‘Sture, can you understand that this is what I’m seeing in those films?’
Sture was still silent, but he hummed and nodded. At least he doesn’t seem angry, I thought. I had said what I had to say. I could not take it back and I had nothing to add.
‘But . . .’ said Sture and then went silent again.
He spoke slowly and with emotion: ‘. . . if it is true that I haven’t committed any of these murders . . .’
Again he sat in silence, staring down at the floor. Then he leaned towards me, threw out his hands and whispered, ‘. . . if it is true – then what can I do?’
I met Sture’s despairing gaze. He looked utterly devastated.
Again and again I tried to say something, but I was so overwhelmed that I couldn’t make a sound. Finally I heard myself say, ‘If it’s true that you haven’t committed any of these murders, you have the chance of a lifetime now.’
By now, the atmosphere in the little visiting room was so tense that it was physically tangible. We both knew what was about to happen. Sture was very close to telling me that he had lied during all those years when he was Thomas Quick. In principle he had already admitted it.
‘The chance of a lifetime,’ I repeated.
‘I live in a ward where everyone is convinced that I’m guilty,’ said Sture quietly.
I nodded.
‘My lawyer is convinced that I’m guilty,’ he continued.
‘I know,’ I said.
‘Six courts have convicted me of eight murders.’
‘I know. But if you’re innocent and prepared to tell the truth, none of that matters.’
‘I think we should leave it there,’ said Sture. ‘This is a bit too much for me to swallow in one go.’
‘Can I come back?’
‘You’re welcome back,’ he said. ‘Any time.’
I have no memory of leaving the hospital, only that a few moments later I was standing in the car park, talking to my producer Johan Brånstad at SVT. Most likely I was incoherently telling him about my overwhelming meeting and its ramifications.
Rather than going back to Gothenburg, as planned, I went directly to Säter Stadshotell and booked a room for the night. Restlessly I paced back and forth inside, trying to concentrate on my work.
I had been given strict orders never to call Sture after six o’clock in the evening. It was two minutes to six. I called the patient line at Ward 36. Someone went to fetch Sture.
‘I just wanted to know how you’re feeling after our meeting,’ I said.
‘Oh, thanks,’ he answered. ‘It actually feels good. I’m feeling it’s good, what’s happening now.’
Sture sounded happy, and this emboldened me to ask the question.
‘I’m still in Säter,’ I admitted. ‘Can I come and see you tomorrow?’
His reply was immediate, without the slightest pause for reflection: ‘You’re welcome!’
THE TURNING
‘I HAVEN’T COMMITTED any of the murders I’ve been convicted of and none of the murders I’ve confessed to either. That’s the way it is.’
Sture had tears in his eyes and his voice no longer carried. He looked at me, as if trying to work out whether or not I believed him.
All I knew was that he had lied. But was he lying to me now? Or when he confessed? Or on both occasions? I couldn’t be certain, but the prospects of finding out had just dramatically improved.
I asked Sture to try and explain right from the beginning, so I could understand better.
‘When I came to Säter in 1991 I had certain hopes that my time here would move things along for me, I’d gain insights into myself and learn to understand myself better,’ he began hesitantly.
His life was ruined and his self-esteem about as low as it could get. He was looking for a reason to exist, he wanted to be someone, and to belong.
‘I’d been passionate about psychotherapy for a while, especially psychoanalysis, and so I was hoping to improve my understanding of myself in that way,’ he explained.
A doctor on the ward named Kjell Persson, who was not a psychotherapist, had taken pity on him, but Sture soon realised that he wasn’t a very interesting patient. When Kjell Persson asked him to talk about his childhood he answered that he didn’t have any particular memories, he did not feel that anything was worth talking about.
‘I realised soon enough that the important thing was to start making up some memories from childhood, traumatic memories about dramatic events. And what a response I got as soon as I started talking about things like that. An incredible response!
‘More and more it was about sexual molestation and abuse and how I myself became an abuser. The story was built up in therapy and the things I said about it were helped along by benzo.’
Sture was already addicted to benzodiazepines when he got to Säter in April 1991 and gradually the range of drugs on offer and their dosages increased – mainly, he claimed, because of developments in the therapy room.
‘The more I told them, the more benzo I got. In the end I practically had free access to medicines, to narcotics.’
Sture maintained that in all the years of the murder investigations he was constantly drugged with benzodiazepines.
‘I wasn’t straight for a moment. Not one moment!’
Benzodiazepines are highly addictive and soon Sture could not live without the medicines. He ‘reactivated repressed memories’ in therapy, confessed to murder after murder and participated in a string of police investigations. In return he gained the attention of therapists, doctors, journalists, police and prosecutors. And he had unlimited access to narcotics.
I thought about all the people around Quick in the years of the police investigations – lawyers, prosecutors and police. Had they been aware that he was drugged? I asked.
‘They must have been! They knew I was taking my Xanax, and you could see by my behaviour that I was drugged. How could anyone not see that? It would have been impossible!’
