Cold Open

It’s August 28th, 1973, in Stockholm, Sweden.

An armed police officer slowly edges along a wall near the vault to the bank Kreditbanken. He’s trying to keep his movements as quiet as possible, but it’s a tough task to move silently when he's wearing a gas mask and can't see where he's stepping.

Five days ago, a robbery went wrong at this branch of Kreditbanken. And the thief didn’t get away before police arrived, so he retreated into the vault with an accomplice and four hostages. Now, the whole of Sweden is watching the siege unfold on television, and authorities have decided it’s time to bring the hostage crisis to an end.

The officer checks his weapon is loaded with tear gas canisters and is ready to fire. The plan is to force the robber into surrendering without provoking a firefight that might risk the hostages’ lives.

The officer then takes his place next to a hole in the bank vault that’s been patched up with wood from the other side. He raises the weapon, then signals to a colleague who’s standing by with a sledgehammer.

The other officer swings the hammer, smashing through the wood and opening the hole back up.

Before anyone on the other side can respond, the officer fires his weapon and sends a tear gas canister into the bank vault. Then, his colleague clamps a panel against the hole to stop the noxious fumes from escaping.

After a few seconds, the tear gas begins to take effect on the other side of the wall. The police officers warily watch the vault door—until finally, it swings open, and the robber and his accomplice stumble out, their eyes streaming tears and almost swollen shut. After five days, the armed siege at the bank is finally at an end.

The hostage crisis at Kreditbanken gripped Sweden for days—but what happens next is even more extraordinary. When the police try to move the hostages to safety, they refuse to leave. Instead, they insist on embracing and shaking hands with the men who held them at gunpoint for five days. This unexpected behavior puzzles those who witness it. But psychiatrists will claim to have the answer, diagnosing a condition that will become famous as “Stockholm Syndrome.” But the supposed victims of the condition will dispute the claims, and the debate over their actions and the very existence of “Stockholm Syndrome” will continue long after the hostage crisis came to an end on August 28th, 1973.

Introduction

From Noiser and Airship, I’m Lindsay Graham and this is History Daily.

History is made every day. On this podcast—every day—we tell the true stories of the people and events that shaped our world.

Today is August 28th, 1973: The Origins of Stockholm Syndrome.

Act One

It’s August 23rd, 1973, at Norrmalmstorg, a square in central Stockholm, five days before the end of the Kreditbanken hostage crisis.

32-year-old Jan-Erik Olsson checks his appearance in the window of a store. He’s drawing some stares from passersby and it’s little wonder: he’s wearing a woman’s wig and oversized sunglasses. But Jan-Erik doesn’t mind attracting a few odd looks, as long as no one recognizes him through his disguise—because he’s about to attempt the most audacious crime of his life.

Jan-Erik has been a petty criminal since he was 16 years old. He’s been arrested for breaking into houses and shops several times and served years in prison. Today, Jan-Erik is about to break the law once again—only this time, he’s going to up the stakes by robbing a bank.

Satisfied that his disguise will prevent anyone from identifying him, Jan-Erik crosses the square and walks through the doors of Kreditbanken. He approaches the middle of the bank, pulls a submachine gun from under his coat, and fires into the ceiling.

As the echoes of the gunshots die away, Jan-Erik orders the customers and staff to lie down on the floor. Then, he directs the tellers to fill bags of cash as he watches the nearest customers to ensure no one tries to be a hero. But Jan-Erik can’t do anything to stop one of the tellers from pressing a silent alarm button under the counter. And within a minute or two, Jan-Erik hears the sirens of police cars roaring into the square behind him.

Jan-Erik knows he needs to get away fast. He grabs a few bags of cash and rushes toward the exit—but he’s a moment too late. A police officer bursts through the door. The two men stop and momentarily stare at each other before Jan-Erik lifts his gun and fires. He misses his target, but the police officer runs back outside for cover. Now, though, Jan-Erik's escape route is blocked. He can’t flee through the square with the police already on the scene, and more squad cars are arriving by the minute.

So, instead, Jan-Erik moves behind the bank counters and tells the customers to run. He hopes their fleeing into the square will delay the police from entering the bank. And as the civilians start rushing for the doors, Jan-Erik orders the three tellers on duty to stay with him and ushers them deeper into the bank. On the way, Jan-Erik finds another staff member hiding in a storeroom. Jan-Erik orders him out at gunpoint and enforces the four hostages into the bank's vault.

