Authors: Hannes Råstam
The man’s name was Tracy Edwards and he told them about a ‘strange guy’ who had put the handcuffs on him before he managed to escape from the apartment.
The door to apartment 213 was opened at once by the tenant, Jeffrey Dahmer, a handsome, presentable thirty-one-year-old man with blond hair who showed no signs of nerves. He readily offered to go and get the keys to his boyfriend’s handcuffs from the bedroom. The policemen gleaned that Dahmer looked to be a decent person living in an apartment which was unusually neat and well furnished for the area. Despite this, something made one of the policemen insist on taking a look at the bedroom where the key was kept.
In the bedroom the policeman discovered a large vat containing 300 litres of acid, in which three human bodies were dissolving. His colleague opened the refrigerator to find four human heads lined up on the glass shelves. No food was kept in the fridge, only human body parts. Another seven craniums were stored in the wardrobe, and Dahmer had baited a lobster trap with the penis of one of his victims.
The well-mannered, attractive young man had drugged his victims, drilled holes in their skulls and poured various chemical substances directly into their brains. Once this was over, he had raped them, cut them into pieces and then eaten choice parts of their bodies.
How does one explain such behaviour? And what does one call a person who has committed such deeds? The newspapers did their best to find suitable labels. ‘Satan’, ‘The Cannibal from Milwaukee’ and ‘A Living Monster’ were some of the names given to Jeffrey Dahmer, but words never seemed to be enough.
However repellent the details revealed about Jeffrey Dahmer were, the media was soon reporting on an even worse serial killer, ‘The Russian Devil’ – guilty of at least fifty-two murders.
Once again it was an apparently harmless, friendly soul who was uncovered as the personification of evil. Fifty-five-year-old Andrei Chikatilo, described as a ‘mild-mannered language teacher’, lived a
peaceful life with his wife and children in the south Russian town of Novocherkassk. In their twenty-seven-year marriage, his wife had never suspected her husband of hiding any dark secrets.
The serial killer could be anyone. You, me, the neighbour or your spouse.
During their twelve-year hunt for the Russian serial killer, the police had arrested several others. One of these suspects was made to confess and, even worse, was eventually executed for murders that were later connected to Chikatilo.
Another suspect managed to kill himself before the trial.
During Sture Bergwall’s first autumn at Säter, an unknown perpetrator started shooting at immigrants in the Stockholm area. Before the shots were fired a small red spot had been observed on the victims, which gave the evening press the idea of calling the perpetrator the ‘Laser Man’.
On 8 November the Laser Man shot his fifth victim – the only one who actually died. National police were under pressure, knowing that the Laser Man would carry on shooting immigrants until he was arrested. This was particularly troubling, as the police had no idea where or in what circles such a criminal should be sought.
The modus operandi of the Laser Man was in many ways consistent with the clichés of serial killers. He chose victims that were non-Caucasian; he worked in a defined geographical area; he had no relationship to the ten victims; he was disciplined and hardly left any traces. On the other hand, the Laser Man had usually failed to kill; of his ten victims, only the fifth died of his injuries, which must be put down to luck, as he hadn’t fitted the weapon’s silencer correctly.
Frustrated at the survival of the first four victims, the Laser Man departed from his earlier methods and sneaked up on his fifth from behind, put the barrel to the back of the thirty-four-year-old man’s head and pulled the trigger. Not even the incorrectly fitted silencer could have saved him.
*
At Säter, Sture Bergwall was placed in psychiatric care alongside heavily criminalised, violent men. The status of the patients was largely determined by how interesting their life stories were, and their crimes. In this context, Sture was rather out of his depth.
A SPECIAL PATIENT
KJELL PERSSON AND
Göran Fransson were the chief physicians in charge of Säter Hospital in the early 1990s and have stuck together ever since.
During the assessment period, before Sture Bergwall was placed in psychiatric care, Göran Fransson had collected 650 kronor (about £50) for offering his psychiatric opinion on the failed bank robber. This opinion – known as a P7 – is sought in order to determine whether a person arraigned for trial should be given a more extensive psychiatric evaluation.
