Transcript: 46. The Assassination of Olof Palme | Sweden

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It was a cold winters night in Stockholm in February 1986. A 59-year-old man was walking home with his wife after seeing a movie at the Grand Theatre Cinema. It was after 11pm and they were making their way to the metro station, to go home.

A figure stepped out of the shadows, pulled out a revolver and shot the man, point blank in his back. Then he fired another shot, grazing the woman’s back as she turned away. With the echo of the gunshots still ringing in the street, the assailant ran away, up the stairs on Tunnelgatan. He stopped briefly at the top of the steps, looked back at his victim, then disappeared into the night.

A taxi driver saw the incident and immediately radioed emergency services. Two young women ran closer to help the man who was bleeding in the snow. As they approached the scene, they recognised the man fighting for his life. The shooting victim was no ordinary man, he was the Prime Minister of Sweden.

Olof Palme was a world leader at the height of the Cold War who was not afraid to speak his mind. Although he had many political friends, he also had enemies in the United States, South Africa, Chile and Yugoslavia – to mention a few. 

Shockwaves rippled through Sweden as the news of his murder broke in the early morning hours. The Swedish nation was socked: how could their leader be gunned down in his hometown, in plain sight? To many people, the 28th of February 1986, was the day Sweden lost her innocence.

Thirty years later, the murder of the Prime Minister remains unsolved. More than 130 people have claimed responsibility for the assassination, but with so many secret agencies at play, will authorities ever know for sure who ordered the hit on Olof Palme?

>>Intro Music

Sven Olaf Joachim Palme was the son of Gunnar and Elizabeth Palme. He was born on the 27th of January 1927 in Stockholm. He was the youngest of three children. His brother was Claës and his sister Catherine.

Through his father’s family, Olof could trace his lineage back to King Frederik the First of Denmark and Norway. His mother was Baltic-German and she arrived in Sweden as a refugee from Russia in 1915.

Olof’s father died when he was six years old and Elizabeth raised the children alone. He was a sickly child and received most of his education from tutors at his home. He was quick to pick up languages and in addition to his native tongue of Swedish, he could speak English and German fluently from a young age. 

He attended the exclusive boarding school, Sigtuna School of Liberal Arts, as a teenager and passed the university entrance exam with ease.

In 1945 he was called to do his compulsory military service and swiftly rose to the rank of Captain in the artillery. When he left the army in 1947, he enrolled to study at the University of Stockholm.

A scholarship took him to the US, at Kenyon College, a small liberal arts school in Ohio. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in only one year and became part of the political scene on campus. He wrote his honours thesis about the United Auto Workers’ Union. 

After his studies, he took some time off and hitch hiked through the USA and Mexico. In America, he visited no less than 34 states. He would later remark that America made him a socialist. This comment confused many people, but it was not actually meant as an insult. Olof Palme was inspired by the social structure in post-war America. The obvious divide between classes intrigued him and he found it unjust that black people had to struggle for equality. He was determined to speak out against injustice for the rest of his career.

When he returned to Stockholm in 1949, Palme enrolled in the university once more, this time to study law. As a student just starting out in politics, he travelled through Europe extensively and observed the various ways in which countries were governed. He openly opposed Communism and took a personal stand against it. When he visited what-was-then Czechoslovakia in 1948, he met a medical student called Jelena Rennerová, who was in danger of being persecuted by her government. He married her in Prague, so she could have permission to leave her native country. 

When she left Czechoslovakia, Jelena initially joined her brother who lived in Paris and continued her studies there. But when she heard that Sweden offered better options for foreign students, she asked Olof Palme for his help again. No questions asked, he stepped in and arranged for her to complete her studies at the university of Uppsala. Once Jelena had completed her education and had settled in Sweden, they divorced.

Palme married for a second time in June 1956. This time his marriage was not a pollical statement, he had found his life partner. Baroness Lisbeth Beck-Friss was an esteemed psychologist in Stockholm and she supported her husband’s ideals. They had three sons together: Joakim, Mårtin and Mattias.

