Authors: Hannes Råstam
What prosecutor Christer van der Kwast thought about all this is not mentioned in the investigation material, although he did approach the psychiatrist Ulf Åsgård for guidance on the psychological issues. Åsgård, who worked for the National Swedish Police Board, declined as he was busy with the Palme Unit. Instead, van der Kwast had to settle for the services of an unknown lecturer and memory expert from Stockholm University who could think of nothing he’d rather do than throw himself into a study of the psyche of a real serial killer.
COGNITIVE INTERVIEW TECHNIQUES
AT THE SAME
time as the first police interviews with Thomas Quick were being conducted in March 1993,
DN Debatt
published an article by Sven Åke Christianson, a senior lecturer in psychology, who mercilessly criticised Sweden as ‘a third-world country in terms of its commitment to psychological research and the use of psychological knowledge in the judiciary and the police service’.
Christianson’s article proposed a number of solutions to the problems facing the Thomas Quick investigation:
At the moment, psychological research is being conducted into how violent criminals and psychopaths perceive and approach emotional situations. Special studies are also being made of serial killers to try and establish personality types, background factors, the sort of victims they select and how they operate. This type of research should be of extreme relevance to the police, in view of the violent crimes that are so prevalent in our time.
To latter-day readers, the article almost seems like an application to join the Quick investigation. Christianson seductively offered up all manner of questions his expertise might help to answer:
Psychological awareness of how to relate to psychiatrically disturbed people or people in emotionally charged conditions would be of great help to both interrogators and prosecutors.
Despite the fact that Sweden hadn’t previously had a serial killer of this kind, Christianson dwelled on the unusual phenomenon:
Studies have been made of grossly violent men and serial killers; how they behave, what drives them, how they see their own crimes and what they remember of them. Some are what we term psychopaths, such as the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer in the USA. He kept pieces from the corpses of fifteen people in his home.
What needs are being satisfied in these psychiatrically disturbed people?
Sven Åke Christianson arrived at Säter Hospital on 14 April 1994 and immediately set about testing Thomas Quick’s memory functions.
Sture Bergwall still remembers their first meeting. ‘I found it difficult to believe that this slight little man was a psychology lecturer.’
Christianson’s enthusiasm at having been offered a job with an investigation that would require all his specialist skills was unmistakable. In addition to memory research he had a burning interest in serious, violent crime and serial killers. Alongside his assignments within the justice system, Christianson spent his spare time at Säter, engaging himself in conversations with Thomas Quick. These conversations sometimes continued for seven or eight hours at a time, and tended to explore all manner of questions on the subject of the serial killer’s behaviour. Christianson was the theorist in these conversations, while Quick was the practitioner expected to come up with answers to the academic’s deep, probing questions on the bizarre inner life of a serial killer.
‘Sven Åke Christianson was a real serial-killer freak who intended to write books on Thomas Quick and other serial killers, books this thick,’ Sture told me, holding his arms straight out to indicate their imagined thickness from cover to cover.
‘Jeffrey Dahmer was one of his favourites in these conversations, the serial killer who kept chopped-off heads in his flat. I remember when Sven Åke asked me how Jeffrey Dahmer felt as he was cutting
up his victims. And he asked me to describe the feeling of eating the victim,
the sensual and erotic feeling of it.
Sven Åke felt that Jeffrey Dahmer
must
have had a sensual feeling. And I was supposed to describe that.’
Sture also told me that Christianson carried out various exercises with him. Prior to his departure for Piteå, where Quick was supposed to show the investigators how he had murdered Charles Zelmanovits, Christianson took him out into the grounds of Säter Hospital.
In a copse behind the hospital museum Quick was told to pretend he was carrying the body of Charles Zelmanovits. He was supposed to make a ‘trial walk’ with the body from the forest road to its final resting place.
‘He asked me to remember my emotional state of mind. I was meant to feel that I was excited and tense, but also that I was weighed down with a great sorrow about the dead body. Also anger, I was supposed to feel that. “Don’t forget you’re carrying a heavy body,” he said.’
