Thomas Quick (48 page)

The murder had supposedly taken place in Lillestrøm, just north of Oslo, and had been seen as a traffic accident, Quick went on. Kåre Hunstad realised that what he had here on video was a confession to a previously unknown murder.
It’s a scoop
, he thought to himself.

Quick carried on talking about another Norwegian murder, of a prostitute in Oslo. Already one such person featured in the investigation – Gry Storvik – but this was someone else.

‘Have you told the police about it?’ asked Kåre Hunstad.

‘I think I’ll talk about it in the autumn. Then I’ll tell them about the prostitute,’ said Quick, and took a slurp of his coffee. ‘I can say this much: as far as I could tell she was a narcotics . . . user. A junkie.’

‘Can you describe her?’

‘About twenty-five years old. Quite down at heel, dark, and she was murdered with three stabs of a knife. I met her in Oslo. I can’t quite say where.’

‘You’re sure she was a drug user? Did you pick her up like any other customer?’

‘Yes, yes. We went a short distance in the car to a place in Oslo I don’t really know so well. A place with some vacant flats. That’s where she was killed.’

‘So you attacked her? Was she raped?’

‘No.’

Quick couldn’t remember the exact year but he thought it was probably 1987.

After this they spoke about the murder of Marianne Rugaas Knutsen. Quick had already confessed and was under investigation for this murder, but there were others.

Quick described how he had driven to Bergen in the 1970s, where he met a boy of about sixteen or seventeen.

‘One of your first victims in Norway?’

‘Yes, my first victim with a deadly outcome,’ Quick confirmed in a matter-of-fact way. ‘He got into the car voluntarily and we drove just outside Bergen. I stopped the car in the forest and raped and strangled him. I drove back to Bergen and left him at the port. In a different place to where I’d picked him up.’

‘So you had the body inside the car?’

‘Yes, I had the body inside the car. And I left the body fully clothed.’

‘Which means you put the clothes back on the body.’

When Kåre Hunstad left Säter Hospital he wondered whether he had a scoop or had just revealed a pathological liar.

Hunstad approached his contacts in the police force and made some enquiries of his own based on the information Quick had given him. He was soon able to confirm that there had not been any deaths, disappearances or murders in Norway that fitted with the three murders Quick had described on camera. It was highly likely that Quick had just made it all up.

I was struck by the fact that Quick had once again been caught out confessing to murders that had never taken place. But why hadn’t Hunstad taken a more critical stance to Quick’s confessions?

‘I never believed Quick,’ said Hunstad. ‘I tried to understand serial killers and learned that they kill specific kinds of people. But here we’re talking about boys and girls, young and old. To this you have to add that there are never any witnesses, no technical evidence and everything is a goddamn mysterious circus.’

Hunstad said that as a journalist he was trying to ‘crack the code’, which didn’t make a great deal of sense to me. ‘The more people who dig around in the Quick case the better,’ said Hunstad, wishing me the very best of luck before we parted.

When it comes to the verdicts for the murders of Trine Jensen and Gry Storvik from 22 June 2000, there is not much of a code to crack. A close reading of the investigation shows how the stories, as usual, are modified as they emerge in a close interchange between Thomas Quick and his circle. In the numerous interviews, Quick variously attacks his Norwegian female victims with a knife, a piece of firewood, an axe or a metal dildo, or – when his imagination is found lacking – head butts or elbows or slams them against some part of the car. Crucial information that proves to be erroneous is followed up and corrected, though it is often still not quite right and so is repeatedly followed up in subsequent interviews.

Despite this, Quick’s assertions even in the very latest statements were so difficult to match with the forensic conclusions that Christer van der Kwast made do with presenting a report in which medical examiners Anders Eriksson and Kari Ormstad only listed factors that more or less acceptably matched the story to the facts. The autopsy report was never cited, nor the DNA analysis of the sperm found inside Gry Storvik, who had been raped. This detail was dealt with by Quick claiming in the courtroom that his ‘clear memory’ of the event was that he ‘had not ejaculated’ during the rape – despite having said precisely the opposite during questioning.