He embodied the modern family man of the 60s who would be successful in his career, while making time to spend with his wife and children. He was often seen going for walks or playing with his sons like any other father did. Even when the Palme-boys were grown-up, they loved spending time with their parents.

Palme joined the Swedish Social Democratic Party, and fitted right in. He rose to become the speech writer and political advisor to Prime Minister Tage Erlander who served fro more than 20 years, from 1946 to 1968.

In 1965, Palme was ready to move out of the wings and he was appointed as Minister of Transport and Communication. He later became Minister of Education and implemented Marxist ideology as part of the curriculum in Swedish schools.

During this time, he caused a stir when he marched alongside the North Vietnam ambassador to the Soviet Union, Nguyen Tho Chan, at a protest in Stockholm opposing US involvement in the Vietnam War. He would later go on to call US bombings of the country “crimes against humanity”.

Because of this, diplomatic relations with America were not good. Nixon ousted Sweden’s diplomatic service from the US and withdrew American ambassador to Stockholm. Nixon was even quoted at the time referring to Palme as ‘that Swedish asshole’.

When Tage Erlander stepped down as Prime Minister in 1968, Olof Palme was elected to be the new head of the Social Democratic Party, which made him the new Prime Minister. At the time, the 42-year-old Olof Palme was the youngest head of state in Europe.

As Prime Minister, Olof Palme had a way to provoke emotions: people either loved him or they hated him, it was impossible to feel indifferent towards him. Forthright and outspoken, he criticised European Communist regimes; he campaigned against nuclear weapons; and at a time when the world hated leaders like Fidel Castro and Yasar Arafat, he kept close relations with them, listening to what they had to say.

He was a feminist who placed great importance on gender equality. One of his most famous speeches was titled “The Emancipation of Man”, which he delivered at the Woman’s National Democratic Club on June 8th 1970. In this speech, he said that policies should be put in place to support families with small children. The mother should not be the main caregiver at that time, instead fathers should have a more active role in the household. It should not be expected of the mother to give up her career while all pressure to provide a living should fall on the father. He encouraged a culture where fathers could be as involved in child-rearing as mothers and women have equal opportunities in the work place, once they have had their kids.

Palme was also ahead of his time with regards to environmental issues, pushing the importance of nuclear power as a source of energy and talking about the detrimental effect of fossil fuel usage on the environment. 

Despite his many reforms and ideals, his reign would not last. In 1976 the Social Democratic Party was voted out for the first time in 44 years and Olof Palme left office. He remained in politics, as leader of the opposition. In 1980 the United Nations appointed him as the mediator in the Iran-Iraq war.

Six years after he was voted out, Palme was voted back in. He remained the country’s Prime Minister until his death in 1986.

Palme had a true passion for international politics, but at the heart of it all, he was a humanitarian who believed in fair treatment of all mankind. He called the Franco regime in Spain ‘Satan’s murderers’. He shone a spotlight on Apartheid and supported economic sanctions against South Africa. The African National Congress (or ANC) and Palestinian Liberation Organisation (or PLO)  received on-going financial support from Sweden thanks to Palme.

He was neither a capitalist, nor a communist. To Palme, there should have been – what he referred to as – ‘a third way’: a balance between American and Soviet economic philosophies. This put him out of favour with the US once again, as he was seen to be a sympathiser of Soviet Russia. 

Olof Palme has been called a “revolutionary reformist” who was both loved and despised. His main goal was to create a booming welfare state in Sweden that promoted an ethical and humanitarian foreign policy.

Although Sweden was technically neutral during the Cold War, Palme was often accused by his own country as well as others to have been too lenient on the Soviet Union. A pressing issue was the fact that Soviet submarines breached sovereignty with their presence in Swedish water. In 1981, Soviet submarine U137 hit a rock near a Swedish naval base in Karlskrona. The Russians claimed that navigation equipment was faulty, and they unintentionally found themselves in Swedish waters. When a nuclear weapon was found on board, it sparked an outrage: was Sweden in danger of being attacked by the Soviet Union?