Sture remembered that as he trudged up the wooded slope, pretending to be carrying the body and the sorrow, Christianson walked beside him with a watch in his hand, counting his steps out loud.
‘When I had walked 300 steps, Sven Åke said, “We’re here now!” Then he asked me if I had any new memories about Charles Zelmanovits. “Oh yes, I certainly do,” I told him. In that way I affirmed him, as well,’ Sture Bergwall recalled.
During the same period Sture also remembers a trip in a car on a forest road to Björnbo, some thirty kilometres from Säter.
‘Me and Seppo took the car out, with three care assistants. We were inspecting different kinds of ditches. We sat in the car and kept going until the road came to a dead end.’
Before long they found a ditch that was very wide and apparently very similar to another ditch in Piteå. Sture claims that Penttinen made him aware of what sort of ditch they were after – not in so many words, but with a certain finesse.
‘I mean, that’s the secret. He said, “Maybe the ditch looked a bit like this?” And then I understood that the ditch did look like that. “Yeah, this is what it looked like,” I said.’
Both the re-enactment on the hospital grounds and the investigators’ approach of taking Thomas Quick into the forest to look at ditches were practical examples of the new ideas about ‘cognitive interview techniques’ as proposed by Sven Åke Christianson. By re-creating the same ‘inner and outer environment’ as at the time of the murder, it would supposedly become easier for Quick to access his memories of the crime. In this context, even leading questions might be justifiable, according to Christianson.
On the specific occasions described by Sture there was such an obvious risk of the investigators providing him with decisive information that I couldn’t quite take his words at face value. The whole thing went absolutely against all established investigative methodology. Could this really be true?
While on a personal level I believed what Sture was telling me, it struck me that I had once again run into information so outlandish that unless I could back it up in some way it would be entirely useless to me.
On the afternoon of 20 August 1994 a private chartered plane landed at Piteå Airport. The passengers on board included Thomas Quick, Birgitta Ståhle, Sven Åke Christianson, the investigators and nursing staff from Säter Hospital.
Piteå-Älvdal Hospital had placed a whole ward at the disposal of the Quick investigation team. It wasn’t particularly comfortable, but everyone could at least stay in the same place and the safety of both Quick and the general public could be guaranteed.
The following morning, the entire group – now also accompanied by Christer van der Kwast and Anders Eriksson, the medical examiner from Umeå – went to the police station in Piteå, where Commissioner Harry Nyman had prepared a welcoming spread of coffee and pastries.
Shortly after, Thomas Quick was travelling in an unmarked police car with Christianson, Ståhle, Penttinen and a nurse from Säter, who were all waiting tensely for the alleged serial killer to lead them to the place where he had murdered and hidden Charles Zelmanovits.
Various documentary sources from the car journey indicate that Quick didn’t have a clue where the car was supposed to be going.
‘As I said during questioning, I don’t have much of a sense of direction here,’ he excused himself.
Because Seppo Penttinen knew the way, they weren’t entirely clueless. The car drove out of the town centre along a road known as Timmerleden (the Timber Route) and then continued a few kilometres on the Norra Pitholmsvägen. Before long they were out in the sticks.
Although they were quite close to their destination, Quick still couldn’t get his bearings, so Penttinen kept moving in the right direction. When they were only 500 metres away, Quick had to take over and show them the way.
‘We’re now in the area that’s of interest to us,’ said Penttinen to Quick.
Along the remaining short stretch of road there was a junction, where Quick had to determine which way they should turn. He chose to go left. The car continued for two kilometres before Penttinen revealed that this was wrong. They turned back and tried the right-hand turning instead.
Soon Quick noticed a number of police officers a short distance into the forest. They drove past. After continuing a few kilometres they reached a settlement and Quick realised they had gone too far. Again they turned back, passed the place where the body had been found and parked by the side of the road. Quick knew that he was very close to the spot. He indicated that he wanted to walk. After fifteen to twenty metres on the forest road he stopped.
‘We looked for ditches like this when we did an inspection in Säter,’ he said.
