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Abroad

Veteran Member
Palle Sørensen, the Dane who shocked the nation when he murdered four policemen in cold blood in 1965, has died. He was 90 and had been out of prison since 1998.

Friday 17 September 1965 is a day deeply etched in the memory of a whole generation of Danes. The habitual criminal shot four policemen at close range with his hitherto unused Browning P35 semi-automatic handgun. The act directly led to the arming of Danish policemen.

In 1949, fresh out of juvenile detention, he cycled from his parent’s apartment in Amager to the offices of the Dansk Arbejdsmandforbund, now 3F. Using stolen explosives from the limestone quarries of Faxe, he blew a safe open with a deafening bang and made off with 130,000 kroner in used 50 kroner notes and 2 kroner coins.

Cycling home with his booty on the back of his bike, he had time to stop off at the baker’s for a loaf of bread, while police cars were speeding around in search of the perpetrators. Newspapers at the time believed that the coup must have been the work of a highly-organised international gang. In reality, it was a one-man job masterminded by expert safe cracker Palle Sørensen.

But the money inevitably ran out and a series of burglaries and a botched insurance swindle on the Mercedes led to a swift return behind bars.

In and out of prison over the next five years, he was the subject of a 1958 Ekstra Bladet article that described him as a lock-picking genius, but what the journalist failed to uncover was his true secret passion in life: a deep fascination with guns. Sørensen had quite an impressive collection tucked away in his mother’s basement.

One fateful night, disappointed by a fruitless break-in at an undertaker’s, the unstable Bune [a fellow ex-inmate from Horsens Prison] had the bright idea of heading off to the undertaker’s private property. It was one broken door too many and the owner heard then, caught them in the act, and alerted the police as they sped off into the Amager night.

Patrols were instructed to look out for the felons and the car was soon spotted by two 24-year-old fledgling police officers, Gert Søndergaard Harkjær and Henning Skov Hansen. It was a short-lived car chase and the Simca was easily forced over to the side of the road.

A tense Sørensen then wasted no time in sprinting out of the car. He pulled out his prized possession, the Browning P35, from its shoulder holster and executed the defenceless policemen in cold blood, giving them both an extra bullet to make sure.

Speeding away they were noticed and overtaken by two more policemen: Elmer Gert Jeppesen, 24, and Aksel Dybdahl Andersen, 28. Unaware of what had happened, Jeppesen made his way over to the car and was immediately gunned down. And then Andersen was brutally murdered as he tried to climb out of the car. In all, 15 bullets had been fired of which 12 hit their intended target. A truly horrendous crime had been committed and Sørensen went into hiding.

He turns himself in, first claiming innocence, later confessing.

By this point in his life, Sørensen had already spent 11 years in prison, but what he did not know was that it would be another 32 years before he would be a free man.

Held in isolation for the next 11 years in the tiniest of cells, Sørensen, a natural loner, went on to break several Danish incarceration records. The name Palle Sørensen had absolutely not been forgotten and a series of applications for release or pardon were firmly rejected.

On 4 May 1998, after 32 years and 8 months in prison, Palle Sørensen was released. And for the last 20 years of his life, Sørensen led a quiet life in Valby, only troubled by the occasional news-hungry journalist or angry elderly lady with a long memory.

http://cphpost.dk/news/police-murderer-palle-sorensen-dead-at-90.html
 
Wow. His life of crime sounds like a weekend in a large city in the good old US of A.:rolleyes:

Didn't wnat to mention any particular city, but we all know of several.o_O
 
Wait, that's considered a long sentence?

That country clearly doesnt value the lives of its police officers.
 
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