The prosecutor, defence counsel, doctors, therapists and members of the court were satisfied to leave it at that.

One supporting factor for Quick’s story that was particularly emphasised in the verdict was the fabric handbag strap tied into a strangling knot which had been found next to Trine Jensen’s decomposed body and was very likely the murder weapon. It came from her handbag and this had not been conveyed to the mass media, which was why the court placed such importance on Quick’s disclosure of this specific detail.

The first time Quick mentioned Trine Jensen’s name to the investigators was on 4 October 1996. That was the day the entire Quick entourage was conducting the second reconstruction of the murder of Yenon Levi.

Quick surprised them by requesting a special interview. He had some information to impart to them and it couldn’t wait.

Seppo Penttinen, Claes Borgström and Thomas Quick were sitting in a makeshift interview room at Säter when Penttinen turned on the tape recorder at 10.15.

‘Go ahead, Thomas,’ he said.

‘I just wanted to give you some information. Very briefly. I’m not going to answer any questions about what I’m telling you, but I do want to leave this with you before we start on the Rörshyttan story, so I don’t have to carry this inside me like a burden. I want to mention that two seasons after Johan’s death, in other words in the summer of 1981, I was in Oslo, where I abducted a woman who, I think, was in her late teens. Her name was Trine Jensen.
I took her away and murdered her. And that’s all for today.’

Penttinen called a close to the audience. The time was 10.17. It had lasted two minutes.

The ‘interview’ where Quick confessed to the murder of Trine Jensen is remarkable in several respects. Obviously first and foremost because it is so brief and the suspect would not accept any questions. Even more irregular is that at a first interview Quick was able to offer such concrete information about a murder: that the victim’s name was Trine Jensen, that she was in her late teens and disappeared from central Oslo in the summer of 1981. All of these details were correct, and they were all available to read in a number of newspaper articles.

In February 1997, on his own initiative, Thomas Quick brought up the question of Trine Jensen’s disappearance, but the investigators let it lie, presumably because they were too busy with other things. In March 1998 it was time again – in an interview with Kåre Hunstad, Quick said that he would ‘soon be talking about the murder of Trine’.

On 27 January 1999 the name came up during questioning, when Quick was being interviewed about a large number of alleged murder victims. He provided another few details, such as the fact that he had left Trine’s body by a forest road near a shed.

Seppo Penttinen tried to press him for more: ‘You say you violated her, what do you mean by that?’

‘I violated her body in different ways.’

‘In different ways, you say?’

‘Mm.’

‘You’re talking in quite a low voice here so I’ll clarify it. Can you describe any of the ways that . . .’

‘No.’

It was like talking to a brick wall, but when Quick was pressed he handed over another few snippets of information, for example that Trine was left completely naked in the forest, probably north of Oslo – ‘Well, you know me and my sense of direction, it’s
hopeless’ – before he put an end to further questions with the words ‘Well, well, that’s all, we’ll leave it at that.’

During questioning two weeks later he asserted that he killed Trine with a blow to the back of her head, but not much more. On 17 May it was time for another interview.

Thomas Quick drew a map of the area which was completely wrong unless, as certain interpreters have suggested, it was an example of Quick’s ‘right–left problem’. If inverted it wasn’t so bad.

Penttinen asked what parts of the body had been subjected to violence.

‘Around the stomach,’ said Quick.

‘Do you remember if you’ve said anything else in earlier questioning?’ asked Penttinen.

‘No,’ said Quick.

Penttinen wondered if he could possibly be remembering any other woman than Trine.

‘Doubtful,’ answered Quick.

‘So I’m notifying you now that you’re under suspicion for the murder of Trine Jensen,’ said Penttinen.

On 28 May 1999, six days before a planned interview with Thomas Quick regarding the murder of Trine Jensen, Seppo Penttinen telephoned Quick so that he could ‘pass on information about clothes and any items that he connects with the victim’. The most important ‘item’ of the case was obviously the strap from Trine’s handbag, which had most likely been used to strangle her.