The truth of this last comment was something I had been able to confirm for myself from the video footage taken in Norway. There was no mistaking that he was so heavily drugged at times that he was unable to walk or talk. And the medication was administered quite openly.
‘Was your use of medications ever discussed between you and your lawyer?’
‘No! Never.’
‘No one questioned your intake of medication?’
‘At no time! I never heard that question being asked.’
According to Sture, the doctors, therapists and carers had ensured that he had a constant and unlimited supply of narcotic medications.
‘Today it would be unthinkable, but at the time I was happy the question wasn’t brought up. It meant I could keep using those drugs.’
Sture claimed that he had been constantly drugged for almost ten years. It was during those years that he cooperated with the prosecutions, leading to his convictions for eight murders which he had not committed.
Then everything came to an abrupt end.
‘One day, it must have been towards the middle of 2001, there was a decision taken by the new chief physician at Säter, Göran Källberg. All the medications would be dispensed with. No more benzo. I was just terrified of having side effects from the withdrawal.’
I thought about what the retired chief physician Göran Källberg had said a few months earlier, about not wanting to be a part of a ‘cover-up of a miscarriage of justice’. I was starting to understand the general thrust of Källberg’s thoughts about Quick, the murders and his use of medications.
Sture had felt that there was a sort of silent agreement between him and Säter Hospital, a connection between his confessions for murder and the unlimited supply of medication. Now the terms of the agreement had been cancelled from one day to the next. His reaction was one of anger, bitterness and fear.
‘How was I going to live without medicine? What would it mean physically?’ Sture’s use of benzodiazepines had reached such high levels that it had
to be reduced by gradual increments over an eight-month period.
‘They were difficult months. I just stayed in my room. The only thing I could do was listen to the radio, P1.’
Sture crossed his arms, clutching at each shoulder.
‘I lay like this on the bed,’ he said, shivering violently.
‘And then suddenly you were clean and felt healthier. But then in practice you were sentenced to life for eight murders?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you’d contributed to this yourself!’
‘Yeah. And I couldn’t find a way out. I haven’t had a single person to turn to for support.’
‘Why not?’
He became silent, then he looked at me with a kind of astonishment, before laughing and saying, ‘Where was I going to turn? I could hardly speak to my lawyers, who were also a part of this whole thing that led to my convictions. I’ve been very alone in this . . .’
‘Not a single person to talk to?’
‘No, I never found anyone. But maybe there were people . . .’
‘The people around you now, in the clinic, do you know what position they take on your guilt?’
‘In general I think they think I’m guilty as charged. Maybe there could be the odd exception among the staff. But it’s not discussed.’
All police questioning ceased after the article in Dagens Nyheter in November 2001 in which Quick announced that he was withdrawing and taking time out. Shortly after, Christer van der Kwast shelved all pre-trial investigations in progress. Quick stopped receiving journalists and entered into his seven-year period of silence.
What is less well known is that Sture also stopped having therapy. Without the medication he had nothing to talk about. He didn’t want to carry on talking about the sexual abuse in his childhood and the murders he committed as an adult – nor was he capable of talking about these things without the benzodiazepine. It was the medication that had made him so glib that he could take the initiative in his therapy sessions and during police questioning.
‘For a few years I didn’t see Birgitta Ståhle at all. Then we started meeting once a month for a “social chat”. Then as you’d bloody expect she slipped it into a conversation: “For the sake of the loved ones you have to carry on talking.” So it’s been like a nightmare scenario!’
Another nightmare has been that Sture has almost no clear memories at all about what happened during his years as Thomas Quick. It’s generally known that high doses of benzodiazepines knock out the cognitive faculties – learning processes simply don’t work.
Initially I suspected that Sture was faking his memory loss, but soon I realised that he really didn’t have a clue about significant events – even when speaking of them would have been in his own best interest. It struck me that this was a situation that had made it almost impossible for him to retract his confessions.
‘I really hope that the medications have been properly recorded in the patient file,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if they have.’
What Sture had told me meant that the case of Thomas Quick was not only a giant miscarriage of justice but also a healthcare scandal of huge proportions – a prisoner in psychiatric care who had been given inappropriate therapy and insane levels of medication. The convictions for eight murders were a direct consequence of this malpractice. That is, if Sture was telling the truth. And how could I ever check the level of accuracy in his statements?
‘It would be useful for me to be able to read your file,’ I said.
Sture looked very uncomfortable.
‘I don’t know if I want that,’ he said.
‘Why?’
He lingered over his answer.
‘I would find it so dreadfully embarrassing to let another person read everything I said and did in those years.’
‘Christ! People have read how you assaulted children, murdered them, chopped them up and ate their bodies! What could there possibly be left for you to be embarrassed about? Everything’s about as embarrassing as it can get!’
‘I don’t know,’ Sture repeated. ‘But I’ll think about it.’
His answer made me suspicious. Was Sture denying me his files because they revealed another story?
