She didn’t have to say anything else. Farebrink knew exactly what Wikström was talking about. He had been thinking about it for months, but only now did the whole episode clearly come back to him.
‘Yeah, oh yeah!’ he said. ‘She had the psychosis!’
‘Mm.’
‘That’s good, you know,’ he continued. ‘I remember that.’
Everyone in the room listened solemnly to Johnny Farebrink’s account of Ingela’s psychosis. It correlated exactly with Ingela’s testimony. He hadn’t been able to have any contact with Ingela, so there was no doubt about the truth of the story. Their testimony, combined with the file, meant that Johnny Farebrink had a watertight alibi for the Appojaure murders.
THE ‘SHALOM INCIDENT’
IN THE SUMMER of 1995 the Efterlyst (‘Wanted’) series on TV3 aired a lengthy report about the unsolved murder of an Israeli citizen.
Yenon Levi was twenty-four years old when he landed at Arlanda Airport on 3 May 1988 for his dream holiday in Sweden. Just over a month later, on Saturday 11 June, he was found murdered on a forest road in Rörshyttan in the region of Dalarna. The body had been severely battered, with two lethal blows to the skull.
Beside the body lay a 118-centimetre-long wooden stick with its bark cleaned off, which the perpetrator had found on the scene. The stick was flecked with splashes of Yenon Levi’s blood and was judged to be the murder weapon. However, the police withheld that detail in the television programme.
The medical examiner could not pinpoint the time of death, but estimated it had been between 8 and 10 June 1988. The last documented trace of Yenon Levi had been at Stockholm Central Station the Sunday before, on 5 June. His movements up until he was found on 11 June remained a mystery, despite the police in Avesta assigning considerable resources to interviewing large numbers of people. The police had no idea when or how he had ended up in the region of Dalarna, where he was finally murdered on the isolated forest road. The murder looked as if it would remain unsolved.
Quick’s confession to the murder of Yenon Levi started with cryptic allusions to ‘the Shalom incident’, two weeks after the report on Wanted.
On the evening of 19 August Quick called Seppo Penttinen. He was not feeling well. He described how with the help of an accomplice he had murdered Yenon Levi. They had picked him up in Uppsala and driven towards Garpenberg. There, Quick had held on to Levi while the anonymous helper struck him with ‘a heavy object from the boot of the car’. The body had been left at the scene, ‘lying on its back more than its side and definitely not on its stomach’.
Later, when Penttinen held the first round of questioning about Yenon Levi, Quick’s story had changed on a few vital points. For instance, Quick now stated that he had committed the crime on his own.
I picked him up in the car in Uppsala . . . offered him a lift. We talked a bit in English, I’m not very good at English. But I told him I’m from Falun, I mentioned the copper mine and said I’d really like to show it to him.
Yenon Levi accepted the offer and travelled to Dalarna with Thomas Quick, where they went to a summer cottage outside Heby. Quick surprised Levi with a punch to the stomach and then he delivered ‘the killing blow with a stone to the forehead or the head, maybe two blows’.
After the murder, Quick loaded the dead man onto the back seat of his green Volvo 264 and drove down a forest road, where he dumped the corpse. Levi’s luggage – a trunk that resembled a ‘sailor’s sack’ – was left beside the body. Quick remembered that Levi had a watch with a leather strap; he thought of taking it, but in the end he didn’t remove anything from the scene.
After two hours, Seppo Penttinen stopped the interview with the intention of coming back to it another day.
‘But before you can go on, first we have to analyse what you’ve told me here,’ said Penttinen.
Quick’s description of the murder was inconsistent with a number of known facts established by the investigation. Though it did tally very closely with the reconstruction shown on Wanted.
STEN-OVE MAKES CONTACT
ON TUESDAY 7 NOVEMBER 1995 the Expressen reporter Christian Holmén called Ward 36 at Säter Hospital and asked to speak to Thomas Quick.
‘Your brother Sten-Ove has written an open letter to you which is going to be published in Expressen. We’d like you to read it before it’s published,’ said Holmén.
