Thomas Quick

by Hannes Råstam

  ‘We took soil samples from the ground and samples of the vegetation in the copse and submitted them for analysis. Thomas’s belt was unbuckled and his trousers unbuttoned. There were bits of vegetation in Thomas’s trousers and underpants. Our technical analysis indicated that the plant material, soil and other fragments, definitely came from this copse. In other words the trousers must have been pulled down in the copse where the vegetation was found.’

  The information that Thomas Blomgren’s trousers and underpants had been pulled down and that the boy lay on the ground in the copse before the murderer had thrown the body into the tool shed had been kept secret until Ragnvald Blomqvist shared it with me. For this reason, Thomas Quick hadn’t been able to read about it in the newspapers and he hadn’t been able to speak of it either. According to his testimony, they had gone straight to the tool shed.

  Several witnesses in the area had heard a scream around the time of Thomas’s disappearance. What the police had also not revealed earlier was that a woman had been walking her dog close to the copse. The dog stood barking towards the trees and refused to move. The police were convinced that it was Thomas who had shouted and the murderer was trying to silence him, but because the woman with the dog had been there for so long, the man didn’t dare release his grip and Thomas died by suffocation.

  The police officers in Växjö have never been able to understand how Christer van der Kwast could link Thomas Quick to the crime. Even more odd was the fact that van der Kwast didn’t want any assistance from the officers who knew this case like the back of their hands. Ragnvald Blomqvist and Sven Lindgren were frustrated that they weren’t allowed to participate in the questioning of Quick.

  ‘We knew a lot, and things that hadn’t been noted down. If we had been allowed to question Quick we could have caught him lying.’

  Blomqvist and Lindgren were both quite clear on this point. But Christer van der Kwast was obviously unwilling to give them the chance.

  The mystery deepened further when we looked into Sture’s statement that the murder took place at a time when he had a watertight alibi. Jenny Küttim had managed to track down most of Sture’s fellow confirmation candidates, who confirmed that the information was correct.

  I called Sven-Olof, who now lived in Svärdsjö in the region of Dalarna.

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘We were confirmed in Kopparbergs Kyrka [Copper Mountain Church] on the Whitsun weekend in 1964. The confirmation ceremonies were held over two days, and the actual confirmation was on the Saturday afternoon. Candidates were asked a lot of questions. The communion itself was at the morning service on the Sunday. I particularly remember that Sture carried the baptismal font.’

  The reason for this was that the Bergwall family were members of the evangelical Pentecostal Church and so hadn’t been christened within the Swedish Church. Sture and his twin sister, Gun, were therefore being baptised alongside the confirmation ceremonies. Sven-Olof emailed me photographs in which Sture could be seen carrying the baptismal font.

  I was stunned. Thomas Quick’s alibi had just been verified for the time of perhaps his most important murder. It was through his detailed description of the Thomas Blomgren killing that Quick had laid the foundations of his credibility as a murderer. That he had started murdering as early as the age of fourteen was an excellent basis on which to build the myth of the crazed serial killer Thomas Quick.

  ‘That was also the weekend he said he’d been down to Växjö for a bit of murdering,’ said Sven-Olof, with a smile that could almost be heard over the telephone.

  ‘You knew about that?’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ he replied in the sing-song dialect of Dalarna. ‘Of course you keep an eye on your mates! Oh yeah. So that was one murder he wasn’t guilty of, anyway . . . We never believed it, that’s for sure.’

  In other words, this was something that Sven-Olof and many others in Dalarna had thought about for many years. They just couldn’t see that it was true. Also Sture’s twin sister, Gun, confirmed it. In addition, she told us that she had been interviewed by the Quick investigators. So they already knew the lie of the land.

  Here was another astonishing piece of information. We had ordered all the files of investigation material and interviews from the Quick inquiry, even the so-called ‘slush’ – unsorted investigation material that didn’t need to be recorded but must nonetheless be kept as official documentation.