It turns out it was the West that was behind the submarine invasion all the time. It was done in a bid to ruin Palme’s reputation and make him appear weak. It was part of a psychological warfare operation in an attempt to provoke violent retaliation from the Swedes. Palme was the only one who was prepared to open communication with Russia and the West did not like this one bit. 

In December 1985, similar issues brought a lot of conflict with Palme and his military commanders who felt he was too weak to take action against the Soviet Union. He was accused of being pro-Soviet and that he did not put Sweden’s safety first. Palme announced that he was planning a visit to the Soviet Union in the spring of the following year, as he was very much pro nuclear-disarmament. 

By the end of February 1986, Palme was preparing for his trip to Moscow. On Friday the 28th, it was a usual upbeat Friday atmosphere at Rosenbad, the seat of the Swedish government.

During the day, Lisbeth was at work. She was overheard that afternoon talking about seeing a film. She called her 23-year-old son Mårtin around 5pm, then went home.

Palme arrived home at 6:30 and Lisbeth suggested they joined Mårtin and his girlfriend to see The Mozart Brothers, an arthouse Swedish comedy by Suzanne Osten. He talked to Mårtin on the phone around 7pm. Mårtin and his girlfriend had already bought their tickets, as it was a popular film. Only around 8pm did Olof and Lisbeth Palme decide to go and let their son know that they would meet him at the cinemas.

They left home at 8:40 and, as usual, there were no bodyguards. Stockholm was considered to be one of the safest cities in the world at the time. Besides, Palme often sent his bodyguards away, as he wanted to live a normal life in the city he was born in raised, a city he believed to be safe.

A neighbour saw the Palme’s leave their home as she arrived home. The neighbour recalled seeing a man who behaved strangely: he walked behind the Palme’s and stopped at the corner when they went into the Metro station. The neighbour could see that the man was talking on a walkie talkie and found it weird. More witnesses came forward and said that they saw other people with walkie talkies in central Stockholm that night. One man was seen on the platform at the metro station near the Palme’s home.

The train driver noticed two men following the Palme’s onto the train. 

A woman saw a police officer standing outside of his official vehicle, talking on a walkie talkie as he watched the Palme’s. She remembered it, as she thought it was strange that he didn’t use the radio in his car.

The Grand Theatre Cinema was halfway between two stations, and the Palme’s went to the farther stop of Rädmansgatan. The train driver noted that the two men who had followed them onto the train, also got off the train at the same station. The ticket desk attendant at the metro station saw another man following the Palme’s out of the station, onto the street.

Olof and Lisbeth met Mårten and his girlfriend at the movies and enjoyed the feature that started at 9pm. Afterwards, they had a short conversation outside the building, then went their separate ways at 11:15pm. 

Lisbeth did some window-shopping along the way, looking at the display in the windows of an interior design store. Then they carried on, walking arm-in-arm, with Olof on the inside and Lisbeth curb-side. When they reached the corner of Sveavägen and Tunnelgatan, Lisbeth became aware of a man approaching them from behind. 

She heard the first shot and instinctively turned away as the second one went off. Her husband of 30 years dropped to the ground and lost consciousness within a minute or two.

The gunman ran away, up the 89 steps on Tunnelgatan. Lisbeth saw him stop for a second to look at them, before he turned and disappeared. A witness chased after him but lost him.

The immediate response to the shooting was chaotic, and it really set the tone for the first hours and days of the investigation. A taxi driver called emergency 90000 (nine-zero-zero-zero-zero), but his call was misdirected. The taxi switchboard operator then called police to give them the message. A second taxi driver, who heard the conversation on his comms, saw a police vehicle close-by, so he jumped out of his taxi and flagged them down.

Two women saw the shooting and rushed to Olof Palme’s aid. One of the women, Anna Hage, was a nursing student and she tried to give him CPR, but it was already too late. As luck would have it, an ambulance happened to pass by the scene, at that moment. There was already a small crowd and one of the bystanders called the ambulance to come back.

Granted, all of this happened within five minutes of the shooting. At that moment, most of the people at the scene were unaware that the victim was their Prime Minister. Olof Palme was carried into the ambulance and his wife, Lisbeth refused, to leave his side. His identity was only revealed once he was inside the ambulance.

