Authors: Hannes Råstam
What was he saying?
A miscarriage of justice? I did my best to hide my excitement. So this was how the ex-chief physician of Säter Hospital regarded the case of Thomas Quick – as a miscarriage of justice.
Göran Källberg indicated that his concerns centred on the events around the time of Quick’s withdrawal, his ‘time out’. He told me that on his own initiative he had asked a couple of different judges about the possibilities of overturning the verdicts and demanding restitution for Quick. The answer he received was that in principle it would be impossible. He had no choice but to leave it there.
However much I thought about it I couldn’t imagine what it was that Källberg considered to be a possible reason for the conviction to be overturned.
One thing I have learned in my years as an investigative journalist is the importance of chronology: to clearly define the order in which things occurred, so that one can rule out incongruities – meaning certain things that couldn’t possibly have happened at the same time – and separate cause and effect.
By meticulously arranging the eyewitness accounts of the death of Osmo Vallo on a timeline, I was able to show that the police’s version of events was not credible. In the same way, accusations against the man convicted of incest in ‘The Case of Ulf’ were disproved by the simple fact that he was elsewhere at the time when he was supposedly assaulting his daughter. After the Gothenburg riots, by breaking things down into units of time – in this case, using the large volume of video footage taken at the time of shots being fired on Vasaplatsen – Janne Josefsson and I were able to show what had actually happened.
Now my attention was focused on the investigation into the
murder of Yenon Levi in 1988. The murder took place in Avesta police district, where the police inspectors Lennart Jarlheim and Willy Hammar had done an impressive job of mapping out Thomas Quick’s life chronologically, from the cradle to Säter Hospital.
By way of a summary they had established in 1956, the Bergwall family had moved to a flat at 4 Bruksgatan in Korsnäs outside Falun. The father, Ove, passed away in 1977 and, after his death, Sture took care of the household and his sick mother, Thyra, up until her death in 1983.
During these years Sture had been declared medically unfit for work because of his psychological problems, and he was claiming disability benefits. Helped along by his mother’s pension, they managed to pay their way. He spent a lot of time with his siblings and their families and had particularly strong ties to his nieces and nephews. At home he kept himself busy with rug-weaving, household chores and by spending time with his mother and her friends.
Sture Bergwall’s life seemed to be improving when, in August 1982, he opened a tobacco shop with his older brother, Sten-Ove. One year later their mother died, and he was now living by himself in the parental home.
A number of youths would hang out at the kiosk in the evenings; one in particular, an eleven-year-old referred to as Patrik Olofsson, started helping out with minor chores and also enjoyed taking care of Peja, Sture’s Scottish deerhound. Sture was soon on friendly terms with the Olofsson family.
In 1986 the Bergwall brothers wound down their entrepreneurial project and Sture became unemployed. He opened a new kiosk on Drottningplan in the town of Grycksbo with a new business partner – this time Patrik’s mother, Margit Olofsson.
The new kiosk quickly became a hang-out for teenage boys in the area, who increasingly also visited Sture at home. Sture had started taking driving lessons and on 27 March 1987, after many attempts, he passed his driving test. His first car was a 1965 red Volvo PV. Sture’s popularity among the boys was at its peak when he began to organise ‘heavy metal’ trips to Stockholm in his twenty-two-year-old car. They went to concerts by Kiss, Iron Maiden and WASP.
Having previously survived on disability benefits, Sture Bergwall had now become a shopkeeper. During the Grycksbo years he worked as a bingo caller and newspaper delivery man too, and he was demonstrably popular with customers, colleagues and employers.
Patrik Olofsson spent more and more time with Sture and even lived with him during certain periods, with his parents’ approval. The relationship between Sture and the Olofsson family was now so tight that it seemed perfectly natural for Sture to celebrate Christmas with them.
But the story ended in catastrophe for the Olofssons. The husband and wife separated, a deep disagreement arose between Sture and Mrs Olofsson, the kiosk went out of business and Patrik turned his back on his family. Sture’s time in Grycksbo came to an end when his and Patrik’s financial and social predicament drove them to rob the town’s branch of Gotabanken.
