S3E8 An Enemy Within: The Plot Thickens

IN THIS EPISODE So, what happened - or seemed to happen - the night of February 28, 1986, the night someone shot Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme to death on a Stockholm street corner as he walked beside his wife Lizbeth after a night at the cinema? There were a number of eyewitnesses - but not all of their stories align. Especially problematic: the story told by eyewitness Lizbeth, the victim's wife. She seems to have attended a different assassination. How one of the most important investigations in Sweden's history went off the rails as the list of suspects grew. SHOW NOTES If you enjoy this podcast, please sample some of our others at Costard & Touchstone costardandtouchstone.com,. Your next podcast obsessioin awaits! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 2:23Speaker 03

  This podcast, it's a Coster and Touchstone production.

• 2:28John Kiriakou?

  It's Friday, February 28, 1986. Swedish Prime Minister Olaf Palma has just gotten home from his office, from parliament, to be specific. His wife, Elizabeth, proposes that she and Palma, their son Martin, and his girlfriend, go to the movies that night to see the Mozart Brothers, a whimsical, satirical comedy. Ironically, Palma had nearly been cast in the movie, but had been forced to decline because he was just too busy being Prime Minister of Sweden. Palma agrees it would be a great way to end a long, tiring week. They decide to attend the late showing at 9:15 PM.

• 3:08John Kiriakou?

  In the movie, directed by Suzanne Ostin, the main character, Walter, tries to radically reimagine Mozart's famed opera Don Giovanni, the story of a serial seducer who gets his comeuppance after a whirlwind of narcissism and hubris by being dragged to hell by the statue of someone he killed. Trust me, that's the least wild thing you're gonna hear in this episode. While Palma was never considered a seducer or a womanizer in any way, actually quite the opposite, he was a consistent proponent of feminist policies, he did have an uncanny similarity to the character Walter in the movie. In the movie, in a Palma-like act

• 3:48John Kiriakou?

  of defiance, Walter challenges the authority of the entire opera company. Both his peers and the entire opera company end up loathing Walter because of his radical ideas and defiance. In our last episode, we broke down Palma's political ideologies and the radical actions he took as Prime Minister. That intensely socialist approach to governance created a lot of haters. In fact, a term was even coined to describe someone experiencing this derangement syndrome: Palma-hatare, Palma-hater. Like Don Giovanni, Walter must face the consequences of his behavior, although Walter's behavior is far more righteous. But Walter will experience

• 4:32John Kiriakou?

  something even worse than being dragged to hell, what it's like to be forgotten. That's how it ends for Walter. While his opera and a movie version of Don Giovanni is a huge success, the performers take all the credit and Walter is left invisible. It's probably a safe bet that most Americans have no idea who Olaf Palma is or was, or that he was assassinated. That's not their fault. Blame America's self-facing educational system. Yet I would also bet that most Americans who do know anything about Sweden see it as a welfare state, good, bad, or indifferent. There must be a reason that Sweden ranks fifth in the latest World

• 5:14John Kiriakou?

  Happiness Report with a life evaluation score of 7.255 out of 10. That's the fifth happiest out of 140 countries. That happiness is the product of a welfare state. If Palma was alive today, he might just feel as invisible as Walter. His ideas culturally defining, his actual self, all but forgotten. The Mozart Brothers would be the last movie Olaf Palma would ever see. As he left the theater that night, he had no idea that his fate had been sealed. Unlike the now invisible Walter, or the dragged-to-hell Giovanni, Palma's fate

• 5:56John Kiriakou?

  would be far less poetic. That night, he would end up lying in a pool of his own blood, face down on a frigid Stockholm street.

• 6:08John Kiriakou?

  I'm John Kiriakou. Welcome to Dead Drop: What Makes a Spy Tick. This is episode three of An Enemy Within, the untold story of the assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olaf Palma. This episode is called "The Plot Thickens." As always, we thank you for making Dead Drop a part of your regular podcasting experience. Assuming that you're enjoying it, please don't forget to like, rate, review, comment on, and share the podcast. We really do appreciate it when you do that, so thank you. And now, back to Stockholm. It's 11:10 PM. The 9:15 Mozart Brothers showing is just letting out. The Palmas emerge into the street. Palma

• 6:53John Kiriakou?

  and Elizabeth say goodbye to their son outside the theater. He and his girlfriend head one way. Palma and his wife walk south down Sveevaggen. As they stroll, Palma and Elizabeth are completely unprotected. Earlier in the night, prior to the movie, Palma had dismissed his bodyguards. This was not unusual. In fact, it was almost predictable for someone observing Palma. Categorically known as a man of the people, Palma regularly dismissed his bodyguards, making his downtime their downtime. It might seem crazy from the perspective of our security-mad world, but you have to remember, Palma Sweden had one of the lowest crime rates in the world.

