Home / Crime and Justice / AI Tackles 40-Year-Old Swedish Prime Ministerial Murder Mystery
AI Tackles 40-Year-Old Swedish Prime Ministerial Murder Mystery
28 Feb
Summary
- Amateur detectives are using AI to investigate the 40-year-old unsolved murder of Olof Palme.
- An AI engine analyzes decades of case files to uncover new leads for Palme's assassination.
- The Swedish investigation into Palme's 1986 murder was officially closed in 2020.
Forty years after Prime Minister Olof Palme was assassinated on a Stockholm street, an amateur investigation team is utilizing Artificial Intelligence to probe the still-unsolved murder. The crime podcast Spår (Track) is employing an AI engine, developed by Swedish and Belgian firms, to analyze the approximately 30,000 publicly available digital documents related to the case.
Palme was shot and killed on February 28, 1986, on his way home from a cinema. Over the years, numerous theories have emerged, pointing fingers at various groups and individuals, but the case remains officially closed since 2020. The podcast team hopes their AI tool, capable of rapid data analysis, can achieve what decades of police investigation could not, potentially leading to the case being reopened.
While AI has proven transformative in other criminal investigations, its application to the Palme case faces hurdles. Case files are heavily redacted, and access to unpublished material is limited, with significant portions still inaccessible. Despite these challenges, investigators are determined to use AI's analytical power to uncover the truth behind the prime minister's murder.