The police superintendent in charge of the scene informed dispatch that the Prime Minister had been shot. In a well-publicised phone call, when hearing that the Prime Minister had been shot, the operator can be heard saying with disbelief: 

“You’re kidding…”

Olaf Palme arrived at Sabbatsberg Hospital just after midnight, at 12:06, March 1st 1986, and was announced dead on arrival.

At a quarter to one the Deputy Prime Minister, Ingvar Carlsson arrived at Rosenbad to take charge. At ten minutes past one, the first radio broadcast about the murder was made.

Olof Palme’s funeral was held two weeks after he was killed. It was a touching ceremony, with nine short eulogies. Lisbeth and their sons walked behind the white coffin, adorned with red roses. Newly appointed Prime Minster, Ingvar Carlsson, said that Olof Palme could be described as a “free and powerful bird, killed in full flight.”

The funeral procession was a slow and sombre march through the streets of Stockholm. As dusk fell onto the city where Olof Palme was born and where he had died, the nation mourned the loss of a great leader. Even people who didn’t support his political views turned up to pay their respects. The whole country came to a stand-still. The kind of violence that ended Palme’s life, in their beloved city, was an unforgivable act.

Investigation:

The police had their job cut out for them. People needed answers: who killed their Prime Minister? 

From the very beginning of the investigation, many mistakes were made. When law enforcement learnt that the victim was Olof Palme, there was a sense of panic, and normal procedure went out the window. 

To give some perspective on how unusual the circumstances were… No leader of Sweden had been killed, since King Gustav the Third in 1792. That is almost two hundred years before Palme was gunned down. Also, no other European head of state had been murdered since World War II. 

The chief of police in Stockholm, Hans Holmér, was placed in charge of the investigation, in an effort to ensure the public that they intended to use the best resources for the job. However, although Holmér was great at his job as the head of police, he was not an investigator. He had never investigated a murder in his life. Basic mistakes were made. The crime scene was not cordoned off properly. It took police close to two hours to set up road blocks to monitor movement in and out of the city centre. By that time, the assailant was long gone.

Two witnesses saw a man running up the stairs of Tunnelgatan and disappeared from their sight in David Bagares Street. As time went by, more and more witnesses came forward. In the end, 25 witnesses in total claimed to have seen the assassination. The conclusion of all the testimonies was that the assailant was a dark-haired man, about 6ft - 6.2ft (or 1.8m-1.85m) tall with a dark jacket. Some witnesses said he had a limp or that his getaway was clumsy, others said he ran away swiftly and quickly. A composite sketch of the assassin was drawn up, but witnesses couldn’t agree if it was an accurate portrayal or not. In the end, the only thing they knew for sure, was that they had no idea what the gunman looked like. Everybody did agree on the escape route, however.

Multiple witnesses also came forward and told police about the men with walkie talkies who had kept surveillance on the Palme’s on the night the Prime Minister was killed. Two Finnish women reported seeing a Finnish-speaking man, whom they knew as he went to their gym, standing at the entrance of a store, about 300yards from where Palme was killed. One of the women went up to him, spoke to him in Finnish, but he didn’t reply. According to the witness, during the awkward silence, she heard the crackling sound of a walkie talkie from the man’s jacket. Someone at the other end said:

“They are coming now.”

Then the man took out a walkie talkie and said: 

“I’ve been spotted, what should I do?”

To which the person replied:

“Complete the mission.”

According to the witness, the man then ran away, in the direction where Palme was shot. The women felt uncomfortable and left. They heard a loud bang and assumed a car had backfired. It was only when they heard about the assassination, that they thought their information could be relevant to law enforcement. Police followed up, went to the gym in Upplands-Väsby, but could never find the man matching the witnesses’ description. Another dead end.

Many conspiracy theories emerged that pointed fingers at members of the police force, but it was dismissed as rumours. The witnesses later told the media that after they reported what they had seen they received threatening calls. The media took statements from all the witnesses, but police never spoke to all of them.

