Authors: Hannes Råstam
‘When I was in Norway I had the opportunity to carefully study the video recordings from your reconnaissance of the crime scene in Norway. I’ll tell you what I saw: you were given an addictive narcotic, a very strong drug, Xanax, in large doses. While you were being taken round you seemed very much under the influence of it. And when you got to Ørje and you were supposed to show them the place where Therese was buried you didn’t seem to have a clue what to do next.’
Sture was listening now, very attentively. His face had a concentrated expression but he did not reveal how he felt about what I was saying.
‘You were unable to show the police to the gravel pit, as you’d
promised,’ I carried on. ‘You couldn’t show them the way to Therese’s body. You behaved as if you’d never been in that place before.’
I looked at Sture, my shoulders hoisted up tentatively.
‘I don’t know what the truth is. But as I said when I called you, I began to feel very hesitant.’
Sture looked straight ahead with an empty stare. We sat there for a long while, neither of us saying anything. Again, I was the one to break the silence.
‘Sture, can you
understand
that this is what I’m seeing in those films?’
Sture was still silent, but he hummed and nodded.
At least he doesn’t seem angry
, I thought. I had said what I had to say. I could not take it back and I had nothing to add.
‘But . . .’ said Sture and then went silent again.
He spoke slowly and with emotion: ‘. . . if it is true that I haven’t committed any of these murders . . .’
Again he sat in silence, staring down at the floor. Then he leaned towards me, threw out his hands and whispered, ‘. . . if it is true – then what can I do?’
I met Sture’s despairing gaze. He looked utterly devastated.
Again and again I tried to say something, but I was so overwhelmed that I couldn’t make a sound. Finally I heard myself say, ‘If it’s true that you haven’t committed
any
of these murders, you have the chance of a lifetime now.’
By now, the atmosphere in the little visiting room was so tense that it was physically tangible. We both knew what was about to happen. Sture was very close to telling me that he had lied during all those years when he was Thomas Quick. In principle he had already admitted it.
‘The chance of a lifetime,’ I repeated.
‘I live in a ward where everyone is convinced that I’m guilty,’ said Sture quietly.
I nodded.
‘My lawyer is convinced that I’m guilty,’ he continued.
‘I know,’ I said.
‘Six courts have convicted me of eight murders.’
‘I know. But if you’re innocent and prepared to tell the truth, none of that matters.’
‘I think we should leave it there,’ said Sture. ‘This is a bit too much for me to swallow in one go.’
‘Can I come back?’
‘You’re welcome back,’ he said. ‘Any time.’
I have no memory of leaving the hospital, only that a few moments later I was standing in the car park, talking to my producer Johan Brånstad at SVT. Most likely I was incoherently telling him about my overwhelming meeting and its ramifications.
Rather than going back to Gothenburg, as planned, I went directly to Säter Stadshotell and booked a room for the night. Restlessly I paced back and forth inside, trying to concentrate on my work.
I had been given strict orders never to call Sture after six o’clock in the evening. It was two minutes to six. I called the patient line at Ward 36. Someone went to fetch Sture.
‘I just wanted to know how you’re feeling after our meeting,’ I said.
‘Oh, thanks,’ he answered. ‘It actually feels good. I’m feeling it’s good, what’s happening now.’
Sture sounded happy, and this emboldened me to ask the question.
‘I’m still in Säter,’ I admitted. ‘Can I come and see you tomorrow?’
His reply was immediate, without the slightest pause for reflection: ‘You’re welcome!’
THE TURNING
‘I HAVEN’T COMMITTED
any of the murders I’ve been convicted of and none of the murders I’ve confessed to either. That’s the way it is.’
Sture had tears in his eyes and his voice no longer carried. He looked at me, as if trying to work out whether or not I believed him.
All I knew was that he had lied. But was he lying to me now? Or when he confessed? Or on both occasions? I couldn’t be certain, but the prospects of finding out had just dramatically improved.
