• 34 years later: Olof Palme's murder: Swedish prosecution targets Stig Engström
  • Murder: Olof Palme case: Sweden closes its open wound

It is 11:19 p.m. on February 28, 1986 at the corner of the Skandia insurer's headquarters in central Stockholm. The comedy The Mozart Brothers has just finished and a crowd button up their coats when they leave the warmth of the Grand Cinema when they go out. It's snowing. Camouflaged among those people are the Social Democratic Prime Minister Olof Palme and his wife, Lisbeth , who have also enjoyed the film. Meanwhile, a man named Stig Engström leaves the Skandia offices, very close to the exit of the cinema, dressed in a dark blue coat and cap, always according to the guards of his entrance, to re-enter four minutes later as if nothing .

Between the two events, apparently offline, the prime minister has been killed in the middle of the street, in front of the Dekorima paint shop, of two accurate shots in the back made with a Magnum revolver, while his wife has only been wounded. Beneath the Prime Minister's body a bloody stain grows and melts the snow on the ground. A taxi driver, who is parked at the crime scene, calls the police on his station. When the officers arrive, the crowd has dissolved, but they determine that there are about 12 direct witnesses to the murder . Among them is Engström, who offers to participate in the reconstruction of the crime that takes place that same night. His testimony hardly sheds light on what has happened, like the rest, but between them they enter into small contradictions. No one knows anything, no one has seen anything, but Engström, already dubbed the "Skandia Man" or "Skandia man" , becomes one of the main suspects.

Police then begin an investigation that leads him to question more than 10,000 people over 34 years , while the figure of Palme is mythologized just like that of Kennedy killed by Lee Harvey Oswald. The agents decide to discreetly enter the Skandia man's office at night. They find no evidence. There are also no traces of gunpowder in the blue coat in which he could have hidden the weapon before firing it. Three of the 12 witnesses, Jeppsson, Nieminen and Zahir, assure that the murderer did not enter Skandia's offices , but was lost running down the Tunnelgatan stairs. Another of the lines of work that were activated then is that there was not a single murderer, but two, just as in the investigation against Oswald in the book store in Dallas' Dealey Square.

The journalist Olle Minell, one of those who has spent the most hours investigating the case, assures that the Skandia man was part of the plot, but not the main shooter. But there is not a single witness who has seen that the revolver has changed hands. And as happened with Kennedy, a line is being investigated that leads us to the mafia, in this case , to the Kurdish criminal clans that traffic drugs in the streets .

Cold War rales

Police chief Hans Holmer believes, at first, that the murder of Palme may be revenge on the Kurds for signing large contracts with Turkey, their arch-enemy. That investigation turns away and gives Engström time and oxygen, but it doesn't lead anywhere either. The Mossad, the Israeli secret service, does not give it credibility and the matter is turned off again . We are in the last stages of the Cold War and Holmer believes that it is a political matter, like other assassins of the time. He himself carries a pistol under his right armpit and surrounds himself with bodyguards who look like they came out of a football team . His inquiries lead him to a dead end.

Who really is the Skandia man and why would he want to kill Palme? Engström was born in Bombay to Swedish parents. When he was just a child they returned to their country. At school he demonstrated artistic and sports skills, but not academic. He was a bad student and decided not to go to university, but to the army . There someone decided that he would never be a good soldier either, but that he had a hand for drawing. His designs began to illustrate the campaigns of the Swedish Defense Ministry, which earned him to sign with the Skandia insurance company , which commissioned him to make his ads. He was married twice in four years, was bald, drank too much, was in debt, and was overweight. He was used to handling weapons because he belonged to a shooting club . A close relative kept a good collection of pistols and revolvers.

Her second divorce, in 1999, preceded her suicide in 2000 . That is to say, an anonymous, gray and empty life, as would correspond to every good intelligence agent who wants to go unnoticed. Now, 34 years later, as the writer Lars Larsson and the reporter Thomas Pettersson had published decades ago, the justice system points to him as the culprit in the murder of Olof Palme and the prosecutor assures that he hated the left and Olof Palme .

The matter leaves huge questions in the air. If the Skandia man killed the Prime Minister, did he do it alone? If so, it seems like a perfect plan . He knew that Palme was in the cinema, when he was going out, how to get rid of the weapon, how to fade into the crowd, build an alibi and how to remain alone as a possible suspect for decades. Case closed?

In accordance with the criteria of The Trust Project

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