Late one winter evening in 1986, Sweden’s prime minister, Olof Palme, left Grand, an Art Deco cinema in Stockholm’s city center. The internationalist statesman and  Social-Democratic Party (SAP) leader had come to see a comedy with his wife, Lisbeth, his son Mårten, and Mårten’s partner. Palme and his wife parted ways with the young couple and started walking home, but after only a few hundred meters, someone came up behind them and fired two bullets.

The first bullet entered the back of Olof’s neck and severed his carotid artery. The second missed Lisbeth by an inch. The perpetrator left the scene before a group of pedestrians arrived to find their prime minister bleeding out on the sidewalk. A passing ambulance rushed Palme to the emergency room, but it was too late. Just after midnight on March 1, 1986, Olof Palme was declared dead.

What wasn’t clear was who killed him — and why. The day after the murder, a tip came in to the police, opening up the first line of inquiry. Two women pointed toward the possible guilt of thirty-three-year-old Victor Gunnarsson, a former member of the European Workers’ Party (EAP), a fringe group in the attentions of the Swedish Security Service (SÄPO). The local branch of the conspiracist LaRouche movement, the EAP had long accused Palme of being on the payroll of both the KGB and the CIA.