The winter of 1986 was relatively cold. During the sports holiday week, there were typical road conditions in Stockholm, icy bark on the sidewalks, dirty gray plow benches. On Friday evening, advertiser Stig Engström was working at Skandiahuset on Sveavägen. In the same neighborhood, Christer Pettersson roamed between the black club Oxen on Malmskillnadsgatan and the drug dealer Sigge Cedergren’s neighborhood in Tegnérgatshörnet. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister came to the Grand Cinema to see Suzanne Osten’s “The Mozart Brothers”. The whereabouts of Christer A, a disturbed hermit whose hobby is shooting revolvers, is unknown, but he lived not too far away.
Olof Palme, the Prime Minister, could use the distraction. His biographer Kjell Östberg describes a difficult time in the chapter “Tired, tired, tired”. Rebellion simmers within the movement; The right-wing chancellor in the House of Representatives is pursuing a financial policy that he dislikes but which he must defend. It’s tiring, in his sixtieth year he was the sole leader for over two decades. He’s just tired and can sometimes seem indifferent.
In the cinema he is private, moves incognito, which he never does, although not in the city
In the cinema he is private, moves incognito, which he never does, not in the city. After the film, when the clock strikes midnight, he and his wife walk along Sveavägen towards the city. Maybe someone is following, maybe it was just evening strollers going in the same direction. He is shot dead on Tunnelgatan, in front of the closed Hötorget subway exit.
Why? From whom? Nobody knows, except the woman who Christer Pettersson recognizes much later, but that’s not enough.
After 34 years of lost search, police call off their search after a prosecutor examines old interrogation transcripts and finds that Stig Engström could not be found. Others were more likely to believe Christer A, who avoided showing his revolver to the police and eventually claimed he had sold it. Undeniably “a good guy,” but what he planned to do that night, no one knows. It turned out that there were a lot of good guys, by the way. With the help of a perpetrator profile, hundreds of them were finally listed.
Lots of other things had passed by beforehand. In 1986, it was justified to take a closer look at the PKK, a movement that was classified as terrorist and tightly controlled by Olof Palme’s government. Added to this was the crime scene – a bit of Kurdistan, as the Säpo people would call the area around David Bagares Street – and the procedure, similar to the street executions that the organization carried out in Stockholm and Uppsala. Other suspicions went to South Africa, but were difficult to investigate as long as the apartheid regime fought by Olof Palme lasted. The primitive approach also worked against better organized actors; Over time, the idea took hold that a professionally planned attack would not have been carried out so spontaneously. Other motif images also disappeared there, such as the infected arms export.
The Skandia advertiser’s behavior was so spectacular that he was questioned early on, only to be dismissed as a known tipster
Traces of rope were also traced. The Skandia advertiser’s behavior was so spectacular that he was questioned early on, only to be dismissed as a known tipster. People who attract attention with interesting information often make suggestions but end up being rejected – or left to speak old-fashioned police Swedish. But as he died and the decades passed, he was taken up by others who had never met him in his life. “The Unlikely Murderer” was the appropriate title of an award-winning book about his life, with evidence similar to that which convicted Thomas Quick, with credibility increasing as probability decreased. The opposite of the less imaginative police experience was gaining the insight that one should distrust chance because most things are as they seem.
The Unlikely Killer Theory However, a small group of investigators was revived and put in charge of the preliminary investigation under a new prosecutor thirty years after the murder. They thought their representatives had overlooked the “Skandian Man” and spent several years looking for evidence of his guilt. But they didn’t find any. In the end, only the deceased’s former wife remained, who, as they saw it, would confess them. But she just said she didn’t understand how the police officers who hired her could suspect Stig. Although they did it, not only suspects – prosecutor Krister Petersson was so sure that he closed the investigation by declaring that the perpetrator was dead and therefore there was no point in continuing.
He also had no evidence to identify Olof Palme’s murderer; The argument relied on circumstantial evidence, which again was more speculative than certain.
Nevertheless, the term became the truth of the Swedish justice system. Even the Prime Minister blessed it, “solid investigation,” he said, “then that’s it.” Later attempts to reopen the investigation were rejected on the grounds that the murder had been solved. Until last Christmas, when a senior public prosecutor had apparently had enough.
Chief prosecutor Lennart Guné put forward arguments against Stig Engström as the prime minister’s murderer
He had one on his table Requesting an individual citizen to use new technologies to search for DNA traces on the coat of the murdered person. According to his decision, there was a formal obstacle to the provision of such a measure, namely that there was already a “designated perpetrator”. (The clarity should be noted as the Attorney General has repeatedly denied that Stig Engström was named as anything other than a suspect.) Had the well-worn path been followed, the petition would have been rejected with this finding. Instead, there was a turnaround.
Chief prosecutor Lennart Guné put forward arguments against Stig Engström as the prime minister’s murderer. For example, Lisbeth Palme’s identification of Christer Pettersson, with whom he could not be confused, as well as the witness statement that the perpetrator was waiting in the Dekomahörnet, which Engström could not have done. Highlighted was the uncertainty about when he actually came out on Sveavägen, with the chief prosecutor finding it inexplicable why he would have had a loaded weapon with him and, if so, where he got it from. After further argumentation along the same lines, the designation 2020 was deleted.
Taking the blade out of his mouth inspires respect
One might ask why this is so happened now, five and a half years later. But there is no doubt that distance was the main thing. This emerges from the handling of the case itself. The application was rejected (for understandable reasons; examining the rock after such a long time proved futile). Therefore, the reassessment was not carried out and a press conference was announced in order to be able to restart the investigation. The purpose was obviously to purify a person who had been unjustly hanged. In his media contacts, the Attorney General seemed relieved about this; When asked, he showed compassion for the people close to him and what they had to endure.
Taking the blade out of his mouth inspires respect. The position taken and the detailed reasons set out mean, in practice, a return to the original view of Stig Engström and a vindication of the original Palme investigation and the law enforcement team who were seriously damaged in connection with the closure. It also means that the justice system accepts that the Prime Minister’s murder remains unsolved.
The appreciation evaporates However, not the fog about what actually happened in those June days of 2020, which ended with a ghostly press conference in the shadow of the corona pandemic and a media disappointment on Swedish television. If a chief prosecutor can so easily dismiss the reasons for attempting to convict a deceased person for the murder of a prime minister out of court simply by leafing through the documents, how is it that everyone else, Prime Minister Löfven and others, supported the decision when it was announced?
The attorney general is in trouble. Now, lower-level prosecutors have taken irreconcilable positions for identical reasons.
The attorney general is in trouble. In 1987, the government decided that the holder of the post should be an investigator, which is a personal task. Now, lower-level prosecutors have taken irreconcilable positions for identical reasons. Considering how current Attorney General Katarina Johansson Welin previously defended the appointment and press conference in 2020, she and the office have some explaining to do. There is no one in the police to turn to, but someone in the agency should look at the website that still portrays Stig Engström as the Prime Minister’s murderer.
Read more:
Senior public prosecutor: It is wrong to identify the man from Scandinavia as Olof Palme’s murderer
Jon Jordås: Here are the unknown DNA traces that should be investigated in the Palm murder
