Clark Olofsson, the criminal who inspired the theory of the “Stockholm Syndrome”, died at 78 years old

Clark Olofsson, the charismatic Swedish robber who contributed to inspiring the theory of “Stockholm Syndrome”, He died at the age of 78 after a long illness. To communicate his family to the Swedish information site Dagens etc.

His world fame exploded in 1973, during a robbery with seizure in a Stockholm bank who would have marked the language of psychology forever. Since then, his figure has never stopped exercising a certain charm, between myth, ambiguity and contradictions.

The robbery that entered history

It all started on August 23, 1973, when Jan-Erik Olsson, a prisoner escaped, broke into the KreditBanken branchin the Normalmstorg plant. Armed, took three women hostage and a man, e He asked that his former prison companion was brought from prison: Clark Olofsson.

The authorities agreed. When Olofsson entered the bank, besieged by the police, His official role was ambiguous. Years later, in an interview ad AFTONBLADEThe claimed to have been commissioned by the authorities to act as an internal mediator, to protect the hostages in exchange for a reduction in punishment. But, according to him, the agreement was never respected.

What happened in the following six days has become the subject of psychological studies, judicial chronicles and fiction works. Within the bank, the growing tension did not prevent the establishment of an unexpected link between hostages and kidnappers.

One of the kidnapped, Kristin Enmark, spoke directly with the Swedish Prime Minister, asking that the kidnappers were allowed to escape with her and the others hostage: “I trust Clark and the robber completely completely. They did nothingHe declared on the phone. “Indeed, they were very kind. As absurd as it may seem, here we spent good moments “.

When the police raided the roof using tear gas, the kidnapping ended without victims. Still, the hostages initially refused to abandon their kidnappers for fear that the police would open the fire, and later They also refused to testify against Olofsson and Olsson.

The birth of the “Stockholm Syndrome”

It was the Swedish criminologist and psychiatrist Nils Bejerot who coined the term “Stockholm Syndrome” to describe this apparent paradox: the victims who end up feeling empathy, affection or even protection towards their attackers. The phenomenon soon became a matter of debate. Some interpreted him as an unconscious survival strategy in extreme contexts; Others questioned its scientific validity. Kristin Enmark, years later, in an interview with BBChe rejected the label decisively: «It is a way to blame the victim. I did what I could to survive ».

Clark Olofsson was not at all new to crime. Robberies, evasions, drug trafficking: his criminal fee was as relevant as his notoriety. He passed most of his life in prison, Sweden and abroad. The last sentence, in Belgium, for drug -related crimes, ended in 2018, the year in which it was definitively released.

In 2022, his figure He returned to the center of the scene thanks to the Netflix series Clark, in which he was played by Bill Skarsgård. A portrait over the lines, colorful, deliberately provocative, who has contributed to renewing the interest for a man whose existence has always moved on the edge of the paradox: capable of inspiring confidence in the heart of fear, a symbol of a syndrome never really clarified, yet entered the common language.

Clark Olofsson remains a controversial figure: recurrence criminal, but capable of exerting an unusual influence on who was next to him. For some a manipulator. For others, a survivor of Nordic prisons, grown in a world that has never been able to offer him alternatives.