A graphic designer at an insurance company was the man who shot dead then-Swedish prime minister Olof Palme in 1986, a prosecutor announced yesterday, adding that the case, which has haunted Sweden for decades, is now closed.
Palme, who led the Swedish Social Democrats for decades and served two periods as prime minister, was one of the architects of Scandinavia’s model of a strong welfare state, and a fierce Cold War-era critic of both the US and the Soviet Union.
He was shot dead in central Stockholm in 1986 after a visit to the cinema with his wife and son.
Photo: AFP
Prosecutor Krister Petersson, who has led an investigation into the case since 2017, said that the killer was Stig Engstrom, a suspect long known to Swedes as “Skandia man,” after the company where he worked, which has offices near the scene of the shooting.
“Because the person is dead, I cannot bring charges against him and have decided to close the investigation,” Petersson said.
Yesterday’s naming of the killer as a lone gunman with no public political profile is unlikely to put to rest the conspiracy theories that have surrounded the assassination — Swedes have for decades blamed a range of forces, from the CIA and Kurdish separatists to the South African security services.
The prosecutor did not announce any major investigative breakthroughs that had helped solve the crime, saying that the technical evidence was not new.
Engstrom, known to have been present at the scene of the crime, has long been a suspect. He was repeatedly questioned by police, but dismissed relatively quickly from investigation.
Petersson said that several witness accounts of the likely killer were in line with Engstrom’s appearance, while witnesses also contradicted Engstrom’s account of his movements at the scene.
Members of Engstrom’s family have repeatedly dismissed accusations that he was the killer.
Daily Expressen quoted his ex-wife as saying in an interview in February that he was too timid to have carried out the murder.
The paper quoted childhood friend Olle Madebrink as saying that Engstrom was “the most normal person in the world. I can’t believe anything else.”
Members of Engstrom’s family could not be immediately reached for comment.
While a petty criminal was convicted of Palme’s killing decades ago, that judgement was later overturned.
The subsequent failure of police to identify the culprit has left a scar on the psyche of a country that still prides itself on how safe it is to walk its streets.
Palme was prime minister from 1969 to 1976 and 1982 to 1986. Some hail him as the architect of modern Sweden, while conservatives decried his anti-colonialist views and criticism of the US.
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