Christer Pettersson

I will admit that I took one look at this guys picture and thought he looked like a serial killer. I was feeling kind of guilty for stereotyping, and then I started to translate the article. Go figure, the guy's trial for murder was just about the start. He was being accused of killing the Swedish Prime Minister. I still feel a little bad about the stereotyping though. Anyway, Christer Pettersson was a Swedish criminal who was a suspect in the 1986 assassination of Olof Palme, the Prime Minister of Sweden. In 1988 he was convicted of the murder in district court but acquitted on appeal the following year. They said they didn't have enough evidence, no murder weapon for one. The PM was murdered while walking down a street with his wife in Stockholm. His wife later picked Christer out from a line up. After his release, he was compensated with $50,000 which he promptly blew on alcohol and drugs. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 2004. Right before he died, he contacted PM's son and said he wanted to meet with him. The son said he wanted to confess to the murder. The meeting never happened. After his death, associates of Pettersson's claimed that he had confessed to killing the PM but it had been a mistake. He had meant to kill a drug dealer who often walked down the same street and dressed in a similar fashion as the PM had been dressed. This was never confirmed. Don't you just hate it when you kill the wrong guy?