Thomas Quick (32 page)

From the Psychological Profiling Group, Detective Chief Inspector Jan Olsson was called in with the psychiatrist Ulf Åsgård to make crime analyses. Olsson also became the forensic expert for the Quick Commission.

Hans Ölvebro was made officer in charge. He was head of the Palme Unit, from which the seasoned investigator Ture Nässén was also summoned. Finally, Detective Inspectors Ann-Helene Gustafsson and Anna Wikström were called in, as was the forensic technician
Lennart Kjellander from the National Police Board Working Group on Forensic Archaeology.

In short, the Quick Commission signed up the most highly qualified crime fighters in the country, who would now roll up their sleeves and get on with the Thomas Quick investigation using every professional and scientific method available to them.

Seppo Penttinen arrived at Säter Hospital at ten in the morning on 17 January 1995. Thomas Quick was waiting in the music room and had already taken so many benzodiazepines that the planned fourth interview on Appojaure hung in the balance.

Penttinen started by trying to establish how Quick and Johnny Farebrink had found their way to the remote picnic spot where the Dutch couple had made their camp.

‘It was Johnny who felt slighted by these people,’ said Quick.

Farebrink had said that the man had behaved rudely and Quick thought they had insulted him in some way.

Thomas Quick’s suggestion that Johnny Farebrink had met the Stegehuises before the murder was problematic. The Dutch couple’s journey had been reconstructed in detail, all the way from Holland to Sweden. Their final two days had been mapped out by the police hour by hour.

The Stegehuises drove south on the E45 towards Gällivare shortly after ten o’clock on 12 July. They filled up their car at a Shell petrol station in Skaulo at a quarter to eleven and continued towards Stora Sjöfallets Nationalpark (Great Waterfall National Park).

From Stora Sjöfallet they drove back and made a stop to take photographs forty kilometres west of Appojaure. We know from their travel journal that they put up their tent at half past four in the afternoon.

In other words, Johnny Farebrink’s meeting with the Dutch couple couldn’t have taken place before they came to Appojaure. For this reason Penttinen steered his questioning away from the subject and asked instead about the knives that had been used in the murder.

Quick maintained that he had used the strange knife with the
broad blade which he had sketched in the first interview, while Farebrink’s knife had been slightly smaller, with a handle made of reindeer horn.

It was out of the question that the broad blades of these knives could have caused the wounds cut into the victims’ bodies. They were made by a knife with a considerably thinner blade, at most twenty millimetres.

A knife exactly like this, the couple’s own fillet knife, had been found at the murder scene. In the autopsy report it is stated that this knife could even have caused all of the injuries. For the sake of Quick’s credibility, it was now vital to get this knife into his account, and in the continued questioning we see how Penttinen managed this through his unmistakably leading questions.

‘Is there a third knife?’ he asked.

‘I’m feeling that there are three knives involved here, but I’m vague about it.’

‘Where would the third knife come from, in that case?’

‘Johnny,’ answered Quick.

This was an answer Penttinen did not want to hear, so he said,’What did you say?’

‘From Johnny in that case,’ Quick repeated. ‘Or the tent.’

‘You seem very disturbed when you say the third knife could have come from the tent,’ said Penttinen.

When Quick ‘seems disturbed’, in the context of the interrogation, it means that he is getting closer to psychologically loaded material – or in other words, the truth, which is often too painful to talk about.

‘Well, of course,’ Quick answered.

Quick felt so terrible at the thought of the couple’s knife that Penttinen had to stop his questioning for rest and medication.

After a break, Quick described how he found the knife inside the tent.

‘Why did you need it?’ Penttinen wondered. ‘You already had a knife each.’

But Quick was no longer with him. He had taken too much medication and wasn’t able to keep up.

‘You keep trailing off,’ said Penttinen.

He wondered if Quick could say where they went after the murders. More uncertainty.

‘What complicates it for me is that I seem to remember he gave me a lift to Messaure, or whatever it’s called. He dropped me off there.’

That he had been left in the village of Messaure was one more decisive piece of information that Quick had not mentioned earlier. Once the place name had been brought up, he did not have the strength to talk about it any more.