The foolishness of the robbery was almost mystifying: Sture was a customer of the bank, which was next door to his previous kiosk. On the morning of 14 December 1990 the robbers forced their way into the home of the bank manager and took the family hostage. They had disguised themselves with Santa Claus masks and balaclavas. As an extra precaution Sture spoke with a Finnish accent, but after a while he forgot about this and went back to his usual way of speaking. Both of them were recognised without much difficulty and they were arrested by police immediately after the robbery.
Patrik was eighteen years old. He received a prison sentence of three and a half years. Sture was clinically assessed and committed to psychiatric care at the Säter clinic, where he had more or less stayed ever since, apart from the few occasions when he had been granted leave to travel to Stockholm, Hedemora and other towns in the regions of Dalarna and Norrland.
It was the time before the robbery that particularly interested me.
During extensive questioning, the teenage boys had described how Sture had made ice hockey goals for them, organised treasure trails and made popcorn. For a while, Sture had rented a holiday cottage
where a number of the boys would occasionally have sleepovers. On no occasion had he tried to molest any of them and none of the boys had even suspected that he was homosexual. One evening a few of the boys had gone to Sture’s home to watch a horror film. When things got particularly scary, Sture had held one of the boys’ hands. On the way home, the boys had talked about it. They thought it was weird that a grown man would want to hold a thirteen-year-old’s hand.
This long-standing innocent relationship with the boys of Grycksbo did not chime with the image of the serial killer who switched personality and compulsively raped, desecrated, murdered and cut up boys.
I contacted a few of the Grycksbo boys and met with one of them. None of them could quite reconcile the image of Thomas Quick with the Sture they felt they had known so well.
Preoccupied with these thoughts, I travelled to Dalarna at the end of August for a second meeting with Sture.
On the way to Säter I stopped at Falu District Court to look through the investigation material on the murder of Gry Storvik. I turned a page and it was like being punched in the gut when I saw the forensic technician’s first photo of the body. The murderer had carelessly flung her out into a litter-strewn car park. A naked woman’s body, still girlish, lay face down on the asphalt. Not satisfied with killing Gry, the murderer had also apparently intentionally and aggressively placed her in an exposed position for public display.
The effect of the photograph was unexpected. I felt upset, confused and embarrassed by the picture in front of me.
Whether he was guilty or not, this was a snapshot of the incomprehensible series of tragedies implied by Quick’s confessions. After all, if Quick really was innocent of these crimes, the convictions were in effect an amnesty for the real murderers who had done this to Gry Storvik and the other victims.
This was precisely what Leif G.W. Persson had said, but it was only now that I properly understood. Again I looked at the photograph
of Gry in the investigation file. It had been taken on 25 June 1985. It was now 28 August 2008 and the murder would become statute-barred in one year and ten months.
In 660 days the murderer – if he were someone other than Thomas Quick – would walk free for ever.
SÄTER HOSPITAL, THURSDAY, 28 AUGUST 2008
AS SOON AS
Sture and I had made ourselves comfortable, I was keen to hear his feelings about his time in Grycksbo.
‘When I read the interviews with the boys in Grycksbo and all the other people who knew you back then, I got the impression that this was a very happy period in your life.’
‘Yes, that was a very good period,’ Sture confirmed. ‘Actually the best time of my life.’
Sture talked about various events, happy memories, his and Patrik’s dogs and Christmas celebrations with the Olofsson family.
‘But it all ended up as a complete disaster,’ I reminded him.
‘Yeah, in the end it went terribly bad, the whole thing!’ said Sture, wringing his hands.
‘And the effects on Patrik’s family,’ I continued. ‘You worked your way in and then you hurt them terribly. Didn’t you?’
Sture nodded. Silent. I could see his mind working. Then he hid his face in his hands and was rocked by deep sobs.
‘Sorry, it’s just so terrible thinking about it,’ he managed to tell me through his convulsions.
I don’t think I have ever seen a grown man cry with such abandon. Like a child. It was touching and frightening at the same time.
I was concerned that I had ruined everything I had started to build up, but Sture soon pulled himself together, wiped his tears and went to the locked door.
