It's 34 years since Swedish prime minister Olof Palme was assassinated, shot in the back at close range when walking home from cinema with his wife.

In 34 mins the current prosecutor will reveal new findings, having hinted that the chain of events are figured out.

'Palme’s murder was a defining moment in Swedish history. The national trauma was made worse by a botched police investigation that led nowhere.

There has been no end of documentaries, conspiracy theories and articles surfacing at regular intervals...'

scmp.com/news/world/eur…

In 1989, Christer Pettersson – a local man with a history of crime – was convicted of Palme’s murder. He was subsequently acquitted, and has since died.

Not to be confused with the chief prosecutor making the announcement today, whose name is Krister Petersson.

According to media, police have found the weapon. Krister Petersson, the prosecutor, has gone on the record only to say that he has uncovered new technical evidence.

We are now seconds away from the announcement...

The primary suspect, that the investigation is landing on as the responsible perpetrator, Stig Engström, is deceased. This means there will be no indictment.

134 people have confessed to the murder over the years. Stig Engström is not one of them.

Both fired bullets have been recovered, the one that killed Olof Palme, and the one that grazed his wife, Lisbet Palme.

They are of type Winchester Wester, Metal Piercing and calibre .357 Magnum.

Now lots of technical details on identifying bullets and the likely weapon...

788 weapons have been tested for purposes of finding a match.

But NFC (National Forensic Centre) say it would be very hard, if even possible, to match the right weapon to the right bullets. The weapon could make different markings today than it did in 1986.

A reminder that the Palme investigation is one of the world’s largest police investigations, often compared to the investigations into the murder of John F Kennedy and the Lockerbie bombing.

Interesting historical leads summarised.

We are reminded that Christer Pettersson was identified in a police line-up as the first person Lisbet Palme saw after turning around, as she did not see the firing of the gun itself.

A run through lack of access to new technical evidence. And details about early witness reports.

When this group of investigators took over the investigation there was one witness whose information stood out and did not match other testimonies.

That witness was Stig Engström.

As he was there he gave testimony, but other witnesses have no recollection of him. It appears he left the scene very quickly. His appearance and clothes matches the description of many witness reports of the person fleeing from the scene.

Other details from his testimony do not match the timelines that can be pieced together from multiple other witness reports.

Ha also said that he spoke with Lisbet Palme, who gave a description of the shooter. Which she had no recollection of and which there are no notes of.

Stig Engström said he ran after police to provide a description of the shooter. And despite being a good runner, he could not find them. Even though they stopped for lengths of time to inspect escalators and lifts (elevators).

The perpetrator description that Stig Engström wanted to provide (that he claimed was from Lisbet Palme) did not match any other witness descriptions. Instead, all other descriptions of the perpetrator matched Engström's clothes.

You can read more about Stig Engström on his Wikipedia page: The Skandia Man. Ha has been a long-time high-profile witness - openly criticising the investigation.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Skand…

The last line of his Wikipedia page has obviously changed already.

"After initially treating him as a person of interest, the police appear to have grown frustrated at Engström as an unreliable witness and publicity seeker who was making a nuisance of himself. He would no longer figure in the official investigation."

Big mistake.

Taking a break from reporting now as I have to do a bit of work.

(They're going through maps now to provide further evidence that Engström's testimonies make little sense.)

A sidetone: There is lots of open criticism of the team that managed the investigation directly following the murder, in their treatment of witnesses and not seeing the value of certain reports.

Now especially the testimony of Yvonne Nieminen.

At the time of the murder my family was living in Saudi Arabia. When my mother got into her workplace at a pre-school, 3 well-dressed men stood outside to express their condolences. Them acknowledging a woman in this way was when she realised how huge Olof Palme was in the world.

🔗 Originally posted on Twitter