Clark Olofsson, who is one of the two criminals involved in the kidnapping and bank robbery during the year 1973 in Swedish capital, which gave rise to the expression "Stockholm syndrome," has died at the age of 78 following a lengthy illness, the BBC reports quoting his family.
During the six-day siege, Olofsson's hostages not only began to sympathise with him and his accomplice, but defended their actions while growing hostile to the police outside.
The incident lends its name to a theorised psychological condition whereby kidnap victims develop affections for their captor, BBC said.
According to the report, the notorious bank siege was instigated by one Jan-Erik Olsson. After seizing three women and a man hostage, he demanded Olofsson, who he had previously befriended in prison, be brought to the bank from jail.
Swedish authorities agreed to his demand, and Olofsson, a repeated offender who spent much of his life in prison, entered the bank, which was surrounded by police.
Years later, in an interview with the Aftonbladet newspaper, he claimed he was asked to work as an inside man to keep the captives safe in exchange for a reduced sentence, but accused officials of not honouring the agreement.
Olofsson persuaded one of the hostages, Kristin Enmark, to speak to the Swedish prime minister on the phone on behalf of the robbers.
She begged to be allowed to leave the bank in a getaway car with the kidnappers, telling him: "I fully trust Clark and the robber... They haven't done a thing to us."
She went on: "On the contrary, they have been very nice... Believe it or not but we've had a really nice time here."
Over the course of several phone calls, Enmark (23) said she feared her captors would be harmed by police and repeatedly defended their actions.
The hostage situation ended after six days when police officers broke through the roof and used tear gas to subdue the pair.
Speaking on the BBC's Sideways podcast in 2021, Enmark rubbished the concept of Stockholm syndrome, saying: "It's a way of blaming the victim. I did what I could to survive."
In 1977, Paul Martinsen directed a Docudrama Clark. And according to BBC, in 2022, actor Bill Skarsgård portrayed him in the Netflix drama series Clark.