Viktor Gunnarsson: A Swede Meets Death

A Notorious Scandinavian’s Fate Lies in North Carolina
(‘To the Viktor,’ Forensic Files)

Viktor Gunnarsson craved attention and fabricated stories to suit his ego.

In Sweden, where he was born and raised, he liked to pretend he originally came from the U.S. 

He had spent some time in California and, upon his return, he started speaking Swedish with a fake American accent.

Shock and sorrow. He tried to impress women he chatted up at bars, once saying that he had debated Prime Minister Olof Palme and utterly humiliated the popular leader.

On the night that an assassin gunned down Palme on Feb. 28, 1986 — in a crime that devastated the peace-loving country — Gunnarsson, who belonged to a right-wing political group, had been loudly spewing anti-Palme hate speech in a bar not far from the crime scene. 

Police detained and questioned Gunnarsson, but the story of a witness who said he had seen him near the murder scene suddenly fizzled, and Stockholm police chief Hands Holmer decided to drop charges against Gunnarsson.

Icy reception. Nevertheless, a cloud of public suspicion remained over Gunnarsson. Many still believed that he was the assassin who first greeted Palme amiably, then shot him in the back as he and his wife exited a movie theater on Sveavägen, a busy street in Stockholm.

In Sweden, Viktor Gunnarsson suddenly found himself about as welcome as an ice storm in summer.

Even the European Labor Party, an extremist group that labeled Palme a Communist, called Gunnarsson a “savage beast” and disowned him. 

Tall tales. So Gunnarsson took his act back to the U.S., where most people didn’t know about his ill repute. And, despite his porn-star mustache, many women found him attractive.

Gunnarsson sometimes told his new acquaintances that he was an FBI agent or a film director capable of turning aspiring actresses into stars.

In reality, he worked as a language tutor. He lived in a rental unit in Lakewood Apartments in Salisbury, North Carolina.

True-crime fame. But he was determined to make a splash in America and he did, just not in the way he hoped.

Instead of landing on 60 Minutes or Biography or The Tonight Show, he ended up as a murder victim portrayed on Forensic Files.

Although “To the Viktor” did a good job of covering the investigation into Gunnarsson’s death, it never mentions who, if anyone, was eventually held liable for Olof Palme’s assassination or whether Gunnarsson remained a hated man in Sweden after his own death.

Grim discovery. For this week, I looked for some answers. So let’s get started on the recap of the Forensic Files episode along with extra information drawn from internet research and the book Blood on the Snow: The Killing of Olof Palme by Jan Bondeson.

On a frosty January morning in 1994, a North Carolina land surveyor found the body of a middle-aged man in a remote area called Deep Gap in Watauga County, North Carolina. His toes were sticking out of the snow. He was naked except for a watch and a ring.

Police believed it was a professional hit. The man had died of two bullet wounds, one to the head and another to the neck, and his body had been there since late December.

Errant boyfriend. At the scene, police found a long piece of electrical tape containing a bullet hole, blood drops, and human hair.

A photo in a missing person’s database identified the dead man as Viktor Gunnarsson, 40, who lived in the U.S. 

Interpol sent fingerprints that confirmed the ID.

A schoolteacher named Kay Weden told police she had been dating Gunnarsson for a few weeks and she hadn’t heard from him since Dec. 3, when he’d taken her out to dinner.

Obsessive ex. Police at first suspected Gunnarsson died in a political assassination tied to the Palme murder. 

The truth wasn’t quite so grandiose, although it was a bit sordid.

Kay Weden told detectives that on her last date with Gunnarsson, a car driven by her jealous ex-fiancée, Lamont Claxton “L.C.” Underwood, cruised by her house to spy on the couple, who were sitting outside, according to “Cold Blooded,” an episode of The New Detectives. 

A female friend of Underwood’s named Shelly Thompson said that the retired cop had written down the license plate of a 1979 Lincoln in front of Kay Weden’s place and then used a police source to find out the name of the owner — Viktor Gunnarsson.

Trusting victim. When police subsequently searched Underwood’s “immaculately clean” house, a sharp-eyed officer noticed that behind a clothes dryer there was some electrical tape similar to the type used to gag Gunnarsson, according to The New Detectives. 

Underwood claimed he’d never heard of Viktor Gunnarsson.