  Nowhere among these tens of thousands of pages was this interview mentioned.

  The driver who had allegedly given young Sture a lift to Växjö was another riddle. Why had this Sixten not been questioned? What did he have to say about Quick pointing him out as an accomplice in the murder of a fourteen-year-old boy? The question troubled me so much that I felt I had to contact him at once. I didn’t manage to get hold of his telephone number, but I did find an address and I soon sent a bouquet of flowers to Sixten Eliasson in Dalarna. It may seem rash, maybe even unethical, but I organised an Interflora delivery and had my earnest wish delivered to Sixten’s door in Dalarna:

  Call me!

  Hannes

  0708-84 XX XX

  When my mobile phone rang I apologised for my methods and explained my purpose, feeling quite guilty when I heard how tortured Sixten sounded to have this subject brought up again, but my curiosity got the better of me.

  ‘I’ve already told the police everything I have to say.’

  ‘What? Were you questioned during the investigation?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. Three times!’

  ‘And what did you have to say about Quick’s statement that you drove him to Växjö in 1964?’

  ‘I’ve already said to the police everything I have to say. I’m not in very good health and this has already ruined my life enough.’

  ‘Can’t you just say if you drove him there or not?’

  I had to accept that Sixten wasn’t going to utter a single word about his part in the investigation, but he had already given me a far more important piece of information than I had dared hope for. There were three existing police interviews with Sixten and it should therefore only be a question of time before I got hold of them.

  Yet none of these interviews were to be found among the investigation material. We contacted Christer van der Kwast and Seppo Penttinen, but they didn’t acknowledge any hidden interview transcripts. We went through all the cuttings and documents again, but to no avail. But as we did, we noticed that there had been others pursuing the same line of enquiry.

  On 24 November 1995 Dala-Demokraten was beating its biggest drum. A full page was devoted to Gubb Jan Stigson’s latest scoop:

  DD-REPORTER REVEALS WHO DROVE QUICK

  TO VÄXJÖ

  ‘I am absolutely sure of the man’s identity’

  According to Stigson, the man who drove the car ‘had protected a murderer for more than thirty-one years’. Stigson had approached the investigators to tell them that he knew the identity of Quick’s driver. Inexplicably – as Stigson saw it – Christer van der Kwast wasn’t the least bit interested in the information. He simply refused to take Stigson’s calls.

  ‘It’s incredibly irritating to make repeated urgent calls to van der Kwast, only to be told that he’s not available,’ Stigson said to a colleague at the newspaper.

  Gubb Jan Stigson reported the chief prosecutor to the Parliamentary Ombudsman for ‘absenting himself from an opportunity to receive information of importance to the investigation’.

  In a letter to the Parliamentary Ombudsman, Christer van der Kwast replied that the driver’s identity was unknown to the investigation.

  Gubb Jan Stigson pondered in his own article on what he should do with his sensational information: ‘It’s an incredibly difficult question. Obviously there’s a big risk that he’s close to a nervous breakdown. The crucial matter is that the man gives us all the information he can so that as many murders as possible can be solved.’

  Sixten Eliasson had provided me with a belated explanation for the whole me
ssy business – on no account did Christer van der Kwast want to reveal to Stigson or anyone else that their man had already been questioned on three occasions, the result of which was that it had been clearly shown that Quick had falsely accused him.

  Despite this, van der Kwast kept insisting that Quick was linked to the murder of Blomgren.

  THE WAR OF THE MEDICS

  AFTER HIS SUCCESS in the Växjö murder case, Thomas Quick admitted that he had also murdered thirteen-year-old Alvar Larsson, who had disappeared in 1967 on the island of Sirkön in Urshult after going out to fetch some firewood. Quick also confessed to murdering eighteen-year-old Olle Högbom, who had disappeared after a school party in Sundsvall on 7 September 1983. Quick was back on heavy medication. The investigators hardly knew what to think of these new stories of murders. ‘Is he Sweden’s first serial killer?’ Dala-Demokraten asked on 8 November 1993.