A few minutes later, the vault telephone rings. Jan-Erik answers and finds himself speaking to a police negotiator who tells him that the bank is now surrounded. Jan-Erik doesn’t know how to extract himself from the botched robbery and decides he needs backup. So, he demands the release of Clark Olofsson, a criminal currently serving time for armed robbery and accessory to murder. Jan-Erik met Clark during a recent stint in prison, and the two became friends. Now, Jan-Erik hopes Clark will be able to come up with a scheme to get him out of this mess.

It takes several hours for Clark to be released from his cell and delivered to the bank. And after he arrives, Clark and Jan-Erik devise a plan to escape, though it’s not a sophisticated plot. They want the equivalent of 700,000 US dollars in a mixture of Swedish and foreign currency. They want a getaway car. And they want the hostages to accompany them as they leave the bank to ensure that the police don’t try to seize them as soon as they set foot outside.

But the police refuse to consider any deal that doesn’t result in the immediate release of the hostages. So instead, the negotiators try a different approach.

When the hostage situation began, police weren’t sure who they were dealing with, but by the second day of the crisis, they think they’ve identified their man. Authorities are sure that the bank robber-turned-hostage taker is Kaj Hansson, a fugitive with a history of committing armed robberies. So, they rush to collect Kaj’s brother, asking him to come to the bank and plead with his sibling to end the siege.

But the police have got it wrong. When Kaj’s brother arrives at the bank, Jan-Erik has no idea who he is. He thinks it must be some kind of ruse to distract him. So, Jan-Erik fires wildly into the air, and the man claiming to be his brother scurries back behind the police lines.

After this mistake by the police, negotiations will grind to a halt, the hostage crisis will slide into a stalemate, and the chances of a peaceful resolution will fade as Jan-Erik becomes convinced the police are trying to trick him and that his only escape will be to shoot his way out.

Act Two

It’s August 24th, 1973, in the Kreditbanken vault in Stockholm, one day after Jan-Erik Olsson’s robbery went wrong.

23-year-old hostage Kristin Enmark shivers on the cold, hard floor. Since the initial trauma of being taken hostage has worn off, Kristin's biggest struggle has been how to get comfortable. The walls of the bank vault are lined with metal safety deposit boxes, and there’s nowhere to sit or lie down except the floor.

Kristin's stomach lurches as Jan-Erik rises to his feet and moves toward her. But her fear turns to surprise when Jan-Erik takes off his coat and drapes it over her shoulders. This chivalrous-seeming deed isn’t Jan-Erik's only act of kindness though. When a fellow hostage becomes agitated and complains of claustrophobia in the vault, Jan-Erik ties a rope loosely around her waist and allows her a walk in the hallway outside. Jan-Erik doesn’t dare go with her, because he’d be an easy target for police snipers. But Jan-Erik trusts the claustrophobic hostage to come back. And after she calms down, the woman does return, and then thanks Jan-Erik for his thoughtful gesture.

Over the next few days, Jan-Erik continues to treat the hostages well. When Kristin has a nightmare, it’s Jan-Erik who soothes her. He allows the hostages to phone their families to reassure them that they are safe. When one of the hostages becomes upset after her family doesn’t answer the phone, Jan-Erik is almost tender in his response, promising her that she can try again later.

Jan-Erik also allows Stockholm’s police chief to enter the vault to check that the hostages are being well-treated. Trying to defuse the tension of the situation, Kristin deliberately lightens her mood and tries to appear positive to reassure him—but the police chief seems to take little interest in the hostages. Instead, his eyes flit around the bank vault as though memorizing every detail. Kristin suspects he’s really there to gather intelligence for a raid.

The prospect of a gunfight in the confined of the vault fills Kristin with horror. So, she offers to speak to the authorities on Jan-Erik's behalf. She lifts the vault phone and asks to speak to whoever is in charge—and is surprised when she’s put through to the Swedish Prime Minister, Olof Palme. Kristin pleads with him to give in to Jan-Erik's demands saying that she would rather take her chances as Jan-Erik's hostage than be killed in a police raid. But the prime minister won’t budge. The authorities will not accept any deal that doesn’t immediately free the hostages.

Kristin fears that the police are mismanaging the crisis and that their ineffectual response will only provoke a deadly firefight. Her worries only increase when Jan-Erik spots a hole being drilled into the vault’s wall from outside. Jan-Erik considers this to be another police trick, and he fires two shots through the hole before patching it up with a piece of wood.

