Clark Olofsson

Clark Oderth Olofsson (later known as Daniel Demuynck; born 1 February 1947), is a Swedish criminal. He has received sentences for attempted murder, assault, robbery, and dealing narcotics and has spent more than half of his life in prison in Sweden. Olofsson has been called Sweden's first "celebrity gangster". Olofsson was present at the Norrmalmstorg robbery whose events resulted in the creation of the phrase "Stockholm syndrome" to describe them.

Biography

Early years

Olofsson was born on 1 February 1947 in Trollhättan, Sweden, into a home with extensive alcohol problems. Olofsson had two younger sisters. His mother was a cashier and his father an asphalt worker. When Clark was 11 years old, his father left the family and soon after, his mother felt ill and was admitted to Lillhagens psychiatric hospital in Hisings Backa. Her problems led to the three children being placed in foster care. Olofsson was unhappy in his foster family and to get out of there, he forged his mother's signature and enrolled in a sailors' school. On the ship ''Ballade'', a 14-year-old Olofsson sailed around the world, including between Japan and South America. When he was 15, he disembarked from the boat and moved home to his mother, who had regained control of her life, and started working in a shop. The children were returned to her care and they moved to an apartment in Slätta Damm on Hisingen, Gothenburg. There he was a neighbor of future journalist Janne Josefsson. The family later moved to Köldgatan in Biskopsgården.

1960s–1980s

For several petty crimes, sixteen-year-old Olofsson was placed in a behavioural institution for young offenders in 1963. Olofsson and two other boys escaped from the institution in August 1965 and entered the country estate of Swedish Prime Minister Tage Erlander at Harpsund, where they stole grapes, cucumbers and tomatoes from the greenhouse. They fled when the gardener discovered them. Three months later, Olofsson assaulted two police officers in Eskilstuna. On 4February 1966, he was sentenced to three years in prison; this was his third sentence and his first real prison sentence. In late 1966, he made his first escape from the prison at Tidaholm.

On 29July 1966, police officers Ragnar Sandahl and Lennart Mathiasson responded to a burglary at a bicycle shop at Skjutsaregatan in Nyköping. Sandahl was shot and killed by Gunnar Norgren. The other burglar was Olofsson, who became a nationally known criminal. Norgren was arrested on 16August that year in an apartment at Utåkersgatan 4 in Kålltorp, Gothenburg and later confessed to the murder. The apartment belonged to a boyfriend of Olofsson's sister. Norgren gave up after the police fired several shots through the door to the apartment. Olofsson had escaped from the apartment before police entered and managed to elude them for two weeks but was eventually arrested on 25 August in Grimmaredsskogen in Västra Frölunda. Via telephone tapping, the police found out that Olofsson and his 20-year-old girlfriend were to meet at a special mountain hill in Grimmaredsskogen. Two policemen disguised as orienteers, Bertil Brosved and Ulf Högenberg, tried to arrest him at the same time as Olofsson pulled a pistol out of his waistband and fired two shots. Högenberg was hit in the shoulder. Olofsson was first sentenced to ten years in prison, but the Court of Appeal changed the sentence to eight years. Norgren was sentenced to 12 years, which was the most severe punishment a Swedish court could impose at that time.

On 4 February 1969, Olofsson escaped from Kumla Prison and fled to the Canary Islands. He then flew on to Frankfurt am Main where he met a girl he was living with when he was arrested by the German police after Olofsson entered West Germany on a fake passport. He was escorted to the ferry in Travemünde where two Swedish police officers met him. He was then taken via Malmö back to the Kumla Prison. Two months before he was to be released, he escaped again, from Lingatan Prison, an open institution in Bohuslän. On 2February 1973, he was arrested in the dining room of the ''Kurhotel'' in Ulricehamn. Police had received a tip from a cleaning-lady who had seen a gun in his hotel room. At the time of his arrest, he had been on the run for seven months and had robbed a bank in Gothenburg. In May 1973, he was sentenced to six years in prison and transported to the Kalmar Prison.

