The Unmarked Grave of Christer Pettersson

A late February night in 1986 the Swedish prime minister Olof Palme was fatally wounded by a gunshot at Sveavägen in downtown Stockholm. Ha and his wife, Lisbeth Palme, were walking home from a cinema when a lone gunman walked up to the couple, shot the prime minister in the back, and wounded Lisbeth with a second shot. Olof Palme died from his wounds with his wounded wife refusing to leave his side.

It took almost three years, until December 1988, before someone was arrested for the murder. Christer Petterson, previously convicted for manslaughter and with a history of drug use and alcoholism, was identified by Lisbeth Palme as the perpetrator in a lineup. He was convicted the next year but acquitted on appeal for several reasons: no murder weapon had been presented, a lack of motive, and there were doubts about Mrs. Palme’s testimonial due to “extremely gross errors” by the police when arranging the lineup.

In 2020, the Swedish Prosecution Authority proposed another man as the most likely perpetrator further clearing Christer Pettersson’s name. He had been dead for years and no trial was held to convict him. But with a prime minister murdered without any conviction, there are those who still believe Christer Pettersson was involved.

Christer Pettersson died in 2004 after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage after falling during an epileptic seizure. He is buried, with his parents, in a family grave in Solna where he lived and where he had wished to be buried. The tombstone was removed in 2011 and the infamous alleged prime minister murdered is now resting under the grass at grave 4984 at section 39 of the North Cemetery in Solna.