A few moments later Quick picked up Sten-Ove’s letter from the fax machine in the reception. He took the letter into his room, closed the door and sat down on his bed to read.
Open Letter to My Brother Thomas Quick
It has now been a few months since my book Min bror Thomas Quick was published [. . .] Since the discussion of what I wrote played out in public I am publishing what you are reading now as an open letter. [. . .]
One of the consequences of the book was that I was reunited with my high school sweetheart and recently we were married. My wife has played a great part in helping me change my view of our kinship.
I put distance between us. I pushed you away as a human being. I even said that your childhood was not my childhood, and that your parents were not my parents.
I do not overlook the things you have done. But deeds do not separate brother from brother. [. . .]
You have yourself in various public forums expressed your consternation over my lack of understanding, my distance, my judgement of you. And you may have your justifications for that. But what I hadn’t understood was that having you, ‘Thomas Quick’, as a brother, meant a lifelong struggle for me.
Now I am able to accept that I am in the middle of this struggle, and that this is about trying to keep you in my heart, trying not to lose faith in our kinship, and not to deny that the same blood flows in our veins.
I stand by your side in the struggle against the evil that exists within you.
I still don’t understand the reasons and mechanisms behind your actions when you are transformed into a bloodthirsty monster. [. . .]
But you are my brother, and I love you. [. . .]
Sten-Ove
Sture Bergwall told me that he sat with his brother’s letter in his hand, trying to understand what was happening. Was this a trick? Was there some ulterior motive? He read the letter again and was convinced of Sten-Ove’s sincerity.
It was as if the letter’s conciliatory and loving tone had opened a floodgate; his emotions came pouring out. He was overwhelmed by his longing to see his brother again.
The next day, Quick spoke again with Christian Holmén. They agreed that Sten-Ove would come to Säter a few days later. Quick went into his room and noted in his diary:
Of course I am tense and nervous but I have no doubt that me and Sten-Ove will find a way back to each other. This first meeting will be a little strange, in the sense that there’s going to be a journalist there. I imagine S-O will come back later and that we will be able to talk in more depth about all the things that have happened, his situation today and mine.
Quick had neither police interviews nor therapy booked in for the next day. No one at Säter Hospital knew what was in the offing, so the reunion of the two brothers was an untarnished promise that brought much happiness to Quick. In his diary he wrote:
9/11 1995
Sten-Ove and his open letter have obviously dominated my thoughts. I don’t know. My situation has changed since the letter and I am faced with difficult decisions. Tomorrow I am seeing Birgitta again, and maybe it will clarify then.
The morning after, Quick told Birgitta Ståhle about his brother’s letter. Her reaction was like an unexpected cold shower for Quick. She was very upset and explained that she had to report what had happened to chief physician Erik Kall.
As soon as Kall found out about Quick’s contact with his brother, he told Christer van der Kwast, and it was only a matter of time before Seppo Penttinen and Claes Borgström were informed.
In his diary Thomas Quick wrote:
Seppo called me up and was really upset. I wasn�
�t prepared for Sten-Ove’s visit to cause Kwast and Seppo to get so upset.
But what made a meeting between two brothers so problematic?
Quick had talked about the terrible things that Sten-Ove had subjected him to as a child. He had also pointed him out as an accomplice in the murder of Johan Asplund. His immeasurable enthusiasm at the idea of meeting Sten-Ove was damaging to his credibility, in the opinion of Penttinen, van der Kwast and Ståhle.
Thomas Quick listened to their reasoning, saw the sense in what they were saying, but was not prepared to give in. He wrote in his diary:
I want to see Sten-Ove although I am beginning to see that it might not be appropriate. But I can’t and will not say no. Seppo suggested that he could be present, which is out of the question for me. The easiest thing would be if Kwast were to arrest me, then I wouldn’t have to give this a further thought – I can’t say no to Sten-Ove.
