The 1973 Stockholm bank heist was anything but ordinary.
An ex-convict, Jan-Erik Olsson, initiated the chaotic scene by firing shots into the ceiling and declaring, “The party starts!” He took three women bank employees hostage. Soon, police surrounded the building, and the media provided live coverage of the escalating situation.
Olsson’s demands weren’t just about money; he insisted his former cellmate, Clark Olofsson, be released from prison and join him. Surprisingly, Sweden’s minister of justice agreed.
Even more unexpected, over six days of captivity, the hostages—who now included a man discovered in the bank’s vault—began to defend their captors and show hostility towards the police attempting their rescue.
One hostage, 23-year-old Kristin Enmark, famously pleaded with Sweden’s prime minister, Olof Palme, over the phone, asking to be allowed to leave the bank with her abductors in a getaway car.
She asserted her trust in “Clark and the robber,” stating they had done nothing to harm them.
Astonishingly, she added, “Believe it or not, but we’ve had a really nice time here.”
Police had swarmed the Stockholm bank during the hostage crisis, while inside, Olofsson and his accomplice held their captives.
Eventually, police breached the roof and ended the standoff with tear gas. What followed was even more perplexing: the hostages refused to testify against their captors at trial.
This extraordinary event coined a new term in pop psychology: “Stockholm syndrome,” describing a perplexing phenomenon where victims reportedly develop a psychological bond with their captors, identifying with them rather than their rescuers.
Clark Olofsson, a figure often portrayed as charismatic in Swedish media and popular culture, was known for a lifetime of criminal escapades, making him one of Sweden’s most famous criminals. He passed away on June 24 at the age of 78.
His death at an Arvika hospital in Sweden, west of Stockholm, was not widely reported at the time. A Swedish newspaper later confirmed his death through his family, citing a “long illness” as the cause.
Olofsson spent over half his life imprisoned for various crimes, including robberies, daring prison breaks, and drug smuggling. His final release from prison came in 2018.
The true nature of Stockholm syndrome as a psychological phenomenon has been debated since the 1973 Kreditbanken drama in Stockholm’s Norrmalmstorg Square, initially known as Norrmalmstorg syndrome.
The term was originally coined by Swedish police psychologist Nils Bejerot to describe the hostages’ unusual behavior. However, it has never been formally recognized in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in the United States.
Psychologists often interpret this behavior as a survival coping mechanism, observed in kidnapping victims, hostages held by terrorists, and even victims of domestic abuse. They suggest that captives may align with their powerful captors as a means of self-preservation.
The concept gained widespread recognition following the 1974 kidnapping of heiress Patty Hearst, who, after months in captivity with the radical Symbionese Liberation Army, denounced her wealthy family and participated in a bank robbery with her abductors.
The phenomenon was also famously depicted in Sidney Lumet’s 1975 film “Dog Day Afternoon,” starring Al Pacino, which drew inspiration from a real-life attempted Brooklyn bank heist where hostages developed a bond with their captors.
Kristin Enmark, one of the original Stockholm hostages, spent years refuting any empathy towards Olsson and Olofsson. She criticized the police’s handling of the siege and dismissed Stockholm syndrome as a myth, asserting she simply did what was necessary to survive.
As she explained in a 2021 BBC podcast, “It’s a way of blaming the victim. I did what I could to survive.”
Olofsson, pictured in 1974 with long hair and a bushy beard, during his jail sentence after the bank robbery, having been temporarily allowed outside prison.
Clark Oderth Olofsson was born on February 1, 1947, in Trollhattan, Sweden. Swedish media accounts describe a tumultuous childhood, including being placed in foster care at age eight. He developed into a habitual offender and was already serving time for robbery and weapons charges when the 1973 hostage crisis unfolded.
Although convicted for his part in the Kreditbanken robbery, his six-and-a-half-year sentence was later overturned on appeal, as Olofsson successfully argued he had acted to protect the hostages.
In 1975, he escaped from Norrkoping prison, remaining at large for a year. During this time, he traveled the Mediterranean, met his future wife, and committed another bank robbery in Gothenburg, Sweden, before being recaptured. The stolen 930,000 kronor (approximately $230,000) was never found, leading to widespread searches by both authorities and the public.
Olofsson, in a more recent photo from 2023, with thinning hair and glasses, became the subject of the 2003 Swedish TV film “Norrmalmstorg” and the 2022 Netflix series “Clark.”
After serving a nine-year sentence for the Gothenburg robbery, Olofsson studied journalism while incarcerated and was released in 1983. However, he was quickly back in prison the following year on drug charges and continued to cycle through Swedish and Danish prisons for drug smuggling convictions for decades, with his cases frequently sensationalized in the tabloids.
He married Marijke Demuynck, the teenager he met on the train, in 1976, and they had three sons. Further details about his survivors were not immediately available.
Olofsson’s notorious life of bank heists, prison breaks, and confrontations with law enforcement became the basis for a 2003 Swedish television film, “Norrmalmstorg,” and the 2022 Netflix series, “Clark,” where he was famously portrayed by Bill Skarsgard.
Despite decades of academic discussion surrounding Stockholm syndrome, surprisingly few mental health experts bothered to consult Kristin Enmark, the central bank employee in the original incident, for her perspective.
One exception was Allan Wade, a Canadian therapist specializing in interpersonal violence. After speaking with Ms. Enmark, he argued that Stockholm syndrome was a fabricated concept, designed to divert attention from the Swedish police’s missteps during the crisis.
As Wade told the BBC in 2021, “The whole notion was an accusation. It was a way to dismiss what an incredibly heroic woman had been doing for six and a half days to resist, preserve her dignity and look after the other hostages.”