• 7:37John Kiriakou?

  He walked around the country, he helped govern, not fearing that his fellow citizens might try to kill him. Elizabeth was walking slightly ahead of Palma as they came to the intersection of Sveevaggen and Tunnelgarten. A man, one witness would say, he'd been waiting at the corner for the Palmas, while another said he had a distinct gait and that he'd been following them closely as they walked away from the movie theater, stepped up directly behind the couple just seconds before.

• 8:10John Kiriakou?

  Elizabeth isn't immediately aware of what has just happened. She thinks perhaps someone had just set off an Easter firecracker. A second shot grazes Elizabeth's upper back, narrowly missing her. Feeling the bullet singe her skin, Elizabeth turns, stunned, and sees that Olaf has collapsed limply onto the snowy concrete. The snow reddens beneath him, soaking up the blood pouring from his neck. In a moment of terror and panic, she screams, "What are you doing?" and drops to the ground in shock. On her knees now, she looks frantically for help. She spots a man standing about 5 to 10 meters behind her, that's roughly 15 to 30 feet. He stares at her in disbelief. At that moment, Elizabeth thinks the man

• 8:53John Kiriakou?

  is the killer. As we'll see, whether because of the shock, or simply because eyewitnesses can be remarkably unreliable as witnesses, Elizabeth's stream of perceptions are consistently problematic. The man Elizabeth first thought was the shooter was just a witness walking behind them, who was now cowering in a doorway shocked by what he had just seen. Another witness calls emergency services from a nearby phone booth, but the call is misrouted and the connection fails. At 11:23 PM, two minutes after the first shot rang out, a Yarfala taxi switchboard operator independently telephones the police dispatch after hearing what just happened from a taxi driver near the scene. Police patrols arrive at 11:24. However,

• 9:38John Kiriakou?

  because of the failed SOS connection, neither an ambulance nor additional police are called until 11:26, when police dispatch finally confirms the shooting to the SOS line. At 11:25, a passing ambulance is stopped, and the EMTs rush out and begin attempting to treat Palma. At 11:28, Palma is loaded into the ambulance and along with Elizabeth is rushed to Sabatsberg Hospital. It's not until 11:30 that the police commander at the scene tells dispatch that the victim is none other than the Prime Minister himself. This, along with the failed connection and lack of urgency, would come back to haunt

• 10:18John Kiriakou?

  the investigation, as it gave the shooter a massive window to escape, virtually undetected. That is, aside from a couple of key witnesses, stick a pin in them. At 11:37, the emergency center is told by operating doctors that Olaf Palma is critically wounded and is unlikely to survive. At 12:06, Olaf Palma is pronounced dead. At 12:45, Deputy Prime Minister Ingvar Karlsson arrives at Rosenbad, the Swedish government office is located in the center of Stockholm. At 1:10 AM, the first radio bulletin reports the murder, and at 4 AM,

• 10:59John Kiriakou?

  the first televised news broadcasts report on it. A surge of calls paralyzes call operators at emergency call centers. A nationwide bulletin, not sent out until two and a half hours after the murder, states that there are two perpetrators.

• 11:17John Kiriakou?

  Dawn is enveloped in chaos, panic, and confusion. Officers had searched for the shooter throughout the night, but owing to the mishandled initial emergency call, which created an escape window for the assassin, they come up empty. There was more botched police work. Anyone who's ever watched five minutes of any Law & Order episode knows that you have to secure the crime scene, while authorities did attempt to cordon off the area, the area they cordoned off as the crime scene was too small. The two bullets were found, but outside the official taped-off crime scene. Even worse, the police didn't find the bullets, the public did. And that was on the day after the murder.

• 12:02John Kiriakou?

  More evidence was lost or compromised because authorities never recorded the names of key witnesses. Others, whose names authorities did know, weren't contacted for days after the murder. And every day those witnesses went unquestioned, as their perceptions and memories shifted, as they heard things from the media and the zeitgeist, their testimonies became more problematic. As chaos often does, it presented an opening for a strong man to take over the investigation. To that end, three choices stepped metaphorically into view. The first option was Sven Aker Hyamroth, the current head of Sapo, the Swedish security service.

• 12:44John Kiriakou?

