BLOOD ON THE SNOW
IT WAS a Friday evening and downtown Stockholm was packed with people ambling between bars and restaurants. And there quietly strolling among them was Swedish prime minister Olof Palme and his wife, Lisbet.
The couple had taken an impromptu trip to the cinema and decided, as they often did, not to bring bodyguards. But on this night in February 1986 it was to be a decision that would cost him his life.
At 11.21pm, as the couple walked down Sveavägen, one of the city’s busiest streets, a tall man in a dark coat walked up behind them, put one hand on Palme’s shoulder and with his other hand fired a single round from a gun into the prime minister’s back.
He grazed Lisbet with a second bullet before fleeing up a flight of 89 steps that links the main street with a parallel road above.
Bystanders instantly rushed to try to revive Palme, who now lay on the pavement in an expanding pool of blood. Six minutes later he was taken to the nearest hospital, where, shortly after midnight, he was declared dead. It was later determined that the bullet had severed his spinal cord and he’d died before hitting the ground.
Although more than 20 witnesses saw the gunman, these facts are still more or less everything that’s known for certain about the killing, which plunged Sweden into a period of shock and confusion.
To his fellow countrymen,
