Thomas Quick. Hannes Råstam
to his usual way of speaking. Both of them were recognised without much difficulty and they were arrested by police immediately after the robbery.
Patrik was eighteen years old. He received a prison sentence of three and a half years. Sture was clinically assessed and committed to psychiatric care at the Säter clinic, where he had more or less stayed ever since, apart from the few occasions when he had been granted leave to travel to Stockholm, Hedemora and other towns in the regions of Dalarna and Norrland.
It was the time before the robbery that particularly interested me.
During extensive questioning, the teenage boys had described how Sture had made ice hockey goals for them, organised treasure trails and made popcorn. For a while, Sture had rented a holiday cottage where a number of the boys would occasionally have sleepovers. On no occasion had he tried to molest any of them and none of the boys had even suspected that he was homosexual. One evening a few of the boys had gone to Sture’s home to watch a horror film. When things got particularly scary, Sture had held one of the boys’ hands. On the way home, the boys had talked about it. They thought it was weird that a grown man would want to hold a thirteen-year-old’s hand.
This long-standing innocent relationship with the boys of Grycksbo did not chime with the image of the serial killer who switched personality and compulsively raped, desecrated, murdered and cut up boys.
I contacted a few of the Grycksbo boys and met with one of them. None of them could quite reconcile the image of Thomas Quick with the Sture they felt they had known so well.
Preoccupied with these thoughts, I travelled to Dalarna at the end of August for a second meeting with Sture.
On the way to Säter I stopped at Falu District Court to look through the investigation material on the murder of Gry Storvik. I turned a page and it was like being punched in the gut when I saw the forensic technician’s first photo of the body. The murderer had carelessly flung her out into a litter-strewn car park. A naked woman’s body, still girlish, lay face down on the asphalt. Not satisfied with killing Gry, the murderer had also apparently intentionally and aggressively placed her in an exposed position for public display.
The effect of the photograph was unexpected. I felt upset, confused and embarrassed by the picture in front of me.
Whether he was guilty or not, this was a snapshot of the incomprehensible series of tragedies implied by Quick’s confessions. After all, if Quick really was innocent of these crimes, the convictions were in effect an amnesty for the real murderers who had done this to Gry Storvik and the other victims.
This was precisely what Leif G.W. Persson had said, but it was only now that I properly understood. Again I looked at the photograph of Gry in the investigation file. It had been taken on 25 June 1985. It was now 28 August 2008 and the murder would become statute-barred in one year and ten months.
In 660 days the murderer – if he were someone other than Thomas Quick – would walk free for ever.
SÄTER HOSPITAL, THURSDAY, 28 AUGUST 2008
AS SOON AS Sture and I had made ourselves comfortable, I was keen to hear his feelings about his time in Grycksbo.
‘When I read the interviews with the boys in Grycksbo and all the other people who knew you back then, I got the impression that this was a very happy period in your life.’
‘Yes, that was a very good period,’ Sture confirmed. ‘Actually the best time of my life.’
Sture talked about various events, happy memories, his and Patrik’s dogs and Christmas celebrations with the Olofsson family.
‘But it all ended up as a complete disaster,’ I reminded him.
‘Yeah, in the end it went terribly bad, the whole thing!’ said Sture, wringing his hands.
‘And the effects on Patrik’s family,’ I continued. ‘You worked your way in and then you hurt them terribly. Didn’t you?’
Sture nodded. Silent. I could see his mind working. Then he hid his face in his hands and was rocked by deep sobs.
‘Sorry, it’s just so terrible thinking about it,’ he managed to tell me through his convulsions.
I don’t think I have ever seen a grown man cry with such abandon. Like a child. It was touching and frightening at the same time.
I was concerned that I had ruined everything I had started to build up, but Sture soon pulled himself together, wiped his tears and went to the locked door.
‘Wait here! I’ll be back in a minute,’ he said, pressing the button.
Before long a care assistant was there to let him out. A few moments later he came back with a big tin box containing hundreds of photographs from his childhood, adolescence and adult years. We sat there for a long time, looking through the photographs. Many were of Sture posing or indulging in horseplay for the camera.
The television producer in me only had one thought: How can I persuade Sture to lend me this box?
One of the photos was of a woman in her mid-thirties. She was sitting in a kitchen, smiling at the camera. Sture held the photo under my nose.
‘This is a bit odd. This is the only woman I ever had sex with,’ he said.
I sensed a certain pride in him.
‘The only one?’ I asked, dumbfounded. ‘Ever?’
‘Yeah. Just with her. There are some special reasons for it,’ he explained cryptically.
Long after, I learned that these ‘special reasons’ were that at a certain time in his life he dreamed of having children. Maybe he could manage to live with a woman despite his sexual orientation? The attempt was unsuccessful.
For my own part, that photograph and what Sture had just told me had another significance. Gry Storvik, I thought to myself. The woman working as a prostitute in Norway, who had been murdered and dumped in a car park with a man’s sperm inside her body. That woman in the photo is not Gry Storvik! With whom you claimed you had intercourse.
So why had Sture told me this intimate detail? Had he given himself away? Or was he consciously leading me down this train of thought? No, we had never spoken of either Gry Storvik or any other murder, so why would he think I knew about his claim to have had sexual intercourse with Gry? My thoughts swung back and forth along these lines as we continued looking through the photographs.
As my visit started drawing to a close I asked, in a slightly absentminded way, ‘Do you think you could lend me a few of your photos?’
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I’d be happy to.’
I made do with five photographs: Sture in the kiosk; Sture and the guys on a hard rock outing; Sture looking with mock alarm into his empty wallet; Sture at the kitchen table; Sture posing outside the Olofssons’ holiday cottage, where allegedly Yenon Levi was murdered.
That Sture let me take the five photographs was a clear indication of trust. As we parted, I knew that Sture would participate in my documentary. One way or another.
A DISCOVERY
BY THE END of the summer of 2008, both Gubb Jan Stigson and Leif G.W. Persson were becoming irritated with me.
‘If you still haven’t twigged what this is about you must be bloody stupid!’ said Persson petulantly.
Stigson thought my mental faculties were just as impaired, since I hadn’t understood that Quick really was the serial killer he had been convicted as.
‘Take the murder of Therese Johannesen, for example. Therese was nine years old when she disappeared from a residential neighbourhood known as Fjell in Norway on 3 July in 1988. Seven years later Thomas Quick confesses to the murder. He’s in Säter Hospital by then, he’s capable of describing Fjell; he’s shown the police to the spot, he’s