Thomas Quick (24 page)

The realisation that there was a serial killer at Säter Hospital created tensions not only internally at the clinic but also between the investigators and the carers. Göran Källberg was soon aware of great consternation within the investigation team that Quick had been locked up. On the same day that the regime at the hospital was changed, Christer van der Kwast called Källberg to explain that the cancellation of his full clearance would put the ongoing investigation in jeopardy.

Christer van der Kwast believed that Thomas Quick ‘has to get something in return’ for his confessions, but he was given short shrift. In fact Källberg was furious that a prosecutor was trying to interfere in the care of one of his patients. Full clearance and leave in exchange for murder confessions? ‘I cannot tolerate reasoning of this kind’, noted Källberg in the file.

Källberg could live with the conflict with van der Kwast. What was more serious was that increasing numbers of staff at the clinic were turning against him. Thomas Quick being disappointed was perfectly understandable, but the real problem was the reaction of the two doctors, Fransson and Persson.

Kjell Persson was already planning to leave Säter for a new job at St Lars Psychiatric Clinic in Lund and he now put a great deal of effort into trying to bring his patient with him. Quick fuelled the fire by threatening to stop cooperating with the police if he wasn’t
allowed to continue his therapy with Persson. Källberg viewed the situation as blackmail – pure and simple.

In February 1994, van der Kwast put in another call to Säter’s management to offer his views on how Quick’s care should be organised and ‘once again emphasised the importance of a close level of communication with senior physician Kjell [Persson] for the sake of the ongoing police investigation’.

When Kjell Persson’s efforts to bring Quick with him to Lund failed, he managed instead to arrange a place for him at the forensic psychiatric clinic in Växjö. However, the chief physician of the institution, Ole Drottved, declined Persson’s offer to continue therapy with Quick. This would have to be handled by the clinic’s own staff.

Christer van der Kwast, who believed that the police investigation was absolutely dependent on Kjell Persson’s therapy, intervened again in the question of care and called Drottved, who let himself to be persuaded. Persson would be allowed to preside over Quick’s therapy.

Again, chief physician Göran Källberg was presented with a
fait accompli
without having been consulted or informed. ‘This is because it has been put into effect by non-medical staff who are not in our employ’, he commented bitterly in his file – a pointed reference to van der Kwast.

But there were many who wanted to help stir the pot in the period leading up to the move. Göran Fransson, while he was on sick leave, maintained his communication with Thomas Quick via the ward’s patient telephone. A psychiatry student who had functioned as Quick’s therapist during holiday periods also threw herself into the ring. In a letter to Quick she tried to make him understand Göran Källberg’s decision on the lock-down in Ward 36:

When it is growing more evident that you have committed six murders, when you are in the midst of a difficult process in terms of your memories of this, it seems reasonable that you should be ‘held with a slightly firmer hand’. Unfortunately I think there would be an almighty row if the public found out that a serial killer was allowed so much free movement. You know how people are, and the mass media . . .

When Kjell Persson’s sick leave was coming to an end, he refused to go back to the clinic unless he could work 25 per cent of his normal working hours and devote himself exclusively to Thomas Quick. He wanted to rid himself of such duties as making ward rounds and dealing with other patients. If he didn’t get what he wanted, he would put himself back on full sick leave.

The request was conveyed to Källberg at a meeting on 7 February, after which Persson immersed himself in a telephone consultation with van der Kwast to schedule police questioning in the coming period. Having concluded this, he left the clinic and went home.

In the midst of this messy conflict, the investigation pressed on with further interviews. It can be seen from Göran Källberg’s notes that at this time he was beginning to have doubts about the method of the therapy Quick was being put through. Källberg and Kjell Persson happened to meet on a train, and they spoke about how the therapy would be organised if Quick moved to Växjö.

Kjell also tells me that he is now taking on a great challenge with the therapy. At the same time [I am] slightly dubious about whether this really is therapy. [Kjell] tells me that he mostly sits in silence and the patience starts remembering as soon as Kjell sits down in the room.

