(CN) — In the end, after 34 years of investigations into the assassination of popular socialist Prime Minister Olof Palme, Swedish prosecutors on Wednesday said they did not uncover a wide-ranging political conspiracy behind his killing.
Authorities instead fingered a deceased, bespectacled and unremarkable office worker with conservative political ideas as the lone assassin responsible for Palme's death on a cold February night in 1986 while he was walking home from a cinema with his wife.
After following thousands of leads and hampered by years of botched police work, Swedish authorities closed the book Wednesday on a political assassination compared to the murder of former U.S. President John F. Kennedy. Both assassinations spawned national agony, complex conspiracy theories, multiple official and independent investigations and scores of books, films and articles.
While not entirely dismissing theories linking Palme's death to his criticism of South Africa's apartheid regime, chief prosecutor Krister Petersson said he was confident the assassin was Stig Engstrom, a graphic designer who worked for Skandia, a Swedish insurance company. At age 66, Engstrom killed himself in 2000, making prosecution of the alleged assassin impossible, Petersson said.
“I believe we've gone as far as we can in the investigation,” he said during a news conference. “There is one suspect who somehow we can't get around. He is Stig Engstrom.”
But the prosecution's decision to wrap up the investigation and accuse Engstrom left many Swedes unsatisfied. Misgivings were deepened by the prosecution's reliance on a review of old testimony and a failure to present new evidence, most importantly a murder weapon. Swedish news media had reported previously that authorities believed they had found the weapon used to kill the prime minister among a collection of guns owned by a friend of Engstrom.
“But we can't put a specific gun in his hand,” the prosecutor said. He said investigators found a weapon owned by the gun collector that matches the caliber of bullets fired at the couple, but he said experts believe it would be impossible to verify the same gun was used in the killing.
“This press conference was a colossal disappointment,” Leif Gustav Willy Persson, a well-known Swedish criminologist and novelist, said on Swedish television. He said he had hoped prosecutors would produce new evidence “you can bite into” but that they failed to make a case that would stand up in court.
“So, after all of the build-up and hype before today's announcement, Sweden's long national drama is not over,” commented Christian Christensen, an American journalism professor at Stockholm University, on Twitter. “It seems it never will be.”
Prime Minister Stefan Lofven, though, urged Swedes to move on from Palme's murder on Sveavagen, a busy Stockholm boulevard. He said Swedish governments had taken responsibility for failures in the investigation – such as not sealing off the crime scene – by establishing an inquiry.
“The shots on Sveavagen on that February night in 1986 turned into a crisis, a wound, a riddle without an answer,” he said, according to media reports. “It is my sincerest wish that the wound can now begin to heal.”
On the night of Feb. 28, 1986, a Friday, Engstrom was working late to finish work before a weekend ski trip with his wife, Petersson said in reconstructing the police version of events that led to the murder.
Engstrom clocked out of work at 11:19 pm and headed down the street to catch public transportation home. A short distance from the Skandia office, he ran across Palme and his wife Lisbet walking down the street, Petersson said. The 59-year-old prime minister had earlier dismissed his bodyguards and gone to the cinema with his wife.
Upon encountering Palme, Engstrom shot both the prime minister and his wife before fleeing, the prosecutor alleged.
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