both male and female inmates in separate wards, Penttilä began to wear make-up and dress in women’s clothes. According to psychiatric reports, Penttilä had a preoccupation with a hyper-masculine and violent male ideal, despite his fetishistic crossdressing tendencies. 

However, the prison’s director soon forbade him from wearing make-up and dresses, citing concerns about security. Penttilä then filed a formal complaint to Parliament’s ombudsman and attempted to argue that he was being discriminated against because female inmates were permitted to wear “men’s clothes.”

While in Hämeenlinna, Penttilä was granted permission to marry a woman named Hannele Pentholm, who was convicted of killing her husband and serving a life sentence. The two were married a short time, only two years, and after their divorce Penttilä adopted the name Michael Maria Penttilä and began claiming to be a lesbianwoman.

After he was released on parole in November 2008, Penttilä again attacked three more women on separate occasions. In May of 2009, he attempted to strangle a healthcare worker who he had called to his home to perform chiropractic services. The woman was eventually able to escape after calming Penttilä down and convincing him to release her.

He continued his violent pattern twice more: first strangling a female housecleaner he had hired to tidy his apartment, and the second just three weeks afterwards.

On June 11 of 2010, the Oulu District Court sentenced Penttilä to six years for three aggravated assaults and attempted aggravated assault, as well as aggravated rape and deprivation of liberty. The next year, the Rovaniemi Appellate Court once again interfered with the ruling and reduced Penttilä’s sentence to just four years and five months. The final verdict was upheld in October of 2012.

Penttilä was released in December of 2016, and just two years later, he murdered a prostituted woman by strangling her with stockings in his Helsinki apartment. Additionally, he had been found to have planned to murder a 17 year-old girl in 2017.

He is now serving a life sentence for the brutal slaying. 

During deliberations to determine whether Penttilä should be charged with homicide or the lesser crime of manslaughter, the court heard how he had spent hours of each day viewing pornography depicting asphyxiationleading up to the murders he had committed.

Psychologist Jan-Henry Stenberg told the Helsinki Court of Appeal that Penttilä’s pornography consumption illustrated the premeditated nature of his crime and highlighted the tendency for pornography use to escalate towards more extreme content. It was revealed that Penttilä had mimicked the actions of one of the men in a pornographic video he had watched.

Despite repeatedly targeting women and girls for sexually motivated violence, Penttilä is now listed as a “female serial killer” on Wikipedia, where editors have argued amongst themselves over this classification in the site’s open-access backend.

The page was initially created in 2018 under Penttilä’s birth name, Jukka Lindholm. 

Few changes were made until last month when, on April 5, a trans activist Wiki editor known as Maddy from Celeste updated the serial killer’s name to Michael Maria Penttilä and cited “deadnaming” as the reason.

Editor Maddy from Celeste, a pseudonym which is a nod to a video game character and its developer, is credited with having created the page “Transgender history in Finland,” and identifies as queer, trans, and non-binary.

“A serial murderer has zero rights – stop with the pathetic gender crap, HE is not a she,” reads one comment on the article’s edit page.

Other comments can be seen in the edit history and depict a back-and-forth exchange over “misgendering”, with one anonymous editor stating, “This person was born a male. Humans cannot change sex.”

In July of 2019, the category labeled “transgender serial killers” was deleted by Wikipedia editors. However, a category does exist for “female serial killers,” and Penttilä is one of two entries in the section regarding Finnish criminals.

Penttilä’s sadistic killing spree resembles the criminal behavior of American serial killer Harvey Marcelin. Marcelin, who identifies as transgender and uses the name Marceline Harvey, murdered three women and dismembered two of his victims’ bodies. Marcelin similarly targeted women trafficked in the sex industry, and is currently being held in the women’s ward at Rikers Island in New York. 

Like with Penttilä’s entry, a dispute between various Wikipedia contributors broke out over Harvey’s pronounsin 2022.

By Genevieve Gluck

Genevieve is the Co-Founder of Reduxx, and the outlet's Chief Investigative Journalist with a focused interest in pornography, sexual predators, and fetish subcultures. She is the creator of the podcast Women's Voices, which features news commentary and interviews regarding women's rights.