Then, five days after the hostage crisis began, on August 28th, 1973, the police finally make the move that Kristin has feared. They fire tear gas canisters into the chamber and call for Jan-Erik and Clark Olofsson to surrender. But Kristin suspects that Jan-Erik won’t go down without a fight—and she hasn’t sat in this vault for days only for the crisis to end in bloodshed. So, she and her fellow hostages ignore the police demand that they come out first. And instead, they wait in the choking fumes, believing that the police won’t open fire while the hostages are still inside. The hostages then push Jan-Erik and Clark out ahead of them and then refuse all offers of help until they’re sure that Jan-Erik and Clark are safe. When the standoff ends without bullets being fired, Kristin is so relieved that she even hugs Jan-Erik and Clark as handcuffs are snapped over their wrists.

But over the next few months, the behavior of the hostages after the robbery will become a topic of fascination for psychiatrists. They’ll conclude that the freed hostages acted irrationally because they formed an emotional attachment with their captors. They’ll name this phenomenon: “Stockholm Syndrome.” But Kristin and the other hostages will push back claiming they didn’t bond with their abductors. And instead, say their actions were motivated by a lack of confidence in the police and by the hostages’ relief that the crisis came to a peaceful end.

Whatever the truth behind the hostages’ unusual attitude to Jan-Erik and Clark, the curious behavior that followed the Kreditbanken robbery will not be an isolated incident. And soon, a second abduction will result in another odd relationship developing between a hostage and their captors, and the high-profile nature of the new case will push “Stockholm Syndrome” into public consciousness around the globe.

Act Three

It’s 9 PM, on February 4th, 1974, in Berkeley, California, five months after the hostage crisis at Kreditbanken gave birth to the idea of “Stockholm Syndrome.”

19-year-old college student Patty Hearst groans at the sound of the doorbell and pushes her boyfriend out of bed to answer it. She continues watching her favorite television program until shouting from the hallway drowns out the TV. A moment later, two men burst into Patty’s bedroom with guns drawn.

But Patty is no ordinary college student. She belongs to one of the wealthiest families in America. Her grandfather, William Randolph Hearst, was a publishing tycoon who founded one of the largest media companies in the world. Thanks to the family’s vast fortune, Patty lives a privileged lifestyle—and it appears these kidnappers want a piece of the Hearst wealth as well.

After Patty is shoved out of her apartment and into the trunk of a car, she’s whisked away to a safe house. And over the next few weeks, Patty discovers that she’s been abducted by a left-wing terrorist group known as the Symbionese Liberation Army, or SLA. But when her family is unable to raise the $400 million ransom that the SLA demands, Patty decides that if she’s going to survive, she needs to ingratiate herself with her captors. So, two months after her abduction, Patty joins the SLA in an armed robbery of a San Francisco bank in which two people are shot. Patty also tapes a recording that the SLA sends to the police.

PATTY: "On April 15th, my comrades and I expropriated $10,680.02 from the Sunset branch of the Hibernia Bank. Casualties could have been avoided had the persons involved cooperated with the people’s forces and kept out of the way until after our departure."

When the tape is played on the news, Patty’s excuses for the group’s violent crime turn public opinion against her. A month later, Patty and the rest of the SLA take part in a second armed robbery—but this time, they’re captured.

During the trial that follows, Patty will claim that she was brainwashed by the SLA and coerced into committing armed robbery. But the jury won't believe her. They’ll conclude that Patty bonded with her captors and voluntarily joined their criminal enterprises. She will be found guilty and sentenced to 35 years in prison.

This strange case will further popularize the idea of “Stockholm Syndrome”. But for decades afterward, psychiatrists will continue to debate whether there is a genuine condition in which hostages form emotional bonds with their captors, or whether “Stockholm Syndrome” is an oversimplification of more complex events, as the hostages at Kreditbanken insisted after their five-day ordeal came to an end on August 28th, 1973.

Outro

Next on History Daily. August 29th, 1997. American entrepreneurs Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph set up a DVD rental service called Netflix.

From Noiser and Airship, this is History Daily, hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Lindsay Graham.

Audio editing by Muhammad Shahzaib.

Sound design by Gabriel Gould.

Music by Thrumm.

This episode is written and researched by Scott Reeves.

Edited by Joel Callen.

Managing producer, Emily Burke.

Executive Producers are William Simpson for Airship, and Pascal Hughes for Noiser.