‘Wait here! I’ll be back in a minute,’ he said, pressing the button.
Before long a care assistant was there to let him out. A few
moments later he came back with a big tin box containing hundreds of photographs from his childhood, adolescence and adult years. We sat there for a long time, looking through the photographs. Many were of Sture posing or indulging in horseplay for the camera.
The television producer in me only had one thought:
How can I persuade Sture to lend me this box?
One of the photos was of a woman in her mid-thirties. She was sitting in a kitchen, smiling at the camera. Sture held the photo under my nose.
‘This is a bit odd. This is the only woman I ever had sex with,’ he said.
I sensed a certain pride in him.
‘The only one?’ I asked, dumbfounded. ‘Ever?’
‘Yeah. Just with her. There are some special reasons for it,’ he explained cryptically.
Long after, I learned that these ‘special reasons’ were that at a certain time in his life he dreamed of having children. Maybe he could manage to live with a woman despite his sexual orientation? The attempt was unsuccessful.
For my own part, that photograph and what Sture had just told me had another significance.
Gry Storvik
, I thought to myself. The woman working as a prostitute in Norway, who had been murdered and dumped in a car park with a man’s sperm inside her body.
That woman in the photo is not Gry Storvik! With whom you claimed you had intercourse.
So why had Sture told me this intimate detail? Had he given himself away? Or was he consciously leading me down this train of thought? No, we had never spoken of either Gry Storvik or any other murder, so why would he think I knew about his claim to have had sexual intercourse with Gry? My thoughts swung back and forth along these lines as we continued looking through the photographs.
As my visit started drawing to a close I asked, in a slightly absentminded way, ‘Do you think you could lend me a few of your photos?’
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I’d be happy to.’
I made do with five photographs: Sture in the kiosk; Sture and the guys on a hard rock outing; Sture looking with mock alarm into
his empty wallet; Sture at the kitchen table; Sture posing outside the Olofssons’ holiday cottage, where allegedly Yenon Levi was murdered.
That Sture let me take the five photographs was a clear indication of trust. As we parted, I knew that Sture would participate in my documentary. One way or another.
A DISCOVERY
BY THE END
of the summer of 2008, both Gubb Jan Stigson and Leif G.W. Persson were becoming irritated with me.
‘If you still haven’t twigged what this is about you must be bloody stupid!’ said Persson petulantly.
Stigson thought my mental faculties were just as impaired, since I hadn’t understood that Quick really was the serial killer he had been convicted as.
‘Take the murder of Therese Johannesen, for example. Therese was nine years old when she disappeared from a residential neighbourhood known as Fjell in Norway on 3 July in 1988. Seven years later Thomas Quick confesses to the murder. He’s in Säter Hospital by then, he’s capable of describing Fjell; he’s shown the police to the spot, he’s told them there was a bank there in 1988, he knew that the balconies had been repainted – all completely correct! He’s said there was a children’s playground being built and there were wooden planks scattered about on the ground. How could Quick know all that?’ he asked rhetorically.
‘If what you’re saying is right, then I suppose at least he must have been there,’ I admitted.
‘Oh yes, of course,’ said Stigson. ‘And then he showed the police a wooded area where he murdered her and hid the body. That’s where they found pieces of bone that proved to be from a human aged eight to fifteen. In one of the fragments there was a groove from a saw blade! Thomas Quick was able to show where he had hidden a hacksaw blade which fitted into the groove in the bone.’
Stigson shook his head.
‘And then they say there’s no evidence! I mean, the evidence is absolutely overwhelming, which is exactly what the Chancellor of Justice, Göran Lambertz, wrote after he’d reviewed all of Quick’s verdicts.’
‘Sure, it sounds convincing,’ I said.
Gubb Jan Stigson had such a rabid, unshakeable and one-eyed view of Thomas Quick that I was reluctant to argue with him. Even so, I was grateful to him. He was a well-informed and invaluable person to talk to, who had also generously supplied me with material from the extensive investigations.
On one occasion he photocopied all three hundred articles he had written on the subject.