BOSTON -- A millionairess member of the Rothschild family has been linked romantically to Swedish Prime Minister Olaf Palme and may be a key to the investigation into his assassination, a published report said Sunday.
Emma Rothschild, 38, of the British banking family, was one of Palme's closest advisors in the years before his Feb. 28 assassination and sources had indicated a romantic link between them, The Boston Herald reported.
'Police feel her phone may have been tapped by Palme's assassin and that information on her movements in the days prior to the assassination may lead them to the killer,' the newspaper said sources disclosed.
Swedish secret police saw Rothschild and Palme meet privately in the months before his death, the London Daily Mail reported Saturday.
The Herald said that a scandal resulted when detectives were told by government authorities they could not pry into Palme's private life because it was an 'unwarranted intrusion,' even if the investigation would help find Palme's assassin.
Palme was shot to death as he and his wife, Lisbet, walked home from a movie in downtown Stockholm. No arrests have been made.
Rothschild is an instructor in 'Science, Technology and Society' at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. MIT o:Thcials said she is on sabbatical until next August.
Neighbors said she had not been seen at her suburban Cambridge home in several months, the Herald said, and she was believed to be in Sweden.
The Daily Mail reported that 'after Olaf Palme was killed in the center of Stockholm, the Swedish Secret Service revealed that it logged meetings -- sometimes open, sometimes clandestine -- between him and a close woman friend.'
The woman has since been identified as Rothschild, the Herald said.
The secret police gave the information to the detectives probing Palme's killing but the report later was removed from the police department, the newspaper said.
The link between Rothschild and Palme surfaced in Sweden a year ago, the Herald said. The national magazine Aret Runt published a story two months before Palme's death that said Rothschild had become one of Palme's chief advisors.