  Gubb Jan Stigson wrote that in addition to the previously known murders of Johan Asplund and Thomas Blomgren, investigations were now under way to see whether Quick was guilty of a further three murders: ‘If this proves correct, the 43-year-old will go down in Swedish criminal history as its first real serial killer.’

  As Sweden’s first serial killer was being unveiled at Säter Hospital, a cat-and-mouse game was in play – very much like the one in The Silence of the Lambs, though this one wasn’t invested with such sophisticated elegance. Thomas Quick wanted to lead the investigation on to the disappearance of Olle Högbom, which had been handled by the police in Sundsvall – Seppo Penttinen’s police district. In one round of questioning about Thomas Blomgren, Quick was keen to talk about an important year in his life.

  Penttinen made the following note in the report:

  One of the years he mentioned was 1983. He said that was the year when his mother died, and, in the same week another ‘dramatic event in several senses’ took place. Quick was anxious when he said this and didn’t want to say in plain words what he meant by the statement. Instead he asked if he could give a little clue in the form of a line from a well-known children’s song. Then he said ‘Mors lilla Olle’ [Mother’s Little Olle].

  Seppo Penttinen didn’t have too much trouble deciphering the helpful serial killer’s little riddle. Olle Högbom’s disappearance was, like the case of Johan, the most infamous crime in his police district in modern times, a mystery where the police did not have the slightest trace or sign of a suspect.

  The names Alvar and Olle were added to the list of Quick’s potential victims.

  A few months earlier, Göran Källberg had taken over as the hospital’s new chief physician and as such was now ultimately responsible for Thomas Quick’s care. Quick’s confessions to the murders of Johan Asplund and Thomas Blomgren had attracted a good deal of press attention and no more than four days into his new job, Källberg brought up the issue with Quick’s doctor. Källberg explained that he was dubious about allowing the patient full clearance and leave at a time when his involvement in two murders was under investigation. Göran Fransson swore that he and Kjell Persson had it all under control. They also emphasised that the arrangement had been made with the full knowledge of the chief prosecutor and the police.

  What Fransson carefully avoided mentioning was that he and Kjell Persson, with a great deal of secrecy, were continuing to run their own parallel criminal investigation. Accompanied by Quick, the two doctors had gone back to Ryggen to look for Johan’s hidden hand. In an unguarded moment, Quick wandered off to a ‘hide’, where he claimed he had found two fingers. When the doctors asked what he had done with them, he said he had eaten them. Afterwards, Persson and Fransson made an agreement with Quick not to mention the incident to the investigators. A few days later they returned again to Ryggen to look for Johan’s body, without success. On later occasions they toured various other locations to look for body parts.

  Early in 1994, Källberg was informed that during therapy Quick had confessed to yet another murder. From his notes:

  On 14 January I learned from members of our personnel that the patient has now disclosed that it is a case of six murders of boys, and that the memories of these are beginning to come back to him.

  Six murders was, apparently, the upper limit of what the chief physician was prepared to tolerate and he brought up his concern with Kjell Persson once again:

  [I] made it clear that I could not support his full clearance and would not give my support either to him or Frasse [Göran Fransson] if something happened. Frasse has, after all, already told me that it would be a catastrophe for him if something happened. Kjell agrees that it would be catastrophic, but he urges me not to interfere.

  After this conversation, Kjell Persson went on sick leave and Källberg agonised over how to handle the situation. When he called ‘Frasse’ to discuss his decision to cancel Quick’s full clearance and leave, he was informed that Fransson was now also on sick leave.

  Thomas Quick was then living on Ward 37, an open ward that was a ‘twin section’ of Ward 36, where violent prisoners convicted of serious crimes were kept locked up. The office for both of these wards was located within Ward 36, and this was where Thomas Quick went to have coffee on the morning of 21 January 1994.

  After a brief meeting with the staff, Göran Källberg sought out Thomas Quick and informed him of his decision to cancel his full clearance. With this, Quick was locked up in Ward 36 along with the most dangerous criminals.