  Hyamroth had a well-known nickname, he was known as the mailman. Hyamroth got that nickname because he started his career working for, well, the postal service. Sapo was typically in charge of investigating acts of terrorism and crimes tied to foreign powers. The second option was the hard-nosed head of the National Criminal Investigation Department, or if you prefer, the Swedish mouthful, Reichs Kriminalpolisin. His name was Tommy Lindstram. His department was in charge of investigating special incidents, which this case most definitely was. But Lindstram's background was in law, not in police work, which was a major drawback.

• 13:25John Kiriakou?

  Like Hyamroth, Lindstram had also acquired a nickname, Tommy Turbo. That was because police once clocked his sob doing 108 miles an hour. The third and final candidate for chief investigator was the nicknameless, former head of Sapo, the then Stockholm Police Commissioner Hans Holmer. Like Lindstram, Holmer was also more lawyer than cop. In education, training, and practice, he had no experience whatsoever leading a large-scale violent crime investigation. So even though Sapo would normally handle an investigation like this, Sapo was now under a cloud. The agency had failed in its responsibility to protect the prime minister.

• 14:07John Kiriakou?

  It seemed ludicrous to then assign them the task of investigating their own failure. That left the other two, better positioned, but less qualified candidates. Lindstram was a hands-on investigator who normally loved the spotlight, but for some reason he resisted the spotlight the morning after the assassination. Having been awakened and learning that the prime minister had just been murdered, Lindstram went back to sleep. Then, when he did get out of bed, he decided to stay home for a while to celebrate his birthday. He wouldn't even show up at the office to investigate the prime minister's assassination until around 10:30 a.m.

• 14:50John Kiriakou?

  By then, the job had already been given to Hans Holmer. Unlike Lindstram, when Holmer learned of the murder, while in the midst of planning to ski in his 18th consecutive annual cross-country race, he immediately got into his car and returned to Stockholm. Hans Holmer was more than qualified, but not exactly for this role. A bureaucrat by nature, Holmer had a law degree and training in police management. What he lacked in practical policing skills, he more than made up for with brio and connections. And his connections were extensive, especially within the Social Democrat Party, which was the ruling party at the time.

• 15:32John Kiriakou?

  But political connections, even extensive ones, don't equal experience leading an investigation of this kind or magnitude. Those are completely different skill sets. Nonetheless, at noon on Saturday, March 1st, after arriving back from his ski trip and inheriting the role of chief investigator, Hans Holmer, exuding confidence, walked into the press room and gave his first press conference. One side note, Holmer's combination of traits would win him the title "Swede of the Year." That Swede of the Year now found himself leading the largest murder inquiry ever in all of Sweden's very long history. As for that investigation, it couldn't have gotten off to a shaky start.

• 16:17John Kiriakou?

  Though the crime scene was in a very central part of Stockholm, and even though there had been several walking patrols and patrol cars in the area, the killer had escaped undetected with relative ease. Witnesses began to come forward, their various testimonies slowly forming the earliest accepted versions of the killer's escape route. Calls flooded Stockholm's police phone lines. Some were potentially legitimate witnesses, but some were extremists, falsely claiming responsibility. All calls had to be vetted, so this was not exactly a quick process. As the police investigated dutifully and conflicting information trickled out, the Swedish public reeled.

• 17:01John Kiriakou?

  This was miles beyond anything they recognized as normal. Not only was Palma beloved by many of Sweden's citizens, but a crime this harrowing, of this scope and scale, was extremely uncommon in Sweden. Arguably, the last event anything like this in Sweden's history was in 1792, when King Gustav III was shot at a masked ball at Stockholm's Royal Opera by a Swedish military officer named Jakob Johan Onkarström. Onkarström was part of a growing conspiracy among Swedish aristocrats, who had grown angry over the king's increasingly autocratic rule and the resulting loss of noble privileges.

• 17:44John Kiriakou?

  Onkarström pushed through the crowd, approached the king, and whispered in his ear, "Bosso a, bo mask." "Good evening, beautiful mask." Before firing a pistol loaded with balls, nails, and scraps of iron. The shot pierced six layers of clothing and lodged in the king's lower back, near the third lumbar vertebrae and hip. Though Gustav survived the initial attack, he died 13 days later on March 29th, 1792, from sepsis, blood poisoning, and pneumonia. Onkarström was arrested, confessed, and was publicly executed by decapitation and his body dismembered.

• 18:26John Kiriakou?

  Still, the assassination of Olaf Palma felt unprecedented. It shattered the idea that Swedish political figures could operate with unusually high public accessibility, and the way it had played out right there in the center of Stockholm, that touched on a vulnerability that was deeply disturbing for the Swedish people. The widening scope of the investigation placed immense pressure on the inexperienced Holmer. Yet he was seemingly unfazed by the assignment or the pressure. Instead of appointing the most qualified homicide detective he could find to lead that part of the work, he took that job for himself. Uncertainty riled the investigation's early days. Was this the beginning of a coup d'etat?

