When that convict, Jan-Erik Olsson, first walked into the financial institution that Thursday, the staff who would turn out to be his hostages felt nothing however worry. “I believed a maniac had come into my life,” then-23-year-old financial institution clerk Kristin Enmark later informed the New Yorker. “I believed I used to be seeing one thing that might solely occur in America.”
However the hostages’ terror didn’t final. In truth, over the course of the following six-day standoff, which shocked and enthralled the Swedish public and dumbfounded the police, a stunning bond fashioned between the robber and his 4 captives.
It spawned, ultimately, a brand new psychological time period: Stockholm syndrome.
Sweden had by no means skilled something just like the drama that unfolded 50 years in the past on the Sveriges Kreditbank, in Stockholm’s upscale Norrmalmstorg sq..
Crime was low within the nation, identified for its peace, prosperity and liberal social welfare. However there have been criminals. Olsson had been serving a three-year sentence for grand larceny, till the jail launched him on non permanent furlough early that August for good habits. He merely by no means returned, and he started planning a really unorthodox theft.
The disguised Olsson determined towards making off with the financial institution’s cash, as an alternative taking its younger workers hostage and making calls for of the police after they arrived. He needed 3 million Swedish kronor (about $710,000 on the time) and a quick getaway automotive. Plus, to help along with his plan, he needed the police to ship him an confederate: his former prison-block neighbor Clark Olofsson, a serial financial institution robber whose string of inventive jail escapes had made him a digital superstar in Sweden.
Olsson wagered that there was no probability “the federal government would danger killing the ladies if he didn’t get his manner,” David King wrote in “Six Days in August: The Story of Stockholm Syndrome.” “Not in Sweden. Actually not this 12 months, when the prime minister confronted a detailed election.”
So, with sharpshooters swarming across the constructing, Olsson retreated contained in the financial institution vault along with his hostages, leaving the door solely barely ajar, and waited for his calls for to be met. Enmark’s fingers and ft had been tied, together with these of her colleagues: financial institution teller Elisabeth Oldgren, 21, and Birgitta Lundblad, 31 and the one hostage who was married with youngsters.
Initially, the gamble paid off. The cash, the automotive — a blue Ford Mustang — and Olofsson himself all arrived at Kreditbank by the top of the day. In keeping with King, Olsson envisioned driving off with the baggage of cash, Olofsson and some hostages, then escaping Sweden by boat.
However whereas police technically fulfilled his calls for, they withheld the Mustang’s keys. Olsson and his rising group had been caught.
Nervous and short-tempered, Olsson shouted orders that day and threatened to kill individuals who resisted. He already had shot one police officer within the hand. However the nice jail escapee Olofsson’s arrival within the afternoon introduced these inside some welcome calm.
“Once I got here, they had been terrified,” Olofsson mentioned in 2019 on the podcast “Prison.” “After 5 minutes, they had been cool. I mentioned, ‘Hey, take it simple, we’re going to repair this.’” He untied the three girls and, strolling across the financial institution for surveillance, discovered one other worker, Sven Säfstrom, 24, hiding in a inventory room. Säfstrom grew to become the fourth hostage.
Olofsson introduced in one of many financial institution’s telephones and linked it contained in the vault in order that the hostages may name their households. When Lundblad couldn’t attain her husband and youngsters, she started to cry. Olsson, her captor, touched her cheek, in keeping with the New Yorker, and mentioned softly, “Strive once more, don’t hand over.”
Day 2: Information crews and a near-shooting
On Friday, after the primary night time within the vault, Oldgren was feeling claustrophobic, so Olsson reduce an extended piece of rope, tied it round her neck and let her stroll across the financial institution on a 30-foot leash. Later, he draped his jacket round her shoulders when she was shivering from the chilly.
Because the day progressed, Olsson grew annoyed over the stalemate with authorities. He persuaded Säfstrom to permit Olsson to shoot him within the thigh in entrance of the police to show he was severe. Olsson promised the shot would simply graze him. “It’s solely within the leg,” Enmark mentioned as encouragement, in keeping with “Six Days in August.”
Säfstrom waited for a sign to get in place, however Olsson didn’t observe via. “I nonetheless don’t know why the sign by no means got here,” Säfstrom informed the New Yorker. “All that comes again to me is how form I thought he was for saying it was my simply my leg he would shoot.”
In the meantime, onlookers crowded Norrmalmstorg sq. exterior, and information crews lined the occasions relentlessly, interviewing the hostages and their captors by cellphone all day Friday. The Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet dubbed it “the pornography of violence.”
Round 5 p.m., Enmark talked to Olof Palme, the Swedish prime minister, and radio and TV stations broadcast clips of their dialog. She requested Palme to permit Olsson to depart the financial institution and drive off with the cash, and he or she volunteered to go alongside as his captive.