Norrmalmstorg

In late 1973, Olofsson was incarcerated at the Norrköping Prison when bankrobber Jan-Erik Olsson took hostages at Kreditbanken at Norrmalmstorg, Stockholm. Olsson demanded that Olofsson be allowed to come to the bank. Olofsson was brought to the bank, where he spent the next six days with the hostages. This event subsequently led to the creation of the phrase "Stockholm syndrome." Olofsson was convicted in the district court but was later acquitted in Svea Court of Appeal. He had, according to himself, acted to protect the hostages and had the silent consent of the police. He was taken back to prison to serve the remainder of his previous sentence. He sought pardon from the government but the application was rejected along with his request to study law.

Fugitive, new sentences, and marriage

Olofsson escaped from the Norrköping prison on 20March 1975. In April that year, he went into a bank in Copenhagen with a gun in each hand, fired a warning shot, and robbed the bank of SEK194,000. One month after the escape, Olofsson was in Marseille on the French Riviera. Together with a companion, he bought the sailboat ''Saga'' for 50,000 francs, and for three months they sailed around the Mediterranean. In August, they passed through the Strait of Gibraltar, out onto the Atlantic past the Azores. With the help of Inger and Mikael von Heijne from Djursholm, on their way home from the Caribbean, Olofsson got on the right course and finally reached Ireland. From there, they went to Denmark where Danish police came upon them. Olofsson escaped and it was not until January 1976 that the police caught up with him and managed to track him down at a crossroads outside Brussels. He managed to shoot himself free; on a train in Germany during this escape, he met 19-year-old Marijke Demuynck. On 24 March 1976, Olofsson robbed Handelsbanken on Östra Hamngatan 27 in Gothenburg of SEK 930,000 - at the time the largest robbery in Swedish criminal history. At the same time, he took two people hostage. He was arrested at 22:30, nine hours after the robbery, at hotel Gyllene Kärven in Herrljunga. SEK 230,000 was recovered at Olofsson‘s arrest; the rest was never found. For the record robbery, he was sentenced to eight years in prison, but three weeks after the verdict, in July 1976, he fled again, this time by driving a Scania truck through three prison gates at Norrköping Prison. Together with a number of fellow prisoners, they fled to a waiting getaway car. On 31 July 1976, he was arrested in Halmstad. On 12 August 1976, Olofsson and Marijke Demuynck married in Kumla Prison.

In 1979, Olofsson (as a prisoner) began studies in journalism at Stockholm University. He did an internship at the newspaper ''Arbetaren''. During a leave on Midsummer's Eve in 1980, Olofsson got into a fight with fisherman Leif Sundin on Möja. The sentence was two and a half years for assault. His studies were interrupted by the verdict, but he eventually graduated in journalism in 1983. Olofsson was released in 1983; he then left Sweden with his Belgian wife and settled in her home country. In November 1984, he was arrested in the port city of Blankenberge in Belgium, suspected of having tried to smuggle 25 kilograms of amphetamine into Sweden with the so-called ''Televerksligan'' (" Televerket Gang"). He was sentenced to ten years in prison for complicity in aggravated felony drug offense.

1990–2010s

Name and country change, convicted of drug smuggling

On 10 October 1991, Olofsson was released, changed his name to Daniel Demuynck, and moved to the Belgian countryside, 80 km outside Brussels. In July 1996, Olofsson was arrested outside a bank in Oslo when the police thought he was preparing a robbery. He was released after 24 hours. On a stormy November night, he was rescued by the sea rescue helicopter off the coast of Halland after his wooden boat was smashed against the rocks. A few weeks later, he was taken into custody for drunk driving in Stockholm. On 15 April 1998, he was arrested in Tenerife as the head of drug smuggling after being wanted internationally via Interpol for several months. He was extradited to Denmark and after a high-profile trial in Frederikssund

HOME


Content is Copyleft
Website design, code, and AI is Copyrighted (c) 2014-2017 by Stephen Payne


Consider donating to Wikimedia



As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases