The nation’s Chief Executive is shot while in public and is rushed to the hospital. Doctors work feverishly but are unable to save him. A shocked nation goes into mourning. Years after the assassination, conspiracy theories abound as to who was responsible.

Such an occurrence describes the globally known assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy in 1963. The description, however, also describes a murder occurring in 1986 which, outside of Scandinavia, is lesser known.

The Prime Minister of Sweden is the Nordic country’s equivalent of the President of the United States. Thus, the assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme can rightfully be compared to that of President Kennedy.

A cornucopia of conspiracy claims continues to surround both crimes. One huge factor, however, separates the two assassinations. History has officially closed the book on the Kennedy assassination, but the murder of Prime Minister Palme is still unsolved.

Olof Palme

Prime Minister of Sweden

Olof Palme became Prime Minister of Sweden in 1969, a position he held until his murder seventeen years later. He was the leader of the left-wing Swedish Social Democrat Party.

Palme’s reign coincided with the escalation of Cold War tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. He adopted a policy of non-alignment with both superpowers and spoke critically of both countries’ foreign policies.

Palme drew the particular ire of the United States when he became the first Western head of state to visit Cuba following the 1959 revolution bringing Fidel Castro to power. His speech praising the revolutionaries was not well received by America.

 

Seventeen Year Tenure 

Prime Minister Palme greatly valued his independence and was determined to live as ordinary of a life as was possible for a head of state. He was often seen in public without bodyguard protection; the evening of February 28, 1986, was one such occasion. Despite protests from his entourage, the Prime Minister gave his protectors the evening off as he looked forward to a night at the movies with his family.

 

Unprotected In Public

That evening, Palme and his wife Lisbeth met their son Marten and his girlfriend at Stockholm’s Grand Cinema where they watched the comedy The Mozart Brothers. After the movie ended at approximately 11:00, the foursome chatted for fifteen minutes before the two couples headed their separate ways.

Olof and Lisbeth Palme began walking toward the Hötorget metro station. After crossing the street, the Palmes briefly stopped to gaze at some displays in a shop window before continuing past a corner deli.

Grand Cinema

Stockholm, Sweden

Several minutes later, officially at 11:21 p.m. according to Swedish authorities, a man approached the couple from behind and twice shot the Prime Minister in his back at point-blank range. After firing a third shot which grazed Mrs. Palme, the perpetrator jogged into the darkness.

An Artist’s Depiction of the Assassination

Paramedics quickly arrived on the scene and rushed Sweden’s first couple to Sabbatsberg Hospital. The shots had severed the Prime Minister’s spinal column and aorta, and he was pronounced dead. Lisbeth Palme was not seriously wounded.

The Swedish First Couple Are Shot

Multiple people witnessed the shooting but could provide only vague descriptions of the assassin. He was generally described as between thirty-to-fifty-years-old, six-feet to six-feet-two-inches tall, one-hundred-eighty-five to two-hundred pounds, and wearing a dark jacket or coat. The descriptions varied so greatly that police deemed them insufficient to develop a composite sketch of the suspect.

The shots were determined to have probably been fired from a Winchester-Western .357 Magnum 158 grain metal piercing revolver. The two bullets recovered from the street were the only forensic evidence as such weapons do not automatically eject cartridge cases.

Based on the bullets’ lack of certain characteristic deformations, investigators concluded the shots had been fired from a barrel no shorter than four inches, meaning the murder weapon would have been a conspicuously large handgun.

A .357 Magnum

Thirty-three-year-old Victor Gunnarrson, a right wing extremist who hated Palme’s polices, was immediately declared the prime suspect in the murder. He matched the general description of the assassin and a witness placed Gunnarsson at a bar near the Grand Cinema that evening, voicing his discontent about the Swedish leader to anyone who would listen.

Gunnarrson was arrested but soon released after no one picked him out of a police lineup. Nothing linked him to the killing, but he was guilty in the eyes of public opinion.

Ostracized and unable to find work in his home country, Gunnarsson moved the United States, settling in Salisbury, North Carolina, a town of approximately 33,000 people in the west-central part of the Tar Heel state. In January 1994, his near-naked body was found in a wooded area approximately ninety miles from his home. He had been shot twice in the head with a .22 caliber firearm.

Olof Palme’s murder has been called the Swedish equivalent of the John F. Kennedy assassination. Gunnarsson, however, was not the likely assassin and he was not silenced for the same reason many believe Lee Harvey Oswald was killed. Instead, Gunnarsson was shot to death by a jealous former boyfriend of the woman he had recently begun dating.

Regardless, many in Victor Gunnarsson’s homeland still believe his murder was poetic justice. Despite his disdain for Olof Palme, no evidence has been found linking him to the assassination.

Victor Gunnarsson

In December 1988, almost three years after Prime Minister Palme’s assassination, an alcoholic and drug user named Christer Pettersson was charged with the murder after Lisbeth Palme picked him out of a lineup as her husband’s killer. Pettersson, who had previously been convicted of manslaughter, was convicted of Palme’s murder, but the verdict was overturned on appeal the following year.

The Swedish appellate court cited several reasons for reversing the lower court’s decision.

• Failure of the prosecution to produce the murder weapon;
• Lack of a motive for the murder;
• Doubts about the reliability of Mrs. Palme’s identification of Pettersson and her testimony; and
• “extremely gross errors” by the police in arranging the photo lineup.

In the late 1990s, several people came forward saying Pettersson had confessed to killing the Prime Minister, allegedly telling associates it was a case of mistaken identity as he had intended to kill fellow drug dealer Sigvard Cedergren, who resembled the Swedish leader and who often walked along the same route the Prime Minister was walking that evening. The claims, however, were made by petty criminals who altered their stories, and officials deemed them uncredible.

Pettersson was awarded $50,000 in compensation for defamation by the police and for wrongful imprisonment. He quickly squandered his windfall on alcohol and drugs, but was able to augment his income through media interviews.

In 1998, the Swedish Supreme Court rejected an appeal to retry Pettersson. He died from a cerebral hemorrhage in 2004, legally declared not guilty in the assassination of Prime Minister Olof Palme.

 

Christer Pettersson

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/6073/olof-palme# 

 

 

 

Scandinavia’s Prime Crime

Deputy Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson succeeded the slain Olof Palme as Prime Minister of Sweden. He led the country until 1991 and again from 1994-96, during which time he  Sweden entered into the European Union (EU.)

Ingvar Carlsson

 

SOURCES:
• Dagens Nyheter
• Los Angeles Times
• New York Times
• Newsweek Magazine
• Stockholm City
• Time Magazine
• Washington Post