STOCKHOLM: Clark Olofsson, a Swedish bank robber who held four people hostage for six days in a 1973 Stockholm bank siege that coined the term “Stockholm Syndrome”, has died aged 78, his family said on Thursday.

Olofsson, one of Sweden’s most notorious repeat offenders and the subject of the 2022 Netflix series Clark, died at a Swedish hospital after a lengthy illness, his family told online media outlet Dagens ETC.

Olofsson had a slew of convictions including robbery, attempted murder, drug dealing and assault, and spent more than half of his life in prison. He was best known for his role in the August 23, 1973 seige of Kreditbanken in central Stockholm.

Another robber, Janne Olsson, had stormed the bank waving a submachine gun, taking three women and one man hostage as police quickly swarmed the building.

Olsson was agitated and demanded that Olofsson, who was in prison for bank robbery at the time, be brought to the bank, and Sweden’s government agreed.

One of the hostages, Kristin En­­mark, later wrote in her book “I Became the Stock­holm Synd­rome” that when Olofsson arrived, she saw him as her saviour.

“He promised that he would make sure nothing happened to me and I decided to believe him,” she wrote.

“I was 23 years old and feared for my life.” She spoke on the phone to authorities several times during the hostage drama, shocking the world when she came out in defence of her captors.

“I’m not the least bit afraid of Clark and the other guy, I’m afraid of the police. Do you understand? I trust them completely,” she told the prime minister at the time, Olof Palme, in one phone call.

“Believe it or not but we’ve had a really nice time here,” she said, adding that they were “telling stories” and “playing checkers”.

“You know what I’m afraid of? That the police will do something to us, storm the bank or something,” she said. The crisis ended on the sixth day when police sprayed tear gas inside the bank, forcing Olsson and Olofsson to surrender, and freeing the hostages. The hostages later refused to testify against their captors.

Experts have since debated whether “Stockholm Syndrome” is an actual psychiatric condition, with some arguing it is instead a defence mechanism to cope with a traumatic situation.

Published in Dawn, June 27th, 2025