  Kjell Persson, still on sick leave, was extremely unhappy about this, and a week later he contacted Källberg to let him know his disappointment with the decision, which, in his view, might result in the serial killer Thomas Quick committing suicide before he’d had time to confess and face trial for his crimes. Persson described this as ‘a national scandal’.

  Göran Källberg dismissed this argument as contradictory, but was unsettled enough by the conversation to place an immediate call to Ward 36 to enquire about Quick’s state of mind. He made a note during the call, to the effect that the staff had not noticed ‘anything out of the ordinary with the patient. As we speak he’s sitting with the staff, playing Scrabble’.

  The realisation that there was a serial killer at Säter Hospital created tensions not only internally at the clinic but also between the investigators and the carers. Göran Källberg was soon aware of great consternation within the investigation team that Quick had been locked up. On the same day that the regime at the hospital was changed, Christer van der Kwast called Källberg to explain that the cancellation of his full clearance would put the ongoing investigation in jeopardy.

  Christer van der Kwast believed that Thomas Quick ‘has to get something in return’ for his confessions, but he was given short shrift. In fact Källberg was furious that a prosecutor was trying to interfere in the care of one of his patients. Full clearance and leave in exchange for murder confessions? ‘I cannot tolerate reasoning of this kind’, noted Källberg in the file.

  Källberg could live with the conflict with van der Kwast. What was more serious was that increasing numbers of staff at the clinic were turning against him. Thomas Quick being disappointed was perfectly understandable, but the real problem was the reaction of the two doctors, Fransson and Persson.

  Kjell Persson was already planning to leave Säter for a new job at St Lars Psychiatric Clinic in Lund and he now put a great deal of effort into trying to bring his patient with him. Quick fuelled the fire by threatening to stop cooperating with the police if he wasn’t allowed to continue his therapy with Persson. Källberg viewed the situation as blackmail – pure and simple.

  In February 1994, van der Kwast put in another call to Säter’s management to offer his views on how Quick’s care should be organised and ‘once again emphasised the importance of a close level of communication with senior physician Kjell [Persson] for the sake of the ongoing police investigation’.

  When Kjell Persson’s efforts to bring Quick with him to Lund failed, he managed instead to arrange a place for him at the forensic psychia
tric clinic in Växjö. However, the chief physician of the institution, Ole Drottved, declined Persson’s offer to continue therapy with Quick. This would have to be handled by the clinic’s own staff.

  Christer van der Kwast, who believed that the police investigation was absolutely dependent on Kjell Persson’s therapy, intervened again in the question of care and called Drottved, who let himself to be persuaded. Persson would be allowed to preside over Quick’s therapy.

  Again, chief physician Göran Källberg was presented with a fait accompli without having been consulted or informed. ‘This is because it has been put into effect by non-medical staff who are not in our employ’, he commented bitterly in his file – a pointed reference to van der Kwast.

  But there were many who wanted to help stir the pot in the period leading up to the move. Göran Fransson, while he was on sick leave, maintained his communication with Thomas Quick via the ward’s patient telephone. A psychiatry student who had functioned as Quick’s therapist during holiday periods also threw herself into the ring. In a letter to Quick she tried to make him understand Göran Källberg’s decision on the lock-down in Ward 36:

  When it is growing more evident that you have committed six murders, when you are in the midst of a difficult process in terms of your memories of this, it seems reasonable that you should be ‘held with a slightly firmer hand’. Unfortunately I think there would be an almighty row if the public found out that a serial killer was allowed so much free movement. You know how people are, and the mass media . . .

  When Kjell Persson’s sick leave was coming to an end, he refused to go back to the clinic unless he could work 25 per cent of his normal working hours and devote himself exclusively to Thomas Quick. He wanted to rid himself of such duties as making ward rounds and dealing with other patients. If he didn’t get what he wanted, he would put himself back on full sick leave.