‘I can see you’ve been given medication so you can’t go on. Or are you just feeling bad?’ asked Penttinen.

‘I feel bad,’ said Quick. ‘There’s no problem with the medication . . .’

Questioning was resumed after lunch.

‘We were talking about Messaure,’ Seppo Penttinen continued. ‘How did that enter into the picture?’

‘We came to Messaure in the early hours,’ said Quick. ‘I have a strong memory of taking a railbus from Messaure in the morning.’

Both Quick and Penttinen were unsure whether Messaure was served by a railbus. As usual they had carried on talking about the murder investigation over lunch.

‘We were getting on to the fact that you had visited someone there, but it seems difficult for you to talk about it.’

Quick confirmed that this was so.

In the next interview Seppo Penttinen said that he had checked a railway map and confirmed that there was no railbus connection to Messaure. Quick stood his ground.

‘He let me off in Messaure and I have a feeling it was from there, later in the morning, that I took a railbus, but here I’m . . .’

‘You’re unsure,’ said Penttinen. ‘What about the bicycle alternative, then, you were going to talk about that?’

‘I have no memory of cycling from Messaure,’ said Quick.

The interviews often seem to take the form of negotiation in this
way, where Penttinen and Quick collectively tried to find a solution that was not contradicted by known facts.

On 23 January there was a meeting of the Quick Commission and Stellan Söderman summarised the position: ‘As it stands there’s a conviction for a murder in Piteå police district dated 1976,’ he explained. ‘The period of criminal activity is approximately thirty years and the current number of cases is seven. Two are statute-barred, one took place in Norway.’

Next the discussion touched upon the sensitive question of Seppo Penttinen’s role in the investigation. There was unanimous agreement at the meeting that it wasn’t appropriate for a single interrogator to conduct all the questioning of the suspect. Penttinen explained the ‘absolutely extraordinary circumstances’ that prevailed during questioning. For the moment, the group agreed to wait before ‘briefing’ another person into the process.

One week later the Quick Commission had its second meeting at Rikskriminalen (CID) in Stockholm. Jan Olsson, who had made an analysis of the double murder in Appojaure, put forward a proposal to carry out a reconstruction where Quick would demonstrate how the crime had taken place. They would also get Quick and the medical examiner Anders Eriksson together, in order to verify or disprove Quick’s information.

A possible reconstruction in Appojaure in the spring was discussed, whereupon Seppo Penttinen again explained to the group ‘the unique interrogation situation’ that applied to Quick.

‘Quick is trying to bring back deeply repressed memories and then reassemble these into a credible sequence of events. According to the therapists this is a part of the work Quick must do in order to go forward.’

He also described the role of the memory expert Sven Åke Christianson in the investigation and explained that Christianson was having regular meetings with Quick. After four years at Säter Hospital Thomas Quick had lost touch with his last few contacts
outside the world of forensic psychiatry and the legal system. His contact with people was limited to police interviews and therapy conversations about murder and abuse. He was utterly cut off from the real world.

Sporadic and scanty notes indicate that Quick was feeling increasingly unwell at the beginning of 1995, while at the same time being prescribed more and more benzodiazepines, with worsening side effects as a consequence.

Some examples from the file:

26 January 1995

Had a panic attack in the smoking room, couldn’t get out. Hyperventilated, grew stiff. Breathing into a paper bag. With assistance from staff he made his way back to his room, sat in a wheelchair. Lay down on his bed. Was given Diazepam, 2 suppositories of 10 mg.

18 February 1995

Thomas had a panic attack at 16.00. Sat in the smoking room calling out, ‘I can’t do it, I can’t do it.’ Suddenly Thomas charged from his chair and into the stairwell where he threw himself head first into the wall. Thomas tried repeatedly to bang his head against the floor. [. . .]

He was so unsteady on his feet that he couldn’t walk, instead he crawled into the smoking room. When he finished smoking he wanted to go back to his room, but he couldn’t manage it. He collapsed outside the office door. With another member of staff I fetched the chair from inside the office, I put him in it.

