Veikko "Jammu" Siltavuori is a man who raped, burnt and buried a couple of young girls that he had picked for a car ride from this neighborhood in the late 1980s.
He originally received a 15 years-to-life sentence for his crimes as he was found mentally retarted. If that would not have been the case, he would have been sentenced to mandatory sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. The Finnish Supreme Court, however, found later some additional mitigating factors and ruled a life sentence to be overall inappropriate in his case. The reviewed sentence was the usual determinate sentence of 15 years with parole possibility after 10 years. 10 years passed and unsuccessful were his first and second parole hearings in Finnish Prison Court (similar to Parole boards in the U.S.). After serving 11 years on the third parole hearing the Prison Court finally let him on strictly supervised parole, but he nevertheless has spent the last few years in Niuvanniemi hospital (in Kuopio) for criminal-psychiatric reasons.
Jouko Turkka's novel Häpeä ("Shame") tells something about that. Says Turkka: "Jammu Siltavuori is the most hated man in Finland. No presidential candidate would want to have his vote. The candidate would pay money if Jammu would publicly announce that he would vote some other candidate. Church or any other religious oragnization would reject him even if the God itself would indicate that Jammu's sins are forgiven. Nobody wants nothing from him, no money, no apologies, no begs for forgiveness. He is the most important issue in cultural life of Finland. Anyone who would express any kind of mercy would undersign his own death penalty."
