Thomas Quick

by Hannes Råstam

  John Sjöberg told the court about his splendid cadaver dog Zampo and how the dog had reacted to a number of the places where Quick claimed to have scattered Johan’s body parts. And in case the court wondered why none of these body parts had been found, the geologist Kjell Persson made a statement on his measurements of levels of phosphates in the ground, which indicated that ‘some form of organic material’ was decomposing in the spot pointed out as the murder scene in the Åvike area.

  Furthermore, Christianson put forward a psychological explanation for the same puzzle: that serial killers have a need to both talk about their actions and preserve the body parts. These dual needs lead to conflicting emotions.

  In its verdict on 21 June 2001, Sundsvall District Court made a slightly hesitant start: ‘Quick has confessed to the deed which is the subject of prosecution. For a confession to form a basis for a guilty verdict, however, there must be additional support from the other parts of the investigation.’

  By way of an opening statement the court acknowledged that there was no technical evidence to connect Quick to Sundsvall at the time of the murder, nor was there anything to establish what had happened to Johan Asplund.

  After this, it was stated that more than twenty years had passed and that this was problematic in itself. Furthermore, the district court declared that Quick’s claims of having borrowed a car from his homosexual acquaintance Tord Ljungström were not adequately supported by the prosecution. Having got all this out of the way, the guns started blazing: ‘Nevertheless the district court believes that in view of what has been established in earlier verdicts regarding Quick’s long-distance travel by car, the question is not of significant importance.’

  The document goes on to note how closely Thomas Quick’s observations from Bosvedjan match the established facts of that particular morning and accepts Christianson, Ståhle and Persson’s explanations as to the missing body parts as well as Quick’s unpredictable but at times razor-sharp power of recall.

  After this came the court’s one and only substantial argument, namely that Quick had been able to describe two physical characteristics on Johan Asplund’s body which were not previously known even to the investigators, and that this seemed to indicate that his story was true: a small birthmark on his back and a hernia in his testicle.

  Checking through hundreds of pages of interrogation transcripts on the Johan Asplund case, I was soon struck by a strong sense of déjà vu.

  The first time Quick mentioned anything about any of Johan Asplund’s physical characteristics was during the Zelmanovits reconstruction on 21 August 1994, when he said that Johan had a scar. Penttinen picked up the thread in questioning nine days later, when Quick clarified that it was a surgical scar on the stomach, ‘maybe five centimetres long’.

  Seppo Penttinen asked if there were any other ‘factors’ about the body.

  Quick answered negatively twice, but when Penttinen would not let it go, he said, ‘Er . . . the testicles.’

  ‘What about them . . . is there something special about them?’

  ‘Well, like this, I have a sense that they’re very shrivelled . . .

  uh . . .’

  ‘Is it the testicles that have shrivelled, or what?’

  ‘Yes, exactly.’

  Seppo wouldn’t drop the subject, and in the end asked ‘if there was a difference between the testicles’.

  ‘Yes, there could be, but then I’m a bit . . . uh . . . more uncertain . . . uh . . . it’s like . . . well, as if one, at least one of the testicles is . . . is pulled up . . .’

  Seppo wondered if it might be the case that the scrotum held only one testicle, and Quick said that this was possible.

  ‘Was one more prominent than the other?’ Penttinen clarified.

  ‘Yes, exactly,’ said Quick.

  One month later Penttinen returned to the subject.

  This time, Quick found it ‘difficult to describe in detail what the exact situation was with the testicle’, but that there was something about the testicles that made him think that Johan’s body was ‘asymmetrical’. Quick also drew a sketch of the scar on the front of Johan’s body, which was placed in the region of his groin and described as red and inflamed.

  Two days later the chief interrogator was at the home of Anna-Clara Asplund, asking whether there were any unreported peculiarities about Johan’s body. Anna-Clara produced a sketch showing a birthmark which was like a faint shadow at the base of the back.

  On 14 October Penttinen held his next interview with Quick. The interrogator was now speaking of a ‘skin condition’, not a scar, and explained that he wanted to discuss its position. Quick wasn’t quite keeping up with all this and pointed out that he had already given ‘quite a close description’.

  Penttinen grew impatient after a few questions and then blurted it right out: ‘Is there any possibility that it could be on the other side of the body? You’ve said that it’s on one particular side of a central line of the body.’

  ‘Mm,’ answered Quick.

  ‘Is there any possibility that it’s on the other side of the body?’

  ‘I think one should always factor in that it could be like a mirror, a sort of reverse perspective,’ said Quick.

  ‘What makes you say that?’ wondered Penttinen.

  ‘Because I’m identifying myself with the victim as well and I am the victim and I also see the victim from the victim’s point of view, so to speak.’

  Quick and Penttinen ruminated a little on this interesting psychological mechanism, before Penttinen came back to the skin condition that had now been placed on the appropriate side of the body.

  ‘So try that description again, if you close your eyes and think back on how you saw that skin condition.’

  But Quick didn’t get any further. Not that time.

