The 1973 bank robbery in Stockholm was anything but ordinary; it unfolded in a way no one could have predicted.
The drama began when ex-convict Jan-Erik Olsson burst into a Stockholm bank, firing shots into the ceiling and declaring, “The party starts!” He quickly took three female bank employees hostage. Soon, police surrounded the building, and the media broadcast the entire tense standoff live to a captivated nation.
Olsson’s demands went beyond just money; he insisted that his former cellmate, Clark Olofsson, be released from prison and brought to him. Remarkably, Sweden’s minister of justice agreed to this extraordinary request.
What followed over the next six days was truly astonishing. The hostages – the initial three women, plus a man discovered hiding in the bank’s vault – began to develop an unexpected loyalty towards their captors. They even grew hostile towards the police attempting to rescue them.
In a surreal phone call with Sweden’s prime minister, Olof Palme, 23-year-old hostage Kristin Enmark pleaded to be allowed to leave the bank with her abductors in a getaway car.
“I fully trust Clark and the robber,” she asserted to the prime minister. “They haven’t done a thing to us.”
She even added a bewildering statement: “Believe it or not, but we’ve had a really nice time here.”
Stockholm police officers swarmed the bank where the hostages were held.
Clark Olofsson with three of the hostages during the 1973 robbery.
Eventually, police breached the bank’s roof and used tear gas to subdue the robbers. In a further twist, the hostages later refused to testify against their captors during the trial.
This bizarre ordeal gave birth to a new term in pop psychology: Stockholm Syndrome. It describes a perplexing phenomenon where victims reportedly develop an emotional bond and empathy towards their captors, rather than the authorities attempting their rescue.
Clark Olofsson, a figure often portrayed as charismatic in Swedish media and popular culture, was known for a lifetime of lawbreaking that made him one of Sweden’s most notorious criminals. He passed away on June 24 at the age of 78.
His passing at a hospital in Arvika, Sweden, west of Stockholm, was not widely publicized initially. The Swedish newspaper Dagens ETC later confirmed his death through Olofsson’s family, who did not disclose the specific cause but noted he had been battling ‘a long illness.’
Olofsson spent over half of his life incarcerated for a string of offenses, including robberies, daring prison escapes, and drug smuggling. He was last released from prison in 2018.
Since its dramatic inception at Kreditbanken in Stockholm’s Norrmalmstorg Square in August 1973 – where it was originally dubbed ‘Norrmalmstorg Syndrome’ – the authenticity of Stockholm Syndrome as a true psychological phenomenon has been a subject of ongoing debate.
The term was coined by Swedish police psychologist Nils Bejerot, who was tasked with analyzing the hostages’ peculiar behavior during the robbery. However, it’s worth noting that Stockholm Syndrome has never been officially recognized in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the standard reference for mental health conditions in the United States.
Some psychologists propose that this behavior is a coping mechanism, observed in various traumatic situations such as kidnappings, terrorist hostage crises, and domestic abuse. They suggest that by aligning with their powerful captors, victims unconsciously seek to ensure their own survival.
The concept of Stockholm Syndrome gained significant public attention following the 1974 kidnapping of heiress Patty Hearst. After months in captivity with radical leftists known as the Symbionese Liberation Army, Hearst famously denounced her wealthy family and actively participated in a bank robbery alongside her abductors.
This puzzling dynamic was also dramatized a year later in Sidney Lumet’s film “Dog Day Afternoon,” starring Al Pacino. The movie, inspired by a real-life attempted heist in Brooklyn, depicted hostages forming a bond with their bank robbers.
Kristin Enmark, one of the original Stockholm hostages, steadfastly denied for years that she ever empathized with Olsson and Olofsson. She criticized the police response to the siege, deeming it incompetent. Enmark dismissed Stockholm Syndrome as a myth, asserting that her actions were solely a means of survival.
“It’s a way of blaming the victim,” she explained in a 2021 BBC podcast. “I did what I could to survive.”
Clark Olofsson in 1974, while serving time for the previous year’s bank robbery, having been temporarily allowed outside prison walls.
Born on February 1, 1947, in Trollhattan, Sweden, Clark Oderth Olofsson experienced a tumultuous childhood, entering foster care at the age of eight. He quickly embarked on a path of repeat offenses. By the time of the infamous 1973 hostage crisis, he was already serving a sentence for robbery and weapons charges.
Despite his conviction for the botched Kreditbanken robbery, Olofsson’s six-and-a-half-year sentence was later overturned on appeal. He successfully argued that his actions during the standoff were aimed at protecting the hostages.
In 1975, while still serving an earlier sentence, Olofsson orchestrated another escape, this time from a prison in Norrkoping, Sweden. During his year-long evasion, he sailed the Mediterranean, met his future wife on a train, and robbed a bank in Gothenburg, all before being recaptured on the very same day. The reported 930,000 kronor (approximately $230,000) stolen in that heist was never recovered, sparking a prolonged “treasure hunt” involving both authorities and ordinary citizens.
Clark Olofsson in 2023. His eventful life of crime inspired the Swedish television film “Norrmalmstorg” (2003) and the 2022 Netflix series “Clark.”
Sentenced to nine years for the Gothenburg robbery, Olofsson used his time in prison to study journalism, eventually being released in 1983. However, his freedom was short-lived; he was convicted of drug charges the following year, returning to prison until 1991. For decades, he was in and out of Swedish and Danish prisons on various drug smuggling convictions, with his exploits frequently dominating tabloid headlines.
He married Marijke Demuynck, the teenager he encountered on a train, in 1976, and together they had three sons. Further details regarding his survivors were not immediately disclosed.
Olofsson’s life, a saga of bank robberies, daring prison escapes, and confrontations with law enforcement, has been immortalized in popular culture. It served as the basis for the 2003 Swedish television film “Norrmalmstorg,” and more recently, the 2022 Netflix series “Clark,” where he was famously portrayed by actor Bill Skarsgard.
Despite half a century of theorizing by mental health experts about Stockholm Syndrome, it’s striking that few bothered to consult Kristin Enmark, the bank employee who was at the very heart of the original drama and its controversial diagnosis.
One notable exception was Allan Wade, a Canadian therapist specializing in interpersonal violence. After meeting with Enmark, Wade controversially declared Stockholm Syndrome to be an invented concept, arguing it served primarily to deflect attention from the Swedish police’s missteps during the crisis.
“The whole notion was an accusation,” he told the BBC in 2021. “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.”