Sture Bergwall

Sture Bergwall
Born	Sture Ragnar Bergwall (1950-04-26) 26 April 1950 Korsnäs, Falun, Sweden
Other names	Thomas Quick Sätermannen ("the Säter Man")
Criminal penalty	Psychiatric confinement
Details
Victims	Convicted of 0 Acquitted in retrials after convictions in 8 other cases
Country	Sweden
Date apprehended	First time: 1969 Last time: 1990

Sture Bergwall (born Sture Ragnar Bergwall; 26 April 1950 in Korsnäs, Falun, Sweden), changed his name to Thomas Quick (Quick was his mother's maiden name) confessed to approximately forty-one murders (some of them subject to the statute of limitations which prevented prosecution) and was convicted of eight murders. His confessions included horrific admissions of rape of adults and children of both sexes as well as cannibalism and he became known as a serial killer. He recanted his confessions on Swedish television, changed his defence lawyer, and was successful in having all of the eight convictions quashed on appeal. He then changed his name back to his birth name - Sture Bergwall.

Bergwall was in a secure psychiatric unit when he started making his confessions, because of robbing his own bank dressed in a Santa Claus costume to support a drug (amphetamine) habit. He says himself that he made the false confessions because this made him the centre of attention, and that he was able to obtain benzodiapines that reduce anxiety, but are also addictive.

The investigations into these convictions and how they came about has been called "the greatest Swedish juridical scandal in modern times" and those who have been embarrassed by the scandal maintain that the faults are systemic and not the fault of individuals.] </ref> Quick was convicted of eight of these murders, but all of the convictions have now been overturned.

The credibility of Quick's confessions was first put into question by Pelle Svensson counsel for the parents of Johan Asplund, an 11-year old who had disappeared without trace. Attorney Pelle Svensson acting for the parents, brought a civil case in the District Court for kiddnapping against Johan's step-father, but lost on appeal when the charges were altered to include a murder charge.

Because of the tenuous nature of the evidence against Thomas Quick, Svensson decided to examine in detail the other eight murder convictions and discovered that there were no witnesses, or forensic evidence in any of them and that Quick's own confessions were the only grounds for the convictions. These did not give the correct answers to key questions such as murder weapons and birthmarks in early interviews, but on repeated questioning, somehow the police managed to prompt the "correct" answers, and the transcripts presented to the court had been manipulated to omit inconsistencies and wild incorrect guesses to information only the perpetrator would have known.

Svensson was convinced that the cases against Quick had been trumped up.

Pelle Svensson decided to comb through the records of Bergwall/Quick's previous seven murder convictions, and found glaring inconsistencies where the police were being manipulative. Svensson lodged a complaint with the Justitiekansler JK - the Chancellor of Justice, who was Göran Lambertz but the complaint was brushed aside with a statement that everything done by the police, prosecutors and the courts was in order.

Svensson wrote newspaper articles detailing the inconsistencies he found and mentioned that two police officers - one the Head of the Swedish CID had resigned because of objections to not following correct protocol.

With this as a basis, investigative journalist Hannes Råstam sifted through fifty thousand pages of material dealing with the cases and transcripts of therapy sessions and produced a program in the series Uppdrag granskning where Quick retracted his confessions, leaving insufficient evidence to convict him in all eight murder convictions.

The coincided with the head of the psychiatric unit being replaced, and Bergström's/Quick's account is that he was offered by the new psychiatrist that his medication could be reduced, and in conjunction with this he fired his defence lawyer and appointed a new one. The accusations were that the psychiatrists, the police and even the appointed public defence lawyere had acted in concert to help clear up unsolved cases with a man who was confessing while heavily drugged.

Early life

Bergwall grew up in Korsnäs with his six siblings. He adopted his mother's maiden name, Quick, around 1991. After a history of delinquency (substance abuse, sexually molesting 11-year-olds at the age of 19 and stabbing a man), Quick was convicted in 1991 for robbing a bank.

Confessions and convictions of murder

After the robbery conviction, Quick was confined to compulsory psychiatric care. During therapy, he confessed to some 20 murders committed in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland between 1964 and 1993. One of his confessions led to the solving of an 18-year-old murder considered to be unsolvable, and another to the informal solving of a murder in Växjö in 1964. The 1964 crime was outside the then 25-year statute of limitations in Sweden, but with the information given by Quick, the case was considered closed.

Between 1994 and 2001, Quick was convicted of eight murders (in chronological order) at six different District Court trials:

• Charles Zelmanovits, Piteå 1976, sentenced in 1994 – no forensic evidence, except for the confession – Charges waived July 2013
• Johan Asplund, Sundsvall, 1980, sentenced in 2001 – no body, no forensics except for the confession. Charges waived March 2012.
• The Stegehuis couple, Appojaure (Gällivare) 1984, sentenced in 1996 – no forensics, but Quick gave information regarding facts that had never been disclosed to the public. His confessions were later questioned, as Quick seemed to have been privy to all information before the trial - retrial granted by the Supreme Court. Charges waived May 2013.
• Yenon Levi, tourist from Israel, Rörshyttan, 1988, sentenced in 1997 – no forensic evidence, but statements included in Quick's testimony were matched against undisclosed police facts. Charges waived September 2010.
• Therese Johannesen, Drammen, Norway, 1988, sentenced in 1998 – no forensic evidence. Charges waived March 2011.
• Trine Jensen, Oslo, 1981, sentenced in 2000 – no forensic evidence. Charges waived September 2012.
• Gry Storvik, Oslo, 1985 – no forensic evidence, confession; the semen found in victim did not belong to Quick. Charges waived September 2012.