21 February 1995, Chief Medical Officer Erik Kall

The patient has been feeling quite unwell for the last few days. Yesterday he received a letter from the parents of one of the victims who want to know what has happened to their son. The patient has had thoughts about whether it is worth the trouble. But he has decided to continue the process.

Thomas Quick’s existence had become a cycle of panic attacks, death wishes, constant medication and conversations about murders and sexual abuse – day in, day out, month after month, year after year.

On 2 March Birgitta Ståhle wrote a summary of the therapy during the period from which the above notes were taken.

After the trial in Piteå we have continued our work of seeing the earlier contexts and how these have been re-enacted at an adult age. This is taking place in parallel with police interviews. New memories where violence is being directed at adults have started coming up. This information is passed to the police and prosecutor for further development.

Thomas has now been arraigned for the so-called ‘tent murder’ outside Gällivare in 1984.

His brother Sten-Ove’s book on Thomas has caused a strong reaction. At the same time this has made Thomas connect more with memories in which his brother subjected him to extremely violent acts during his childhood.

Thomas made two suicide attempts in the autumn, when intense anxiety awakened a desire to die and avoid the suffering caused by the psychotherapy and police questioning.

Birgitta Ståhle pointed out that as his therapist she remained ‘in close cooperation with his ward about his daily psychological status’. Despite Quick’s harrowing panic attacks, his longing to die and high intake of medication, Ståhle insisted that the psychotherapeutic process was in a positive phase:

The images and memory fragments that come up in the therapy are clarifying more and more, and the circumstances around the murders are also becoming clearer. There has been a development towards a deeper ability to make contact both in terms of his own life story and how he has functioned later as an adult. He has also developed contact with difficult feelings such as hatred and fury as well as despair and guilt about what he has subjected other people to. [. . .]

Through Thomas being open and sharing his extremely difficult situation our communication and the therapy have also been further strengthened.

A few hours after Birgitta Ståhle had written her account of the positive advances in the therapeutic process, a more typical note was added to the file by a nurse:

Time 19.30: In the evening Thomas had severe panic attacks. He was provided with 2 x 10 mg Diazepam suppositories. Declared that he does not have the strength to live any more. A watch has been put in place.

Late at night on 12 March the telephone rang at the home of Assistant County Police Commissioner Bertil Ståhle. It was immediately clear to him that one of his wife’s patients had been given their home telephone number. He called out towards the bedroom:

‘There’s a crazyman who wants to talk to you. He says his name is Ellington.’

His wife, who had been woken up, reached for the receiver.

‘Sture, it’s Birgitta,’ she said.

A theatrical and mocking laugh was heard.

‘This is Ellington and I want to talk to the therapist.’

Birgitta Ståhle recognised the thick voice.

‘Sture!’

Afterwards, Birgitta Ståhle summarised the telephone call from memory, inserting her own commentary in square brackets.

‘Sture is lying in his bed. He has anxiety. (
Laughs
)
They believe in his anxiety and his stories. He’s just manipulating.’

‘Who are you, then?’

‘I’m Ellington and we’ve met a few times. (
Laughs
)

[Here I get the sense that it’s Sten-Ove who’s calling, which feels disconcerting. I am used to meeting Sture, but not Sten-Ove. He communicates his contempt for Sture, who is anxious, who is weak. Also contempt for the therapy, the way he calls me ‘the therapist’.]

Ellington continued: ‘Now I’m going to tell you about the trip to Norway.’

[Now I know that this is Sture in the figure of Ellington. I’m going to listen to what he has to say and try to regain contact with Sture.]

‘Me and Patrik. We’re travelling towards Oslo. Close, just before . . . (
Starts laughing again
)

‘I manipulate and I manage (
triumph in his voice at his power and strength
)
to get Patrik to step out of the car. (
Laughs again
)
He steps out of the car and he kills the boy. It’s he who kills the boy. That was what he wanted! And I’m the one who makes him do it.’

[Here his voice goes into silent crying. I hear Sture say in a whisper, ‘Birgitta.’ Straight away I know I have to acknowledge Sture, I have to make him clear and strong in comparison to Ellington. Ellington’s voice sort of growls in the background but Sture begins to talk to me and I realise that he is back inside himself.]