Meanwhile, just days after Gunnarsson’s death, a bigger tragedy befell Kay Weden. Her mother, Catherine Miller, was shot to death, apparently by someone she knew. The 77-year-old had been cooking a meal in her apartment when it happened, and there was no sign of a break-in. Like Gunnarsson, she received two shots execution style, although they were from a .38 caliber, a different gun from the one used on Gunnarsson.

Cold greeting. But police found plenty of evidence, both circumstantial and forensic.

Underwood, who was bitter about his breakup with Kay Weden, had at one time confronted Catherine Miller and accused her of ruining his relationship with Weden, according to the Winston-Salem Journal.

He had also dumped a glass of iced tea in Weden’s lap at a restaurant.

Troubling record. The iced tea incident wasn’t exactly proof of murderous intent, but strands of Gunnarsson’s hair found in the trunk of Underwood’s car looked pretty incriminating.

A typewriter ribbon in Underwood’s house revealed the same language used in anonymous threatening notes that Weden had received in the run-up to the murders.

Plus, Underwood, who had been married and divorced three times, had a history of stalking women once their relationships started to sink. (He probably feared abandonment — Underwood lived in a children’s home from ages 3 to 18, according to a newspaper account.)

March into forest. Investigators theorized that Underwood killed Viktor Gunnarsson and Catherine Miller because he wanted to create havoc in Weden’s life so that she would rush back into his arms for consolation.

They believe Underwood abducted Gunnarsson at gunpoint, bound him and gagged him with the black electrical tape, put him in the trunk, drove 90 miles to Deep Back, made him walk into the woods, and shot him to death. To eliminate forensic evidence, he either forced Gunnarsson to disrobe or undressed him after killing him.

Next, he dropped by Catherine Miller’s house and murdered her.

At the trial for Gunnarsson’s homicide, the defense tried to play the Olaf Palme card. Underwood’s lawyer trotted out a witness who claimed a federal inmate told him that the Russian government had killed Gunnarsson to deflect attention from Palme’s real assassin.

Not a cause celébrè. The jury didn’t buy it and convicted Underwood in July 1997. He got a sentence of life without the possibility of parole. 

Authorities never tried Underwood for the murder of Catherine Miller, probably because he already had little chance of getting out of prison on two feet — and Kay Weden had suffered through enough court proceedings.

In 2004, a local innocence group looked into Underwood’s case, but it’s not clear how far they took it. A federal court vacated his conviction in 2010 on the basis of ineffective counsel and granted him a new trial, but another court put the kibosh on that.

Elusive resolution. Underwood died in the hospital while serving his sentence at Central Prison in Raleigh on Dec. 23, 2018.

So, back in Sweden, did authorities ever find out who killed Olof Palme? 

Well, not exactly.

They succeeded in prosecuting ex-convict Christer Pettersson after the prime minister’s widow, Lisbet Palme, identified him in a police lineup. But the courts later voided the conviction for lack of evidence, namely the missing murder weapon. Pettersson received $50,000 for wrongful conviction. He spent it all on drugs and alcohol, according to the Observer.

Renewed interest. In 2004, Pettersson died of natural causes, with many still believing him guilty. Others speculated that South Africa had ordered Palme’s hit because he was anti-apartheid.

Authorities still haven’t given up on the case. Sweden changed its homicide laws to extend the statute of limitation beyond 25 years.

In 2016, the country appointed a prosecutor to start a new probe into Palme’s murder.

In the meantime, the population remains divided as to whether new forensic technology will help authorities crack the case or whether it’s time to admit defeat and close the files, according to an article published on the 25th anniversary of Olof Palme’s death on Swedish news website The Local. Over the years, police had already questioned 10,000 people in connection with the assassination and 134 individuals falsely took responsibility for the crime.

Fanciful contention. In any case, suspicion toward Viktor Gunnarsson had faded in his country of birth by the time of his death.

One conspiracy theory holds that the real assassins set up Gunnarsson as a suspect and then had him murdered in the U.S. in hopes that Swedish authorities would close the books on the case.

Gunnarsson and his ego would probably find that explanation for his death more satisfying than the real story — that he got tangled up in a love triangle with a couple of public-sector employees.

That’s all for the week. Until next time, cheers. — RR

---

Watch the Forensic Files episode on Tubi