Espoo mother suspected in murder of three children
Police suspect that three children found dead in an apartment in Espoo were killed by their mother. The 40-year-old single mother of the victims - eight-year-old twin daughters, and a son who would have turned two this month - was arrested on Monday on suspicion of murder.
Police found the bodies of the children in the woman's apartment in the Suvela area of Espoo on Monday. The mother was in the apartment when the police arrived.
The girls, who lived elsewhere with their father, had been visiting their mother. Only the boy lived with the mother.
The head of the police investigation, Jukka Kaski, is saying nothing about what the motive for the killings might have been, or the manner in which they were carried out. However, he says that some amount of premeditation was involved.
"They were not committed in the heat of the moment", he said.
Under Finnish law, a homicide counts as murder if the act was premeditated, or if carried out in an especially brutal or cruel manner.
Other residents in the five-storey apartment building were shocked to hear what had happened.
Neighbours interviewed by Helsingin Sanomat had not heard any noise from the woman's apartment that would have suggested that anything was amiss.
The woman was described as polite, but very quiet and shy. She had last been seen in the playground of the building with the three children during the weekend.
The neighbours said that they had never seen the father.
"She was in the yard with her youngest child on the swings every day, and we made small talk. In recent days she was happy and smiling, just like she always was", said a woman who lived in the same building, and whose daughter had often played with the 8-year-old twins whenever they were visiting their mother.
The police arrived at the apartment after receiving a call from someone outside the family.
"It was clear to us fairly soon that the children had been killed", Jukka Kaski said. He also said that the call to the police did not come from the father.
He estimated that the children had been dead for a day at the most when the police arrived.
Police have already interrogated the suspect. Kaski did not immediately say if she had confirmed or denied killing the children.
Helsingin Sanomat
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| 8.8.2007 - TODAY |
 Espoo mother suspected in murder of three children |
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