It does not fall within the brief of a P7 to make judgements on the level of danger a person presents, even less to speculate on the likelihood of the person having committed as yet undiscovered crimes. Yet this was exactly what Fransson felt he was especially suited to do:
The crime for which he has been convicted shows signs of serious sexual perversions where the risk of repeat offences is high, and in view of this it seems surprising that he has not been prosecuted on other occasions for such crimes.
Göran Fransson’s assumption that Sture Bergwall had committed serious crimes which had not yet been discovered would soon prove to be almost prophetic. That the opinion was inappropriate has even been retrospectively conceded by Fransson himself. ‘I regret writing that. It shouldn’t have been there, in a P7. But I was proved
right in the end,’ he said in an interview with
Dala-Demokraten
in June 1996.
The belief that Sture had committed other undiscovered crimes in the past was soon well established among those in charge of Sture Bergwall’s care. And obviously, whoever seeks shall find.
Sture’s patient notes, medication logs and other documents gave me a detailed insight into his day-to-day life at Säter from the very start. Sture participated apathetically in the routine examinations when he was being admitted: he undressed on command and allowed a medical assistant to shine a torch into his eyes, test his reflexes with a rubber mallet to his knees and inspect his skin for signs of puncture marks or anything out of the ordinary that should be taken into account. On the following day he met with a doctor who was destined to make a number of interventions in Quick’s life that would prove to have a profound impact. Chief physician Göran Källberg had an introductory conversation with Sture and made the following notes in his patient file:
He was calm and collected and entirely at ease with the implications of psychiatric care. He has extensive familiarity with closed psychiatric care. We spoke in general about his situation and his difficulties. [. . .] At times he is overwhelmed by powerful anxiety attacks and even during our conversation he became extremely tense, tearful and also irregular in his breathing. Eventually he calmed down. Apart from this, he maintained a good level of formal communication in the conversation.
When Göran Källberg questioned the existing prescription of medications he was surprised by Sture’s vociferous protest. He allowed the medication to stay as it was for the time being, but noted in his patient file that Sture was ‘clearly addicted to the little dose of Oxazepam which he has been taking for a number of years’.
Sture’s day-to-day life at Säter Hospital soon fell into sedate
normality. Judging by the file, he kept a low profile and settled in without any problems at all.
But the files also repeatedly mention Sture contacting members of staff to report that he was feeling unwell and having suicidal thoughts. On 17 May 1991 Kjell Persson wrote:
Sture Bergwall came today and wanted to speak with a doctor. Mentions that he broods a lot at night, feels anxious, breaks into sweats and wants to cry. ‘I have to talk and get it off my chest.’
Even though Persson was not a psychotherapist he took pity on Sture and let him come to see him from time to time, precisely to ‘get things off his chest’. These informal conversations gradually took the form of counselling sessions. One of Sture’s recurring themes was that he had no justification for his existence, that he should kill himself. He bore a burden of deep sorrow for having lost his former best friend, Patrik, who was twenty-two years his junior. As the elder of the two, he felt guilty that Patrik had been imprisoned. Persson made a note in the file on 24 June 1991:
When one touches upon these and similar matters the patient displays a wealth of tics, convulsive breathing and strange grunting sounds. During rounds today it was reported that there has been less and less of this on the ward. There have not been any other problems.
It seems that Sture Bergwall had a burning desire to be allowed to start psychotherapy; however, it was proving far harder than he had thought. Regardless of whether his panic attacks, tics and grunts were theatrical or the real thing, the doctors remained quite cool in their response. Put simply, they did not view Sture as an interesting patient. On 2 July Kjell Persson wrote in the file:
The patient has been increasingly plagued by anxiety these last few days, is having problems sleeping at night and broods a great
deal. He has suicidal thoughts, but says that in actual fact he would not dare hurt himself. This is something he has been experiencing for years, with varying levels of intensity, but he claims that he really did intend to kill himself the evening before the robbery. He claims that he had chosen a place where he would drive his car off the road, when he noticed his dog on the back seat. He said he would like some sort of confirmation that he is so bad that he should really commit suicide.