‘You think about it,’ I said. ‘But if you want the truth to come out, it’s conditional on you being absolutely candid. Truth and nothing but the truth . . .’
‘Yes, I suppose you’re right,’ said Sture. ‘I’m just so dreadfully ashamed . . .’
We said goodbye after a long and exhausting conversation. As I was preparing to leave and Sture was just about to ring the bell for the care assistant, I suddenly remembered something important.
‘Sture, I just want to ask you one last question that I’ve been obsessing about for six months.’
‘What’s that?’
‘What did you do in Stockholm when you were on leave?’
He smiled broadly and answered without a moment’s hesitation. His answer also made me smile.
PART II
‘If you’re saying that the police, along with a psychologist, have rigged Swedish court cases to put an innocent person behind bars, I will answer that this has never happened in the history of our legal system. If someone could prove that, it would be the biggest scoop in the world!’
Claes Borgström, Thomas Quick’s defence lawyer 1995–2000, in an interview with the author on 14 November 2008
LIVING A LIE
I WAS STANDING by the door to the visiting room, waiting for the guard to let me out. But first Sture had to answer my question.
Thomas Quick’s trips to Stockholm when he was on leave were noted in the police investigation material. On his return from one of these trips, it was as if he had made ‘a hypnotic journey in a time machine’ and now had amazing recall of every detail of his murder of Thomas Blomgren in Växjö. At least this was how his therapist interpreted the sudden return of his memory.
‘Oh, I can tell you that all right,’ said Sture triumphantly. ‘I sat in a library in Stockholm reading newspaper articles about Thomas Blomgren. Yeah, I sat there scanning through microfilm. I noted down important facts and made a drawing of the outhouse. I smuggled these into Säter and mugged up on them before I got rid of them.’
Although I had suspected this was exactly what had taken place, it was almost unsettling to learn how infernally crafty he had been. Why on earth had he put so much effort into duping the police?
According to Sture, his goal had not been to trick the police. It had all been about achieving credibility with his therapist and trying to be an interesting patient.
‘I was forced to the library by Kjell Persson,’ Sture explained. ‘You have to understand the enormous pressure I was under in my therapy. We sat there three times a week, a couple of hours every time. And I talked and talked without being able to come up with any real facts. It was also about Kjell Persson and [chief physician] Göran Fransson wanting to pass on something substantial to Seppo and Kwast. Talking about Thomas Blomgren seemed harmless. It was a statute-barred crime and there was no risk I’d be prosecuted for it.’
I heard what Sture was saying, but however hard I tried to understand, it was all too crazy for me.
‘And anyway,’ Sture continued with a pointed glance, ‘I have an alibi for the murder of Thomas Blomgren! A very strong alibi!’
I still hadn’t quite got over what he’d said about the library.
‘Me and my twin sister were confirmed on that Whitsun weekend in 1964,’ Sture told me eagerly. ‘The confirmation stretched over two days! It was at home, in Falun! We were in folk costume! We were part of a folk-dancing group and we were all confirmed together.’
‘Are you really sure about this? You’re sure you have the right date and the right year?’
‘Quite sure,’ he said emphatically. ‘I was worried all along that they’d find out about the confirmation. My siblings knew about it! And the others who were being confirmed. It wouldn’t have been so difficult to find out about it!�
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Finally the guard came to let me out. We had to say a quick goodbye.
My head was spinning as I walked out into the autumn air and went to my car. There was a great deal to process here; I remained deep in thought all the way back to Gothenburg.
Sture Bergwall’s retraction of his confessions to all the murders had a fundamental impact on the work with my planned television documentary.
He soon got over his initial resistance to letting me have his files and before long I had access to material far beyond anything I could ever have dreamed of. The material primarily consisted of patient notes, records of medications and so on, but Sture had also kept masses of correspondence, diaries, private notes and old investigation documents.
Sture provided me with everything I wanted and didn’t even bother reading through what he was passing to me.
‘That’s my big security, I know there’s nothing in this material that will contradict me. For the first time I have nothing to hide. Nothing!’
‘The truth will set us free,’ I answered in a slightly jaunty tone, but at the same time there was a deep underlying seriousness.
If Sture’s new version of events was indeed the truth, I knew that the mere fact of telling it would be a great relief to him.
In the time after Sture’s turnaround we often spoke about the devastating consequences of any attempt on his part to lie to me. Even the most inconsequential lie would send us both into limbo. In my heart I knew he was telling me the truth. I knew it. But for reasons of plain self-preservation I was determined to question every-thing he said.
As far as the outside world was concerned he was the foremost lunatic in the whole country, a person entirely devoid of credibility. The fact that he now claimed it was all made up wouldn’t necessarily change that perception.
Yet the convictions imposed on Thomas Quick were also based on additional evidence, and I knew that I would have to scrutinise – and rule out – every single piece. If even one item could not be explained in any other way than by Sture’s guilt, his entire story would collapse like a house of cards.
Thomas Quick Page 11