On 21 February Göran Fransson, who was still on sick leave, communicated his unwillingness to go back to his job at the clinic, where ‘he feels exposed to some sort of plot and that someone wants to do him harm’.

Göran Källberg wrote in his memorandum after the telephone call that he viewed Fransson as ‘clearly paranoid’. In short, the atmosphere at the regional clinic in Säter was not at its best.

Kjell Persson never went back to his job at Säter. Instead, he focused all his energy on the transfer of Thomas Quick. For his own part, he was going to be working at St Lars in Lund, commuting twice weekly to Växjö for the therapy sessions with Quick.

Shortly before Quick’s departure, Persson was informed of the rules in force at Växjö, including the prohibition of all forms of benzodiazepine. This was an unexpected problem. Would Quick agree to it? And if he did, would he have to be detoxified before he was moved to Växjö?

On 28 February Källberg wrote:

Have initiated a reduction in the dosage of benzodiazepine for TQ. Unfortunately it has not been clear to me just how much he is taking. He is also motivated to quickly cut his intake.

Sture Bergwall tells me that all this was just a pretence: ‘It was a shocking piece of news that they weren’t offering benzo at Växjö. At first Kjell said it would sort itself out, he’d talk to chief physician Drottved. When they wouldn’t agree to it, Kjell said it would all sort itself out once I got there.’

Thomas Quick suffered withdrawal symptoms during his detoxification which lasted a few weeks, but he was eager to get it over with as quickly as possible. After all, once he was there everything was going to ‘sort itself out’.

On 3 March Källberg noted that ‘TQ is having withdrawal symptoms but he wants to carry on with the rapid detox’.

Less than two weeks later a removals van took Thomas Quick and his belongings to the regional psychiatric clinic in Växjö, which immediately proved to be an entirely different institution to Säter Hospital. The hope that things would fall into place as far as provision of benzodiazepines was concerned was quickly scuppered. The Växjö clinic emphasised ‘security aspects, the establishment of boundaries and assessments of the dangers posed by patients’, Quick was told.

The move was also a disappointment for Kjell Persson, who had been looking forward to resuming his successful therapy with Quick. According to Sture, Persson visited him twice for the purpose of the therapy, but on both occasions he came in vain.

‘I couldn’t speak a single word. I couldn’t describe anything without benzo, so we just sat there,’ he said, laughing at the memory.

Nor did the infamous patient from Säter live up to the expectations that had grown among the staff at Växjö, who noted in the file:

The patient has been kept in our admissions ward for the last two weeks. The ward staff perceive him as withdrawn and introspective in any communication.

Via his therapist Kjell [Persson] the patient has communicated that he can’t put up with the methods of care practised in our clinic. The therapist Kjell also takes the view that he cannot continue his therapeutic programme under existing routines here.

Thomas Quick would only communicate with staff via Kjell Persson, and the management of the clinic confirmed that it had proved impossible to integrate the two different care regimes of Säter and Växjö, ‘which means that we cannot satisfy the patient’s views and wishes on full clearance, medications, etc.’.

By the time this note was made, Thomas Quick had already called Ward 36 at Säter Hospital to say that he couldn’t stand it any more. He wanted to go back.

‘We’ll come and pick you up tomorrow’, was the immediate decision.

The following day three care assistants went to Växjö to effect the move. Sture enthusiastically told me about the journey back to Säter: ‘It was wonderful! As soon as we got into the car they got out a paper bag of Diazepam! Home at last!’

They stopped off in Gränna to eat at a restaurant and bought sweets at Svampen in Örebro. When they came back to Ward 36 all the staff were waiting for Quick with open arms. At the front stood Birgitta Ståhle.

Now things would really get started.

BIRGITTA STÅHLE TAKES OVER

AFTER HIS RETURN
to Säter Hospital on 30 March 1994, Thomas Quick moved into his old room and the doctors put him back on a moderate dose of benzodiazepines. A liberating sense of calm descended over the clinic which had for so long been riven by dispute.