  When the investigators checked Johan Asplund’s medical records they discovered that he had been troubled by a testicular hernia. His mother assured them that it was completely healed and not at all visible at the time of Johan’s disappearance, but this didn’t make any difference.

  In an interview on 3 June 1998 the news had somehow got through to Thomas Quick. After a long description of how he had abducted Johan and cut him into small pieces, Penttinen steered the questioning on to his ‘physical characteristics’.

  ‘The way I’m feeling it today, he had some sort of testicular hernia,’ answered Quick pretty much instantaneously.

  A little later Penttinen reminded Quick about the skin condition and Quick pointed at his back.

  ‘You’re pointing at yourself as you’re sitting there, you’re pointing at the right-hand side of your back just above your buttocks,’ said Penttinen helpfully.

  And with this, it was done and dusted – just like with the strap that was used to strangle the victim outside Oslo. The chief interrogator, thanks to an impressive amount of work on this case for almost four years, had reached a point where indisputable evidence could be presented to the court.

  That Quick’s initial descriptions of these ‘physical characteristics’ were fundamentally different obviously wasn’t a matter that was brought before the court.

  Sture Bergwall had an alibi on the day of Johan’s disappearance. His mother came home from hospital on 7 November 1980, which was confirmed by both his diary from that time and the hospital’s own records. Secondly, on that same day he picked up a month’s supply of Oxazepam on prescription.

  So how did he get hold of information about the crime which was, after all, correct?

  Sture told me that he remembered at a very early stage seeing an episode of Efterlyst (‘Missing’) on Johan Asplund. He borrowed an annual from 1980 that contained quite a lot of detail. To help him find his way around Sundsvall, he tore the map out of a telephone book in a phone box when he was on leave in Stockholm. Then, after he started confessing in 1993, he read all the newspaper articles about the case. Closer to the trial he was given access to the investigation material.

&nb
sp; At some point in 2000 he was also allowed to borrow a book, Göran Elwin’s Fallet Johan (‘The Case of Johan’), published in 1986. It helped him fine-tune the last details. Sture found his study notes for me. Among other things he had copied the book’s descriptions of the clothes Johan Asplund had been wearing at the time of his disappearance – information he had been lacking earlier that he could now slot into his story ahead of the trial.

  And who lent him the book?

  Gubb Jan Stigson.

  INTERVIEW WITH THE PROSECUTOR

  THE GUILTY VERDICTS against Thomas Quick acted as a springboard for the career of Christer van der Kwast, who was promoted to chief prosecutor and head of the Anti-Corruption Unit when it was set up in 2005. Since then, he hasn’t been interested in talking about Thomas Quick. ‘I’ve parted ways from that inquiry’, is how he has put it.

  He was willing to make an exception for me – very likely Gubb Jan Stigson’s recommendations had played a part in this.

  Right until the very last minute I was worried that the interview I had scheduled with Christer van der Kwast on 13 November 2008 would be cancelled, and my fears were only assuaged once I was inside the modern premises of the Office of the Prosecutor-General by the Kungsbron (King’s Bridge) in Stockholm and was shown into van der Kwast’s office.

  In the interest of brevity we had agreed to limit the interview to three of the cases: those of Therese Johannesen, Yenon Levi and the Stegehuises.

  Lars Granstrand, the cameraman, rigged up the lights and camera, while I sat with Christer van der Kwast and engaged in small talk. He found it curious that I should be interested in such an old story as the Quick case.

  ‘I wonder if you’ll get any viewers for a subject like that. The case is so old now anyway, there’s no way of assessing it.’

  I answered that there might be one or two interested viewers, but above all I was the one who found the case interesting. Soon I felt Lars giving my shoulder a poke, which meant that the camera was running.

  ‘How convinced are you that Thomas Quick is guilty of the eight murders you had him convicted of?’ I asked.

  ‘I am convinced that the evidence I presented in the law court was enough for a guilty verdict to be reached.’

  ‘Clearly,’ I said, ‘but that’s not an answer to my question.’

  Thus the interview began and thus it continued. I felt that he was taking cover behind legal formalities, or, when did this not work, rejecting the relevance of my claims and questions.

  Van der Kwast described how the investigation began with the case of Johan Asplund and then moved on to the murder of Thomas Blomgren in Växjö.

  ‘In the Blomgren case you have said that Quick is connected to the crime.’

  ‘Yes, that’s how I remember it, that was my judgement – that if it had not been ruled out by the statute of limitation I would have been in a position to put it before a court of law.’

  ‘What made you so convinced of that?’

  ‘Really the same main ingredients as in all the Quick investigations. He gradually provided information in a number of ways, information that connected him to the victim, knowledge of the victim, so that we could rule out any other possibility than his having been there and in contact with the victim.’

  Van der Kwast continued: ‘There was clearly a connection between him and the place, above all the place where the body was found. According to the medical examiner, everything was explained and nothing was left unexplained. His description of the wounds was very compelling. He could place Blomgren, the victim, very precisely in a shed of some sort. I’m trying to describe this so you can understand how we worked.’

