The Crazy True Story Behind Stockholm Syndrome

The term «Stockholm syndrome» explains the irrational feelings of hostages to their captors. It all started with a bank robbery in Stockholm. On 23 August 1973, convict Jan-Erik Olsson was on leave from the prison. He walked into a bank with a submachine gun. Olsson fired several shots at the ceiling and announced the robbery. He took four bank workers hostage. The robber demanded 3,000,000 Swedish kronor, a getaway car, and the release of another prisoner, Clark Olofsson. Clark Olofsson served a sentence for an armed robbery and murder of a policeman. Within hours, the police delivered Olofsson, money, and blue Ford Mustang. The robbers demanded to leave the place with hostages. It was the only way for them to ensure their safety. But the police refused to let them go with the hostages. For the next six days, robbers looked for the way to get away. Entire Sweden worried about the captives. But the hostages felt totally safe near the captors and even supported them. Later, they described that the abductors were mostly nice to them. Olsson gave a wool jacket to the hostage Kristin Enmark when she began to shiver. He also gave her a bullet from his gun as a souvenir. He encouraged another captive to call her family. When she couldn’t reach them he told her, «Try again, don’t give up». Hostage Elisabet Oldgren suffered from claustrophobia. So the captors let her walk outside with a 30-foot rope. They called each other on a first name. The captives started to fear the police more than the abductors. One of the hostages called the Prime Minister of Sweden and asked him to let the robbers go. The hostages felt sympathetic to the abductors even when they were threatened with physical harm. Olsson threatened to shot in the leg of a hostage to shake up the police. On the sixth day, the police decided to act. They pumped tear gas into the vault and abductors surrendered. Hostages continued to defend the two. They refused to go out of the vault first. When the captors were imprisoned the ex-hostages visited them and sent them letters. Warm feelings between the abductors and the hostages surprised the police and the nation.
After months of examination, the theory of the Stockholm Syndrome appeared.

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