Thomas Quick drew a map of the area which was completely wrong unless, as certain interpreters have suggested, it was an example of Quick’s ‘right–left problem’. If inverted it wasn’t so bad.
Penttinen asked what parts of the body had been subjected to violence.
‘Around the stomach,’ said Quick.
‘Do you remember if you’ve said anything else in earlier questioning?’ asked Penttinen.
‘No,’ said Quick.
Penttinen wondered if he could possibly be remembering any other woman than Trine.
‘Doubtful,’ answered Quick.
‘So I’m notifying you now that you’re under suspicion for the murder of Trine Jensen,’ said Penttinen.
On 28 May 1999, six days before a planned interview with Thomas Quick regarding the murder of Trine Jensen, Seppo Penttinen telephoned Quick so that he could ‘pass on information about clothes and any items that he connects with the victim’. The most important ‘item’ of the case was obviously the strap from Trine’s handbag, which had most likely been used to strangle her.
The telephone call was not recorded, so we do not know what exact words were spoken, but the fact is that in this exchange Seppo Penttinen also chose to discuss the most crucial matter of all – without the tape recorder being switched on. Quick told him, according to Penttinen’s note, that Trine Jensen had a ‘handbag with straps that were longer than just a handle’. If one knows that a handbag has long carrying straps, which are considered significant in some way, it does not seem excessively difficult to work out what the straps might have been used for.
When, on 3 June 1999, Thomas Quick was questioned about the murder, he once again drew a map which, with some goodwill, could be correct – provided one reversed it. Quick described how Trine had got out of the car and was moving on her own when he attacked her with a knife and stabbed her several times. He claimed that there would have been a trail of blood some thirty metres long.
Finally Trine collapsed and Quick could see that she was dying. At this point he started attacking her again. She died while lying on the ground. He stabbed the front of her body.
‘I’d locate it in the chest or possibly the stomach,’ he said.
Despite being aware of the long carrying straps of the bag, Quick gave an entirely inaccurate account of how Trine had been killed. Instead of just asking him to continue with his story, Seppo Penttinen steered the conversation on to items she had brought with her.
Quick mentioned that he remembered ‘the handbag with . . . er . . . that strap’. Penttinen immediately took the bait.
‘What’s this handbag strap you’re talking about?’
Quick wasn’t able to answer; he sat there in silence, sighing.
Seppo Penttinen reacted with the same signal that he always used when Quick was on the right track.
‘Do you have some memory associated with that strap? I can see by your face that this is difficult for you to talk about.’
‘Yes, it’s difficult,’ answered Quick.
‘What do you associate with that handbag and the strap?’
‘Well, I take the strap and I use it, I was going to say . . . uh . . .’
‘You were going to say you used it? In what way did you use it? Can you explain that to me?’ asked Penttinen. ‘If that’s right . . .’ he added, just to be safe.
Quick sighed and said that he couldn’t remember. But by now Penttinen was in full swing and he wasn’t about to let this one go.
‘Do you remember if something happened with it?’
‘Well, I remember holding the strap . . . er . . .’
Quick indicated that the strap was a few centimetres wide. This did not tally very well with Trine’s bag, but Penttinen egged him on.
‘What was it made of? Do you have some sort of sense memory of the whole thing?’ he asked.
‘Yeah, I have a sense memory and . . . uh . . .’
‘If you’re thinking of the texture,’ Penttinen prodded.
‘Well, it’s some sort of leather or skin, or whatever it’s called,’ Quick attempted.
This was completely wrong. Penttinen knew it was a fabric strap. Quickly he changed the subject.
‘What happened with this strap you keep bringing up?’
‘I could say that I bound her feet with it, but that would be the wrong information.’
Penttinen’s questions were endless and Quick offered the alternative that Trine found it distressing when he was holding the strap. In the end Penttinen went in hard to get Quick’s statement into order.
‘If you just try to speak in plain language, Thomas! There’s something you’re avoiding. You want to get it out, but I can see that it’s very hard for you.’
