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Said to be the longest ever criminal investigation in the country, Sweden have finally laid to rest the 34-year-old mystery of who killed the former Prime Minister Olof Palme on the night of February 28, 1986.
The mystery over the murder of Palme had gripped the nation for three decades. During this period it gave rise to numerous speculations over the assassin and their motive and produced innumerable conspiracy theories.
Palme was shot dead while he was on a late-night stroll after watching a cinema in central Stockholm with his wife, Lisbet.
“As the person is deceased, I cannot bring charges against him and have decided to discontinue the investigation. In my opinion, Stig Engstrom is the prime suspect. My assessment is that, after over 34 years, it is difficult to believe that any further investigation would provide us with any new details. Therefore, I believe we have come as far as one could expect,” said Chief Prosecutor Krister Petersson during a digital press conference along with the Swedish Police Authority.
He said that the current Palme investigation could not do an investigation as the department was to a large extent “at the mercy of the police investigative work that was performed closer to the time of the crime”.
Speaking about the case, CNN quoted Hans Melander, head of the investigation, as saying, “90,000 people are included in the preliminary investigation, of which 40,000 are named. More than 10,000 people have been interviewed, many of them several times. More than 4,000 vehicles were investigated. 134 people have confessed to committing the murder, including 29 directly to the police.”
Analysis of the two bullets found at the scene — one of which killed the Prime Minister, while the other injured his wife — was carried out by laboratories in Sweden and Germany as well as by the FBI in the United States, he said.
“Only a few traces were left on the .357 Magnum caliber metal-piercing bullets and it would be impossible now, given the passage of time, to match them to a specific weapon,” he added. It is by far Sweden’s largest criminal investigation, Melander further said.
