An Unprotected Walk into History
On the night of February 28, 1986, Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme and his wife Lisbeth left the Grand Cinema in Stockholm after a late showing of Bröderna Mozart. They had declined personal bodyguard protection. At 23:21, as they walked down Sveavägen, a man approached from behind and fired two shots.
Palme was hit in the back and pronounced dead at 00:06 the next morning. Lisbeth survived with a minor wound. The killer fled eastward on Tunnelgatan and vanished into the night.
A Case That Changed a Nation
The murder stunned Sweden and led to the country’s largest-ever criminal investigation. Within minutes, taxi drivers and passersby alerted authorities.
Police and ambulances arrived quickly, but the assassin had already escaped. Over the years, thousands of leads were pursued. The murder weapon—believed to be a .357 Magnum revolver—was never found. Numerous witness accounts described the killer as a man aged 30–50, roughly 180 cm tall, wearing a dark coat.
Convictions, Acquittals, and Theories
In 1988, Christer Pettersson, previously convicted of manslaughter, was identified by Lisbeth Palme in a police lineup and convicted. He was later acquitted on appeal due to lack of weapon evidence and procedural flaws.
Pettersson died in 2004 without being retried. In 2020, prosecutor Krister Petersson named Stig Engström—known as the “Skandia Man”—as the most likely suspect. Engström, who had inserted himself into the investigation early on as a witness, died in 2000. The case was closed without formal charges.
Unanswered Questions and Ongoing Theories
Multiple theories emerged: involvement of the PKK, South African security forces, CIA-linked networks, or right-wing extremists. In 2006, a revolver linked to a 1983 robbery using identical ammunition was recovered from a lake, but it was too rusted to confirm its use in the assassination.
In 2021, another revolver was found in Stockholm but has not been linked to the crime. To this day, no one has been formally convicted, and over 700,000 documents have accumulated. The case remains one of the most complex and controversial unsolved political murders in modern Europe.
On February 28, 1986, Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme left a cinema with his wife, unguarded.
Minutes later, he was fatally shot on Sveavägen in central Stockholm.
The killer vanished into the night. What followed became one of the world’s longest investigations…🧵👇 pic.twitter.com/UlprSrBDbe
— Fascinating True Stories (@FascinatingTrue) August 8, 2025