28 Feb 1986 Olof Palme, together with his wife Lisbeth were walking home from a cinema in Central Stockholm. Going to the movies was a spontaneous decision of the couple Palma, taken after the Prime Minister released her bodyguards. 23.21 in the spouses fired from a revolver at close range. Palma died on the spot while his wife was wounded. Both bullets were soon discovered, but the murder weapon to find and failed.
for 34 years this crime was, without exaggeration, “an open wound” for Sweden. There were five major and dozens of minor theories of who could have killed Palme. 134 people confessed to the murder, and 29 of them were surrendered to the police, and the rest talked about it to friends and acquaintances.
In 2010, the country partially lifted the 25-year Statute of limitations in cases of this kind to continue the investigation. Only this time it was interrogated 10 thousand people, collected such a number of materials on the case concerning the murder of Palme that they have enough for the 250 cabinets, 11 of which are for audio and video. All of them, incidentally, were recently digitized.
during these years on the investigation spent about $ 65 million. And that’s not counting the cost of two trials, during which in July 1989 he was first convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment and then acquitted by the court of appeal suspect, Christer Pettersson. He remains the only person ever convicted for the murder of Palme, after the Prime Minister’s widow identified him in the course of the relevant procedure at the police station. He died in 2004.
In an amazing coincidence, Christer Petersson name and the current chief Prosecutor, who announced the completion of the investigation. The latest version of the investigation, the killer palm – Stig Engstrom, who originally took on the case as a witness. He appeared in the police murder of Palme, and said that worked as a graphic designer in the insurance company Skandia, located near the scene of the crime. According to him, he was one of the first on the scene and tried to help the dying Prime Minister. But in a recent revision of case materials, the police found inconsistencies in the stories “witness” of His. The investigators analyzed his readings and correlating them with the testimony of other witnesses, came to the conclusion about his guilt.
during the two-hour press-conference devoted to closure of the case, Petterson said that “if Engstrom was there, he was gone before he could remember none of the witnesses” and, therefore, he was in a hurry to escape, and assisted the victims of crime. At the same time, the investigators have no possible motive for the crime, no murder weapon, no more or less tangible evidence, nor, at the end of the conCC, accused of the living.
In an interview with the European edition of Politico, the Prosecutor said that he would like to refrain from speculations on the motive for murder, but “Engstrom ran in the same circles of opponents of the palm”, besides, he had “problems with money and alcohol.” Anyway, the son of Olof Palme Martin told Swedish media that he fully trusts the conclusion reached by the Prosecutor’s office, and I’m glad the case is finally closed.