Inside the police force was the petty crimes unit, known as the Baseball League. Most members of this squad were affiliated with extreme right-wing elements. Photos exist of senior members doing the Hitler salute. The founder of the Baseball League was chief of police himself, Hans Holmér. Although Holmér was officially a social democrat, he was known to associate with right-wing extremists within the police force.

What cast more suspicion onto police, was the fact that one of the members of the Baseball League happened to work in communications on the night of Palme’s murders. The first emergency calls about shots being fired were cut off. Once it could not be contained any longer, he only broadcasted the shooting on one frequency – reaching only a limited number of emergency vehicles. Also, contrary to protocol, he did not use the alert level 1 for urgent cases, instead he opted for level 3 – a low priority level. So, only a handful of responders received the alert that there was an incident, that was not that serious.

Chief Investigator Hans Ölvebro refused to follow up on the theory that Palme’s killing was a plot that had originated in the police force. He made it clear to the media that he would not allocate any resources to explore the accusation.

Investigators wondered how a well-orchestrated plot could have been executed, if the Palme’s decision to go to the movies on that Friday night was made on the spur of the moment. They searched the Palme home, as well as Mårtin’s apartment for bugging devices on the phones or around the home but could not find anything. Lisbeth said that she recalled two men acting suspiciously outside their home three weeks before the killings, but that was near impossible to verify.

Looking at forensic evidence, they found that the Prime Minister was shot in the back, at close range. The first bullet travelled through his trachea and oesophagus and damaged a main artery in the sternum, before exiting his body. The second shot missed both Olof Palme and hit Lisbeth. It only scraped her back as she turned away, causing a superficial wound.

The bullets were fired from a revolver, so no bullet casings would have ejected. Both bullets were recovered by witnesses at the scene, not by police officers. Ballistic experts concluded that the gun that had fired the bullets was most likely a Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum.

The copper-tipped lead bullets were not common in Sweden at all. It didn’t match any of the 500-600 bullets in the police reference collection. This kind of bullet was designed to pierce metal, or even a bullet-proof vest. It was not the average bullet and would have been difficult – if possible at all – to source in Sweden.

There was tremendous pressure on investigators. The public needed answers. Police had to name a suspect. It was unacceptable that someone could simply walk up to the Prime Minister, kill him and run away. Despite witness statements of many people following the Palme’s, investigators felt strongly that the killing was the work of a lone assassin, without the backing of a bigger cause. The murder was simply too risky and the getaway too sloppy for a professional organisation. 

The first suspect they looked at, was a man by the name of Victor Gunnarsson. He was a Right-Wing Extremist, who was very outspoken against Palme. He grew up in Southern Sweden and was involved in politics from a young age. Witnesses placed him at a café in Stockholm, called Mon Chérie on the night of Palme’s murder. He was overheard making anti-Palme remarks and before he left, he gave two women a business card. Witnesses claimed to have seen him on Tunnelgatan after the shooting and also outside Grand Theatre Cinemas earlier that night.

A week after Palme’s assassination, Gunnarsson was taken in for questioning. He was labelled ‘The 33-year-old’ by the media. His friends described him as kind and harmless.

What made him even suspicious, was the presence of gun residue on his jacket. He was arrested in April 1986, but due to a lack of evidence, he was released later the same month. In May, detectives were satisfied that he was not the person they were looking for and the investigation against him was closed.

In December 1993, less than a decade after Palme’s death, Gunnarsson’s body was found almost naked, a fair distance away from his apartment in Salisbury, North Carolina. His death was the result of a love-triangle gone-wrong, and his murderer was caught and convicted. Gunnarsson always maintained his innocence in the Palme murder. 

A year after the Prime Minister was shot, another name kept coming up on police radar. Christer Pettersson –he was a known criminal and drug user who had been convicted of manslaughter when he was a teenager. He was eventually arrested three years after Olof Palme’s murder, after he was picked out of a video line-up by Lisbeth Palme. Another witness, who saw the incident from a parked car, also identified Pettersson as the assailant.  

