Lars-Inge Svartenbrandt

Lars-Inge Andersson (5 May 1945 – 15 April 2016) best known as Lars-Inge Svartenbrandt, later Lars Ferm and even later known as Lars Patrick Carlander, was a Swedish criminal.

Svartenbrandt spent almost 40 years combined in prison for several robberies, violent crimes, and prison escapes.

He was described as the "most dangerous man in Sweden".

Svartenbrandt described himself as an "uncurable psychopath".

Lars-Inge Svartenbrandt grew up under unstable conditions in Dalarna.

Twelve years old, he was placed under protective public care order (skyddsuppfostran) and ended up in juvenile detention school.

In May 1961 he celebrated his 16th birthday by escaping from a juvenile detention school.

The following year, 1962, he broke into a military armory and received his first prison sentence but escaped the following year.

In 1967, he received his first detention sentence (interneringsdom) for grand theft (grov stöld) and threat to public servant (hot mot tjänsteman).

In 1969 came his first conviction for armed robbery when he was sentenced to four years in prison.

Medially Svartenbrandt became first known in connection with the spectacular mass escape from the Kumla Prison in August 1972.

He had managed to hide in a saucepan cupboard in the security department and the guards had not noticed that he was missing when they locked up the prisoners for the night.

Svartenbrandt crawled out of his cupboard after a few hours and unlocked his fellow prisoners' cell doors using counterfeit keys.

The escapers included Lars-Inge Svartenbrandt, Bosse Dynamit, Nisse Pistol, Kalle Kanon and the Yugoslav Embassy murderers Miro Barešić and Anđelko Brajković.

Together with 15 other hard-hit interns, including terrorist Miro Barešic, he climbed over the "fugitive walls" from what which was called Europe's safest prison, and disappeared.

Svartenbrandt was arrested a week later in Lindesberg.

The following year, in June 1973, he escaped along with three other prisoners in a garbage truck.

Svartenbrandt and Nisse Pistol and two other companions jumped over the fence and hijacked the garbage truck by threatening the driver with a weapon they came across.

They rammed the prison gate and disappeared.

After two months on the run, Svartenbrandt was captured in Rörsås, south of Mariestad.

Svartenbrandt was granted leave in October 1979 from Hall Prison to visit a doctor in Uppsala.

Instead he freed his friend Benny Lilja who along with other prisoners had gone to the bathhouse in Södertälje.

Svartenbrandt was waiting outside the bath house in a black Jaguar and Lilja got into the car and the two drove off.

Svartenbrandt and his companion Benny Lilja parted ways on 22 November 1979, when Svartenbrandt would help an acquaintance to collect a debt in an apartment on Kungsgatan in Stockholm.

This ended with the two men getting murdered.

Svartenbrandt confessed seven years later that he stabbed one of the victims with a hunting knife, but argued that his companion, who was now dead, fired the fatal shots.

The day after Svartenbrandt and Benny Lilja rushed into the post office on Döbelnsgatan in Stockholm with rubber masks depicting Elvis Presley and John Travolta over their faces and AK 4's in their hands.

During the escape Svartenbrandt fired 19 shots into a police van from the Östermalm police where officers Christer Backman, Gunnar Andersson and Dick Gunnelöf were sitting.

All of them were injured and Gunnar Andersson was hit by seven shots.

A doctor described it later as "an incredible luck that he survived".

Seven people were taken hostage during the escape.

These were released a few hours later.

The two robbers managed to get to Gothenburg.

The police tracked down their hideout on Viktoriagatan 15 and during a nighttime police raid the police sprayed tear gas into the apartment whereupon both gave up.

Svartenbrandt was sentenced to twelve years in prison for attempted murder, aggravated robbery (grovt rån) and unlawful deprivation of liberty (olaga frihetsberövande).

During this sentence, he made several unsuccessful attempts to escape.

In 1981 Svartenbrandt tried to escape by stabbing a guard with a sharpened toothbrush.

Two years later in 1983 his wife tried to rescue him from the Hall Prison which failed and the result was another ten months to his sentence.

The same year he was transferred to Säter's Mental Hospital in Dalarna.

In May 1986, during a leave from prison to visit his mother, he escaped.