“I totally belief Clark and the robber. I’m not determined. They haven’t carried out a factor to us,” Enmark mentioned. “Quite the opposite, they’ve been very good. However you realize, Olof, what I’m fearful of is that the police will assault and trigger us to die.”
Palme refused, claiming that it could endanger the general public “to let folks out on the roads with weapons and harmless folks.” The police, with no precedent to information their response, had been already overwhelmed.
Olsson’s disguise, it turned out, had succeeded: The police had no concept who he was, and so they ended up misidentifying him as one other jail escapee Olofsson had identified, Kaj Hansson. They even introduced in Hansson’s teenage brother, Dan, to purpose with the robber, solely to be met with gunfire. Later, the police had Dan name the vault cellphone, in keeping with King.
Dan hung up after speaking to Olsson and known as the policemen “idiots.” “You may have the unsuitable man!” he yelled.
Day 3: A ‘bond of friendship’ fashioned
On Saturday morning, after the second night time within the Kreditbank department, the police tried a dangerous resolution. An officer snuck in and closed the door of the vault, locking the hostages inside with Olsson and Olofsson. For these within the vault, the open door had been their lifeline, via which the police had delivered foods and drinks to maintain them and thru which Olsson had maintained slim hope of escaping. That hope was now gone.
Telephone contact contained in the vault additionally was reduce off to anybody however the police, who feared the media’s limitless entry would ship Olsson a cult standing. With the robber lastly contained, the police additionally hoped everybody inside would type what Nils Bejerot, a psychiatrist they consulted, described as a “bond of friendship” that might stop Olsson from inflicting hurt on his captors.
Such connections, in truth, had already begun to type — and police didn’t foresee how robust they’d turn out to be.
That afternoon, not realizing after they would eat subsequent, Olsson pulled out three pears left over from a earlier meal, reduce every in half and gave everybody a portion. All observed Olsson taking the smallest piece, King reported. “When he handled us properly,” Säfstrom mentioned, in keeping with the New Yorker, “we may consider him as an emergency god.”
As she fell asleep that night time, Enmark may hear everybody’s respiration and inform after they had been in sync. She even tried to vary her respiration to match. “That was our world,” she mentioned. “We had been within the vault with a view to breathe, to outlive. Whoever threatened that world was our enemy.”
Days 4 and 5: Not only a drill
On Sunday, drilling disrupted the group’s calm.
A crew had began working to punch via the vault from above — ostensibly, the police informed Olsson, to create a gap broad sufficient for him to give up his weapon. It took hours to drill via the steel-and-concrete ceiling, and people within the vault deduced the true purpose for it: to pump in tear fuel and pressure the robber to give up.
In response, Olsson positioned the hostages beneath the outlet with nooses round their necks, the ropes connected to the highest of a row of safe-deposit containers. He informed police that if any fuel knocked the captives unconscious, the nooses — and, by extension, the police — would find yourself killing them.
“I didn’t assume he was going to hold us,” Enmark mentioned in 2016, on the podcast “Reminiscence Motel.” However the hostages frightened what the fuel would do to them. Olsson had shared his principle about tear fuel: After quarter-hour of publicity, he informed them, all of them would endure everlasting mind injury.
To bypass the makeshift gallows, employees began drilling extra holes above different elements of the vault. The police despatched a bucket containing sandwiches down the unique gap, the hostages’ first actual meal in days, giving them a quick respite from standing of their nooses. As they started to tire, Olsson allow them to rotate in shifts, and Säfstrom requested the robber whether or not he may do the standing for all of them.
“He was an actual man,” Olsson informed the New Yorker. “He was able to be a hostage for the hostages.”
Day 6: Syndrome or survival tactic?
By Tuesday, the crew had drilled seven holes into the ceiling, and shortly after the final one was accomplished, fuel started pouring into the vault. The hostages had been on their fingers and knees, coughing and choking, earlier than Olsson may organize them again to the nooses. Quickly the police heard voices yelling, “We hand over!”
After opening the door, the police ordered the hostages out first, however they refused, fearful that Olsson and Olofsson could be killed by the police if left alone within the vault. Enmark and Oldgren hugged and kissed Olsson, Säfstrom shook his hand, and Lundblad requested him to put in writing to her. Then the robber walked along with his confederate out of the financial institution vault and into police custody.
Bejerot, the consulting psychiatrist, is credited with coining Stockholm syndrome that 12 months to explain the phenomenon of captives growing emotional bonds with their captors. Skilled associations haven’t accepted it as a psychological analysis, although it has been invoked since in some instances of abuse, for prisoners of struggle and, notably, in the kidnapping of Patty Hearst, the 12 months after Olsson’s Stockholm theft.
However Enmark, who left the financial institution and have become a psychotherapist, mentioned in 2016 that the hostages’ relationship with Olsson was extra self-preservation than syndrome.
“I feel it’s a manner of blaming the sufferer,” she mentioned. “All of the issues I did was intuition of survival. I needed to outlive. I don’t assume it’s so odd. What would you do?”