When Quick’s team realised that the meeting looked as if it would go ahead, there was panic back at camp. ‘There’s a storm about Sten-Ove’s visit,’ he wrote in his diary. They all tried their hardest to make him cancel the meeting.
I don’t give a shit about Seppo’s talk about credibility in terms of a trial for Johan, the credibility is up to him and Kwast!! For God’s sake – does no one understand, deep down, how divided I am about the meeting with Sten-Ove!? I want to see him and I can understand it may not be appropriate but my will to do it is much stronger than my intellect.
Sunday was the last chance to stop the meeting, and every bit of firepower was concentrated on Quick to make him back off. If not, Sten-Ove’s visit had to be stopped by legal means.
Thomas Quick spent the entire Sunday on the telephone with Ståhle, Penttinen, Kall and Borgström. They were unanimous in their view that Quick should voluntarily cancel his meeting with Sten-Ove.
In the end the matter was settled by Erik Kall, who decided to impose a visitation ban on Sten-Ove Bergwall. Quick accepted the decision. In his diary he noted Penttinen’s comment: ‘We were lucky to dodge that bullet.’
One might wonder why everyone around Thomas Quick should be so terrified about the meeting of the two brothers. It is a reaction that one associates with very secretive cults.
Sture told me later that he had no doubt about what the consequences would have been if the meeting had taken place.
‘If me and Sten-Ove had been allowed to meet and talk, I’m sure the Quick era would have come to an end as early as 1995. There wouldn’t have been any more police investigations, because if me and Sten-Ove had been allowed to talk, I couldn’t have persisted with my lie. Birgitta Ståhle realised that, maybe even Seppo Penttinen. That’s why they were willing to do absolutely anything to stop the meeting.’
In the period that followed, Thomas Quick stopped bothering to get out of bed, answered questions monosyllabically and stopped eating.
THE TRIAL IN GÄLLIVARE DISTRICT COURT
JAN OLSSON AND the medical examiner Anders Eriksson were due to make a joint presentation of the forensic findings that matched Quick’s description of the murders in Appojaure.
Olsson told me that he had breakfast with Christer van der Kwast at Hotell Dundret in Gällivare on the day that his and the medical examiner’s testimony was being presented. Olsson had appeared in a number of trials as an expert, and in this sense it was just another day at the office. Despite that, and even though their joint presentation was close to airtight and would certainly have a profound effect on the outcome of the case, he felt slightly uneasy about his testimony.
After breakfast, Jan Olsson and van der Kwast walked to the district court together in the Arctic cold. Olsson was consumed by his doubts about the murders in Appojaure and he remembers saying, ‘That rubbish bag. The upright bag in the tent. Quick couldn’t have gone into the tent and done what he said without overturning it.’
Earlier in the trial Thomas Quick had described making his way into the tent through the rip in the canvas, whereupon the whole tent collapsed.
If Christer van der Kwast thought anything at all about what Jan Olsson was saying, he didn’t put it in words. Olsson had studied the photographs from inside the tent with a magnifying glass until he could visualise every detail from memory. It wasn’t just the upright rubbish bag that disturbed him. The little schnapps glass was even worse.
Inside the tent on the small area of floor between the two murder victims, where Quick had supposedly positioned himself during the attack, stood a tiny schnapps glass of sherry. The glass had not been knocked over.
‘It just couldn’t be right,’ Jan Olsson told me.
He and van der Kwast, both with similarly grim faces, turned left from Storgatan into Lasarettsgatan. They had reached the district court.
Jan Olsson and Anders Eriksson were well rehearsed for their presentation and, using overhead projectors, they demonstrated both the tears in the canvas and the victims’ injuries. The presentation was informative and highly convincing. It seemed clear that over the course of the investigation Thomas Quick had accounted for more or less every wound he had inflicted on the couple with the knife.
Sture Bergwall remembered them in the district court.
‘Very strong feelings can come up in a courtroom and that’s how it was when Jan Olsson and the medical examiner gave their testimony. It was incredibly significant. That I had described the wounds in Appojaure was almost as important a thing as Therese’s bone in Ørje.’