‘Yeah, it’s very hard,’ Quick confirmed.
‘You don’t bind her legs, but it comes into use in some other way if I’m understanding you right.’
Again Thomas Quick tried to explain how frightened Trine was of the strap and then he went back to the knife. But Penttinen didn’t want to hear this.
‘If I interpret you now with your body language and so on, I’d say something happens with that handbag strap. At what stage is it useful to you? Where were you at this point? If you can try to develop that.’
The question was no longer if the strap was of use, but where and how.
By the time the next interview came around, on 1 September 1999, Quick had been mulling it over for two months. He’d also been able to fish for information and snap up various tips from the Swedish and Norwegian police who took part in the August reconnaissance to the places where Trine Jensen and Gry Storvik were found.
And sure enough, in a therapy session with Birgitta Ståhle, Quick revealed that important memories had been reawakened.
In the interview, Thomas Quick, Seppo Penttinen and Christer van der Kwast managed through their collective efforts to reach the conclusion that the strap had been used as a strangling knot.
At long last – two years and eleven months after Thomas Quick had first admitted to the murder of Trine Jensen – they had finally obtained a piece of evidence that would hold up in court.
And the inspection video? This notorious film that had such an effect on the conviction shows Thomas Quick, on 16 August 1999, leading a number of Swedish and Norwegian police and other individuals to almost the exact spot where Trine Jensen’s body was found. On the way the car also passed close to the car park where Gry Storvik was found. Quick reacted strongly, with a severe anxiety attack. The others in the car later claimed they were not aware at this time of the other murder – as stated in court, only at this stage did suspicions arise that Quick had also murdered Gry Storvik.
Remarkably enough, my Norwegian colleagues told me that Oslo police had connected the two sexually motivated murders at an early stage and suspected that Trine and Gry had fallen prey to the same assailant. I also discovered that Gry had already featured in newspaper coverage of the Quick investigation just as much as Trine Jensen.
Bearing in mind the leaks and Quick’s generous allowance of full clearance, what was the value of leading the police to two crime scenes that were fifteen and almost twenty years old, and not in any way secret or unknown?
DA CAPO
AT SÄTER HOSPITAL Christmas and New Year were not usually a big deal, and exceptions weren’t made for the eve of the new millennium. Around the time of the New Year Thomas Quick was ‘tense and shaky’, according to his file. His carers reported ‘weeping and despair’. Quick was unable to sleep because of his ‘high-level anxiety’.
In March a meeting was held to discuss Quick’s treatment regime, but he was too ill to attend. The chief physician Erik Kall was optimistic as always, noting in the file that there had been ‘positive developments in the patient. He has progressed in his psychotherapeutic process and become more integrated as a person’.
Birgitta Ståhle went even further when she wrote in the file of the beneficial effects of the long-term therapeutic treatment
. As usual she began her entry by describing the recent advances in the therapy, then moved on to developments in murders currently being investigated and how these related to Quick’s traumatic childhood experiences.
Our continued therapeutic work has implied a broadened and deepened seeing and understanding of both the significance of the various murders and also how the earlier experiences are narrated/expressed in the murders.
In the later part of the autumn there was a clear integration which means that the contexts, both earlier and later, are connected in a clearer way. The differentiation between the various murders has been one of the things of importance to work on. This has become very clear in the meaning and significance of the murders of boys and those of women.
Chief physician Erik Kall and Birgitta Ståhle’s enthusiastic judgements are in heart-rending contrast to the notes made by the ward staff at this time:
Thomas is having a particularly difficult period at the moment with a lot of existential brooding. On 6/4 he was told that he would be formally arraigned for prosecution within two weeks, which led to additional pressure and increasing anxiety as a consequence. Has taken extra amounts of benzodiazepine to reduce his anxiety and to be able to sleep. On the night of 8/4 he slept only two hours. Much despair with crying and screaming in the night despite extra on-demand medications.
In the weeks that followed there were dreadful scenes of sleepless ‘scream-nights’, anxiety and a parade of Thomas Quick’s multiple personalities, who took turns making appearances on the ward – with high dosages of medication as a result.