• 19:11John Kiriakou?

  Did an organized crime syndicate have a hand in it? Were other Swedish government officials going to be targeted next? That fear put Sweden into a state of siege. Airports were sealed off, border controls tightened, even ferries and harbors fell under scrutiny. Suddenly, everyone in power had to look over their shoulder, that included investigator Holmer. He didn't trust Sapo's compromised security team to handle his security. Could anyone blame him? So instead, he hired private security. Tips poured in, most of them crap, the main suspects being deranged gunmen and foreign conspiracies, but finally, a tip came in that got investigators excited.

• 19:52John Kiriakou?

  Eba Carlsson, a very well-connected investigative journalist and political fixer for the Social Democratic Party, reported to Holmer that he had received a private phone call the day before the murder from someone at Sapo. Carlsson's Sapo connection had initially called about a book that he wanted to publish, but during the conversation, the caller revealed that Sapo had learned via a phone tap that members of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, were actively planning to murder someone in Sweden. Founded in November 1978, the PKK is a Kurdish militant political organization and armed guerrilla group, primarily based in the mountainous Kurdish majority region of southeastern

• 20:37John Kiriakou?

  Turkey, northern Iraq, and northeastern Syria. Originally presenting itself as part of the worldwide communist revolution, their ideology fused revolutionary socialism and Marxism-Leninism with Kurdish nationalism, the PKK's goals evolved over time toward achieving national autonomy, that is, an independent Kurdistan. Because the PKK had carried out multiple political murders, the United States, the European Union, Australia, and Japan had all designated the PKK a terrorist organization. Turkey went even further, characterizing Kurdish demands for education in the Kurdish

• 21:17John Kiriakou?

  language as "supporting terrorist activities by the PKK." Not all nations agreed that the PKK was a terrorist organization. Finland and Sweden's alleged support for the PKK was one of the reasons that Turkey opposed Finland and Sweden joining NATO.

• 21:37John Kiriakou?

  Although Eber Karlsson's phone contact didn't know who was going to be murdered in Sweden, after Palma's assassination, the math seemed simple. The PKK was known for its violence and had carried out at least three political murders in the previous two years. The PKK, it turned out, also had a motive. Although allegedly supporting the PKK, Palma had refused to grant the PKK's leader, Abdullah Oçalan, either asylum or a visa. There are conflicting accounts. Furthermore, Palma had put alleged PKK members under travel restrictions. Palma and other Swedish authorities believed that the PKK was using Sweden as a base for intimidation and violence against Kurdish opponents and defectors.

• 22:23John Kiriakou?

  Their evidence included the murder of a former PKK member named Enver Ata, who was gunned down in a public square in Uppsala on June 20, 1984, while the actual gunman was sentenced to life in prison. Sapo believed that eight members of the PKK's leadership had organized or ordered the hit. While the eight were never prosecuted, all eight were ordered to be deported to Turkey in November 1984. However, because the eight all feared political persecution in Turkey, Sweden allowed them all to remain in Sweden under a kind of house arrest, restricting them to certain municipalities. A year later, things got even worse, when former senior PKK member Chetin Gungor was

• 23:07John Kiriakou?

  shot dead in Stockholm. Stick a pin in this moment.

• 23:14Speaker 00

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• 24:18John Kiriakou?

  If you're enjoying Dead Drop, and of course, we hope you are, then while you're waiting for new episodes, I'd like to suggest another great granular story podcast from the Costard and Touchstone family. Just the Photographer with David Swanson does for photojournalism what Dead Drop does for spies. Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist David Swanson tells you stories his amazing news photos just can't. What it felt like being in all those dangerous places like war zones and natural disasters, doing his job, taking pictures. Having been to a few war zones myself, I can tell you this. Just the Photographer will put you right there, on the ground, right next to David. Inside his head, in fact.

• 25:02John Kiriakou?

  It's a hell of a podcast, and you can find it wherever you find your favorite podcasts or at costardandtouchstone.com. There's a link in this episode's show notes. In fact, you'll find lots of great story podcasts at Costard and Touchstone, like The Donor, a DNA horror story, The Hall Closet, Sage Wellness Within, and the How Not to Make a Movie podcast. Who knows? Your next favorite podcast might be just a click away. Now, back to Dead Drop.

• 25:32John Kiriakou?

