Netflix has “solved” the Olof Palme murder. Not everyone in Sweden is convinced.
On February 28, 1986, Sweden’s Prime Minister Olof Palme was shot down on the street outside a cinema in Stockholm after filming a movie with his wife and son.
His killer was never found.
Palme, who led Sweden from 1969 to 1976 and 1982 until his death, was a divisive figure who did not lack enemies. He was an outspoken critic of the US war in Vietnam and a supporter of Fidel Castro’s Cuba, and he advocated the expansion and expansion of Sweden’s welfare state.
Even 35 years ago, the murder shares the question of who was responsible for Sweden. Many blame the CIA, others the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and still others the apartheid-era South African government, which Palme was critical of.
Dozens of books have been written, television programs made, newspaper articles published and statements made about the murder of one of Sweden’s most popular leaders. For three decades, more than 10,000 people have been questioned by Swedish police.
On June 10, 2020, Swedish police announced that their primary suspect was not a shady far-right cabalist, foreign agents or Kurdish radicals, but rather a graphic designer, Stig Engström, who was then 52 years old with a penchant for alcohol and the right. conspiracy stories.
Engström, known as the ‘Skandia man’ because he had worked in the company’s office near the cinema on the night of the murder, had been questioned by police in the late 1980s but was dropped off as a suspect. He had also appeared as a witness during the night of the murder, interviewed Swedish media and criticized the police investigation.
The question in June 2020 was that Engström was dead. As such, the Swedish police investigator Krister Pettersson told the media that after 34 years now, the investigation into Palme’s murder has been closed. Pettersson said he was “sure” that Engström was the killer.
The police’s findings agree well with another Pettersson, Thomas, who wrote a best-selling book, “The unlikely killer”, 2018, which concludes that Engström most likely pressed the trigger. Pettersson’s book has now been made into a Netflix series of the same name, which began streaming across Europe on 5 November.
Both Petterssons, the investigator and the author, have stopped categorically saying that Engström shot Palme. Although Krister Pettersson said he was “sure” Engström killed the Swedish leader, he pointed out that since he was dead, there was no way to interview him or start a trial. The case had been “settled”, not “resolved”.
Asked if he was 100% sure that Engström killed Palme that night in 1986, Thomas Petersson told Euronews: “I do not doubt.”
“I have very little doubt,” he clarified.
Netflix qualifies in the very first frame of its five-part series that it is “based on an unsolved crime” but then cuts to a picture of Engström – played by the Swedish actor and comedian Robert Gustafsson – who holds a gun and stands over Olof Palmes lifeless body.
There will be no doubt for anyone watching the series that Engström was the killer.
Unsurprisingly, the series has not fallen in love with the Engström skeptics, especially those like the author Jan Stocklassa, who has spent years researching the Palme murder and published another bestseller in the case, The Man Who Played with Fire.
“In a word,” Stocklassa told Euronews when asked about the Netflix show, “it’s deceptive.”
The main problem Stocklassa has with the Netflix show – which he admits is beautifully produced and has a fantastic actor, especially Robert Gustafsson – is that in many respects it is an unequivocally correct portrayal of exactly what happened. As such, it is completely credible – and yet it goes far too far when you show Engström as the killer.
“It’s so close to reality, in many many ways […] Anyone who looks at this will think, “Well, if most of this is true, then everything is true – which is not the case,” he said.
Netflix did not respond to requests for comment on Euronews.
One of the things that the Netflix series did right – and what everyone in Sweden agrees on – is that the police investigation was an unimproved failure.
On the night of the murder, the crime scene was not secured and the public tangled through the snow to lay flowers, which meant that no footprints could be found. One of the bullets fired by the killer – who shot at Palme’s wife Lisbeth, but missed and grabbed her in the back – was not found until two days later by a passing member of the public.
“How could they have missed it?”
The first chief investigator, Hans Holmer, was finally suspended from the case in shame in 1987 and the two men who replaced him lasted for less than a year. In 1989, another Pettersson – Christer Pettersson – was convicted of the murder but was later released on appeal in 1989 when it emerged that the police had not discovered either motives or murder weapons.
As early as 2020, Stocklassa said, the investigators who revealed that Engström was the main suspect revealed no new evidence. If what they had was enough to name Engström a killer in 2020, why was it not enough to arrest and convict him in the 1980s?
“Those who believed that Skandia man [was the killer] waited for this moment, for decisive evidence, and there was absolutely nothing, Stocklassa said.
Pettersson – Thomas then – was one of the disappointed. During all these years he had assumed that the investigators must have had a good reason – a central proof – for not arresting Engström between 1986 and his death in 2000. Now he knows that they did not have it, and yet Engström was never caught seriousness as a suspect.
“How could they have missed it?” he said.
Regarding the criticism of the Netflix series, Pettersson said that it is a fictional account of his book, not facts, and he thought that viewers “are smart enough to know the difference”.
He does not believe that neither his work nor Netflix will solve the case in Swedes’ consciousness, it will far from lead to more debate, more investigation, more conclusions. As it should be.
“I have no need to convince people that he was the killer, I want to tell the story,” he said. “People can decide.”
Every weekday, Uncovering Europe gives you a European story that goes beyond the headlines. Download the Euronews app to get a daily alert for this and other latest news. It is available at Apple and Android devices.