  I listened and nodded to indicate that I knew how they worked. At the same time I had to bite my tongue to stop myself blurting out that Quick had an alibi for the murder. Not yet. As soon as I said this, there would be a serious risk of the interview being called to a halt.

  Instead we started quarrelling about the double murder in Appojaure. I asked how he felt about Quick’s first statement, in which he claimed to have cycled from Jokkmokk to Appojaure and back again, only to say in the next interview that he had come by car with Johnny Farebrink, who had been his accomplice in the murder.

  ‘This has been a recurring problem, that the events are wholly or partially fuzzy,’ said van der Kwast.

  ‘Surely it’s not so fuzzy,’ I ventured.

  ‘In the sense that his story emerges exactly as you’re describing now.’

  ‘Is it really possible to talk of a story “emerging” if the original story is completely replaced by a different one?’

  ‘Well, it can be described any way one likes,’ said van der Kwast.

  The interview had been in progress for over an hour when I asked van der Kwast why at the time of the investigation he had allowed Quick leave and full clearance despite the fact that he was under investigation for the murder of several young boys.

  ‘Of course one could say it’s not understandable. But the basic question is if it was proper. Are there other aspects to the question? You see, the thing is there are other aspects,’ he answered cryptically.

  ‘Yes, you wanted Quick to tell you as much as possible,’ I tried.

  ‘Of course. It was my job to get him to talk.’

  ‘Do you have any memory of being at all interested in what Thomas Quick got up to during his trips to Stockholm while he was on leave?’

  ‘I don’t remember that. We tried to keep tabs on him as much as possible.’

  ‘Did you ever ask him?’

  ‘How could I know that, eight years later?’

  ‘What if I told you he went to the library in Stockholm? To the press archive?’

  ‘I don’t know what he did – is that what he did?’

  ‘He did.’

  ‘You know a lot, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I do know a lot.’

  For the first time in the interview, Christer van der Kwast was visibly flustered and I felt uncomfortable when I looked at his troubled expression. His eyes were watering and he rubbed his hands together nervously, while saying with supposed indifference, ‘And so, what did he read?’

  ‘About Thomas Blomgren, among other things.’

  ‘Still, the crucial evidence was not that sort of material. That’s the whole point.’

  We both knew that it was precisely the ‘whole point’ – that Quick had repeated what he had read in the newspapers from 1964. Van der Kwast realised this and changed tack in the middle of his answer.

  ‘If it can be shown that we were wrong the whole situation will have to be reviewed.’

  ‘He travelled down to Stockholm with the express purpose of doing research on Thomas Blomgren,’ I clarified.

  ‘I have a kind of recollection I’ve heard this story before. But no more than that,’ said van der Kwast.

  It was an extraordinary comment. As if it were just a minor detail that a serial confessor was researching the murders he was being interviewed about. I made no further comment on it. Instead I pulled out a photograph of Sture Bergwall and his twin sister posing in folk costume in front of Stora Kopparberg Church in Falun and gave it to van der Kwast.

  ‘This photograph was taken on the same day that Thomas Blomgren was murdered,’ I said.

  Christer van der Kwast gave the photo a cursory glance.

  ‘And?’

  ‘Thomas Quick and his twin sister were confirmed on that day. You actually interviewed the sister about this, so I’m wondering where that information is. Where is the interrogation report?’

  ‘I’ll have to ask Seppo about that. I can’t remember. I’d be extremely surprised if such a simple fact had been overlooked. I’m not going to sit here and defend this, but I won’t accept anything until I have it in black and white right under my nose.’

  Christer van der Kwast knew he couldn’t pass any of the blame on to Seppo Penttinen or anyone else. As the head of the investigation he had approved the interviews that were held and
bore ultimate responsibility for the impartiality of the inquiry. Material that weighed in against his prosecution could absolutely not be withheld. For this reason he assured me that he had conducted the investigation to the very best of his abilities.

  ‘I’m quite open – if something comes up that’s wrong – then I’ll say, “This is wrong, we’ve taken a wrong turn there, this is all over the place, we’ve had the wool pulled over our eyes.” But before anyone can say that something is fundamentally wrong it really has to hold water. In all these years I’ve never met anyone who’s come up with something convincing. Not for any of the cases.’

  It was now time for me to reveal the secret I had been incubating for more than two months.

  ‘You see, the thing is, Sture Bergwall has taken back his confessions,’ I said as calmly as I could.

  ‘Well, he can do that if he wants to,’ said van der Kwast with a shrug of the shoulder. ‘I worked on the premise that even if he did this, the court judgments would still hold firm.’

  He thought about it.

  ‘So that is the opening of your programme? On film, is it?’

  ‘Yes. Everyone will have the opportunity to say their own piece,’ was all I could think of saying in my dazed condition.

  ‘Ha, ha, ha! Well, that’s certainly interesting news for me. He retracted his confessions, did he? To you? Just like that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So he never did anything?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The thing is, there’s no guarantee that what he’s saying now is true and what he said before was false. In that case he has to explain how it was possible. I’d be surprised if he claimed he’d been fed the information which led to his convictions.’