Stockholm Syndrome

The former building of Sveriges Kreditbanken Bank

On the morning of August 23, 1973, Jan-Erik Olsson, an escaped convict, entered the Sveriges Kreditbanken bank, pulled a loaded submachine gun, fired at the ceiling and yelled out in English, “The party has just begun!”  After wounding a police officer who had responded to the silent alarm, Olsson took four bank employees hostage for a standoff that would last five days.  Olsson demanded  $700,000 in Swedish and foreign currency, a getaway car and the release of Clark Olofsson, a friend who was currently serving time. Within hours, the police had delivered Olsson's requests; yet,  authorities refused  Olsson’s demand to leave with the hostages in tow to ensure his safe passage.  During the time of their captivity, the hostages began to form a bond with their captor as he soothed and calmed their nerves during the ordeal.  By the second day, the hostages were on a first-name basis with their captors, and they started to fear the police more than their abductors.  One police officer noted after observing the hostages, that they seemed aggresive and hostile towards him and relaxed with their captor.  After 130 hours, the police ended the standoff by pumping tear gas into the bank, forcing both the captors and hostages to surrender.    The police called for the hostages to come out first, but the four captives, protecting their abductors to the very end, refused.  At the end of the ordeal, the hostages and captors embraced, kissed and shook hands before surrendering to the police.  Even after Olofsson and Olsson returned to prison, the hostages made jailhouse visits to their former captors.  Olsson was released from prison in 1980, after which he married one of his female admirers that had written to him while he was in prison.  Attending the wedding as a guest of honor, was one of the hostages from his bank robbery.  It was from the incident that the term Stockholm Syndrome originated from and refers irrational compassion and attachment the hostages felt towards  their captors.