Lapland killer in sentence appeal

A Czech man jailed for killing his Fife girlfriend in a remote part of Lapland is back in court today, as his appeal against a murder conviction gets under way in the Finnish city of Rovaniemi.

Former soldier Karel Frybl and Rebecca Johnson, originally from Burntisland, were working at a husky ranch in Enontekiö in December 2016 when the murder took place.

Frybl, who used the name Radek Kovac during their relationship, confessed to killing Johnson at trial last year.

The killer says he blacked out during a frenzied attack which left 26-year-old Johnson with more than 30 stab wounds to her head, chest, back, abdomen and thigh.

The couple had a history of verbal and physical violence on both sides, but on the morning of her death Rebecca Johnson had phoned a colleague to admit that she was in an abusive relationship, and requested that their employer move Frybl somewhere else.

Sentencing Frybl in February, judges described the murder as “brutal and cruel” and said the knife wounds “showed determination, perseverance and cold-bloodedness”.

Defence lawyers lodged an appeal against the murder conviction, which carries a mandatory life sentence.

“The juridical question here is if the defendant is guilty of manslaughter or murder. The defendant has pled guilty of manslaughter but denies the murder” says Frybl’s lawyer Katri Mäkinen.

Under Finnish law, Frybl’s original conviction and the new appeal hinge on whether Rebecca Johnson’s killing reached the criminal threshold for murder which requires some degree of premeditation, or for the death to have been particularly brutal. A Facebook picture of victim Rebecca Johnson.