[finnishcrimestory]

The Serial Strangler

Michael Penttilä was born as Jukka Torsten Lindholm in July 1965 in Oulu, Finland. His criminal life began when he was only 16 years old in 1981, when he attacked a girl coming home from a party and dragged her to a basement where he beat, kicked and strangled her with a scarf. He also threatened to rape her. Luckily the girl managed to escape and later recognized Penttilä from a mugshot. Penttilä got probation and had to pay a fine, but his earlier thefts and wrongdoings sent him to Kerava Youth Facility in 1984. He got out in 1985.

On 26th of August 1985 in Oulu, Penttilä strangled his own 48 year old mother to death. He wasn’t caught just yet.

On 26th of July 1986 Penttilä met two 12 year old girls in town and lured them into following him with promise to pay them 10 Finnish marks if they helped him to carry alcohol to his apartment. Inside said apartment Penttilä locked one of the girls in closet and started to choke the other girl with a belt. Some time later Penttilä let the other girl out of the closet and assaulted her. The girl managed to escape and ran away. Penttilä fled from his apartment to a forest where the police caught him later. He was notably drunk. When investigating this insident Penttilä also confessed to murdering his own mother. He told that he had got mad to his mother for not being able to get him out from juvenile prison and for wanting to live with her new boyfriend. Later he withdrew his confession and told the police that he was drunk and high on drugs during his confession. In 17th of March 1987 Penttilä was sentenced to 9 years and 7 months to prison for two accounts of manslaughter as well as other crimes. The murder of his mother was seen only as an assault and negligent homicide that reduced his sentence to only 7 years of imprisonment. 

Penttilä was released on parole in May 1992 and he continued his criminal way of life a year after that. On 31st of May 1993 he strangled 42 year old woman to death in his grandmas apartment. He didn’t confess at first and claimed that someone random had done it and that he was set up. On 23rd of June 1993, while being on pretrial detention, Penttilä escaped Oulu County Police Station with some other man. Later in 13th of December 1993 he was sentenced to 9,5 years to inprisonment. He wasn’t satisfied with this so he made a complaint and claimed that what had happened was an accident. According to him he had suggested S&M sex and the woman had died accidentally while he choked her. After the murder Penttilä had wandered to his mothers grave and layed beside it for a while. The Appellate Court subsequently changed the sentence to 10,5 years and Penttilä was send to a special institution. 

While in prison Penttilä married Hannele Pentholm who was in prison for murdering her husband. They were married for couple years.

Penttilä was once again released on parole in November 2008 even though before his release  he was subjected to a treatment, which came to a conclusion that he was not yet ready for civilian life. 

In 2009 Penttilä left a restaurant/pub with a woman and they went to Penttilä’s apartment. As you may have guessed, Penttilä strangled her to death. On Autumn 2009 Penttilä ordered a masseuse to his apartment and while the woman was setting up her massaging table, Penttilä attacked her and started to strangle her. On september 2009 Penttilä ordered a cleaning lady to his apartment and tried to kill her. The woman managed to escape and she called the police. On 11th of June 2010 Penttilä was once again sentenced to prison for six years for three attempted manslaughters and numerous assaults. The authorities ordered Penttilä to sit through his whole sentence in prison, because they had conducted a psychologist evaluation on him and according to that he was very dangerous to other people’s life, freedom and well being. Altough on April of 2011 The Appellate Court of Oulu lowered his sentence to 4 years and 5 months, because they saw that he had only committed three aggravated assaults. At the same time, the Appellate Court ruled that the prerequisites for ordering Penttilä to sit out his punishment as a whole in jail did not exist.

On 21st to 22nd of August 2009, Penttilä committed rape, gross ill-treatment and false inprisonment at a hotel in Oulu. He also committed an assault on 1st to 31st of May 2009 in his own apartment. He was sentenced to 4 years and 4 months to prison on 2nd of March 2012. The authorities ordered Penttilä to execute his full sentence in prison, and the Appelate Court upheld the verdict in October 2012.

On Tuesday, 13th of October 2015, Penttilä escaped the Laukaa open prison. He got caught on the next day and he was sent to prison in Mikkeli. 