In Sweden a defendant always gains access to the full police investigation prior to the trial. Quick's lawyer Claes Borgström has been criticised for failing to protect his mentally disturbed client's objective interest in being judged not guilty.

Confessions and subsequent withdrawals

In the years following 1990, when Quick was sentenced to closed psychiatric confinement, he confessed to several unsolved murders. His first murder, according to his own accounts, occurred in Växjö in 1964, when Quick was only 14 years old. The victim, Thomas Blomgren, was described by Quick as being the same age but not as strong and tall as himself. The second alleged victim was Alvar Larsson, whom Quick claimed to have murdered at Sirkön in the lake Åsnen outside the town of Urshult. According to Quick's sister, Quick never left Falun at the time of this murder. The credibility of Quick's confessions had been widely debated in the Swedish media since 1993, up until 2008, when Quick withdrew all of his confessions. There have been consistent doubts about the reliability of his statements, and some of his confessions have been proven to be fabrications – in some cases the victims have turned up alive and well. Another dubious circumstance is the fact that no witnesses have ever testified to seeing Quick in the proximity of any of the crime scenes, even though more than 10,000 people were interviewed for intricate details.

Critics of these confessions and the trials claim that Quick never murdered anyone, but that he is a compulsive liar. Among the critics are the parents of a child he confessed to having murdered in the late 1970s. In response to these accusations, Quick himself wrote an article for the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter in 2001 in which he said that he refused to cooperate further with the authorities concerning all open murder investigations.

May 2009: Quick's brother Sten-Owe Bergwall and lawyer Pelle Svensson with the books they authored, wherewith they criticise the Swedish authorities' handling of the Thomas Quick cases.

In November 2006, Thomas Quick's trials were reported to the Swedish Chancellor of Justice by retired lawyer Pelle Svensson on behalf of two relatives of a murder victim who wish to have the trials declared invalid.

Several principals in the fields of law and psychiatry, amongst them Swedish police professor Leif G. W. Persson and secret sources in the Swedish police all claim that Quick has a history of mental illness, but is not guilty of many, if any, of the crimes to which he confessed. Handling of the Quick cases has been described as the "most scandalous" chapter of Scandinavian crime history, branding it as glaring incompetence, naiveté, and opportunism within the police and judicial system.

Quick withdrew all of his confessions in 2008 during the taping of a TV documentary. Quick's attorney now contends that the prosecution withheld important investigative material from the defence (which the prosecution adamantly denies). Quick's attorney also maintains that his client is mentally ill and had been under the influence of prescription drugs when he confessed to the killings.

Thomas Quick, now Sture Bergwall, recanted his confessions and requested the Svea Court of Appeal order a new trial for the murder case of Yenon Levi at Rörshyttan. In December 2009, the court of appeals granted a retrial of the Yenon Levi case. As the prosecutor found that the evidence was not sufficient, Quick moved for a judgment of acquittal, and he was acquitted in September 2010.

Quick's counsel also declared his intention to ask for a retrial of the Therese Johannesen case, claiming that Quick had an alibi for the day when Therese Johannesen was abducted and murdered. SKL (Statens kriminaltekniska laboratorium, State Forensic-Technical Laboratory) found in March 2010 that two forensic objects which the prosecution had claimed were bone fragments were in fact wood, glue and some synthetic material. A retrial was granted, and Quick was formally acquitted when the prosecutor dropped the charges.

Quick was acquitted of all eight murder counts; the last aquittal was handed down on 30 July 2013.

On 19 March, 2014 Falun administrative court determined that there was a need for continued psychiatric care, but that it need not necessarily be in the form of compulsory confinement.

See also

• Henry Lee Lucas, an American "serial killer" whose confessions are now believed to be fabricated

Further reading

• Hannes Råstam: Thomas Quick: The Making of a Serial Killer. Cannongate Books, 2013, ISBN 9781782110712
• Elizabeth Day: Thomas Quick: the Swedish serial killer who never was. The Observer, 2012-12-20
• Bergwall, Sten-Ove (1995). Min bror Thomas Quick: en berättelse om det ofattbara. Stockhol: Rabén Prisma. Template:Sv icon
• Quick, Thomas (1998). Kvarblivelse. Stockholm: Kaos Press. Template:Sv icon
• "Quick-mål har anmälts till JK" Template:Sv icon. Dagens Nyheter. 20 November 2006. Archived from the original on 1 October 2007.
• "Court orders retrial in new serial killer case". The Local - Sweden's News in English. 26 September 2010.
• "Thomas Quick frikänd för mord" Template:Sv icon. SvD Nyheter. 3 September 2010.
• Dagens Nyheter Dokument visar att åklagare och polis manipulerade viktiga bevis. (Documents show that the prosecutor and police manipulated important evidence(Swedish) Has links to copies of the judgments in all eight trials.

Media

Thomas Quick: Confessed Mass Murderer didn't do it (9 minutes)