Kalevi Heikkinen

Arvo Kalevi Heikkinen (May 25, 1911 – December 1, 1940) was a Finnish member of the Lapua movement, known for his involvement in the murder of Yrjö Holm, a municipal councilor from Forsa, in 1930. Later, he fought in the Spanish Civil War on the side of the fascists led by General Francisco Franco. The detective who interrogated Heikki regarding Holm's murder characterized him as an "ideological fanatic".

Murder of Yrjö Holm

Heikkinen, born in Kestilä, North Ostrobothnia, returned home from his military service as a sergeant. He then worked as a business assistant until he started studying at Evo's forestry college. In the summer of 1930, he became interested in the extreme right-wing Lapua movement and began to lead its strike group operating in Loimaa, which managed to commit three kidnappings. One of them turned fatal, when a group led by Heikkinen broke into the home of Yrjö Holm, a former member of the Loimaa town council in Forssa, on the night before July 4. Holm, however, did not submit but defended himself and lost his life in the resulting exchange of fire.

At first, Paavo Markkula was suspected as Holm's shooter, after his arrest, Heikkinen organized a demonstration of 800 supporters of the Lapua movement in Forssa on November 4 to get him released. After Markkula's release, not only Heikkinen but also student Enso Kivikoske was suspected as the shooter, but in the end no one was convicted of the murder. However, in 1931, Heikkinen received a nine-month suspended sentence from the Court of Appeal in Turku for three false imprisonments. After that, he worked as an advertisement seller for the newspaper of the same name published by the Lapua movement and the IKL youth organization Blue-and-Blacks, until he became unemployed after the organization was closed in 1936.

Spanish Civil War

Heikkinen, who became unemployed in early 1937, decided to join the Spanish Foreign Legion and go fight in the ranks of the Falangists in the civil war that broke out in the country in July 1936. In February, he traveled with a group of ten Finns on the S/S Wappu steamship from Kotka to Hamburg, where the men contacted the head of Nazi Germany's propaganda department, Heinrich Hoffmann. This led them to the talks of a Spanish recruiter who arranged a trip via Lisbon to Spain. Olavi Karpalo, who later fought in the SS forces of Nazi Germany, joined the Spanish Foreign Legion with him.

Heikkinen appeared in the Foreign Legion under the pseudonym "Arbo Kalbi", fighting on the Madrid front. In April, Heikkinen, who was wounded by a grenade fragment that hit his head, was transferred to the military hospital in Palencia, where he wrote about his war experiences in IKL's Ajan Suunta magazine under the pen name "H". Heikkinen was soon transferred to Ceuta, located on the coast of Morocco, from where he continued to write for various magazines of IKL, this time under the pen name "KH" and later also reported under his own name for Ilta-Sanomat.

Return

In September 1937, Heikkinen returned to Finland together with the journalist Veikko E. Rutanen from Kajaani . In November, he got a job as the editor of IKL's Lakeus newspaper published in Seinäjoki.

In March 1938, Heikkinen started as a prison guard at Helsinki County Prison, but he was arrested after only a month in connection with the murder of Yrjö Holm. Even in the new trial, the murder charge could not be proven, but Heikkinen received another five-month sentence for false imprisonment. He died of his injuries in Spain in December 1940 at the age of only 29.