Pettersson was tried and convicted for Palme’s murder, but later acquitted on appeal. His appeal succeeded for three reasons: firstly, because the murder weapon was never found; secondly, because prosecution never really managed to establish a clear motive; and lastly, there was a big question mark over how police arranged the video line-up in which Pettersson was identified. The identification evidence was ruled to be uncertain.

In the 1990s new evidence surfaced that pointed to Pettersson as the gunman, yet again. This included a confession by Pettersson himself. One of his friends told police that Pettersson said that he was guilty, but that they would never be able to prove it, as the weapon was gone. However, most of the evidence was conversations overheard or second-hand retellings and it was enough to charge Pettersson for the murder again.

Years later, after Pettersson’s death, some of his associates came forward and said that he had confessed to the murder to them, but that it was all a big blunder. In fact, it was a case of mistaken identity. On that February night in 1986, he had intended to shoot Sivgard Cedergren, a drug dealer who, as fate would have it, bore a strong resemblance to Olof Palme. Sivgard Cedergren was known to go for late night walks in the city. Pettersson wanted to kill him after a drug deal-gone-bad.

It was revealed in a documentary that police were staking out the area surrounding the Grand Theatre Cinema on the night of Palme’s murder, because of local drug activity. But they had ceased the observation 45 minutes before Palme’s shooting. The documentary was criticised for omitting contradictory evidence and also fabricating statements.

Some people believed that Pettersson was used as a scapegoat, it was easier to believe that a lone gunman with substance abuse problems was behind it, than a larger organisation, because that in turn would mean that the whole of Sweden was under threat.

To this day, Pettersson remains the strongest suspect in the case, most people think he was the one who pulled the trigger. He died in September 2004 due to a cerebral haemorrhage caused by an epileptic fit.

A larger conspiracy, attributed Palme’s death to the Kurdish organisation, PKK. In the mid-1980s, multiple PKK defectors who had sought refuge in Sweden were murdered. Because of that, Palme’s government declared the organisation a terrorist unit. Many PKK members were deported from Sweden after this ruling. There was evidence that the organisation had acquired a handgun in the weeks before the murder, so police believed there was a chance they wanted revenge against Palme.

In January 1987, no less than 22 people associated with the PKK were taken in for questioning, but they were all released within a couple of hours.

Turkish newspapers claimed that the PKK had admitted to the murder. The PKK said in 1998 that the allegations were made as part of a propaganda plot by the Turkish government to discredit their organisation.

In 1995, German journalist, Klaus-Dieter Knapp, said in an article in the newspaper, Die Zeit, that right-wing extremist police officers in Sweden were responsible for Palme’s death. This report states that two witnesses were able to identify the murderer, but police never investigated this lead.

In the late 1990’s, another possibility came to light. In South Africa, the first free and fair elections were held in 1994, which meant the end of Apartheid. Nelson Mandela, as leader of the ANC, became president. For the first time in the country’s political history, they did not have a minority rule.

The tables had turned, and much like the Nuremburg Trials after the Second World War, South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission was appointed to smoke out the crimes of the previous government.

Information about South African espionage was declassified. In the 1970s, the South African National Party (which was the ruling party that invented Apartheid) enjoyed support of far-right movements in Europe – and other countries around the world. Z-squad Incorporated was an intelligence unit, that was tasked with eliminating possible opposers of the Apartheid government in Europe. 

The suspected leader of Z-Squad was South African weapons dealer and spy Dirk Stoffberg. He was taken in for questioning at Heathrow airport in the year following Olof Palme’s murder. In his possession was a hitlist with names of members of the ANC and their sympathisers, living in Europe. A couple of years later, in the early 1990s, Stoffberg died in a motor vehicle accident, under suspicious circumstances.

Colonel Eugene de Kock, a former police officer, confessed to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that Palme was eliminated by the Apartheid government, because he opposed their ideals and gave financial support to the ANC. Palme very strongly opposed Apartheid and he was not afraid to speak his mind. week before Palme’s death, he made the keynote speech to the Swedish People’s Parliament Against Apartheid in Stockholm. He made a very strong statement, saying that Apartheid shouldn’t be reformed, it should be abolished. 