Penttilä was released in December 2016, but in April 2017 police ordered for him to be arrested for alleged aggravated crime and the preparation of a criminal offense. However Helsinki District Court released him during the investigation. In May 2017, the Helsinki Appellate Court annulled the decision and Penttilä was rearrested. On 7th of July 2017, the Helsinki District Court dismissed the prosecution of an aggravated criminal offense or a health offense and ordered Penttilä to be released. In May 2018, the Appellate Court changed the decision and Penttilä was sentenced to 2 years and 6 months imprisonment, and to pay the victim a compensation of 4,000 euros.

On 13th of April 2018, Penttilä killed a prostitute in her apartment in Helsinki. The prostitute had recognized Penttilä and according to Penttilä himself she had said “you’re the fucking serial strangeler” and called him a freak, which enraged him. After killing her Penttilä hid the body under a bed. He spent couple days in the victims apartment, which he cleaned before he left. Penttilä’s DNA or fingerprints weren’t found from there. The victim was found on May 4th. First the police didn’t have no idea who had killed her, especially when they didn’t find any DNA or the fingerprints, but the police recognized Penttilä from a CCTV tape that had captured his arrival to the apartment. He was a familiar face to the police of course so they arrested Penttilä two days later in Helsinki, suspected of murder. On 17th of May 2018, the police announced that Penttilä had confessed during interrogations that he had committed a homicide. In July, the Helsinki District Court sentenced him to life imprisonment for murder. He had held steady discretion in the murders, using several tools such as leather belts, tights or his bare hands. Penttilä later announced that he would appeal the court's decision.

Penttilä is serving his sentence in Helsinki prison under special surveillance.

Penttilä is the very first Finnish person who FBI has classified as a serial killer. Penttilä has spent two decades of his life in prison.

Penttilä has explained his interest in women’s clothing and using makeup that according to him started when he was around 15-16. His interest to S&M came from a stripper, that was “a pure domina” who taught him how to practice S&M. He has stated that controlling someones breathing is an interesting thing to him.

He appears to have some sort of a fetish towards leather clothing. He used his mothers blue leather gloves while strangling her, also wearing her scarf. In his later murders, he also used some sort of leather gloves (pictured above) while strangling his victims.

[thestruggleisrealink]

25 + Years Ago: Philadelphia Police Bombs MOVE Headquarters Killing 11, Destroying 65 Homes

Today marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of a massive police operation in Philadelphia that culminated in the helicopter bombing of the headquarters of a radical group known as MOVE. The fire from the attack killed six adults and five children and destroyed sixty-five homes. Despite two grand jury investigations and a commission finding that top officials were grossly negligent, no one from city government was criminally charged. MOVE was a Philadelphia-based radical movement that was dedicated to black liberation and a back-to-nature lifestyle. It was founded by John Africa, and all its members took on the surname Africa. We hear from Mumia Abu-Jamal and speak with Ramona Africa, the only adult survivor of the bombing. [includes rush transcript]

JUAN GONZALEZ: Today marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of a massive police operation in Philadelphia that culminated in the helicopter bombing of the headquarters of a radical group known as MOVE. The fire from the attack killed six adults and five children and destroyed sixty-five homes, an entire neighborhood. Despite the two grand jury investigations and a commission finding that top officials were grossly negligent, no one from city government was criminally charged.

MOVE was a Philadelphia-based radical movement that was dedicated to black liberation and a back-to-nature lifestyle. It was founded by John Africa, and all its members took on the surname Africa.

We’ll be joined in a moment from Philadelphia by Ramona Africa. At the time of the bombing, she was the sole adult survivor in the house. She escaped with major burns by crawling through a basement window with a thirteen-year-old boy then known as Birdie Africa. Ramona went on to serve seven years in prison on a riot charge.

But first, here’s a clip from Mumia Abu-Jamal’s latest commentary from death row.

MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: May 13th at twenty-five. May 13th, 1985 is more than a day of infamy, when a city waged war on its own alleged citizens, but also when the city committed massacre and did so with perfect impunity, when babies were shot and burned alive with their mothers and fathers, and the killers rewarded with honors and pensions, while politicians talked and the media mediated mass murder. On that day, the city, armed and assisted by the US government, dropped a bomb on a house and called it law. The fire department watched buildings ignite like matches in the desert and cut off water. The courts of the land turned a blind eye, daubed mud in their socket, and prosecuted Ramona Africa for having the nerve to survive an urban holocaust, jailing her for the crime of not burning to death. Eleven men, women and children died, and not one killer was even charged with a misdemeanor.