For Quick, on the other hand, the loss of his therapist Kjell Persson was difficult to endure. Birgitta Ståhle wrote in the file that Quick, after his stay in Växjö, was extremely impatient to continue his therapy and also very clear about the need to do this within the framework of the clinic at Säter, because he felt so secure and at home in his ward. He asked Ståhle to help him and she agreed.

As the chief physicians Fransson and Persson had left the field, Birgitta Ståhle emerged as the undisputed winner of a bitter contest in which she had not even needed to participate.

At three o’clock in the afternoon on 14 April 1994 the new core of the Quick investigation assembled in the music room of Ward 36. In the four red and black armchairs sat Seppo Penttinen, Thomas Quick, Birgitta Ståhle and the lawyer Gunnar Lundgren. The fifth wheel of the cart was Sven Åke Christianson, a lecturer in psychology from Stockholm University, who was there in his capacity as a memory expert with a particular interest in serial killers.

In advance of the session, Thomas Quick had passed on the message that he had important information about the murder of Johan Asplund. He had consumed large amounts of benzodiazepines over
the course of the day. His account grew painfully detailed and fuzzy while Seppo Penttinen listened patiently, asking questions and trying to move the story on.

Towards the end of the long interview things became extremely problematic when Quick, via Ståhle, revealed to the police that the doctors had been conducting their own investigation.

Thomas Quick left the room and Birgitta Ståhle took over to explain what had emerged in their therapeutic conversations regarding Johan’s recovered finger bones.

‘This is the difficult part,’ she began hesitantly. ‘This is what he told me. Now. Er . . . because he told me he found pieces of bone from the hand by the stream and he showed them to Göran and Kjell but then he ate them, so they’re no longer available to us.’

Penttinen sat in silence.

That two doctors had been running their own investigation and actively keeping this information from the investigators was probably shocking enough. Even worse was that Quick had allegedly eaten the only technical evidence to have emerged in the entire investigation.

Birgitta Ståhle’s short intervention was recorded on tape and would be transcribed and become public on the day the prosecution was announced for the murder of Johan Asplund. Seppo Penttinen had already heard enough.

‘I see,’ he said tersely. ‘We’re pausing this interview at 16.06.’

Kjell Persson’s successor, Birgitta Ståhle, never involved herself in investigative activities, choosing instead to cooperate fully with the police. She conducted therapy sessions with Thomas Quick at least three times a week and reported anything of police interest to Seppo Penttinen.

The greatest difficulty was that Quick, when he came to Säter Hospital, was unaware of having committed any murders at all. These memories were completely repressed, as were all the sexual assaults to which he had been subjected in his childhood.

Under Ståhle’s custodianship Quick managed to go back mentally into his childhood in Falun in the 1950s. In the therapy he seemed to be transformed into the little boy Sture, who, with a child’s vocabulary, recounted his experiences in detail while Ståhle continuously made notes and recorded his reactions.

Similar situations had been described by Kjell Persson as ‘a hypnotic journey in a time machine’. The psychological term for such time travel is ‘regression’, which implies that the patient goes back to an earlier stage of development, often for the purpose of reliving and working on traumatic experiences.

Thomas Quick’s term for the experience was ‘time-fall’ and it did in fact seem that in the therapy he was able to go back in time at will, either to his supposedly terrifying childhood or to those occasions when he had committed murders as an adult. According to the theories in practice at Säter Hospital, his violent crimes were ‘re-enactments’ of the traumas of his childhood, so that in effect the violent criminal harboured within himself both the victim and the perpetrator. The connection between the victim and the perpetrator in the same person meant that the reconstituted memory of a sexual assault in the perpetrator’s childhood could be used to gain an understanding of how the abuse had been re-created by the adult. Sture Bergwall had re-enacted his parents’ sexual assaults by raping and murdering young boys.

Over a period of time, Birgitta Ståhle’s therapy with Thomas Quick developed into a garden of repressed memories, several of which were germinated and developed into stories that held up all the way through legal processes to court verdicts for murder.