On 30 June Birgitta Ståhle made another triumphant note in the file, this time on the subject of how the previous week Thomas Quick had managed to get himself convicted of the murders of Gry Storvik and Trine Jensen.
Continued therapy 3 times a week. Ongoing constructive development of the psychotherapeutic process. Trial in Stockholm 18–30 May.
The trial was regarding prosecution for the murder of two girls, committed in 1981 and 1985. During the trial this positive development takes the form of Thomas managing to conduct himself throughout the trial in a much more collected way than before.
Birgitta Ståhle observed that Thomas Quick needed ‘a relatively short time to recuperate himself after the trial’ and that the therapy ‘has taken a huge step forward’.
Even before the verdict had been given, Seppo Penttinen and Christer van der Kwast were back at Säter for the next murder investigation.
Eight years after Thomas Quick had assumed responsibility for the murder of Johan Asplund it was finally time to bring the whole thing across the finishing line.
Quick’s repeated failure to show where he had hidden Johan’s body had led to van der Kwast being forced, after every fresh attempt, to admit that the foundations were not yet in place to bring the Johan murder inquiry before a court. Now the investigation was going to be brought to a close, so that Quick could be put on trial.
On 26 November 2000 Birgitta Ståhle described what happened to Quick during the reconstructions and the mechanisms of a serial killer.
These tours have resulted in a strong, active and very constructive inner therapeutic process. The earlier defensive structures have been exposed and it is possible to both see and understand in a more complete sense.
She continued:
A prerequisite for this inner work is a deepened connection with reality, both his own early vulnerability and the vulnerability of the victims.
That Thomas Quick, despite this ‘deepened connection with reality’, was in free fall in a personal sense can hardly be doubted. On 12 December 2000 a psychiatric nurse wrote in the file:
Thomas came out of his room at about 02.30 crying inconsolably and in despair. He stayed in the day room until about 04.00 with staff. Thomas paced back and forth and was at times very torn up and in despair. He held his head and said repeatedly that he ‘can’t take the pressure’.
The staff resolved the crisis with the help of Xanax and Panocod, but a few hours later the situation was just as bad again.
In the morning, Thomas felt a bottomless despair. He cried uncontrollably. Sat with the staff. Calming conversation and medication as needed. Conversations with Birgitta Ståhle on the telephone. ‘The bottomless despair runs parallel to the severe anxiety.’
A little later in the day, Thomas Quick was paralysed by cramps in the doorway of the smoking room and was quite unable to move. The hospital staff solved the problem with even more Xanax and Panocod. ‘Part of it is that on Thursday, 14 December that is, a documentary on the so-called “Johan case” will be on TV. It’s obviously going to be difficult for Thomas,’ a nurse noted.
During rounds, Dr Kall was informed that Quick hadn’t slept in three nights. He suggested a mammoth additional dose of tranquillisers, 50 mg of Diazepam. It worked and Quick managed to sleep for between four and five hours and declared himself satisfied with the effect of the Diazepam, which was still working when he woke up, as he ‘managed to get out of bed despite crippling despair’.
During the period that followed he grew worse and worse and was constantly speaking of suicide.
The hospital staff frequently wrote in the file about his ‘significant anxiety which he tries to control by taking additional on-demand medication’. Many times the maximum intake was exceeded. According to the nursing staff, police questioning in the run-up to the trial for the murder of Johan Asplund was ‘tougher than expected’ and Thomas Quick was once again mentioning suicide. In the following days it was noted in the file that he felt ‘especially bad’ with ‘a great deal of anxiety’ and was ‘trembling, pale, slurring his words’.
A few days later, on 16 February, it was once again time for Birgitta Ståhle to sum up the situation:
A psychotherapeutic ‘wheel spin’ after the Christmas break has brought a further emotional deepening and connection as well as the ability to see and embrace both his earlier activities and how these earlier activities have been acted out in his adult life and have taken form, among other things, in the murdering of boys.