  Riled and dangerous, the PKK was one of the very first names to top the suspect list. In addition to curious delays, amateurish mistakes, and careless inattention to detail, a steady stream of unreliable witnesses also worked against the investigation. The most surprising of that group was Olaf Palma's wife, Lizbeth. When they first sat down with Lizbeth in her home, investigators hoped for clarity and answers, but from the jump, she could not describe the killer's face or much of anything about the actual killer. Instead, she had claimed that the man behind her, Anders Bjorkman, was the assassin. Bjorkman was an innocent bystander, however.

• 26:16John Kiriakou?

  As time went on, Lizbeth's continuing unreliability perplexed investigators. Another complicating factor raised its head: a witness named Stig Engström. He would later be dubbed "The Scandia Man." Engström was a graphic designer who worked at an insurance company in the Scandia Building, which was right next to the murder location. In the murder's immediate aftermath, Engström behaved strangely, inserting himself into the crime scene, making phony and fallacious claims. For example, he insisted that right after the shooting, he had spoken to Lizbeth Palma and had attempted to resuscitate the victim. Engström also claimed that he chased the killer.

• 26:59John Kiriakou?

  None of the other witness testimonies corroborated any of Engström's wild claims. In fact, none of the other witnesses had reported seeing him until the police and paramedics arrived. Whatever the intention of his attention-grabbing behavior, Engström soon drew the attention of investigators. At a news conference in the Capitol, Chief Prosecutor Kristur Peterson identified Engström as the likely assassin. If only it was that easy. So stick a pin in the Scandia Man, too. I sure hope we have enough pins. As I already mentioned, among the primary eyewitnesses identified by investigators was Anders Bjorkman, the person walking behind the Palmas.

• 27:40John Kiriakou?

  There were other primary witnesses, too: Anders Delsborn and Inga Morelius, and 10 additional witnesses who saw the killer run away and disappear down Tunnelgatan. These witnesses described the killer in some detail: a white male, roughly 30 to 40 years old, middle height and broad shoulders. He was wearing a dark knitted cap with flaps that you could pull down over the ears, and a dark or black knee-length coat that flew up as he was running. Palma's son had turned around a couple of moments after saying "goodnight" to his parents. He saw a man fitting the above description following his parents. Several other witnesses referring to the same man said that he was carrying a small bag with a wrist loop.

• 28:25John Kiriakou?

  The killer seemed calm, and then the murder weapon was in his hand. One witness said that the revolver had a long barrel, potentially pointing to the use of a silencer. And then, the shooting now over, and this is where accounts begin to get muddy. The shooter either disappeared into the Scandia Building, ducked between the barracks that were nearby, or ran down the dark, narrow Tunnelgatan, heading toward stairs at the far end that lead to David Bagaresgata, another street where the killer disappeared. And yet, the killer didn't really just disappear. According to Stig Larsson, in a letter written to Jerry Gabel on March 20, 1986, "A 25-year-old

• 29:06John Kiriakou?

  man named Lars, quote, 'happened to meet the killer at the end of Tunnelgatan without being seen by the killer since they passed each other on different sides of a construction hut. Lars hesitated for some precious seconds, not more than a minute, and then decided to take up pursuit by foot,' unquote." Larsson continued, quote, "At that stage, Lars did not know it was the prime minister who was the victim. Following the same route as the killer, Lars quickly ran up the steps, 86 of them, but at the top, the killer was nowhere to be seen. Acting on instinct, Lars continued straight on along David Bagaresgata, where after one block, he met a couple strolling towards him.

• 29:50John Kiriakou?

  Asking them if they had seen a man running along the street, they both agreed that they indeed had met him only 30 seconds earlier and that he passed them continuing down the street," unquote. Lars had expected to catch up to the killer. That he didn't mystified him, he would claim later, and it gets murkier.

• 30:12John Kiriakou?

  Lizbeth claimed to Chief Inspector Akka Rimborn that she had seen two men at the crime scene. One had a beige coat, she said, and he avoided making eye contact with her when she looked to him for help. That same man was identified by another witness, Leif Lyngsvist. Lyngsvist was in a car stopped at a red light. He claimed that the man wearing the beige coat had been running southbound on Svea Wagen Street. Now, to be fair, even though it's clear that the man in question was most likely not the killer, if this was a professionally-run operation, it would not be surprising if the team had placed a backup shooter nearby as a failsafe. What if, at the moment of truth,

• 30:54John Kiriakou?

  the shooter is out of place or some other unforeseen complication arises? Investigators had to consider the crime from the perp's perspective, and as for the perp, Lizbeth wasn't the only person confused about him. Anders Bjorkman, whom Lizbeth had first mistaken as the killer, and Anders Delsborn, another witness, claimed that the killer and the Palmas appeared to be a group of three. In other words, those two witnesses thought the Palmas and the shooter were together. Another witness, Anna Haga, agreed with that interpretation. Bjorkman claimed that initially, he saw Palma and the killer talking to each other. When Palma went to turn around,