There it was – proof that it had happened exactly as Sture described it to me.
A single, stray comment in hours and hours of wandering about in the Piteå forest, absolutely puzzling to all but those who were most closely involved with the case, and for the same reason so very easy to overlook.
When they reached the ditch closest to where the body had been
found, Quick noticed that a path had been formed by the police and technicians who had examined the location in the last few weeks.
‘Think we have to go in here,’ said Quick.
After a few steps he hesitated.
‘I can’t cope with walking on my own to the place.’
He was ushered into the forest and on the video tape you can hear Quick saying, ‘It’s supposed to be as far as the trial walk I did with Sven Åke. Three hundred steps . . .’
Once again the cognitive interview techniques were reaping rewards.
Quick was supported and led into the forest by Seppo Penttinen. After they had gone 300 steps the relevant spot was visible. Forensic technicians had dug up the ground in their search for bones removed by foxes and other wild animals, and a large area of the ground had been disturbed.
Penttinen noted in his memo of the reconnaissance that Quick ‘is extremely bothered by the ground being disturbed and the moss torn up’.
During earlier questioning Quick had described sitting on a stone or a tree stump. Once he was at the scene he found a large boulder near the place where the remains were found. He tried to show how he had sat there after Charles had been murdered.
Despite the dark November night there had been no problems, said Quick. He had seen both his accomplice and Charles quite clearly. Anyone who has been in a forest at night will immediately realise the problem. In a Norrbotten forest at two in the morning, you would be hard pressed to make out your hand in front of your own face. Quick nonetheless claimed that he had been able to see the ground in front of him and could differentiate between spruce and pine. No one questioned how this could have been possible.
In accordance with Sven Åke Christianson’s cognitive interview techniques, the police had brought along a dummy to represent Charles Zelmanovits. Penttinen asked Quick to place the dummy on the ground exactly as he had placed Charles’s body.
The dug-up section of ground showed the position of the body but not which way the head was pointing. Quick had a 50 per cent
chance of getting it right. The dummy ended up 180 degrees in the wrong direction.
Penttinen asked if the body had really faced in that direction.
‘Yes, I’d say so. I’d say so,’ said Quick.
At this point, Sven Åke Christianson stepped in, gesturing with his hands to help Quick access his emotional recall.
‘Shall we try and put it in that direction as well? So he can get a feeling for that?’
However, Quick refused to move the dummy, so Penttinen had to turn it round himself in accordance with Christianson’s suggestion. Finally the dummy ended up in the right position.
‘I don’t know if the video camera is picking it up, but Thomas is nodding vigorously,’ Penttinen clarified into camera.
Anders Eriksson asked a few questions about the cutting up of the body, which Quick had problems answering. He was unsure whether he had lopped off one of the arms. If so, he believed it was left at the scene.
‘What about the hands, did something happen to them?’ asked Penttinen.
But Quick couldn’t bear the exchange any longer.
‘I can’t take it, can’t take it. I can’t cope any more.’
Quick was crying uncontrollably, sobbing and shaking.
‘Give me another Xanax. I don’t give a damn if I overdose . . .’
‘Of course.’ There was a chorus of voices in the background.
‘You haven’t had one for quite a while,’ said Birgitta Ståhle.
A care assistant from Säter brought the jar of pills and Quick got what he wanted. Twilight was beginning to fall over the forest and Quick began to weep in a monotone that soon turned into a strange sort of guttural braying.
Once Quick’s moaning and weeping had calmed down, the large group left the forest feeling absolutely triumphant. With a measure of forethought, Harry Nyman had booked a table at Paltzerian in Öjebyn, north of Piteå – the only restaurant in the world that exclusively served
palt
, a northern speciality made from offal and rye.
Sture remembers the restaurant visit with mixed feelings.
‘They were all so happy and pleased! The one who was most
pleased of all was Seppo Penttinen. Many different kinds of
palt
were brought in and we munched them all down with a lot of chatting. As if the murderer was being celebrated after the successful reconnaissance! It was repulsive and macabre . . .’