De Kock pointed the finger to former South African spy, Craig Williamson for orchestrating the murder. A Swedish intermediary who lived in Cyprus, was said to have worked for Williamson, helping him to find an assassin in Sweden. The intermediary was a man by the name of Bertil Wedin. 

Wedin supported the far-right wing in Sweden, and he was an informer for Swedish Intelligence, Säpo. In the 1970s, Wedin organised mercenaries to assist the minority governments of Rhodesia and South Africa with guerrilla attacks in Angola and Mozambique. This is when he met South African spy, Craig Williamson leader of Long Reach – an operation that targeted and eliminated opponents of Apartheid both in South Africa and abroad.

Bertil Wedin became instrumental in making connections between Apartheid South Africans and far-right circles in Sweden.

In October 1996, a month after the information of the confessions in South Africa surfaced, Swedish police went there to follow up. They interviewed Eugene De Kock and Craig Williamson but were unable to substantiate anything. When investigators left South Africa, they told the press that they were satisfied. After the visit, the Swedish police stopped their investigation into the South Africans, concluding that they were NOT behind the hit on the Prime Minister.

However, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission concluded that the perpetrators in the killing of Olof Palme were QUOTE “South African agents in collaboration with Swedish henchmen”  END QUOTE. They also stated that the man behind it all, was Craig Williamson.

Tommy Lindström, who was head of Swedish CID at the time of Palme’s murder, was also convinced that the Apartheid government of South Africa was responsible. According to Lindström, their motive was to stop payments to the ANC from the Soviet Union, that was paid into a Swiss Account by the middleman, the Swedish government.

In April 2001, the theory that the Kurdish PKK was responsible resurfaced. Swedish investigators acted on a tip and went to Turkey to interview PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan, following up on allegations that a Kurdish dissident group, led by Öcalan’s ex-wife was responsible for Palme’s death. The investigators left without any new information. The tip was given to them by none other than Bertil Wedin.

People who believe that South African spies were responsible for Palme’s murder, feel that Wedin tipped off authorities about the PKK, just as things were heating up against the South Africans. Wedin denies any involvement in Palme’s murder to this day.

Another international theory was that Palme had died because of his stance on the situation in Chile. Palme had given asylum to leftist Chileans after the 1973-coup that overthrew Salvador Allende. The man behind the assassination of Palme is said to be Roberto Thieme.

Thieme was a Chilean fascist who headed the most militant wing of Patria y Livertat, a far-right organisation. Then an American former-agent confessed to the killing, saying he had acted on behalf of Chile. Many years after the murder, a witness who attended the same film as the Palme’s that night, claimed to have seen the American agent that night at the cinema.

Over the years, many books have been written and many documentaries have been made. Every one of them has a different theory about who killed Olof Palme.

In 2005, Jan Bondeson published a book, called Blood on the Snow: The Killing of Olof Palme, that points out the links between Palme’s murder and arms trades to India. Palme had secured a multi-billion Dollar arms deal for the Swedish company Bofors to supply the Indian army with artillery. However, Bofors went behind his back to secure the deal, by bribing Indian government officials, using a British connection.

On the morning of his murder, Olaf Palme met with the Iraqi ambassador Muhammad Saeed al-Saggaf, who told him about Bofors’ dealings. Palme was furious. According to Bondesson’s research, Palme was killed so he wouldn’t expose the corruption. If Palme had blown the whistle, they risked losing the multi-billion Dollar deal. According to Bondesson, MI6 Intelligence supplied information to the Swedish police, but it was suppressed.

Carl Fredrik Algernon, war material inspector agreed to testify in the Bofors investigation. But before he could do so, he allegedly took his own life by jumping in front of a metro train in January 1987.

Yet another plot surfaced, involving the CIA and Italian Masonic Lodge, Propogande Due (or P2). A telegram was discovered from Grand Master of the organisation, Licio Gelli to American Republican Representative Philip Guarino. Guarino was one of the members of George Bush Sr’s inner circle. The telegram, that was sent three days before Palme’s murder, said: 

“Tell our friend that the Swedish Tree will be felled.” 