Jan Olsson agreed.
‘We did a good job, me and Anders Eriksson.’
He was obviously uneasy about the topic of conversation, although he wasn’t avoiding any difficult questions. His own view was that the district court in Gällivare was duped, because so many of the circumstances that strongly refuted Quick’s account were never brought up in the courtroom. He was thinking of that schnapps glass; he was thinking about some of the curious events at the reconstruction and the fact that the couple’s radio was found in Vittangi. He was also thinking about the rubbish bag, which, he felt, showed that Quick didn’t have a clue about the crime and what had actually taken place.
‘Afterwards, I thought I should have said all this in the courtroom. But then again – and I guess this is an excuse – I was an expert witness who was supposed to answer questions, not draw my own conclusions. I was expecting questions about it from the defence lawyer. But there was total silence there.’
Jan Olsson knew from experience that the defence lawyer will always attack any point of uncertainty in the technical evidence, so Claes Borgström’s passivity came as a surprise to him.
Surely he has to ask about this rubbish bag, I thought. ‘It’s accounted for in the crime scene report. There has to be a lawyer who questions things – it’s a necessity,’ he added.
Instead, Olsson and Eriksson received a number of appreciative comments after their joint testimony.
I also read in the trial report that Sven Åke Christianson had been lined up to make a statement on Quick’s credibility. Claes Borgström asked him if there was any risk that they were dealing with a false confession. Christianson’s answer, by way of a summing-up, was that ‘nothing had emerged that might lend support to the notion that this was a false confession by Quick’.
Oddly enough, at this very moment a fax arrived at the district court from a forensic psychiatrist – it was a long and detailed letter warning of the risks of false confessions and false memories. The fax was handed over to the chief judge.
Gubb Jan Stigson, the crime reporter and expert on Quick, referred to the moment in his column in Dala-Demokraten the following day:
There was a bit of a palaver while the judge, prosecutor and defence discussed how to handle the letter. At that point Quick stepped in:
‘I don’t even think we should look at that. If some quack from Älmhult sends something here, we obviously have to put it in the bin!’
His request was approved!
Apparently there was an outburst of hilarity in the
district court at this elegant solution to the ill-fated letter from a ‘quack from Älmhult’. Nils Wiklund, the letter-writer, was in fact a senior lecturer in forensic psychiatry from Stockholm who specialised in witness psychology.
Nils Wiklund still has the letter that the district court chose to consign to the wastepaper basket and showed it to me when I visited him. It concludes with the following lines on the warning signs of false confessions, of which the district court should have been more aware:
1. Has the patient for a long period of time not had any memory of events which have ‘come back to him’ in the therapy process? This increases the risk of false memories.
2. Are there tape recordings of the conversations that touch upon the memories? If so, any alleged process of influence can be analysed. If not, the therapist may not realise whether the interaction has called up false memories.
3. Are the suspicions backed up in other respects by evidence unrelated to the patient’s own account (fingerprints, DNA analysis, technical evidence)?
If only the account itself is considered to give credence to the suspicions, the account should be carefully analysed to see whether it could have been fetched from other sources, such as the mass media.
If there is any risk of memories having been produced in the therapeutic process, the account should be subjected to expert scrutiny by a psychologist with university training in witness psychology. [. . .] If therapy-induced memories are used as a foundation for court judgments without any such analysis, there is a risk of miscarriages of justice.
With kind regards
Nils Wiklund
Registered psychologist, senior lecturer in forensic psychiatry, specialist in clinical psychology
Unusually, on the last day of the trial the defendant, Thomas Quick, was given the option to present his own ‘plea’ – a speech to the courtroom, the audience and the press. He stood up and read from six densely written A4 pages.
‘In this court we have experienced and been shown a cruelty which, for most of us, is beyond explanation, a crime with the most horrible ingredients,’ Thomas Quick began, with a tremor in his voice, obviously close to tears.
Thomas Quick Page 30
