Швециялық қылмыскер: Кларк Олофссонның өмірі мен қылмыстық жолы

Swedish criminal (born 1947)

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 faced a tumultuous childhood marked by familial challenges. Growing up amidst extensive alcohol problems, he endured the departure of his father and his mother's subsequent illness, which led to the placement of Olofsson and his two younger sisters in foster care. Determined to escape an unhappy foster family, Olofsson forged his mother's signature at the age of 15 and enrolled in a sailors' school. Embarking on the ship Ballade, he sailed around the world, gaining a unique perspective between Japan and South America. Returning home at 15, Olofsson reunited with his mother, who had regained stability. Despite earlier adversities, the family settled in Gothenburg, where Olofsson's journey took a criminal turn. Convicted for various offenses in the 1960s, including burglary and assault, Olofsson gained notoriety for his involvement in the killing of a police officer during a robbery. Multiple prison escapes characterized his criminal career, with notable incidents like the Norrmalmstorg robbery, coining the term "Stockholm syndrome". Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Olofsson continued a pattern of escapes, criminal activities, and imprisonments, marked by a marriage in Kumla Prison. Despite his turbulent criminal history, Olofsson pursued education, studying journalism while incarcerated. Released in 1983, he left Sweden with his wife, settling in Belgium. However, his criminal activities persisted, resulting in a drug smuggling conviction in 1999. The subsequent decades saw Olofsson's involvement in various criminal enterprises, leading to multiple arrests, imprisonments, and deportation. His life story, filled with escapes, convictions, and legal battles, became the subject of films, documentaries, and a Netflix drama series in 2022, portraying the complex and notorious figure of Clark Olofsson.

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 fell ill and was admitted to Lillhagens psychiatric hospital in Hisings Backa. Her problems led to the three children being placed in foster care. There he was a neighbor of future journalist Janne Josefsson. The family later moved to Köldgatan in Biskopsgården.

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. 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. Sandahl was shot and killed by Gunnar Norgren. 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. Two months before he was to be released, he escaped again, from Lingatan Prison, an open institution in Bohuslän. At the time of his arrest, he had been on the run for seven months and had robbed a bank in Gothenburg. 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. 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. 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.

On 10 October 1991, Olofsson was released, changed his name to Daniel Demuynck, It was then the most severe punishment for drug offenses ever handed out in Danish legal history. While in Denmark, he was held in the isolation ward at Vestre Prison in Copenhagen. A total of six people were arrested in Stockholm and Varberg on suspicion of serious drug offenses. Until the autumn of 2012, Olofsson was incarcerated at Saltvik Prison in Härnösand before he was moved to Kumla Prison. On 5 March 2013, Olofsson submitted his 24 page application for a new trial to the Supreme Court, where he, among other things, withdrew his involvement. The application was rejected in April 2013. As early as 2010, Olofsson applied for relocation to Belgium in the hope of a shorter sentence. The move from Kumla Prison in Sweden was delayed for several years and did not take place until the end of 2016 then against his will after Swedish and Belgian representatives agreed that he would be imprisoned for at least as long in Vorst Prison in Belgium. In February 2017, Olofsson turned 70 years old and was granted new Swedish citizenship. In October 2017, he was rejected in a Belgian court on his application for an ankle monitor. Olofsson demanded relocation back to Sweden. Belgium granted the application but in November 2017 Sweden rejected it.

The decision to release Olofsson came after a negotiation on conditional release in Belgium at the end of May 2018. On 30 July 2018, Olofsson landed at Landvetter Airport outside Gothenburg, Sweden as a free man.

On 7 July 1967, Olofsson became engaged to Madiorie Britmer in prison. He has six children, of which the youngest son is with his current fiancée; three older sons with his former wife Marijke, and two daughters from before his marriage. The podcast Criminal spoke with Olofsson about the Norrmalmstorg robbery in their episode "Hostage." In January 2020, Sveriges Television aired the documentary Clark en rövarhistoria. The documentary was criticized for portraying Olofsson like an idol, and because it had been produced by Alexander Eriksson, one of the convicted robbers from the Västberga helicopter robbery. On 11 May 2020, Netflix announced Clark, a limited six episode drama series about Clark Olofsson. The series, directed by Jonas Åkerlund, aired in May 2022. Olofsson is played by Bill Skarsgård.