But on that day, more than MOVE members died. The city died, too. Its politicians died, its media died, its courts died, and its churches and houses of worship died, for they ceased to function, and they served power and money. In a very real sense, the city massacred itself, for one’s faith in such institutions died. They became empty, hollow and dead, but for the shell. May 13th, 1985 is a day that shall live in infamy, but for far more reasons than the obvious. It was the death knell of a system committing suicide. It proved that a man called John Africa spoke powerful truths when he spoke about the nature of the system as corrupt, as flawed, as poisoned. Every day past that date has only proved it even more.

From death row, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal.

AMY GOODMAN: Mumia Abu-Jamal also a former Philadelphia reporter, that commentary courtesy of the Prison Radio Project.

Ramona Africa joins us now from Philadelphia on this twenty-fifth anniversary of the MOVE bombing.

Ramona, welcome to Democracy Now! Go back twenty-five years ago. You were the sole adult survivor of the police bombing, May 13th, 1985. Describe what happened as the bomb was falling on your house.

RAMONA AFRICA: OK, the first thing I want people to understand is that that bombing did not happen because of some complaints from neighbors. This government had never cared about black folks complaining about their neighbors or any other people complaining about their neighbors. They bombed us because of our unrelenting fight for our family members, known as the MOVE 9, who have been in prison unjustly going on thirty-two years now, as a result of the August 8th, 1978 police attack on MOVE. I just wanted to make that clear.

In terms of the bombing, after being attacked the way we were, first with four deluge hoses by the fire department and then tons of tear gas, and then being shot at — the police admit to shooting over 10,000 rounds of bullets at us in the first ninety minutes — there was a lull. You know, it was quiet for a little bit. And then, without any warning at all, two members of the Philadelphia Police Department’s bomb squad got in a Pennsylvania state police helicopter and flew over our home and dropped a satchel containing C4, a powerful military explosive that no municipal police department has. They had to get it from the federal government, from the FBI. And without any announcement or warning or anything, they dropped that bomb on the roof of our home.

Now, at that point, we didn’t know exactly what they had done. We heard the loud explosion. The house kind of shook. But it never entered my mind that they dropped a bomb on us. But the bomb did in fact ignite a fire. And not long after that, it got very, very hot in the house, and the smoke was getting thicker. At first we thought it was tear gas. But as it got thicker, it became clear that this wasn’t tear gas, that this was something else. And then we could hear the trees outside of our house crackling and realized that our home was on fire. And we immediately tried to get our children, our animals, our dogs and cats, and ourselves out of that blazing inferno.

The adults were hollering out that we’re coming out, we’re bringing the children out. The children were hollering that they were coming out, that we were bringing them out. And we know that the police heard us. But the instant, the very instant, that we were visible to them, you know, trying to come out, they immediately opened fire. We were met with a barrage of police gunfire. And you could see it hitting all around us, all around the house. And it forced us back in to that blazing inferno, several times. And finally, you know, you’re in a position where either you choke to death and burn alive or you possibly are shot to death.

So we continued to try to get out of that house. And I got out. I got Birdie out. You could hear the shots hitting all around us. A cop grabbed Birdie, took him into custody, grabbed me, they threw me down on the ground and handcuffed, you know, me behind me, in the back of me. And I just knew that everybody else had gotten out. They were right behind me. And I didn’t find out until police took me to the homicide unit of the police administration building that there were no other survivors.

AMY GOODMAN: Ramona Africa, the sole adult survivor. Six adults, five children killed that day. Juan, you were a reporter for the Philadelphia Daily News.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: You were there on the corner when this happened.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Yeah. Well, Ramona, as you recalled, it was a — it was May 13th, but it was a Sunday that year, and it was Mother’s Day. And I’ll never forget, because the confrontation started early in the day and went for most of the day, and I remember precisely when that helicopter dropped the C4, because I was about a block away with my fellow Philadelphia Daily News reporter and longtime friend Linn Washington. And we saw the helicopter hovering overhead, and we said, "What’s that helicopter doing?" But we didn’t understand what it was up to at that point. We turned around, when all of a sudden the explosion goes off.

