Nikita Bergenström (formerly Juha Veikko Valjakkala, Aslak Valdemar Ahonen, and Nikita Joakim Fouganthine; 13 June 1965 – 27 February 2023) was a Finnish murderer convicted of the triple murder of a family in the northern Swedish community of Åmsele.
The series of events that led to the murders began when the 22-year-old was released from a prison in Turku on 1 May 1988, after which he started wandering through Sweden and Finland with his 21-year-old then-girlfriend Marita Routalammi.
Later Sten's wife and Fredrik's mother, Ewa Nilsson, went looking for the two, was chased into the woods and had her throat slit by Valjakkala outside the cemetery.
[2] Valjakkala was given a life sentence on three counts of murder, while Routalammi received two years for complicity in assault and battery.
In 2002, he escaped from Pyhäselkä prison and traveled to Sweden with his wife, and was captured after a large police operation in Långträsk.
[11] In 1991, Swedish director Jan Troell directed a film based on the Åmsele murders, Il Capitano, starring Antti Reini.
Nikita Bergenström is credited as Juha Valjakkala in The Girl Who Played with Fire, in a comparison between criminals' profiles.
The eighteenth episode of the Danish television drama Rejseholdet is based on the Åmsele murders.