As the 25th anniversary of the assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme nears, Police have revealed that 130 people have falsely confessed to his unsolved murder. All the admissions of guilt over the fatal shooting that took place on 28 February 1986 have been discounted by police and the investigation is still ongoing.
As media interest in the crime resurfaces again 25 years on, police have also revealed that the case so far takes up 225 metres of shelf space and has cost more than half a billion kronor (EUR 56.7 million). As the removal of the statute of limitation on the murder will allow the inquiry to continue indefinitely, however, expenditure is set to increase even further.
Palme and his wife Lisbet were shot at close range when walking home from a cinema in central Stockholm in 1986. His wife later recovered but Palme, who served as Sweden’s prime minister on two occasions between 1969 and 1976 and from 1982 until his death, was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital.
At a press conference this week organised by the National Bureau of Investigation, Kerstin Skarp, who is the sixth officer to lead the investigation into Palme’s death, said police still hope to catch the former prime minister’s killer.
“When there is absolutely nothing to work with and we have reached a dead end, then it shall be closed. But we are not there yet,” she said. She added, however, that there is no particular person currently in the frame.
Stig Edqvist, the fourth leader of the case, said the police get two or three new tips from the public each year, but admitted that most of these come to nothing. “It obviously is tough to deal with from time to time,” he said. “However, if someone comes in with information about a named person or a weapon, we are obviously interested in it.”