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Evening Standard
Evening Standard
World
Ewan Somerville

Olof Palme murder: Suspect named over assassination of Swedish Prime Minister 34 years ago

Olof Palme's murder has remained a mystery (Picture: TT News Agency/AFP via Getty Ima)

Prosecutors probing the killing of Swedish prime minister Olof Palme in 1986 have named a suspect.

Stig Engstrom, an advertising consultant who killed himself in 2000, was named on Wednesday as the man who assassinated Mr Palme.

Chief prosecutor Krister Petersson said he is now closing a three-decade probe into the death.

The former PM was shot in the back as he walked home from a cinema with his wife in Stockholm, but its circumstances have remained a mystery since.

The murder shocked the world and was compared to the assassination of US president JFK. It also shook the Scandinavian county's image as being a safe haven.

Olof Palme was known for his left-leaning shade of politics and his flamboyant style (AFP/Getty Images)

More than 100 people have been suspected in the crime and the unsolved case has been surrounded by conspiracy theories, ranging from foreign involvement, rogue Swedish police with right-wing sympathies to an act by a lone shooter.

Explaining the decision to close the case, Mr Petersson told reporters: "Stig Engstrom is deceased, and therefore I am not able to start proceedings or even interview him, that is why I decided to discontinue the investigation.

"Since he has died, I cannot indict him."

Hans Melander, head of the investigation, told the news conference that 134 people had confessed the murder — 29 directly to the police — and some 10,000 people had been questioned during the 34-year probe.

Hundreds lined the streets for Olof Palme's funeral in 1986 (AFP/Getty Images)

The 52-year-old Engstrom, who had become known as "Skandia Man" through his job at Skandia insurance company, was reportedly one of the first people at the murder scene and was briefly considered a possible suspect.

Several witnesses gave descriptions of the fleeing killer that matched Engstrom, while others said he wasn't even at the scene.

Engstrom, thought to have disliked Mr Palme's left-leaning views, lied about the moments atfer the murder, even claiming he attempted to resuscitate the victim.

Engstrom appeared in Swedish media and developed an increasingly detailed story of his involvement in the events that night, even criticising the police investigation. He eventually died by suicide in 2000.

Immediately after Palme was killed, thousands of Swedes flooded the scene of his death with red roses, a symbol of his Social Democratic Party, building a meter-high wall of flowers.

He was known to want to live normally and had no bodyguards on the night of the killing.

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