Less than a fortnight after the murder, Wednesday the twelfth of March, he had been arrested. A week later he was released, and after another two months, on May 16, 1986, the prosecutor decided to close the preliminary investigation on him.
During those two months a number of things happened that concerned Gunnarsson and in time filled half a dozen thick binders in the Palme investigation’s files: technical investigations of his residence and his clothes, interviews with relatives and witnesses, photo arrays, diverse expert statements, as well as a major charting of his background and way of life. After that there had been mostly silence about him for several years. Freed from the suspicion of having assassinated the prime minister, he emigrated to the USA in the early nineties, and it was only when the American police made contact in January 1994 and reported that Gunnarsson had been found murdered-shot several times and dumped in a wooded ravine in the wilds of North Carolina-that he once again landed in the headlines.
It proved to be an ordinary drama of jealousy. That the perpetrator on whom Gunnarsson set horns was also a policeman was in some way consistent, considering the life Gunnarsson seemed to have lived. The investigator in the Palme group who was responsible for the preliminary investigation of Gunnarsson had a hard time handling his disappointment in any case. In his world it was still Gunnarsson who had murdered Olof Palme, and only a few years after Gunnarsson’s demise he published a book in which he tried to prove it.
Mattei found a copy stuffed into one of the binders, with a personal dedication: “From the author to his colleagues in the Palme room,” and when Lewin left the room to get coffee for them both she took the opportunity to slip the book into her handbag to read in peace and quiet as soon as she got home.
Six bulging binders on Åke Victor Gunnarsson, but nothing compared to the material that dealt with the so-called Kurd track, or PKK track, which evidently occupied almost two hundred police officers full-time during the first years of the Palme investigation.
The idea that the PKK, Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan, or Kurdistan Workers’ Party, could have murdered the prime minister seemed to have made a deep impression on the leadership during the first week of the investigation. The original material came from officers with the secret police who had reason to be interested in the organization in a completely different context. During the two preceding years, PKK had been behind a total of three murders and one attempted murder in Sweden and Denmark, crimes aimed at defectors from the organization, but apart from a certain superficial similarity in approach, it was almost a mystery why they also would have attacked the Swedish prime minister.
PKK was known for murdering defectors and infiltrators in their own ranks. Not for attacking Western politicians and least of all the prime minister of Sweden, a politician and a country that was kindly disposed to the Kurdish liberation struggle and had offered political asylum to a large number of Kurdish refugees.
During the latter part of July 1986 the investigation leadership decided that PKK “with high probability was behind the murder of the prime minister.” Several meetings were held on the topic, and in one of the many binders Mattei found detailed minutes from the investigation leadership’s own management team, in which their conviction was put on paper.
During the following six months the Kurd track, or PKK track, would also constitute the so-called Main track. All according to the top boss’s own terminology, and for Lisa Mattei it was a mystery in a factual sense. Regardless, at that time, twenty years ago, all their resources had basically been directed at this track, and the whole thing ended with a real bang.
Early on the morning of January 20, 1987, investigation leader Holmér conducted a major operation. Twenty-some Kurds were seized, several house searches were made, and many things were confiscated. Already after a few hours the prosecutors started releasing the majority of those whom the police had deprived of liberty, all the confiscations were revoked within a few days, and the two individuals who were arrested were released after a week.
It was a scandal. Holmér was fired as investigation leader and resigned as police chief. The responsibility for the investigation was turned over to the prosecutor, and the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation was given the task of supplying him with the police officers needed to take care of the practical aspects. The Kurd track had suddenly simply ended. All that remained twenty years later were almost a hundred binders of papers plus a number of boxes that held things that were hard to stuff into binders.
Sigh and moan, thought Mattei, even though she seldom thought that way.
But there were other things too. All the crazy tips, for example. Another hundred binders and thousands of tips, mostly about particular perpetrators who could have murdered Olof Palme. This was also the essential reason that the investigation’s list of such persons-suspects of all kinds, provided on various grounds, pointed out with no grounds, the result of pure premonitions and vibrations in the informant’s head-amounted to almost ten thousand named individuals. In the majority of cases the reports went straight into the binder without the police showing the least interest in them.
Let’s sincerely hope it’s not one of them, thought Mattei self-righteously.
Remaining were all the tracks that had the good taste to fit into a smaller number of binders. Often one or two were enough for these tracks, and the maximum was five. It was also here that there seemed to be political, ideological, or more generally visible ambitions. Here were leads that concerned South Africa, the Iraq/Iran conflict alias the Iran/Iraq conflict, the “Middle East including Israel,” “India/Pakistan” alias the “Indian weapons affair” alias the “Bofors affair.”
Here were other leads that dealt with various “terrorists” or “violent organizations” all the way from the Baader-Meinhof Gang, the Red Brigades, Black September, and Ustašha to the crew-cut talents in KSS, Keep Sweden Swedish, and the old disgruntled socialists who were said to form the backbone of We Who Built Sweden.
Here too were organizations and individuals who should have known better or at least shown mercy to the victim. Government security agencies in the Balkans, in South Africa and various dictatorships and banana republics, as well as the USA’s own CIA. Military personnel and ordinary Swedish police officers, various intimates, acquaintances, and former work and party comrades. There was even a subfile that dealt with members of the victim’s own family.
The family track, thought Lisa Mattei. For some reason she thought of her mother, who had worked as a police superintendent at the secret police for more than twenty years.
Here there was literally something for everyone, and as far as the factual basis for the political speculations was concerned, Mattei believed it seemed consistent enough. Mysterious informants who claimed to have a secret past, various revelations in the media, former TV journalists with psychiatric diagnoses plus all the regular nutcases who figured in the public debate. Otherwise little or nothing.
The most concrete contributions Mattei found were the travelogues that various Palme investigators had turned in over the years. Assuming that the clues led in the direction of warmer regions and the season was right, a number of leads had been investigated on-site.
Unfortunately and in all cases without result, but at least the foreign colleagues seemed to have taken good care of their Swedish visitors.
It’s always something, thought Lisa Mattei.
Most of all, however, it was all about the “Palme assassin” Christer Pettersson. During two periods of several years combined, the investigation seemed to have been mainly about him. It began the summer of 1988 and ran through to the end of the following year, when he was freed by the Svea Court of Appeal. Then there was a period of relative calm lasting several years, up until 1993 when preparations were made for a petition for a new trial to rehear the acquittal decision.