• 31:36John Kiriakou?

  the killer put his right hand on Palma's back and fired the kill shot. That eyewitness account suggested a physically identifying feature of the killer, that he was left-handed, or at the very least, that he was comfortable using either hand to fire a shot. If you've ever handled firearms, you probably know how challenging it is to use your non-dominant hand to aim and fire. If you're firing with your left, it's because that is your dominant. Still, not all accounts substantiated the claims of the shooter's left-handedness. On the Monday after the murder, the investigative team contacted German colleagues

• 32:17John Kiriakou?

  at the Federal Criminal Police Office, or BKA Laboratory, in Wiesbaden. The BKA was considered the absolute best in Europe at creating composite sketches for investigations involving unknown assailants. A BKA team traveled to Stockholm on March 5 to produce images based on the descriptions from key witnesses. One of, if not the most crucial eyewitness, would turn out to be a 22-year-old woman with the pseudonym Sarah. She was given a pseudonym to protect her identity. Sarah walked out of the staff entrance of Stockholm's hottest nightclub, Alexandra's, to smoke a cigarette. As she opened the staff entrance door onto a street named Smala Grand,

• 33:01John Kiriakou?

  she almost hit a man with the door. "He was rushing by nervously," Sarah observed. Their eyes met, and realizing he had been seen, the man flipped up his collar, concealing his face. Though their encounter was very brief, there was one bit of luck in what had otherwise been a luckless night. The area was well lit. Because of that, Sarah was able to see the man with the collar clearly enough to recognize some of his features. When she woke up the next morning to the news that the prime minister had been killed, she immediately phoned the police, realizing what she may have witnessed that night: the prime minister's murderer escaping. BKA, the German sketch artists,

• 33:44John Kiriakou?

  went to work producing composite images. The two-man team, Superintendent Joachim Huhn and Desk Officer Stefan Wagner, had brought all of their state-of-the-art equipment with them from Germany. This included the Minolta Montage synthesizer, which at the time was the pinnacle of modern image processing. At 26 inches across and weighing in at a staggering 50 pounds, this was no small piece of equipment. Let's zoom in for a moment on how exactly composite photos are actually created. Photographs of faces are separated into four quadrants: the chin and mouth, the cheek and nose, the eyes and forehead, and the hair. These sections are placed into corresponding slots

• 34:28John Kiriakou?

  on the side of the Minolta Montage synthesizer. Based on the eyewitness's description, the operator slides various versions of each facial section in and out of position, slowly building an image that matches their memory as closely as possible. It takes about an hour, normally. But the compositing process used to try and solve the Palma assassination was anything but normal. Sarah, the young woman who had almost hit the fleeing suspect with the back door of Sweden's hottest bar while she was exiting it, had a phenomenal memory and far above-average observational abilities. Sitting at the Montage synthesizer for staggering four hours, Sarah managed to produce a high-quality black-and-white portrait

• 35:13John Kiriakou?

  of a slender-faced man with a rigidly straight nose that bisected his face from his almond-shaped eyes to just above his snake-thin lips. Another key detail: just above his lips, on the right, there sat a slight mole-like smudge. This unique characteristic would make identifying the alleged killer significantly easier. Pulling back the camera again, Sweden did not have a term for composite imaging, though that's what they needed. They borrowed a German word used by the BKA technicians: Phantombild, or in English, "the phantom image." Hans Holmer hand-delivered this composite phantom image of the killer

• 35:56John Kiriakou?

  to his boss, National Police Commissioner Holger Romander. Since it was Romander's birthday, Holmer brought along a birthday gift, too: a cigarette case. So thoughtful. While other composite images were created from the memories of the other witnesses, the phantom image was the only one that was mass-photocopied, distributed, and published. It's important to note that one person who was never asked to produce a facial composite was Lizbeth Palma. And probably for good reason. As I noted, she confused the killer for one of the key witnesses.

• 36:36Speaker 00

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• 38:20John Kiriakou?

  Following the phantom image's publication, more than 8,000 tips poured into the investigation's tip line. Having a face to circulate marked a huge breakthrough in the case, even if it was still unclear if the face being circulated was actually the man who had fired the shots. Curiously, having thrown all those resources at creating that image just a couple of months later, the image would become suspect after the witness, Sarah's reliability, fell under suspicion. What really happened was that the investigators all had their theories, and Sarah's composited picture of the killer clashed with the investigators' various theories.

