Notorious Stockholm Syndrome Criminal Clark Olofsson Dies at 78

Clark Olofsson, the Swedish criminal whose involvement in a 1973 bank robbery and hostage crisis led to the coining of the term "Stockholm syndrome," has died at the age of 78 after a long illness. During the six-day siege at Kreditbanken in Stockholm, Olofsson and his accomplice Jan-Erik Olsson held hostages who began to sympathize with their captors and even defended them against the police, a phenomenon that inspired the psychological concept now known as Stockholm syndrome. Olofsson was brought to the bank from prison at Olsson's demand, and during the standoff, he persuaded hostage Kristin Enmark to speak with Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, expressing trust and concern for the captors. Olofsson later claimed he had been asked to act as an inside man to protect the hostages in exchange for a reduced sentence, an agreement he accused officials of breaking. His criminal career included multiple prison breaks and bank robberies, and his story was dramatized in a 2022 Netflix series starring Bill Skarsgård. The hostage situation ended when police used gas to force the captors out, resulting in their arrest and cementing Olofsson's place in criminal and psychological history.