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Comment by bjourne | Hacker News Reader

The Palme murder was the largest unsolved crime mystery of my life time and it ends like this? Definitely a very disappointing conclusion to the investigation.

You couldn't even make it into a movie script because it would be so unbelievable.

A 52 year old man that has no history of crime and who most considers somewhat "feminine" sees Palme and decides to shoot him on a whim. With a revolver he carries in his purse this night. Then he flees the scene but returns ten to fifteen minutes later. None of the other dozen witnesses who are still there and are being questioned by the police recognizes him and he blends in as just another witness. Then instead of keeping a low profile he contacts the police the following days and offer to testify. He also does several interviews in the media over the years. Fourteen years later he dies in an apparent suicide never having told anyone about the murder.

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Only problem is, all the other possible suspects are even less likely:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Olof_Palme#Mu...

It's a Sherlock Holmes case: "Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."

Christer Andersson, the man identified as GH in the wikipedia article is imho just as likely, if not more so, compared to the Skandiaman.

1. He lived in the vicinity of the murder scene

2. He fits the description given by many witnesses extremly well.

3. He owned a revolver of the same type as the murder weapon

4. He claimed to have sold the revolver to some unknown person when asked.

5. He had just been bankrupted, due to a change in tax policy, implemented by Olof Palme's government

6. The police had been called to his home some time before the murder, because someone had heard a gunshot. He claimed then to have accidentally shot at Olof Palme on television.

7. He committed suicide in 2004 when police was knocking on his door.

8. He claimed to have an alibi the evening of the murder, but his alibi did not check out.

There is no smoking gun, but he is definitely just as likely a culprit as the man currently pointed out.

It's not a Sherlock Holmes case at all. That principal only applies to locked-room style mysteries, with a provably tiny pool of possible suspects that can be eliminated one by one. I.e., fictional situations.

In this case, the set of "other possible suspects" includes literally everybody in the world who loosely fits the description of the killer and can't prove they were elsewhere that day.

"On a whim" is not entirely correct. Palme was widely hated by the political right, to an uncomfortable degree.

The theory is the he did not actually return to the scene, right? He just said he did to create confusion.

Yes, but there are other witnesses that claims to have seen him at the scene. It is also known that he left his office 50 meters from the murder scene 23:19 or 23:20 (exact time is hotly disputed) and returned to it at 23:40. According to the night watchman he was visibly shaken and they spoke about the murder that he had just witnessed. Not exactly how you expect someone who just has murdered a prime minister to act.

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