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One of the two charismatic criminals involved in the invitation that gave the world the term “Stockholm syndrome” passed away at the age of 78, his family said.
Clark Olofsson – who rose to global infamy in 1973 after an invitation and bank robbery in the Swedish capital – died after a long illness, his family told online media outlet Deigen and others.
During the six-day siege, Olofson’s hostages began to sympathize with him and his accomplices, defending their actions while growing more hostile to the police outside.
The case lends its name to a theorized psychological state, and the victims of the lure have affection for the prisoner.
The infamous siege of the bank was instigated by another man, Jan Eric Olson. After taking three women and one man hostage, he demanded that Olofson (who had previously become friends in prison) be taken from prison to the bank.
Swedish authorities agreed to his request, and Olofsson entered a bank surrounded by police.
Years later, in an interview with the Aftonbladet newspaper, he claimed that he had been asked to work as an inner person in exchange for prisons to keep prisons safe, but was accused of not respecting the contract.
Olofson persuaded one of the hostages, Christine Enmark, to speak to the Swedish prime minister on the phone on behalf of the robber.
She asked to be allowed to leave the bank in a getaway car with the temptation, saying, “I trust Clark and the robber completely… They’re not doing anything to us.”
She continued: “On the contrary, they were very kind…believe it or not, we had a really good time here.”
Over the course of several calls, Enmark said she repeatedly defended her actions, fearing that her prisoner would be harmed by the police.
In her memoirs, she recounts Olofson:
The hostage situation ended six days after police officers broke through the roof and used tear gas to conquer the pair.
Initially, the hostages refused to leave the prisoners, fearing they would be shot by police. The hostages later refused to testify against Olofson and Olson.
Experts have since debated whether Stockholm syndrome is a real psychiatric symptom, with some arguing it as a defense mechanism to deal with traumatic situations.
The term was coined in the aftermath of the siege by Swedish criminologist and psychiatrist Nils Bezerotto, and described the irrational affection that some prisoners thought to have felt for hostage takers.
This theory reached a larger audience the following year, when Patty Hearst, the heir to a California newspaper, was lured into revolutionary extremists.
Speaking about the 2021 BBC sideway podcast, Enmark rubbed the concept of Stockholm syndrome, saying, “It’s a way to blame victims. I did what I could to survive.”
Olofson has been a repeatedly criminal and spent much of his life in prison. He was last released in 2018 after being sentenced to a drug crime sentence in Belgium.
In 2022, actor Bill Skarsgard portrayed him in the Netflix drama series Clark.
