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On February 28, 1986, the head of the Swedish government Olof Palme is killed in the heart of Stockholm. While the police accumulate errors and false tracks, the journalist Stieg Larsson gathers a colossal documentation in order to determine the motives of the crime and the identity of the assassins. In 2013, Jan Stocklassa discovers these forgotten archives and continues the investigation.
It's 7 pm that night in the neighborhood of Norrmalm. Few passers-by to meet Minister of State Olof Palme and his wife Lisbeth as they walk home after talking with their son and girlfriend about Suzanne Osten's latest film they saw together at cinema. The idea of a family outing came to light at the end of the afternoon, even though Olof Palme has already granted leave to his bodyguards.
The man who did not leave anyone indifferent
What might seem imprudent is not surprising in Sweden, where the model of an open society supposes that its leaders have the most ordinary and transparent life possible. It must be said that the last political assassination dates back to 1792, when King Gustav III was mortally wounded by a pistol shot for having discontented the nobility of the country.
Olof Palme was, in the 1980s, one of the most admired and hated leaders in the world. Secretary General of the very powerful Swedish Social Democratic Party of Workers since 1968, he succeeded the very long reign of Tage Erlander, leader of five successive governments from 1948 to 1970, and returned to power after a brief centrist and liberal parenthesis between 1976 and 1982.
Coming from the conservative upper middle class, Olof Palme committed himself to the left in the 1950s and kept his studies in Ohio a feeling of revolt against segregation and inequality. For many of those who share his social origins, he is perceived as a traitor.
Adept of a "third way" while the cold war drags on, he has in his career returned back to US intervention in Vietnam and that of the USSR in Afghanistan. He is also a fierce opponent of apartheid in South Africa. It does not take less for him to be considered by some as a supporter of liberalism and by others as a KGB agent.
A perfect crime, executed by an amateur
It is 11:21 pm when the couple Palme is about to cross Tunnelgatan Street along Sveavägen Street. At this point, a man suddenly approaches them and fires twice with a 357 magnum revolver. The first bullet mortally wounds the Minister of State, the second hurts his wife slightly. The assassin immediately flies into Tunnelgatan Street, and disappears at the top of the stairs.
Contrary to what the police say, nothing suggests the action of a professional killer, nor the weapon, a powerful revolver prohibiting the use of a silencer and the accurate shooting of several bullets to ensure that the victim will not survive, the armored ammunition considered not very destructive, nor the flight on foot by a staircase of 86 steps, which could have facilitated the interception of the performer by a passerby or a police patrol.
For the rest, the police are slow to intervene, the security perimeter is so limited that the projectiles are found by passersby, the stunned authorities do not know who to entrust the investigation, which quickly becomes entrenched on an extravagant track: the assassination was ordered by the PKK, whose seat is near the place where we lost track of the killer.
Stieg Larsson leads the investigation
The journalist Stieg Larsson is already interested at this time in the actions of the extreme right. In 1991, he dedicates a book to him, then a second four years later centered on the Democrats of Sweden, a microparti infested with neo-Nazis which he squeeze the meteoric rise - he will get almost 20% of the votes in the elections of 2018, at the price of 'a vague standardization.
In a letter written to friends less than three weeks after the murder, he mentions the hypothesis of a far-right operative and that of an organized network linked to the South African secret service, motivated less by the defense. apartheid than the sale of arms threatened by the Palme Commission.
" This is the first time in history, I believe," he notes again , "that a head of state is murdered without any idea of who his assassin is. Thirty-three years later, at least as far as the official version is concerned, this sentence is still relevant.
Neither the foundation of "Expo" in 1995, quarterly dedicated to anti-fascism, nor the writing of the Millennium trilogy that will make him world famous a few months after his death in 2004, do not divert him from his interest in the Olof affair Webbed.
Jan Stocklassa, from diplomacy to gonzo journalism
Everything would have remained there without the curiosity of a former Swedish diplomat and businessman, Jan Stocklassa. While the latter aims to write a book on the influence that places can have on people who commit crimes, he begins to take an interest in the death of Olof Palme and discovers the archives kept at Expo headquarters. .
Stieg Larsson's letter, quoted above, is an excellent start, and he gets permission to use all the documentation. Very quickly, he realizes that the work of his predecessor has already dismissed many false leads and is a great accelerator for the resolution of the enigma.
Beyond the exploitation of these sources, he has also embarked on an eight-year investigation, including the book published this year in France under the title The crazy investigation by Stieg Larsson is the first outcome. Translated into several languages, he seems to have had only a relatively limited echo in his country of origin, despite the work done.
Jan Stocklassa, an amateur journalist, puts herself on the scene in her search for testimonials, finding an invaluable ally in the figure of a young Czech woman who uses her network and her power of seduction to hack e-mails and messages on the Internet. social networks, obtain confessions recorded on spy microphones with possible protagonists of this assassination and give this investigation the appearance of a real spy novel. The author is convinced that the resolution of the case is now very close.
► Jan Stocklassa, The crazy investigation of Stieg Larsson , Flammarion, 2019. Translated from Swedish by Julien Lapeyre de Cabanes.
Since 1986, the police have never closed the case, which continues to haunt Sweden, according to historian Tomas Lindbom: " The name of Olof Palme still exists in the memory of Swedes, young people including . Until this attack, we believed that Sweden was a country without major conflicts, where such events were simply unthinkable. This does not mean that the Swedes of 2019 see in this assassination the origin of their lost innocence. That they are more pessimistic today about society did not lead them to formulate a historical explanation ".