I asked Sture to try and explain right from the beginning, so I could understand better.
‘When I came to Säter in 1991 I had certain hopes that my time here would move things along for me, I’d gain insights into myself and learn to understand myself better,’ he began hesitantly.
His life was ruined and his self-esteem about as low as it could get. He was looking for a reason to exist, he wanted to be someone, and to belong.
‘I’d been passionate about psychotherapy for a while, especially psychoanalysis, and so I was hoping to improve my understanding of myself in that way,’ he explained.
A doctor on the ward named Kjell Persson, who was not a psychotherapist, had taken pity on him, but Sture soon realised that he wasn’t a very interesting patient. When Kjell Persson asked him to talk about his childhood he answered that he didn’t have any particular memories, he did not feel that anything was worth talking about.
‘I realised soon enough that the important thing was to start making up some memories from childhood, traumatic memories about dramatic events. And what a response I got as soon as I started talking about things like that. An incredible response!
‘More and more it was about sexual molestation and abuse and how I myself became an abuser. The story was built up in therapy and the things I said about it were helped along by benzo.’
Sture was already addicted to benzodiazepines when he got to Säter in April 1991 and gradually the range of drugs on offer and their dosages increased – mainly, he claimed, because of developments in the therapy room.
‘The more I told them, the more benzo I got. In the end I practically had free access to medicines, to narcotics.’
Sture maintained that in all the years of the murder investigations he was constantly drugged with benzodiazepines.
‘I wasn’t straight for a moment. Not one moment!’
Benzodiazepines are highly addictive and soon Sture could not live without the medicines. He ‘reactivated repressed memories’ in therapy, confessed to murder after murder and participated in a string of police investigations. In return he gained the attention of therapists, doctors, journalists, police and prosecutors. And he had unlimited access to narcotics.
I thought about all the people around Quick in the years of the police investigations – lawyers, prosecutors and police. Had they been aware that he was drugged? I asked.
‘They must have been! They knew I was taking my Xanax, and you could see by my behaviour that I was drugged. How could anyone not see that? It would have been impossible!’
The truth of this last comment was something I had been able to confirm for myself from the video footage taken in Norway. There was no mistaking that he was so heavily drugged at times that he was unable to walk or talk. And the medication was administered quite openly.
‘Was your use of medications ever discussed between you and your lawyer?’
‘No! Never.’
‘No one questioned your intake of medication?’
‘At no time! I never heard that question being asked.’
According to Sture, the doctors, therapists and carers had ensured that he had a constant and unlimited supply of narcotic medications.
‘Today it would be unthinkable, but at the time I was happy the question wasn’t brought up. It meant I could keep using those drugs.’
Sture claimed that he had been constantly drugged for almost ten years. It was during those years that he cooperated with the prosecutions, leading to his convictions for eight murders which he had not committed.
Then everything came to an abrupt end.
‘One day, it must have been towards the middle of 2001, there was a decision taken by the new chief physician at Säter, Göran Källberg. All the medications would be dispensed with. No more benzo. I was just terrified of having side effects from the withdrawal.’
I thought about what the retired chief physician Göran Källberg had said a few months earlier, about not wanting to be a part of a ‘cover-up of a miscarriage of justice’. I was starting to understand the general thrust of Källberg’s thoughts about Quick, the murders and his use of medications.
Sture had felt that there was a sort of silent agreement between him and Säter Hospital, a connection between his confessions for murder and the unlimited supply of medication. Now the terms of the agreement had been cancelled from one day to the next. His reaction was one of anger, bitterness and fear.
‘How was I going to live without medicine? What would it mean physically?’ Sture’s use of benzodiazepines had reached such high levels that it had to be reduced by gradual increments over an eight-month period.
‘They were difficult months. I just stayed in my room. The only thing I could do was listen to the radio, P1.’
Sture crossed his arms, clutching at each shoulder.
‘I lay like this on the bed,’ he said, shivering violently.
