"Lie down! The party begins!" Screaming in English, Jan-Erik Olsson entered a bank in Stockholm on August 23, 1973, drugged, agitated, and brandished a submachine gun.
Thus began a six-day hostage play that gave rise to the term "Stockholm Syndrome" - a now-known worldwide concept that captives develop romantic relationships. sympathize with their captors.
Olsson, known as "Janne", took four employees hostage - three women and one man.
Police and the media quickly surrounded the square outside Kreditbanken, with snipers stationed in the surrounding buildings, guns pointed at the bank.
Olsson used the two hostages as human shields and threatened to kill them. “After that, I used to think about the silly situation we were in,” hostage Kristin Enmark, then 23, recalls in her book, “I Became the Stockholm Syndrome.”
"Panic and caught between two death threats, a policeman on the one hand and a robber on the other."
"Fear for my life"
Olsson made several demands, demanding three million crowns (nearly $700,000 at the time) and Clark Olofsson, one of the country's most notorious bank robbers at the time, to be brought to the bank.
To smooth things over, the Swedish government agreed.
The whole country was mesmerized by the ongoing drama, one of the first major news events to be televised live on Swedish television.
"When Clark Olofsson arrived, he took control of the situation, he was the one who spoke to the police," recalls Bertil Ericsson, 73, a press photographer covering the crisis, today. in an interview with AFP. "He's got a lot of charisma. He's a good speaker."
Olsson calmed down as soon as Olofsson arrived. And Kristin Enmark quickly saw in Olofsson a savior.
"He promised to make sure nothing happened to me and I decided to believe him," she wrote.
"I'm 23 years old and scared for my life."
She spoke to authorities over the phone several times during the hostage drama, which shocked the world as she stood up for her captors. "I'm not afraid of Clark and that guy at all, I'm afraid of the police. You understand? I trust them completely," she told Prime Minister Olof Palme in a phone call.
“Believe it or not, but we had a great time here,” she said, adding that they were “telling stories” and “playing chess.”
"You know what I'm afraid of? That the police would do something to us, storm the bank or something."
The crisis ended on Friday when police pepper-sprayed the bank, forcing Olsson and Olofsson to surrender and free the hostages.