The telephone call was not recorded, so we do not know what exact words were spoken, but the fact is that in this exchange Seppo
Penttinen also chose to discuss the most crucial matter of all – without the tape recorder being switched on. Quick told him, according to Penttinen’s note, that Trine Jensen had a ‘handbag with straps that were longer than just a handle’. If one knows that a handbag has long carrying straps, which are considered significant in some way, it does not seem excessively difficult to work out what the straps might have been used for.

When, on 3 June 1999, Thomas Quick was questioned about the murder, he once again drew a map which, with some goodwill, could be correct – provided one reversed it. Quick described how Trine had got out of the car and was moving on her own when he attacked her with a knife and stabbed her several times. He claimed that there would have been a trail of blood some thirty metres long.

Finally Trine collapsed and Quick could see that she was dying. At this point he started attacking her again. She died while lying on the ground. He stabbed the front of her body.

‘I’d locate it in the chest or possibly the stomach,’ he said.

Despite being aware of the long carrying straps of the bag, Quick gave an entirely inaccurate account of how Trine had been killed. Instead of just asking him to continue with his story, Seppo Penttinen steered the conversation on to items she had brought with her.

Quick mentioned that he remembered ‘the handbag with . . . er . . . that strap’. Penttinen immediately took the bait.

‘What’s this handbag strap you’re talking about?’

Quick wasn’t able to answer; he sat there in silence, sighing.

Seppo Penttinen reacted with the same signal that he always used when Quick was on the right track.

‘Do you have some memory associated with that strap? I can see by your face that this is difficult for you to talk about.’

‘Yes, it’s difficult,’ answered Quick.

‘What do you associate with that handbag and the strap?’

‘Well, I take the strap and I use it, I was going to say . . . uh . . .’

‘You were going to say you used it? In what way did you use it? Can you explain that to me?’ asked Penttinen. ‘If that’s right . . .’ he added, just to be safe.

Quick sighed and said that he couldn’t remember. But by now Penttinen was in full swing and he wasn’t about to let this one go.

‘Do you remember if something happened with it?’

‘Well, I remember holding the strap . . . er . . .’

Quick indicated that the strap was a few centimetres wide. This did not tally very well with Trine’s bag, but Penttinen egged him on.

‘What was it made of? Do you have some sort of sense memory of the whole thing?’ he asked.

‘Yeah, I have a sense memory and . . . uh . . .’

‘If you’re thinking of the texture,’ Penttinen prodded.

‘Well, it’s some sort of leather or skin, or whatever it’s called,’ Quick attempted.

This was completely wrong. Penttinen knew it was a fabric strap. Quickly he changed the subject.

‘What happened with this strap you keep bringing up?’

‘I could say that I bound her feet with it, but that would be the wrong information.’

Penttinen’s questions were endless and Quick offered the alternative that Trine found it distressing when he was holding the strap. In the end Penttinen went in hard to get Quick’s statement into order.

‘If you just try to speak in plain language, Thomas! There’s something you’re avoiding. You want to get it out, but I can see that it’s very hard for you.’

‘Yeah, it’s very hard,’ Quick confirmed.

‘You don’t bind her legs, but it comes into use in some other way if I’m understanding you right.’

Again Thomas Quick tried to explain how frightened Trine was of the strap and then he went back to the knife. But Penttinen didn’t want to hear this.

‘If I interpret you now with your body language and so on, I’d say something happens with that handbag strap. At what stage is it useful to you? Where were you at this point? If you can try to develop that.’

The question was no longer
if
the strap was of use, but
where
and
how
.

By the time the next interview came around, on 1 September 1999, Quick had been mulling it over for two months. He’d also been able to fish for information and snap up various tips from the Swedish and Norwegian police who took part in the August reconnaissance to the places where Trine Jensen and Gry Storvik were found.