But the aspect that many people are not aware of, that as that fire raged, we remember the fire trucks, as you mention, that had been hosing down the building beforehand, suddenly the firefighters were just ordered to stand down, and they allowed the fire to rage, I would estimate, for — it must have been about an hour. And of course, eventually, the flames not only destroyed your house, but then destroyed sixty-five other houses, all in the entire neighborhood. But the firemen just stood there, under orders not to douse the fire, because they were trying to basically force you out.

The other aspect of the story, I think, and as you mentioned, was what happened in the rear as they attempted to shoot the MOVE members as they went out, because the stories the next day, in my newspaper then, in the Philadelphia Inquirer, were, because basically they came from police sources, that the MOVE members had tried to shoot their way out, when it was actually a — it later clearly — your story was backed up by the commission, that basically the police ended up shooting you down —-

RAMONA AFRICA: And by Birdie Africa.

JUAN GONZALEZ: —- as you attempted to come out. And — but the —-

RAMONA AFRICA: You know -—

JUAN GONZALEZ: Go ahead.

RAMONA AFRICA: Why MOVE people talk about how this system intended to kill MOVE, that this was not an attempt to arrest. They came out there to literally wipe MOVE out, exterminate MOVE. People want to poo-poo us and act like, "Oh, you’re just taking it out." But the fact that they deliberately shot at us as we tried to exit the building and the fact that you just brought up of how, you know, firefighters stood there and allowed that fire to burn, I defy people to tell me, you know, when William Richmond or really any other fire commissioner or firefighters had made a decision to let a fire burn in a building, a row house, where there are men, women, babies and animals inside. I mean, firefighters are known for running into burning buildings to save people. Now, William Richmond tried to excuse or explain away, you know, their actions by saying he wasn’t going to have his firefighters, you know, in danger or come under fire from MOVE. But for hours, when there was no fire, they put — they had four deluge hoses, each of which pump out 10,000 pounds of water pressure, according to them. They aimed those water hoses at our home for hours in the morning of May 13. Now, why wasn’t it a danger then? It’s only a danger when in fact there is a fire? I mean, it is very clear to any fairminded person looking at this situation that their intent was to kill. Wilson Goode said he wanted a permanent end to MOVE. That’s what he said.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And, of course, this was the second confrontation between the police and MOVE, following the 1978 shootout that occurred, where Police Officer Ramp was killed and where Delbert Africa was beaten senseless in front of all the television cameras as he attempted to surrender after that standoff. Could you talk about the impact —-

RAMONA AFRICA: Yes.

JUAN GONZALEZ: —- that that had on how you regarded, as you were in that house, what could happen to you?

RAMONA AFRICA: Oh, absolutely, it had an impact on, you know, our realization of May 13th, 1985. We know that in 1978 they came out to kill MOVE then, too. I mean, you had cops testifying during the later trial that it was dark in the basement of MOVE headquarters in '78, so they couldn't really see, but they emptied their guns, reloaded, and emptied them again in corners where they heard babies crying. Now, that’s not an attempt to kill? What crime had the babies committed, you know?

It is obvious that MOVE did not kill Officer James Ramp, by their own, you know, admissions. James Ramp was shot with the bullet traveling on a downward angle. That’s what the system’s medical examiner determined and stands by. How could anybody in a basement shoot somebody standing on street level above them on a downward angle? It’s physically impossible. Second of all, why would the city send a demolition team out within hours after arresting MOVE people and completely demolish the scene of the crime? Vital evidence in a murder case where a cop is killed. They would have preserved every bit of evidence they could get their hands on if they really believed that MOVE killed a cop, you know?

So we know what their intent was, and knowing that they were coming after us again, we knew that they were going to try to come stronger than they did in '78, because they were upset, they were angry, they were pissed off, that they had not killed MOVE in 1978. So, coming out there to Osage, you know, after MOVE again, we knew their intent was to really get the job done this time. It wasn't about an arrest. Both situations, they keep using this word "eviction," that they were coming out to evict MOVE. Since when are evictions held, you know, carried out, by hundreds of cops armed for war? In ’85, they had —-

AMY GOODMAN: Ramona, we have five seconds.

RAMONA AFRICA: —- nine-millimeter Uzis, .50-caliber machine guns. OK, well, they came out there with the weaponry of war. War. Their intent was to kill.

AMY GOODMAN: Ramona Africa, sole adult survivor of the May 13th, 1985 police MOVE bombing that killed eleven people, five of them children. #hoodreform #thestruggleisrealink