The file clarified that Göran Fransson had withdrawn the highly addictive medication Somadril (‘it drones so nicely in the brain’) and the doctors tried one substitute after another. Sture claimed that all the other medications made him even more depressed. Finally, after the Somadril was administered again, a sense of calm was temporarily restored. Göran Källberg noted on 10 July:
The overall judgement on the risk of suicide does not in my view merit any special security measures. Just for the patient to be able to talk about it and open up seems to provide relief. It should also be noted that the suicidal thoughts are mostly based on a sort of existential problem, in that he sits there looking back at his life and how difficult it has been and how he feels like a failure. There is nothing depressive, melancholic or psychotic about his thinking and argumentation. In other respects it should be noted that the patient has adapted well on the ward. He has a sincere wish to get himself into a better state, but he feels he cannot manage it by his own efforts alone. The patient is very intellectual in his arguments and likes to use theoretical terminology. At the same time he is aware that this is a way for him to distance himself.
During the summer months, as a mark of trust, Sture was allowed outings of a few hours’ length in the company of members of the nursing staff. These took place without any hitches. The conversations with Kjell Persson continued, but the doctors were unsure whether there would be any meaningful results from psychotherapeutic treatment. Persson noted in Sture’s file on 9 September:
Ever since being moved to Ward 31, i.e. shortly after his arrival at the clinic, the patient has been pleading for psychotherapy. It is not wholly clear whether he would be a suitable candidate for this, and one must take into account our limited psychotherapeutic resources. As a temporary solution I have therefore set up my communication with the patient under a heading of supportive conversation. It has been found that the patient uses the time sincerely, to reflect on himself, his actions and his situation.
The conversations seem to generate a lot of anxiety and muscular spasms and the patient also pleads for more time, as he apparently feels that this process is helping him organise his thoughts.
Sture was ambivalent during the conversations. On the one hand he begged for communication, on the other hand he was closed. ‘He is fond of expressing himself in abstract terms rather than speaking of tangible events in his life,’ wrote Persson, then went on:
What seems central to him at the moment is that he has no justification for his life at all. He behaves impeccably on the ward, but we have not felt he can be trusted with leave, so far we judge him to be too closed and inaccessible, difficult to gain an overall perspective on.
Sture had gone through psychotherapy before. Back then he was also asked to talk about his childhood. At the time he had answered that he had no direct memories, by which he meant that his growing up as one of a large number of siblings in a fairly poor family did not offer any particularly interesting experiences.
Sture noticed that Kjell Persson was fishing for traumatic events in his childhood. His feeling of being an uninteresting patient solidified his sense of failure. It seemed that he was incapable even of being a successful lunatic.
Sture explained it to me: ‘I had intellectual interests but lacked an education and had an inferiority complex towards my brothers and sisters. They studied at university and got academic jobs, but I failed
and was terribly alone. I had a passion for psychoanalysis and was utterly focused on starting a process of deep therapy. But not really because I wanted to clear up strange thoughts or ideas within myself. It was more the social interaction I was longing for. To be an intellectual, to be able to make associations freely, to sit down and talk with an equal, these things appealed to me. To a large extent it was also about having some confirmation of being an intellectual person.’
The therapy at Säter was based on so-called object relations theory. This offshoot of psychoanalysis first emerged in the 1930s and attaches great importance to the first years of the child’s life. In short, among other things the treatment makes the assumption that a number of personality disruptions can be traced back to sexual abuse by parents. Because people do not generally have memories from a very early age, one of the important roles of the therapist is to ‘reawaken’ such memories or interpret vague intimations so that they become understandable and fit into the therapeutic pattern. A central aspect of the theory is that painful memories can be repressed or even ‘dissociated’, meaning that they end up scrambled in some way. The therapist must therefore look for the real events underlying metaphysical and often symbolic narratives, memories and dreams.