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Palle Mogens Fogde Sørensen
Classification: Murderer
Characteristics: Bank
robbery - Escape
Number of victims: 4
Date of murder:
September 18,
1965
Date of arrest:
Next day
Date of birth:
March 26,
1927
Victims profile: Aksel Dybdahl Andersen / Henning Skov
Hansen / Gert Sondergaart Harkjaert / Elmer Gert Jeppesen (police officers)
Method of murder:
Shooting
Location: Copenhagen, Denmark
Status: Sentenced to life in prison on August 24, 1966.
Released on March 17, 1997
Palle Mogens Fogde
Sørensen
(born March 26, 1927 in Copenhagen, Denmark) in
September 1965 while escaping in a stolen car he shot
four young police officers in Copenhagen.
After a huge search
operation he was apprehended the following day and
sentenced to life imprisonment. He was released after 33
years in prison — the longest time anyone has served in
a Danish prison in modern history.
Palle Sørensen's crime eventually led
to Danish police carrying guns, instead of just clubs.
With four police officers dead, and
Palle making it out of prison alive, the "score" 4–0 has
become a provocative outcry of violent demonstrators
fighting the police.
Palle Mogens
Fogde Sørensen
Born in 1927, Palle Sørensen's
life changed dramatically when he was arrested on
September 19, 1965 for murdering 4 Danish police
officers during a bank robbery in Copenhagen.
On August 24, 1966 he was
sentenced to prison for life. In Denmark prisoners
serving life-time sentences serve a maximum of 16
years, the average has since 1955 been pardoned
after 13 years.
But Palle Sørensen's case was
different. By taking the life of 4 police officers,
which no one had ever done before in Denmark, and
never has since, he now had not only the court of
law against him, but also the Minister of Justice
and the entire Danish government.
To pardon him even after the
maximum of 16 years seemed highly unlikely, and
through the 80s and 90s it seemed like he would
never regain his freedom. Thus he sat in prison for
more than 32 years before he was eventually pardoned
in 1997, a few days before he turned 70.