While plans were being hatched for three new prosecutions for the murders of Johan Asplund, Olle Högbom and Marianne Rugaas Knutsen, a man in another wing of the hospital sat down to scrutinise Thomas Quick’s files and medication logs. This was the previous chief physician Göran Källberg, who after a few years in other professional fields had now taken up his former position as head of the clinic. Realising that Quick’s consumption of narcotics-strength medications was exceeding recommended doses by a significant amount, he was seriously alarmed. In his view, what he was seeing here was a consumption of pharmaceutical drugs for the sake of ‘kicks’. And it had been going on for a terribly long time. Ultimately, it was Källberg who was responsible for this clear case of negligent care.
In a conversation with Göran Källberg on 25 April 2001, Thomas Quick denied that this was a case of outright drug abuse and grew very worried when Källberg communicated his decision: benzodiaze-pine medication would be gradually reduced and then phased out completely. Quick told me that at this time he had been dreading the approaching trial for the murder of Johan, which was due to start a few weeks later.
Göran Källberg’s decision had immediate consequences for the murder investigations. There is an interesting note from a nurse from 5 May which gives an insight into Quick’s withdrawal problems. The note also reveals that he was sitting with the investigation notes, as if studying them in order to be able to give a coherent story in the forthcoming district court proceedings.
[Thomas Quick] did not sleep last night. Sat trying to ‘work’ in preparation for the coming trial. Has investigation notes he needs to read. Because of feeling unwell, due to withdrawals and anxiety, he can’t do this. Asked me to contact Dr Kall or another doctor on duty to get a one-off prescription of a Xanax tablet and two soluble Panocod tablets.
But Göran Källberg’s decision was strictly adhered to and Quick was not given any extra dosage of the medi
cation, neither on this occasion nor on the following day. However, chief physician Erik Kall realised that his patient would not be able to manage the trial unless he was given temporary reprieve from the planned cutback. He wrote:
For the duration of the trial it is necessary to impose a temporary needs-based medication regime, as follows:
At times of high anxiety affecting the patient to the extent of endangering his ability to complete the trial, a Xanax tablet, 1 mg, can be given when required.
At times of such serious tense headache that the completion of the trial hangs in the balance, a Treo comp tablet can be given, or two if required.
If the patient’s general condition is affected in such a way that oral medication cannot be administered, Diazepam Prefill 5 mg/ml 2 ml can be given when required.
The trial for the murder of Johan Asplund started in Stockholm on 14 May 2001. Because Claes Borgström had taken up the position as Sweden’s new Ombudsman for Equality, Thomas Quick was being defended by a new lawyer, Sten-Åke Larsson from Växjö. Aside from this change, he was flanked by the usual group: Seppo Penttinen, Christer van der Kwast, Sven Åke Christianson and Birgitta Ståhle.
On the first day Quick recounted his extremely detailed memories of the abduction of Johan some twenty years earlier: how he had tricked Johan into getting into his car by telling him he had run over a cat, how he rendered him unconscious by slamming his head against the dashboard, how he drove him up to Norra Stadsberget and how there he assaulted him sexually.
After this, how he drove Johan to a place in the area of Åvike, where he strangled him, undressed him and then cut up the body using a saw and a knife. And lastly how he scattered the different body parts in various places around central Sweden.
Again, Sven Åke Christianson was brought in to talk about his invention – the memory test which, it was believed, demonstrated that Quick hadn’t simply acquired his facts from the newspapers. As usual, Birgitta Ståhle testified about Thomas Quick’s horrendous formative years and how the reawakened memories of them were capable of explaining his transformation into a serial killer. Once again she made a statement under oath that as a general rule she is not present during police questioning and also that the police were not party to what was mentioned in the therapy sessions. Seppo Penttinen also testified about the ‘airtight seals’ between the therapists and the investigators and claimed that Quick, despite having changed his mind on some of the points over the course of the eight-year investigation, had retained ‘clearly defined memories’ on the crucial aspects and ‘stayed true to the central parts of his information’.
Thomas Quick Page 38