According to former CIA agents, Ibrahim Razin and Richard Brenneke, Palme knew too much about illegal international weapons trade in connection with the Iran-Iraq War. 

The CIA denied any involvement in the alleged plot. Philip Guarino denied any knowledge of the telegram. Swedish police dismissed the claims and called Razin an ‘international scammer’.  

Journalist Cats Falck investigated arms smuggling and international governments’ roles in illegal arms trade. But before she could publish her work, she drowned in Hammarbyhamnen. Mysteriously, the friend she was swimming with, also drowned.

Swedish investigators were still not convinced and felt that the key to Palme’s murder, was closer to home. Journalist Thomas Pettersson felt the same and published a series of articles titled ‘The Unlikely Assassin’ based on a long-running investigation into the Palme Murder. He claimed that it was a man called Stig Engström who had killed Olof Palme. He was known as the Skandia Man because he worked at the Skandia Insurance Company. He was the first eyewitness to arrive at the scene. Engström did not like Palme and what he stood for, so the theory is that he chanced upon Olof and Lisbeth as they walked home and saw an opportunity to eliminate a Prime Minister whom he despised. 

Engström fitted descriptions of the man who fled the scene. And although he, as self-proclaimed witness, claimed to have been at the scene the whole time, nobody could recall seeing him immediately after the shooting. The theory is that he ran away after the shooting, then made his way back to the scene, the last place where anyone would suspect the murderer to have been: he played the role of a distraught witness. 

Through the years, police found him to be an inconsistent and unreliable witness and considered him as a person of interest. Engström was quite vocal in the media as he told his version of events of that night. He also criticised police openly.

Engström can no longer answer to the allegations, as he took his own life in 2000.

In 2006, following a tip-off, police divers found a gun in a lake in central Sweden. Bullets fired by this gun during the robbery of a post office, matched bullets found at the Palme-crime scene. However, the gun was rusted and had been damaged after being in water for years, and there was not any evidence confirming that the bullets that killed Olof Palme were fired from that weapon.

So many people connected with this case have died. Sure, everyone died in unrelated incidents: Victor Gunnarsson was killed by his partner’s jealous ex, Dirk Stofberg died in a suspicious car accident, Stig Engström took his own life… One cannot help but wonder if the one thing they all had in common, suspicion in the murder of Olof Palme, had something to do with their deaths…

It has been more than 30 years since Olof Palme’s assassination and over the years, more than 130 people have confessed to the murder. Yet, the case has not been solved. 

The late Stieg Larsson was obsessed with the Palme case. If his name rings a bell, he was the author of the Millennium Series: Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. Journalist and author Jan Stockslaa was granted access to Larsson’s archive – an extensive and well-indexed resource. Boxes full of information filled a storage space. It took Stockslaa years to work his way through all of Larsson’s research, but he is confident that within the research lies an answer. 

South Africans contracted Bertil Wedin, who tasked Swedish right-wing extremists. The actual gunman, according to Larsson’s research and Stockslaa’s interpretation, was a man called Jakob Thedelin. Larsson and Stocklaa concluded that the planning and set-up of the murder was professional, most likely done by people with experience in espionage, but the execution of the actual murder was poorly done.

Thedelin, who still lives in Stockholm, has been recorded spitting on Palme’s grave, saying that the former Prime Minister was a Soviet Spy. The book exploring this theory in English, will be released later this year. Look out for ‘The Man Who Played With Fire: Stieg Larsson’s Lost Files and the Hunt for an Assassin.’

The Palme family established the Olof Palme Memorial Fund for International Understanding and Common Security. This is a yearly grant to further human rights and democracy. Lisbeth Palme died in 2018, sadly never seeing the man who shot her and killed her husband on that fateful February night in 1986 brought to justice. To the end, she still believed that Christer Pettersson was the man she saw.

The part of Tunnelgatan where Olof Palme spent his last moments alive, has been renamed Olof Palmes Gata. There is a memorial plaque, which serves as a constant reminder of the day that changed Sweden forever. And the fact, that whoever killed Olof Palme, got away with it…

If you’d like to read more about this case, have a look at the resources used for this episode in the show notes. 

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