‘And then suddenly you were clean and felt healthier. But then in practice you were sentenced to life for eight murders?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you’d contributed to this yourself!’
‘Yeah. And I couldn’t find a way out. I haven’t had a single person to turn to for support.’
‘Why not?’
He became silent, then he looked at me with a kind of astonishment, before laughing and saying, ‘Where was I going to turn? I could hardly speak to my lawyers, who were also a part of this whole thing that led to my convictions. I’ve been very alone in this . . .’
‘Not a single person to talk to?’
‘No, I never found anyone. But maybe there were people . . .’
‘The people around you now, in the clinic, do you know what position they take on your guilt?’
‘In general I think they think I’m guilty as charged. Maybe there could be the odd exception among the staff. But it’s not discussed.’
All police questioning ceased after the article in
Dagens Nyheter
in November 2001 in which Quick announced that he was withdrawing and taking time out. Shortly after, Christer van der Kwast shelved all pre-trial investigations in progress. Quick stopped receiving journalists and entered into his seven-year period of silence.
What is less well known is that Sture also stopped having therapy. Without the medication he had nothing to talk about. He didn’t want to carry on talking about the sexual abuse in his childhood and the murders he committed as an adult – nor was he
capable
of talking about these things without the benzodiazepine. It was the medication that had made him so glib that he could take the initiative in his therapy sessions and during police questioning.
‘For a few years I didn’t see Birgitta Ståhle at all. Then we started meeting once a month for a “social chat”. Then as you’d bloody expect she slipped it into a conversation: “For the sake of the loved ones you have to carry on talking.” So it’s been like a nightmare scenario!’
Another nightmare has been that Sture has almost no clear memories at all about what happened during his years as Thomas Quick. It’s generally known that high doses of benzodiazepines knock out the cognitive faculties – learning processes simply don’t work.
Initially I suspected that Sture was faking his memory loss, but soon I realised that he really didn’t have a clue about significant events – even when speaking of them would have been in his own best interest. It struck me that this was a situation that had made it almost impossible for him to retract his confessions.
‘I really hope that the medications have been properly recorded in the patient file,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if they have.’
What Sture had told me meant that the case of Thomas Quick was not only a giant miscarriage of justice but also a healthcare scandal of huge proportions – a prisoner in psychiatric care who had been given inappropriate therapy and insane levels of medication. The convictions for eight murders were a direct consequence of this malpractice. That is, if Sture was telling the truth. And how could I ever check the level of accuracy in his statements?
‘It would be useful for me to be able to read your file,’ I said.
Sture looked very uncomfortable.
‘I don’t know if I want that,’ he said.
‘Why?’
He lingered over his answer.
‘I would find it so dreadfully embarrassing to let another person read everything I said and did in those years.’
‘Christ! People have read how you assaulted children, murdered them, chopped them up and ate their bodies! What could there possibly be left for you to be embarrassed about? Everything’s about as embarrassing as it can get!’
‘I don’t know,’ Sture repeated. ‘But I’ll think about it.’
His answer made me suspicious. Was Sture denying me his files because they revealed another story?
‘You think about it,’ I said. ‘But if you want the truth to come out, it’s conditional on you being absolutely candid. Truth and nothing but the truth . . .’
‘Yes, I suppose you’re right,’ said Sture. ‘I’m just so dreadfully ashamed . . .’
We said goodbye after a long and exhausting conversation. As I was preparing to leave and Sture was just about to ring the bell for the care assistant, I suddenly remembered something important.
‘Sture, I just want to ask you one last question that I’ve been obsessing about for six months.’
‘What’s that?’
‘What did you do in Stockholm when you were on leave?’
He smiled broadly and answered without a moment’s hesitation. His answer also made me smile.
PART II
‘
If you’re saying that the police, along with a psychologist, have rigged Swedish court cases to put an innocent person behind bars, I will answer that this has never happened in the history of our legal system. If someone could prove that, it would be the biggest scoop in the world!
’