• 39:02John Kiriakou?

  If we can compare this to fitting a square peg into a square-shaped hole, it would be the equivalent of trying to fit a square peg into a circle-shaped hole, and then claiming that the circular hole was the problem and not the square peg that you're determined to force into it. In the arena of debate and rhetoric, it holds a specific name. It's called confirmation bias. Putting yet another bizarre and dubious action from the investigating team aside, let's take a closer look at the man who would be the first real suspect in the case. Viktor Gunnarsson's story was kind of microcosm of this whole investigation. Dubbed "the 33-year-old",

• 39:44John Kiriakou?

  Gunnarsson had been pointed out by two witnesses for acting suspiciously. Gunnarsson certainly fit and played the part. He came from a tiny village called Yammo in remote Blackinga County in southeastern Sweden. Jumping around from job to job, Gunnarsson didn't have any real friends. He joined the far-right-wing European Workers' Party, the EAP. He had a deep admiration for the United States and would go so far as to speak Swedish with an American accent. As I said, multiple witnesses placed Gunnarsson at the scene, doing strange things. One witness described him trying to stop a car and asking for a lift on a street connected to the steps

• 40:26John Kiriakou?

  at the end of Tunnelgarten immediately following the murder. Another witness saw Gunnarsson entering a movie theater roughly 10 to 12 minutes after the shooting, a full half an hour after the movie had already begun. It's a very Lee Harvey Oswald thing to do. Police took Gunnarsson in for questioning first on March 8, only to then release him that same evening. They took a second crack at Gunnarsson on March 12.

• 40:56John Kiriakou?

  Investigators searched his house just outside of Stockholm. While the search came up mainly empty, they did find something curious. It was a key that didn't work on any of the locks in Gunnarsson's home. Here's an odd thing. You remember the PKK, the militant Kurdistan Workers' Party? When investigator Tommy Lindstrom gained access to this key, he proved something that confirmed police suspicions, not against Gunnarsson, but against the PKK. That key happened to fit a door that was in a building in which the PKK had an apartment. Increasingly, Homers would return to this lead.

• 41:39John Kiriakou?

  Particle testing on Gunnarsson's clothing indicated a strong possibility that Gunnarsson had fired a weapon recently. For the record, there was no established connection between the residue on Gunnarsson's clothing and the murder weapon. Gunnarsson also had military experience, and he belonged to a shooting club, which in the early days of the investigation seemed to be a big deal. Investigators had deduced via the bullet's trajectory, through Palma's trachea, aorta, and spinal column, that the shooter had an intimate knowledge of firearms. And to top it all off, Gunnarsson had no alibi for the night of the murder. On the 17th, police took Gunnarsson into custody, and the prosecutor made a request to the court to detain him.

• 42:24John Kiriakou?

  A fragmented and already messy investigation became even messier when Chief Prosecutor KG Svensson opposed Homers' continued detention of Gunnarsson. Svensson was unconvinced by the evidence against Gunnarsson. Not only was there zero forensic evidence, but central witnesses failed to identify him. And one of the two witnesses who had identified Gunnarsson, the one claiming Gunnarsson had tried to hitch a ride, could no longer identify Gunnarsson with 100% confidence. As it was his decision to make, Svensson released Gunnarsson. That infuriated Homer, who broke off communication with Svensson.

• 43:08John Kiriakou?

  A question now arose. Who held ultimate power in this investigation? The Ministry of Justice surprisingly sided with Homer. That didn't change the fact that Gunnarsson was released, but Homer walked away with a political edge in the ensuing investigations. He completely curbed Svensson's involvement. As for Gunnarsson, though he left Sweden for the United States, public attention and suspicions followed him all the way to Salisbury, North Carolina. Eight years later, on January 7, 1994, Gunnarsson's body was found near Deep Gap, North Carolina. The medical examiner concluded that he had been shot in the head

• 43:52John Kiriakou?

  with a 22 caliber pistol. He'd been dead for weeks. He was naked, wearing only a gold watch and a gold ring. Suspicion spiked anew. Could this be related to the Palma murder? Was this the Jack Ruby moment? Actually, the murder's root cause was a love triangle. Police Officer Lamont Claxton Underwood had killed Gunnarsson out of jealousy after taking him out to dinner. Gunnarsson had been sleeping with Underwood's former fiance. But Gunnarsson's messy murder aside, there were connections that led back to Olaf Palma. When police searched Gunnarsson's North Carolina home, they found something wildly unexpected. It was an address for the former mercenary Ivan von Birken.

• 44:37John Kiriakou?

