A criminal who helped inspire Stockholm Syndrome The term dies at the age of 78

One of the two charismatic criminals involved in the abduction, which gave the world the term “Stockholm Syndrome” died at the age of 78, his family said.

Clark Olofson – who rose to global fame in 1973. After a robbery of abduction and bank robbery in the Swedish capital, he died after a prolonged illness, his family told the online media Dagens, etc.

During a six-day siege, the hostages of Olofson began to sympathize with him and his accomplice, defending their actions as he grew more hostile to the police outside.

The incident gives its name to a theorized psychological condition, in which the victims of abduction develop attachments to their abductors.

The famous siege of the bank was incited by another man, Jan-Erik Olson. After seizing three women and a man hostage, he asked for Olofson – with whom he had previously been friends in prison – to be brought to the bank by prison.

The Swedish authorities agreed to his request and Olofson entered the bank, which was surrounded by police.

Years later, in an interview with Aftonbladet, he claims to have been asked to work as an internal person to keep the captives safe in exchange for a reduced sentence, but accused officers of not worshiping the agreement.

Olofson convinced one of the hostages, Christine Enmarc, to talk to the Swedish prime minister by phone on behalf of the robbers.

She begged him to be allowed to leave the bank in a car to escape with the abductors, saying to him, “I fully trust Clark and the robber … They didn’t do something to us.”

She continued: “On the contrary, they were very nice … Believe it or not, but we had a really nice time here.”

In the course of several telephone calls, Enmark said she was afraid that her abductors would be hurt by police and repeatedly defended their actions.

In her memoir, she told Olofson: “He promised that he would make sure that nothing had happened to me and I decided to believe him. I was 23 years old and was afraid of my life.”

The hostage situation ended in six days when the police were breaking through the roof and using tear gas to conquer the couple.

Initially, the offenders refused to leave their abductors because of fears that they would be shot by police. Later, the hostages also refused to testify against Olofson and Olson.

Since then, experts have been discussing whether Stockholm’s syndrome is an actual psychiatric condition, some claim to be a protective mechanism for dealing with traumatic situations.

The term was introduced after the siege by Swedish criminologist and psychiatrist Niels Bedzhero to explain the seemingly irrational attachment that some captives are experiencing towards their hostage participants.

The theory reached the broader audience of next year when the California heir to the Patty Harst newspaper was abducted by revolutionary fightersS

Speaking of BBC SideWays in 2021Enmark destroyed the concept of Stockholm’s syndrome, saying, “It’s a way to blame the victim. I did what I could to survive.”

Olofson was a repeated criminal and spent much of his life in prison. He was released for the last time in 2018 after serving a sentence for drug violation in Belgium.

In 2022, the actor Bill Skarsgard presented it in the dramatic series of Netflix Clark.