  According to later accounts of the police search, investigators found a note in Gunnarsson's home referring to Charles ITT. The original document has not been publicly authenticated in a way that establishes what the phrase meant. However, there are plausible theories, primarily from research professor Emeritus at the Peace Research Institute Oslo by the name of Ola Thunander. According to Thunander, who has spent much of his life writing about security politics, naval strategy, submarine operations, geopolitics, dual states, psychological operations, and Cold War history. Charles ITT was an alias for Charles Morgan,

• 45:19John Kiriakou?

  a CIA officer who in November 1985 had offered von Birken $2,800,000 to shoot Olaf Palma. Ah, but Charles Morgan or Charles ITT has always been an elusive character, and von Birken has always been described by more than one person as a swindler and a liar. So what can you believe? Solving the puzzle of a murder, especially 40 years after the fact, is tough. But when you don't know who to trust or where the truth actually lies, it takes on a whole new level of difficulty. It is public record that von Birken

• 46:03John Kiriakou?

  had, in the weeks leading up to the murder of Olaf Palma, personally delivered warnings to Inger Bavner, a social democratic Stockholm city councillor, KG Olsen, the Stockholm Police Commissioner, and Alf Carlsson, an official within Sapo. But von Birken's warnings were never investigated. No action was taken to determine the credibility of his claims. And what's worse, von Birken's wasn't the only warning or threatening note. Stig Larsson was especially intrigued by a fierce Palma hater by the name of Anders Larsson, no relation. Anders Larsson was a prominent member of the WACL, the World League for Freedom and Democracy,

• 46:47John Kiriakou?

  an international anti-communist NGO founded in 1954 under an initiative of Chiang Kai-shek of all people, the leader of the Republic of China as the Asian People's Anti-Communist League. Like von Birken, Anders Larsson had also delivered envelopes to government offices and the Foreign Ministry. In one, Anders Larsson put an old newspaper article about the death of Olaf Palma's uncle, also named Olaf. The article's headline read, "Dr. Olaf Palma is Dead", but someone had crossed out the word "doctor". This threatening lead too was never followed up. These intersecting circles weren't coincidental.

• 47:31John Kiriakou?

  Multiple people were sending similar threats and warnings through and to the Swedish government. It's entirely possible, if the anti-communist circles had been put together like Stay Behind networks, that one anti-communist circle had no idea what the others were doing. Yet both von Birken and Anders Larsson knew Viktor Gunnarsson personally. This was according to a Baltic exile named Joel Hakka, who could be described as an informant for Sweden's military intelligence unit, SSI. In an interview he gave to Estonia's public broadcaster, ERR, Hakka described seeing Anders Larsson physically drop off the warnings.

• 48:16John Kiriakou?

  And Hakka wasn't the only person watching Anders Larsson. Writer and researcher Jan Stoklasa, referencing a conversation between Stig Larsson and Hakkan Hermansson, a man we'll talk about a lot more in the next episode. When Anders Larsson dropped off the warnings, he was already being investigated by a parliamentary stenographer named Bent Henningsson. Stig Larsson told Hakkan Hermansson, quote, "That doesn't make any sense to me. That would mean that the guy who dropped off the warning before the assassination was being tailed by both military counterintelligence and Sapo",

• 48:59John Kiriakou?

  Hermansson added, quote, "And neither of them acted to prevent the assassination", A lot of people knew this was coming. While the murder investigation was about to submerge itself in the belief that the PKK had carried out the murder, independent investigators like Stig Larsson would point to other, more deeply entrenched networks, all of which had more to gain from Palma's untimely demise than did the PKK. Another question would rise from the depths. Who were these various people surveilling Olaf Palma? Multiple witnesses reported seeing men with walkie-talkies along Palma's final route.

• 49:42John Kiriakou?

  Could this have been a larger, fuller-scale operation than realized? Yes, as a matter of fact, it could. In the next episode, we'll dive into Hans Homers' obsession with pursuing the PKK lead, and we'll explore the second suspect officially detained in the investigation, one that Lizbeth Palma herself would point out, for better or worse. Meanwhile, Stig Larsson was uncovering something far more insidious. Whole networks dedicated to seeing the downfall and murder of Olaf Palma. How ironic. As far as the lead investigators were concerned, the suspect list was shrinking.

• 50:25John Kiriakou?

  But to Stig Larsson, the suspect list was about to grow exponentially. Until next time, I'm John Kiriakou. "An Enemy Within" is written by Tristan Katz and Alan Katz. Micah Smith did the sound design and audio mix. Costart and Touchstone produced the podcast, and John Kiriakou and Alan Katz are the executive producers.

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